Lobenthal.com

Even though she was 90, her death is slightly disconcerting because the last time I saw her, when she spoke at the Town Hall memorial tribute to Sutherland two years ago, she was so vigorous–so much the powerful personality she’d been on stage.

To fete her and to sample her artistry, I interrupted my very busy listening schedule to play her Clytemnestra at the Met in1966 – I’d never heard it.  She’s joined by Nilsson-Rysanek-King-Dooley.  Schippers conducts.

My only coherent reaction to the entire performance is—Wow!

More on Resnik when I recover.

The superintendant in the coop next to me said that they’ve installed a compost drum on the roof, where residents of the building can bring their biodegradable waste. The building is flagship in a pilot program sponsored by the city.

Oh, yes, that must be related to the Bloomberg composting initiative I posted about in June.

From a NYCB dancer in the early, early days:

Balanchine “had a way of demanding, of asking you to do just a little bit more than you thought you could, of keeping you on edge, keeping that carrot in front of you.  And that’s what the audience felt.  When these dancers got on stage, they were dancing to the edge of their ability.  They were going over the precipice.”

I’m transcribing the entire interview for publication but it’s going to take a while.

From the Miami Herald:

“Two of the dead teenager’s friends, including one who says he was his ‘lookout’ while Hernández-Llach applied paint, said the officers exchanged high-fives and congratulations after Tasering him.”

The police in this country are taking extreme, unreasonable, unacceptable liberties, killing a 17-year-old graffiti artist in Miami, Israel Hernandez-Llach.

Image via instagram

Essential, sobering reading at Commondreams.org, by Jon Queally.

His sister “said her brother wanted to make art that would change the world.  ‘He was a boy that could dream more than anybody could think. His life was about art.’”

Staying in a house furnished with numerous full-length mirrors!

I don’t often cry at performances, particularly canned ones, but I do tear up when I watch Janis Joplin singing Little Girl Blue on the Tom Jones show in 1969.  The sadness of her voice melds with the sadness of the song and of her life.

And I’m not alone. . .

Joplin’s publicist, Myra Friedman, who wrote the biography Buried Alive, told me than when Joplin first sang the song in the recording studio, Joplin herself cried as did the engineers.

I don’t particularly like to think about Joplin.  I loved her singing so much in my extreme youth that I kind of feel-enough for one lifetime!  Furthermore, I find her life and death painful.  Her abuse of herself was also the abuse of an incredible talent that she should have protected.  “Should” however is too moralistic, judgmental: Friedman’s book makes a very good case for the way that Joplin was at the mercy of an irresistible internal command.

Writing about Linda Gravenites, however, I will make myself read all the Joplin bios.  I’ve read in all of them but the only one I’ve read cover-to-cover is Friedman’s.

Joplin’s hunger to sing and to be acclaimed somehow enabled her to transcend the other drives–to the extent that she did.  Linda told me that Joplin told her she had given up painting because she believed she would never be a great painter.

“Janis needed to be great,” Linda said.

When ABT put on an all-Tudor program during its City Center season in 2008, that night also seemed well attended.  The audience’s attention was certainly rapt all the way through, despite the fact that there were no intermissions.  Ballet audiences tend to get restive, particularly now; they’re usually not Wagnerians.  And their attention span has certainly NOT been helped by the endless abridging of full-length ballets.  As always, dumbing down begets dumbness.

But everyone’s attention seemed to hold fast during the Tudor tributes, both in 1986, when the ballet audience really was different, more educated in the art form, and again in 2008.

My mother told me that they showed the 1985 ABT in San Francisco program at her retirement home.  It went over big.

I said to my mother, “You see how gripping Lilac Garden can be?” She agreed wholeheartedly.

It’s a supreme theatrical, kinetic experience when it’s well performed.

Nowadays it’s hardly performed at all, let alone well performed, and the ways of casting politics make me shudder at what it could look like.

Even when Tudor was alive, there were casting compromises, but some of that could be ameliorated through coaching.

The ballet administrations wonder why there’s no audience.  Why not perform emotionally gripping ballets so that they become emotionally gripping?

Not that Tudor’s ballets are traditionally boffo box office, but I remember at the all-Tudor evening ABT performed in 1986, the house–that would be the Met– was packed.

And you know what?  The audience, the critics, the art form itself, all deserve some supreme theatrical/kinetic experiences.

Everybody knows that I’m always willing to help with their gardening projects—as long as they pay for the gas.

This month I’ve got a little sycamore “job” lined up—planting two baby trees for someone who’s out of town on vacation.  Just got an email: Oh, there may be some more trees arriving.

Next month I do a major lilac transplant number.