I suppose I’ll bite the bullet and watch tonight’s Republican debate, which looks to have some verbal fireworks and a huge listening audience. I may even live-blog it, if I can stomach it. Those of you who read this blog … Continue reading →
Violette Verdy is now in her early 80s, but in her heyday as a soloist with the New York City Ballet I saw her dance many times and loved her performances, particularly in the role she created as the girl … Continue reading →
…we have Ksenia Parkhatskaya (see yesterday’s post if you don’t know who I’m talking about). This dance has a completely different tone than the ones I posted yesterday, and therefore it spotlights her versatility. Although it’s not the sort of … Continue reading →
Here’s a video (with subtitles) of an interesting Russian entertainer named Ksenia Parkhatskaya, performing on a Ukrainian TV show. She starts out giggling—and gets practically everyone else giggling, too—but don’t let that fool you. She a good singer, with no … Continue reading →
Let’s take a look at some beauty. This is a video of company class at one of the best ballet companies in the world, Britain’s Royal Ballet. “Company class” means it’s a class that’s taken by the company members, who … Continue reading →
You may think I’ve gone stark raving mad. What could Van Rothbart, the evil magician in the ballet “Swan Lake,” have to do with the Iran deal? Answer: not all that much. But in the wake of the Iran deal … Continue reading →
I’ve written about the ballet “Etudes” before, but now I want to hone in on one of my very favorite parts of it, the mazurka, in particular one of the male solos. “Etudes” is a ballet choreographed in 1948 by … Continue reading →
For the Fourth of July, courtesy commenter “mezzrow”: I saw that film on TV maybe 30 times when I was a child. Loved it, and in particular loved the idea that James Cagney—whom I already knew as a tough old … Continue reading →
Meet Misty Copeland, a soloist at American Ballet Theater, one of the premier dance companies in America: Because the dancer’s body is her (or his) instrument, the fact that Copeland is black becomes more of an issue than it would … Continue reading →
I remain fascinated with the dancing of Georgian men. That’s “Georgia” as in here: In Georgian folk dance tradition it’s the men rather than the women who sometimes dance on their toes, or en pointe as we like to say … Continue reading →
Here’s one more video to show you at least a tiny bit of what made Maya Plisetskaya one of the most wonderfully unique dancers who ever lived. Some dancers do the steps more perfectly, with a more elegantly stretched and … Continue reading →
…and yet Galina Mezentseva has been retired for at least twenty years, and is of my generation. The minute I watched the very first video that I’d ever seen of her, which featured her performing Odile (the Black Swan role … Continue reading →