« Almanac | Main | Zowie! Splat! »
July 28, 2003
Elsewhere
This link will take you to Robert Gottlieb's dance reviews in the New York Observer, which in my opinion rank among the very best things currently being written about dance in New York, or anywhere else. Last week he wrote about Dance Theatre of Harlem and Pilobolus, and in both cases he was right on the money. Gottlieb came to criticism late, after editing books (which he still does) and The New Yorker, but he's taken it up with a vengeance, and he's a natural. It figures--he's probably been to more New York City Ballet performances than anybody other than George Balanchine and Edward Gorey, and they're both dead.Click the link, then bookmark it. You won't be sorry.
Greg Sandow (who blogs about classical music elsewhere on artsjournal.com) responds to my recent posting on Adam Guettel, the off-Broadway composer of musicals whom I think is writing operas and doesn't know it, or maybe won't admit it. Here's an excerpt:
Opera singers are good at operatic singing, and if that's what I want--along with the grand surge of an operatic orchestra--I'd better get my work produced in an opera house. But if what I want is good theater, maybe I'd be better off elsewhere. I used to write a lot of incidental music for plays and was delighted with how quickly actors got to the heart of any music they were involved in. They went straight for what the music meant, something that, in my experience, happens much more slowly in opera, and sometimes might not happen at all.
Read the whole thing.
Posted July 28, 2003 12:02 PM
