Apollinaire: Holiday lists of dances you almost loved

As I have no time over the next couple of weeks to post anything substantive, I thought maybe YOU could.

It used to be that people would revise their ballets. Over and over again. In his "Complete Stories of the Great Ballets," Balanchine admits to tweaking "The Nutcracker" every year. I don't know how much that's happening now, but I sure wish it would. It's so much effort to create a work in the first place, and so much less effort to revise it once it's up, that I wish more choreographers had the opportunity.

Here's a few dances I found compelling, but not completely so. I have faith they could be fixed without total revamping:

Mark Morris's "Kolam" for his own troupe. It begins with a sense of foreboding, which builds straight to the end, when the dance gives up. The ending needs fixing.

Christopher Wheeldon's "Evenfall" for the New York City Ballet. What a stunning, lovely, inventive ballet. This one doesn't need much to make it incredible. There's just some problem with the pas de deux at its center: not integrated enough, or maybe too integrated. hmmmmm....

Peter Martins' "Friandises" for the New York City Ballet. Tonal problems in the beginning, I think. The ballet can't decide at the start whether it wants to be coy or a flurry. I don't think there's any coyness in the music, so I'd get rid of those gestures. (Martins should never be allowed to use a parallel passé sauté again, ever, or in fact any kind of parallel passé. No more passés, for you, Mr. Martins. You've used up your lifetime allotment.) The opening needs to prepare us for the poignancy of the central adagio. And the whizzy entrances at the end are GREAT, but I wish they were more of a surprise, with the dancers arriving a bit sooner or later than we expect. And it would be neat if the performers thought of themselves as members of a circus or a commedia del arte troupe, as in the opening of Balanchine's "Donizetti Variations."

Alright, your turn...