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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 10, 2004

TT: Both ends of the telescope

January 10, 2004 by Terry Teachout

New York City Ballet
is celebrating the centennial of the birth of George Balanchine, the greatest choreographer of the 20th century, with two full seasons’ worth of Balanchine-heavy programs. I’m in the process of writing a brief life of Balanchine for Harcourt, so I expect to be going to NYCB two or three times a week throughout the next couple of months. I just returned from my first performance of the winter season, an all-Balanchine triple bill of Prodigal Son, Serenade, and Scotch Symphony, two masterpieces and a lesser but nonetheless delightful effort. I brought with me a jazz musician who’d never seen any of Balanchine’s choreography, and was eager to find out what she’d been missing.


Most serious balletgoers (if not all) have felt for some time now that NYCB was in decline, and tonight’s performance did little to prove them wrong. I don’t need to go into particulars, since Tobi Tobias nailed all the myriad deficiencies of the current staging of Scotch Symphony in a posting on “Seeing Things,” her artsjournal.com blog:

I had been looking forward to my favorite Scotch Symphony moment. Two of the kilts lift the Sylphide high–she seems to be standing on air–and toss her, still vertical, into her ardent suitor’s arms. “She sails forward as if the air were her natural home,” Walter Terry wrote in 1957, “and [her partner] catches her high on his chest as if she were without weight.” I recall the exquisitely gentle Diana Adams in that moment. For two unforgettable seconds, she seemed to be not falling but floating–softly, lazily, serenely, swept crosswise by an idle breeze. It didn’t happen last night. They didn’t even attempt it. I wonder if whoever is setting the ballet even knows that moment existed. Or cares.

I was one year old in 1957, but anyone who’s seen the old Bell Telephone Hour video
of Maria Tallchief and Andr

TT: Almanac

January 10, 2004 by Terry Teachout

“The band was deep in a minuet, a Clementi minuet in C major that Jack and he had arranged for violin and ‘cello, one that they had often played together; and now that he was in it, in it for the first time as a dancer, the familiar music took on a new dimension; he was part of the music, right in its heart as one of the formally moving figures whose pattern it created–he lived in a new world, entirely in the present.”


Patrick O’Brian, The Surgeon’s Mate

TT: Grant challenge

January 10, 2004 by Terry Teachout

A fellow blogger writes:

An artsy
pal and I played this parlor game: If you were going to be a seven-figure, major donor to one arts
institution in the USA, what would you pick?

That is a really good question, and as Jack Benny said to the mugger who asked him for his money or his life, I’m thinking it over. You do the same. I’m painfully aware that the e-mailbox is overflowing and that it will probably be at least another three days before I have a spare half-hour to clear it out, but I’ll be strongly inclined to post a whole bunch of your answers one of these days.


Right at this moment, I’m torn between Carolina Ballet and the Phillips Collection. But I could change my mind several dozen more times between now and whenever. Oh, the joys of imaginary philanthropy….

TT: Man at work

January 10, 2004 by Terry Teachout

Finally, finally, I’ve updated the right-hand column. Three new Top Fives (plus the extraction of one gallery listing that passed its sell-by date a week ago, arrgh), fresh items in “Teachout Elsewhere” and “Second City,” even a revised publication date for A Terry Teachout Reader in “About Terry’s Books.” And about time, too, yes, I know, thank you very much.


In the process of passing these everyday miracles, I discovered that all the links in “Teachout in Commentary” were busted, on account of a major redesign of the Commentary Web site that went live without anybody bothering to tell me (duh, thanks, Neal!). I’ll get ’em fixed as soon as I figure out how.


I won’t make you giggle by promising to do all this more often. Either I will or I won’t. And hey…maybe I will.

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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