{"id":479,"date":"2007-11-30T12:25:35","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T20:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp\/2007\/11\/who_woulda_thought_a_lovely_be\/"},"modified":"2007-11-30T12:25:35","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T20:25:35","slug":"who_woulda_thought_a_lovely_be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/2007\/11\/who_woulda_thought_a_lovely_be.html","title":{"rendered":"Who woulda thought? A lovely Bejart ballet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The European philosopher-choreographer-king Maurice Bejart died on Thanksgiving (in case you live in a cave), and a week later the Alvin Ailey troupe premiered his &#8220;Firebird&#8221; at their gala. Which meant even at Newsday, where reviews have come to be frowned upon, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsday.com\/services\/newspaper\/printedition\/friday\/partii\/ny-etailey5481855nov30,0,4236775.story\">piece<\/a> was in order.<br \/>\nWhat a hapless task! What was I going to do if I didn&#8217;t like the dance&#8211;which seemed more than likely, given how I&#8217;d felt about pretty much every other Bejart ballet I&#8217;d seen? I believe in honoring the dead, and whatever you might think of Bejart&#8217;s choreography he&#8217;s always seemed as sweet and kind a man as an artist could be.<br \/>\nWell, I needn&#8217;t have worried. &#8220;Firebird&#8221; is a lovely thing&#8211;dated in the nicest way, with such innocent and liberating homoeroticism. The Ailey dancers have done better by the choreographer than his own dancers ever did. I make a case for  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsday.com\/services\/newspaper\/printedition\/friday\/partii\/ny-etailey5481855nov30,0,4236775.story\">why<\/a>.<br \/>\n<em>The magnificent Clifton Brown as the Firebird. Photo by Paul Kolnik. (The other standout in the cast&#8211;and all night: Linda Celeste Sims, far right.)<\/em><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Maurice%20B%C3%A9jart%27s%20Firebirdreduced.%20Paul%20Kolnik.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/Maurice%20B%C3%A9jart%27s%20Firebirdreduced.%20Paul%20Kolnik.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"312\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European philosopher-choreographer-king Maurice Bejart died on Thanksgiving (in case you live in a cave), and a week later the Alvin Ailey troupe premiered his &#8220;Firebird&#8221; at their gala. Which meant even at Newsday, where reviews have come to be frowned upon, a piece was in order. What a hapless task! What was I going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/foot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}