Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The mysteries and scandals of the Kremlin are nothing compared to the mysteries and scandals of the Bolshoi.
Shakespeare has always been up for grabs, and choreographers have every right to use him any way they choose.
It's always fascinating - and sometimes a little disquieting - when two first-rate critics violently disagree.
I have no problem selling ebooks for authors directly as an agent, but partnering with them is another matter.
One of the odder byways of nonfiction is the dishy memoir by those who have served the great or the near-great.
How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity.
We know how Merce Cunningham works and how he thinks - we've been told, over and over again, by him and by others.
Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more.
Classics are constantly being re-imagined and transformed, and the originals are none the worse for it; they endure.
Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, 'The Tempest' loses much of its resonance.
What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground.
Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced.
The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right.
I hated Matthew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned.
'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot.
The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity.
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is one of George Balanchine's greatest creations - and one of the greatest of all story ballets.
The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do with them.
For me, the real pleasure in writing is in having an excuse to pursue my curiosity about people who have meant something to me.
Every great dance company, even when it seems poised in perfect balance, needs constant renewal of both repertory and performers.
Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy.
Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition?
Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs - and her violently checkered career - attest.
In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two.
We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically.
Dance Theatre of Harlem has done a lot of good things well, a lot of good things badly, and a lot of bad things - it doesn't matter how.
If you like being battered, the work of Savion Glover - one-time child prodigy - should be up your alley. I don't, and it isn't up mine.
The finest chroniclers of the great and the near-great have often been courtiers - the Duc de Saint-Simon, for instance, or Lady Murasaki.
No agent/publisher is in a position to create across a spectrum of media and distribution what major publishers can accomplish for authors.
What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time.
A steady diet of the higher truths might prove exhausting, but it's important that we acknowledge their validity and celebrate their survival.
'The Leaves Are Fading' had something of a vogue when Antony Tudor made it in 1975, largely because of Gelsey Kirkland's ravishing performance.
I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and help them say what they mean.
I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning.
We know that Diana Vishneva is a phenomenon of strength and style, and she certainly has earned the right to stretch her talents as best she can.
Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, 'It sounds just like you.' But it sounds just like me after I've made it sound like me.
'River of Light,' to a dense but powerful score commissioned from Charles Wuorinen and with ravishing lighting by Mark Stanley, has depth and resonance.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. When a ballet company spends a lot of money on gimmicky pieces, it's stuck with them for a while - they have to earn their keep.
You can usually tell how healthy a ballet company is by the degree of your interest in the middle ranks of the dancers - the not-yet stars, the up-and-comers.
Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification.
In traditional 'Swan Lakes,' it's Prince Siegfried's 21st-birthday celebration, his coming-of-age. The entire court, from his mother the Queen on down, is on hand.
Soledad Barrio is clearly a master - of thrilling steps and passionate movement. She stalks, she circles, she struts, she snaps her head - her feet drill the stage.
'The Sleeping Beauty' is the greatest, most challenging and most vulnerable of classical ballets. Everything can go wrong with it, and all too often, everything does.
What 'War and Peace' is to the novel and 'Hamlet' is to the theater, Swan Lake' is to ballet - that is, the name which to many people stands for and sums up an art form.
Larry Hart and Dick Rodgers were both bright Jewish boys from Manhattan who at one point or another went to Columbia, but there the similarity in their backgrounds ends.
Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards.
In my view, the ebook world for both established and new authors is a terrific new and exciting format. It is a format that will bring forth many new writers to publishing.
'Eclipse' is overlong and overly self-conscious, but it isn't a fake or a zero; it just gets exhausting. It raises a crucial question: 'When does Concept morph into Gimmick?'
Audiences love Paul Taylor, and so do I. Not everything, and not always, but year in, year out, he gives me more concentrated pleasure than I get from any other dance company.
You don't have to be a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to figure out that when you title a memoir of your parents 'Them,' you're performing an act of distancing.