If the New York Times had actual editors

January April 1, 2012

A Fairy Tale Stoked by Childhood Dreams
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

We live in a golden age of children’s fiction, and in the most memorable moments of his staging of “The Nutcracker,” Alexei Ratmansky takes his place among the most imaginative children’s authors.[This is a ballet review, not something for the Book Review section.] The snow scene that ends Act I, with aspects of seduction, terror and vengefulness unlike in any other “Nutcracker,” has a dramatic urgency that recalls some of the classic works of Hans Christian Andersen.[Aspects of seduction and terror have always been there in the music, and are already present in Mark Morris's "Hard Nut."] The time-traveling scenes whereby a pas de deux in each act shows us a Princess and Prince who are the adult alter egos of Clara and the Nutcracker Boy recall some of the finest parts of the “Harry Potter” and “His Dark Materials” series.[To repeat: this is a ballet review, not a discussion of children's literature over the ages.]

Few productions of “The Nutcracker” repay serious scrutiny.[As opposed to productions of Corsair, Bayadere, Sleeping Beauty?] If you’re just [JUST?!] a balletomane, you may return to see multiple casts; but the lover of choreography craves more. The curious thing about Mr. Ratmansky’s production, which American Ballet Theatere presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for almost three weeks in December (the company gave it its premiere there in 2010), is that, although it’s presented as a vehicle for a wide range of star casts, its pas de deux in Acts I and II by no means compliment all of them.[You were expecting different casts to dance identically?] It is, however, a company show. Vividly engaging from the opening kitchen scene, gorgeously costumed, full of keenly individual characters, its most invariably telling fare comes in what it gives its children, its corps de ballet and its supporting players.

When the massed children first rush into the Stahlbaums’ party, they gesture yearningly upstage to the Christmas tree (and its presents), hopping. Then they stamp in frustration, memorably doing little jumps with bent knees that arrive with turned-out feet together (assemblés). That gesture to the tree is echoed by the Snowflakes at the end of the act, as the children escape their lures.[Are "the children" here the same "massed children" in the first sentence? If not, clarify.] And those stamping assemblés (with the knees tucked up) are the kernel of many steps that follow for the Snowflakes, Clara and the Nutcracker Boy, the Princess They are also to be seen in "Hard Nut."]

All this suggests that the children’s pent-up energies stoke the fantasy scenes that follow.[How does this follow? Are all other children in all other versions of Nutcracker so lethargic?] And so the Ratmansky “Nutcracker” acquires a strong edge of “Hansel and Gretel.”[Huh?] The children are the motor to the energy of this “Nutcracker” and its dream. And see how the Nanny and Butler return as Sugar Plum Fairy and Majordomo: this is a child’s dream in which the domestic staff rule the heavens. (Richard Hudson’s décor proposes, rather confusingly, that the Sugar Plum land is somehow inside the children’s doll house.)

The intricacy of this construction deepens on further inspection — but several flaws still glare. Amid all the liveliness at the party (I never tire of Frau Stahlbaum’s endearingly silly sisters), irritants include the grandfather’s sneezes (always a bad shtick in ballet), the grandmother’s dodderiness, and the child who three times has the same crying fit directly at the audience.[Are these really "flaws" that "glare"?]

If I understand Mr. Ratmansky’s idea correctly, this “Nutcracker” occurs in a child’s world.[The phrase "well, duh" comes to mind.] Nanny screens the children’s eyes from the sight of their parents kissing. The dancing dolls, like the vivid servants in the kitchen and (above all) the mice, have a heightened intensity that makes them more real and less daft than the formally polite grown-ups. So the tepidly choreographed battle of mice and soldiers is a disappointment. And though the snow scene is serious, it is the last serious moment until, late in Act II, Clara and her Nutcracker Boy recognize themselves as the Prince and Princess, as if meeting them in a magic mirror.[Doesn't the character of the music direct what is "serious" and what isn't?]

The rest of the Sugar Plum land in Act II — despite a real wealth of dance detail — is just a return to charming silliness. Since the 1892 premiere production of “The Nutcracker” ended with a view of bees before a hive, it’s interesting that Mr. Ratmansky — who knows an astonishing amount of dance history — has restored bees to the ballet. His four male bees fructify the 16 female flowers in the long Flower waltz. But these bees, with their foolish helmets and petty wing beats, and the giddy, vapid flowers are the ballet’s most trivial characters; and theirs is a long waltz, played here at a very moderate tempo.[This is one of the most famous and gorgeous ballet scores: can you really have nothing else to say about it than what all ballet stage managers know, that the Waltz of the Flowers is 26 min long?]

I watched eight American Ballet Theater performances in December, with seven women as Princess and seven men as Prince. In the first performance in 2010, with Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg, the pas de deux took off as multilayered constructs.[huh?] That was just as true on Wednesday, when Mr. Hallberg (returned from injury) again partnered Ms. Murphy. These two breathtaking virtuosos find time to phrase and to characterize, so that you’re aware of the roles within roles: the Nutcracker doll and the chivalrous boy within the Prince; the coltish, giddy girl within the Princess.

The same role found Xiomara Reyes at her best on the evening of Dec. 18; and Herman Cornejo, his partnering never better, beautifully captured the triple tiers of boy, hero and doll. Likewise Paloma Herrera and Cory Stearns on Dec. 24: Mr. Stearns’s characterization was canny and his presence never more handsome. (Something about his handsomeness and his artistry often gets lost in the vast space of the Metropolitan Opera House.)[Word count in this graf about the women: 18. Word count in this graf about the men: 30, disregarding the 19 words in the parenthetical, with its simpering repeated reference to how handsome the dancer is. As the kids say: ew.]

I reviewed the season’s first cast, with Veronika Part, who is physically and technically ill suited to being rapidly manhandled, and Marcelo Gomes, who is too virile to catch the boyish wonderment.[If you reviewed them already, why repeat such harsh dismissal? And "too virile to catch the boyish wonderment" is a telling phrase.] Eric Tamm, new to leading roles, acquitted himself pretty well on Dec. 15 (when his partner, Ms. Murphy, replaced Hee Seo) and Friday (when he replaced Alexandre Hammoudi). His partner at that latter performance, Yuriko Kajiya, was sure but bland.

With lesser casts, these pas de deux both become obstacle courses.[As so most real pas de deux.] Since Daniil Simkin is a precarious partner, it’s as well his performance on Tuesday evening was not his most precarious. There was no mishap, but the partnerwork was at best blurry. His soloist technique is stellar but involves a tricky mixture of facility and tension; his stage persona lacks any element of repose. His partner, Maria Riccetto, was deft and sickly sweet. Unless the moments when she kneels to press his hand to her cheek are played with fresh emotion, they cloy.

Joseph Gorak’s dancing (Dec. 21 matinee) combines brilliance with stylishness to rare degrees; it’s already evident he’s one of Ballet Theatere’s most remarkable men. But to give him this as his first full-length role was to throw him in the deep end. The choreography was more to blame than he or his partner, Sarah Lane, for the moments when she came unstuck.[Blame? We're blaming, now?] She, Ms. Riccetto and Ms. Kajiya are all inclined to make the heroine’s adoration of her partner sentimental.[This echoes the last sentence of the previous graf. Spell out what you mean to say, and say it once, but clearly. You tend, in these 3 grafs, to praise, defend, or justify the male dancers, while sniping, in far fewer words, at the females.]

How can we add up the positive and negative aspects of this “Nutcracker”? I changed my mind at every performance. And I keep changing my mind about Mr. Ratmansky. When I say he is the finest artist choreographing in ballet today, I say so with mixed feelings about ballet itself.[WTF????? Your review attempts to show you off as a person who knows children's literature and opera and ballet history more than it tells us about Ratmansky's "Nutcracker." If you have mixed feelings about ballet, Mr. Macauley, you are in the wrong job. You might also give equal attention to the females as the males on stage.]

Lucy Kellaway rules!

I have mostly enjoyed working for insensitive people as I find them restful and straightforward. An insensitive boss can be told what his failures are without going into a blind funk. They don’t take things personally. And because they are insensitive, they help me behave better. If I know I’m not going to get rewarded for being needy, I have no choice but to tone it down a bit.

Debt is not your friend

I read Club Orlov, Irvine Housing Blog, and Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation, but I think Orlov and Kunstler exaggerate to make their points. Then I come across things like this, a reader letter to the Simple Dollar blog:

I’m 26, married, and expecting a child in October.

My Debts:
$390k @ 5.5% mortgage
$15k @ 4.9% car payment
$13k @ 4% education loan
$25k @ 3.3% education loan

I have a well-stocked emergency fund already in place and I’d like to start minimizing my monthly payments on other debt. Generally, I would agree the best approach would be to pay down the mortgage since it has the highest interest rate. However, I only plan to be in this house another 3-5 years. When I move, I’ll be moving to an area with a much lower cost of living (and also lower pay). I hope to use proceeds from the sale of my current home to buy a small home with cash in the new area. Since I won’t be staying in this house long enough to truly realize the benefits of extra payments on my mortgage, does it make sense to instead try to clear the other 3 debts so that when I move, I will be completely debt-free?
- Chloe

Where to begin? She's married and pregnant, but speaks exclusively in the first person SINGULAR.

She's 26, and carrying a debt burden over USD400,000.

And (wait for it) ... she believes that the house she "owns" will turn from an income suck into an ATM in "another 3-5 years."

Why has this young person mortgaged her future, and that of her child?

How many others are similarly situated?

How will her story end?

How will their stories end?

How will our story end?

Slouching towards Appomattox

So Joe Klein posts this on the death of Jody Powell:

He was a civil war buff, the descendent of seven--he claimed--confederate southern soldiers and I began the Rolling Stone story with a quote from W.J. Cash's incredible The Mind of the South about the confederate soldier, slouching, disheveled, undisciplined and lethal. I wish I could replicate that quote here, but I can't seem to find the piece on the internets--kudos to the reader who can...because, to my mind, it's the ultimate tribute to the man.

And I find this, via Amazon's "look inside book" feature, without too much trouble:

To the end of his service this soldier could not be disciplined. He slouched. He would never learn to salute in the brisk fashion so dear to the hearts of the professors of mass murder. His "Cap'n" and "Gin'ral" were likely to pass his lips with a grin -- were charged always with easy, unstudied familiarity. He could and did find it in himself to jeer openly and unabashed in the face of Stonewall Jackson when the austere Presbyterian captain rode along his lines. And down to the final day at Appomattox his officers knew that the way to get him to execute an order without malingering was to flatter and to jest, never to command too brusquely and forthrightly. And yet -- and yet -- and by virtue of precisely these unsoldierly qualities, he was, as no one will care to deny, one of the world's very finest fighting men.

Aside from the h/t from Anonymous himself, what interests me is how different his recollection and the original are, and yet how clear it was that this was what he was looking for.

Why oh why can't we have better ballet criticism?

X. laughed and I sputtered at this, from Alistair Macaulay:

Even so, I’m impatient to get to Mr. Hallberg. What should one praise most? The way he has taken six roles already this season as if each one made him a wholly different person? The way he makes the imaginative world of each ballet more real by his absorption in it and his focus on others? The beauty of his partnering, so that it’s a wonder just to see him gently lower a woman to the floor? Or should one cut to the chase and wonder at the astounding stretch of his entire body — such legs, such feet — in classical ballet, so that he illuminates steps with time, naturalness and phenomenal grace?

Yes, Mr. Hallberg has lovely feet and, perhaps, from the furthest seats in a very large house, he might look an impressive dancer.

But.

I saw him from the eleventh row of City Center, and his eyes are dead: he sees the studio mirror at the proscenium, nothing more. His gaze focuses on "his" ballerina only when she comes into his orbit and he is required to be aware of her.

Artur Rubinstein always said that live performance was communication, and of course he was right.

In Hallberg's case, haven't seen such a total absence of communication, of communing, of community, since the unlamented Huntington Hartford ballet company.

James Wolcott, as is his wont, says it much better than I ever could:

The suspended animation was broken only when a man rushed on the stage, fell to his knees, and pressed his face against David Hallberg's chiseled cheeks as if he had found the Promised Land. It took two stagehands using an elderly usherette as a spatula to pry the intruder off of Hallberg's white tights, and then Alastair Macaulay was escorted back to his seat, the other members of the tableau shuffling into the wings during the interim.

know thyself, said the Greeks

Friend: You're a good person.
Me: What?! I'm Attila the Hun in an estrogen suit!

Don Giovanni dress reh, minus the Mozart

The nice thing about grand opera is, if the visuals suck, you can close your eyes and listen. If the singers suck, you can watch the stage action and listen to the orchestra. If the conductor, however, manages to somehow drain Mozart of all shape, crystalline structure, coherence, in sum, whatever it is that makes Mozart Mozart, and turns the music into Muzak, this is a profound problem. When it occurs in an ugly, ugly stage set than sees most of the action taking place in what seem to be brickwalled underground spaces, and a production that despises all the characters, well ... it makes for a long, sad night at the opera.

I heart Jon Stewart

Yes, it really takes Jon Stewart, basic cable comedy news host, to call out Tony Blair for conflating Hezbollah AND Hamas with Al Qaeda. Jesus, as they say, wept.

Random thoughts

• Regarding Ratmansky landing at ABT instead of City Ballet: If you had a choice of working for Peter Martins or Kevin McKenzie, who would you choose?

• Perhaps there is a case to be made against General Jaruzelski for actions after the imposition of martial law in Communist Poland. But it can be argued that the only instance in which the military stepped in to displace a Communist government made the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union more likely, not less so. Perhaps, just perhaps, Jaruzelski, who did have military divisions (pace Stalin), deserves some of the credit that is generally reserved for the Polish Pope? Can his patriotism be questioned?

• If teevee won't give airtime to idiots who run onto the baseball field during a game, why oh why do the "news" channels show, interview, and generally reward the moronic behavior of people who disregard "mandatory" evacuations during hurricanes?