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3 weeks ago

Susan Sontag on Balanchine, Formalism and Dance

“I remember, when I started going to see Balanchine’s work, I thought that what I loved in it was the austerity and the purity, the non-narrative quality. I loved Agon, I loved The Four Temperaments. Things such as Midsummer Night’s Dream, I merely tolerated. Also, I was very influenced by Lincoln Kirstein’s writing on Balanchine’s work, by his screwy Gurdjieffian take on it. Ballet, Balanchine - it was discipline, order, submission, formality. And I thought, Sure, that’s what I love. But you know, that wasn’t what I loved. I remember in La Valse, Joseph Duell putting his white-gloved hand in front of his face, and he did it in a certain way, and I used to feel stabbed through the heart. I would go and see La Valse again and again, and I would wait for that moment. I would say to myself, “Is it going to happen again?”.

And it did. And what is that about? I’m not sure, but it’s not about formalism.”

6 months ago

Published!

It’s on paper: the Lightship Anthology, a collection of ”the best new literary voices from around the world” includes my story Bund Girls! Buy the anthology on Alma Books or pre-order from Amazon.

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7 months ago

EURO Crisis: Chronicle of a death foretold? «

Soros weighs in on the never-ending Euro crisis via NY Review of Books.

9 months ago

Der Untergang of the West

Unearthed this post from six years ago, written in the aftermath of the Katrina debacle. It foreshadows the now rapidly snowballing decline of the US:

Katrina looks like the beginning of the end. It’s the event that marks the official start of the decline of the US - and maybe the West as a whole, except for scandinavia of course. Nothing can touch the conscientious, rat-race averse nordics.

http://vanessafabiano.tumblr.com/post/503018705/katrina-power-failure

1 year ago

An American in Spain: How Velazquez inspired John Singer Sargent’s Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Two depictions of privileged childhood, two hundred years apart. At the Prado Museum earlier this year.

1 year ago

theparisreview:

How effective is it to use literature to seduce men?

via theparisreview

1 year ago

And in the last war we lost a lover. We used to have a lover, and since the war he is gone. »A B Yehoshua, The Lover

1 year ago

There was a time when people felt as if structure in most forms were a constraint and they attacked it, which in a culture is like an autoimmune problem: the organism is not allowing itself the conditions of its own existence. We’re cultural creatures and meaning doesn’t simply generate itself out of thin air; it’s sustained by a cultural framework. It’s like deciding how much more interesting it would be if you had no skeleton: you could just slide under the door. »Marilynne Robinson in the Paris Review

1 year ago

Just do it

An account of George Balanchine rehearsing with dancers Violette Verdy and Edward Villella

Balanchine was going to redo the variations in the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. Violette was her voluble self while we were working on the ballet, going on and on about the steps, and Balanchine became impatient with her.

“You know dear”, he said to her, “it’s a nice simple step, grand jete, you see. Just watch him. It’s wonderful to just watch him jump. Just simple. He just jumps. Wonderful.”

Source: Can’t remember. Robert Garis?

1 year ago

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end. »Alexis de Tocqueville

2 years ago

Replika Teatro Madrid - La Dama Boba by Lope de Vega.

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Susan Sontag on Balanchine, Formalism and Dance

Published!

sponsor a dancer «

EURO Crisis: Chronicle of a death foretold? «

Der Untergang of the West

Just do it