Word: ballet
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...figure of international fame; and, if he came from a tenement-bound ethnic minority, a folk hero. This spirit is not yet dead; though today's fighters don't go twenty-five or thirty rounds, though tickets to a good fight now cost as much as seats for a ballet, when Italian legions scream "Nino!" a gut-level nationalism is present; and when Clay returns to floor a dumb (if scrappy) Irish fighter like Quarry, and a stronger Oscar Bonavena, the crowd roars for him not only as a boxer, but as a surrogate warrior fighting for appealing politics...
Movement and Metaphor: Four Centuries of Ballet by Lincoln Kirstein. 290 paqes. Praeger. $17.50. A delightfully idiosyncratic history of classic dance by the co-founder and general director of the New York City Ballet. It minutely and wisely analyzes 50 landmark ballets, from Balthasar de Beau-joyeulx to George Balanchine. Kirstein's prose is suave and evocative. The stunning black and white illustrations, many of them never before reproduced, are a far cry from the expectable salon-photography narcissism...
...nuances of expression and speech-repeating the same words and sighs in slightly different, carefully thought-out ways-make the play beautiful to watch. In difficult roles without any real action, the two masters complement each other perfectly. Their dialogues have the counterpoint of music and the precision of ballet. Also in the original London production, Mona Washbourne as Kathleen and Dandy Nichols as Marjorie are funny and excellent, and Graham Weston, as Alfred, the lobotomized wrestler, is very capable in a supporting role. Lindsay Anderson's direction is outstanding...
Triumphs and Disasters. While Joffrey has been cultivating talent, the man who has done most to give the company a style is Arpino, a close friend and longtime collaborator. Joffrey contends that a resident choreographer is essential for a company seeking definition and consistency. There is some dispute in ballet circles, though, about whether Arpino is the best man possible for that purpose. He is wildly uneven, capable of lasting triumphs like his muscular tribute to masculine athleticism, Olympics, but also given to pretentious disasters like The Poppet, an epicene parody of Arthur Miller's The Crucible...
...roughly half the works in the large and varied repertory of 36 items-perhaps too large for the company's size (between 38 and 40 dancers). Reflecting Joffrey's scholarly catholic taste, pieces by other choreographers range from delicate snippets of 19th century Danish court-style ballet (Bournonville's William Tell Variations) to an intelligently danced but dramatically muzzy re-creation of Petrouchka, to the somber, erotic psychodrama of Todd Bolender's The Still Point (new with the company this season...