Word: balletic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Serve art and scrounge for money. Exploit talent, but be fair. Serve up the pyrotechnics, but keep an eye on all those overstressed knees and feet. It isn't easy to run a ballet company...
Being a professional ballet dancer is tough too, and the challenge must be met during adolescence. There is, of course, the need to develop perfection of technique. Add to that the care of one's body, the avoidance of drugs and drink, rent payment and roommate control. Most important, however, is the reinvention of oneself as an alluring theatrical image that rewards the eye -- and blinds it to the charms of the next performer in line...
...years ago, journalist John Fraser and photographer Eve Arnold undertook to cover a season (1986-87) with the American Ballet Theatre: the rehearsals, the tour, the filming of the Herbert Ross movie Dancers in Italy. Their achievement is that they manage to animate the dailiness of backstage life from the point of view of both the artistic management, led by Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the dancers. Fraser's prose may be gushy at times, and Arnold's photos are grainy, but both beat with life and explode with candor. The arias of shop talk, the revelation of fears and jealousies...
...Baryshnikov's enduring commitment has been to the American Ballet Theatre. After several years of critical condescension -- and he does read and ! react to adverse reviews -- he is finally getting some respect for having greatly improved the level of performance, relying less on imported etoiles and instead nurturing young talent within the troupe...
Madness descended. Motorcycle cops jumped curbs, machines roaring over the grass in a ballet of aimless panic. The crowd on the grassy knoll looked like it had been swept with a giant scythe. The street was empty, a stark, lifeless slab of concrete that smelled of disaster. Kennedy's motorcade had been chopped in two like a luckless centipede, the front end blown to God knew where, the rear end writhing and thrashing...