Word: geniality
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...July picnic in Des Moines. He mixes an earthy Midwest charm with a trace of Finnish ancestry ("yahs" sprinkle his speech), which makes it difficult to fathom his lingering bad-guy notoriety. But behind the affable grin lie eyes cold and calculating. Perhaps it is this paradox -- the genial great-grandfather and steely communist chieftain rolled into one -- that has made him one of the longest-sitting leaders of a national Communist Party...
...centerpiece of the Royal Ballet's current U.S. tour is a production of SWAN LAKE that in most respects is a genial mess. In the famous "white act," the enchanted maidens dance around in what appears to be silvery decor left over from their Christmas party, all tinsel and discarded trees. But the company does have a genuine Swan Queen: the bewitching French ballerina SYLVIE GUILLEM. At 26, she is the reigning star of international ballet, and it is easy to see why. Tall and leggy, she seems to have double-jointed hips -- her ordinary kick is stopped only...
Cavazos' ouster was long overdue. The genial but ineffectual Reagan holdover -- one of two Hispanics in George Bush's Cabinet -- had long been the most visible symbol of the President's failure to make good on his 1988 campaign pledge to be the "education President." Among those reportedly on the short list to become Cavazos' successor: former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, now president of the University of Tennessee, and Lynne Cheney, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities...
Alas, poor Cyrano. For decades he has been little more than a rumor of antique flourishes, known to the mass American audience mainly as the source of Steve Martin's genial little comedy Roxanne. Swordsman and poet, idealist and unrequited lover, born rebel as well as natural nobleman, the hero of Edmond Rostand's great romantic play is not, face it, a figure calculated to inspire a nonromantic age. One does not suppose, for example, that he figures very largely in George Bush's inner life. Or, for that matter, Jesse Jackson...
...strange, ectoplasmic life in the pages of other people's books, most of them written by his former dancers at New York City Ballet. One, Gelsey Kirkland's angry, vengeful Dancing on My Grave (1986), made the best-seller lists. This year brings a slight but more genial coda from Kirkland and the memoir the dance world has been waiting for, from Mr. B.'s last muse, Suzanne Farrell...