Word: pas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...predictable New york cultural rite: a gala fund-raising performance by the American Ballet Theater. The audience, lavishly dressed for the party that will follow, sits through a numbing succession of virtuoso turns: gaudy pas de deux and solo flights by resident stars, international étoiles and great names of the past who walk through famous old roles. Even the curtain calls are a production, usually choreographed more carefully than the rest of the show. The balletgoers finally leave, convinced that they have seen something unique but vowing to themselves "Never again...
...York dance company. The result was about as Russian as apple pie. In From Sea to Shining Sea, Taylor's 1965 send-up of American life, Baryshnikov played an office worker and George Washington, while Nureyev portrayed a workman and a Brando-like waterfront tough. During a pas de trois romp with Dancer Gwen Verdon, they hoisted her up onto their shoulders, then discovered that she was facing away from the audience. Said Nureyev: "The great thing about America is that you can laugh at yourself when things go wrong. In Russia...
...create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, all made terrible gaffes, with Ford perhaps making the most unusual ("Whenever I can I always watch the Detroit Tigers on radio"). Yet this is no modern phenomenon. The term faux pas goes back at least as far as the 17th century, having originally referred to a woman's lapse from virtue. Not that women lapse more than men in this regard. Even Marie Antoinette's fatal remark about cake and the public, if true, was due to a poor translation...
...cannon shell stopped at one-millionth of a second as it leaves the nose of a fighter plane; Pitcher Carl Hubbell's arm and hand caught in the act of committing a knuckle ball; Ballerina Nora Kaye transformed into a tornado of multiple images during a pas de bourrée; Pablo Picasso holding a penlight in his darkened studio, carving a picture out of thin...
...might be distracted by a romance with Bissell. Others said she had never recovered from the breakup of her 1974 affair with Baryshnikov, 31, or at the very least had deep "artistic differences" with him. Whatever the reasons, ballerina and director were far from the harmony of past pas de deux. "Misha got tired of running a kindergarten," said one observer at A.B.T. Kirkland's booking agent, Alex Dube, conceded that the dancer's conduct was "unprofessional" but asked, "Is that news? She has canceled numerous performances before. But when she comes out onstage she is a miracle...