Mark Morris at B.A.M.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

The Hard Nut at Brooklyn Academy of Music

Mark Morris'version of the Nutcracker, The Hard Nut, opened at Brooklyn Academy of Music today so I raced there to see it. It's very calming in the middle of the silly season to see a suburban holiday party go so awry, with the sinister neighbour unleashing his handsome, youthful, alter ego on the innocent little girl before they cavort through a psychic wonderland of obsession and betrayal. Mark Morris himself appeared as the suburban Dad managing the drinks trolley while his garish guests raced each other off and drank to oblivion. The entire production was entirely gender non-confirming, with women lifting, men en pointe and androgenous snow fairies; the suburban maid was a superbly-muscled drag queen. It was amazing to see little children in the audience, but it will probably do them a lot of good in the long run.

Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim's Last Collaboration

www.rollingstone.com

The Best Worse Thing That Could Ever Have Happened

 

A film by Lonnie Price

 

Film Society of Lincoln Center

It's almost unbelievable, but the original cast of "Merrily We Roll Along", AND Stephen Sondheim AND Hal Prince appear in this documentary about the experience of originating the show in 1981 only to have it be a total flop and close after 16 performances. For some of the cast, it was the end of their acting careers and they never returned to the stage, and Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim never worked together again. But as was said at the time, just because the public didn't get it then, doesn't mean they wouldn't get it later, and they did. It's been a cult hit for decades. There's a touching moment when the cast members talk about recording the album the morning after the show closed, saying that they sang in defiance, and had never sung so well.

Frans Helmerson at Juilliard

www.piatigorskyfestival.usc.edu/artists/

I went to Frans Helmerson's cello masterclass at Juilliard tonight and sat for three hours, transfixed by him, as he tutored James Jeonghwan Kim, Xinchi Wang and Mariko Wyrick, all brilliant graduate students, in Schumann, Rachmaninoff and Poulenc. The famous Carlos Avila accompanied. All in a day's work for them, and for Juilliard, and they let us in to gape, in fact they welcomed us. It was amazing. So, now I feel very unaccomplished and wish I had practised more.

La Boheme

Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Cecil B. De Mille at the Met

What a spectacular "La Bohème" at the Met tonight, like Cecil B. De Mille, with intimacy. The
eighty German tourists sitting in the cheap seats, as was I, will remember nothing about it except the rowdy argument they had in German, from the prelude in the garret to the final curtain on Mimi’s rosy corpse. I think that must be what they do at the opera in Germany. Their complete indifference to the performance was probably sophisticated. It reminded me of that bit in "Amadeus" when Mozart is at the vaudeville watching the rowdy parodies of his own music, and he conceives the idea of writing "The Magic Flute." Anyway it didn’t really matter. It was marvelous.

Francoise Grossen at M.A.D.

Francoise Grossen

Gigantism in Textiles

Tonight was "by donation" night at the Museum of Arts and Design so I went to see Lauren Kalman's full blown gold, diamond and pearl jewellery but ended up being fascinated by Francoise Grossen's textiles. They are gigantic and overwhelm everything else, including the jewellery. She says she frees fabrics from the two dimensional weave and instead creates these massive multi -dimensional, sculptures which seem to writhe and intimidate as soon as you look at them; they almost groan at you ... One of them resembles an organismic, pulsating Jackson Pollock.

Nutcracker at New York City Ballet

photo @Andrea Mohin

I had reservations about going last night to see the New York City Ballet's Balanchine Nutcracker, because I prefer Mark Morris' version where the adults get stonkered and fall down drunk behind the sofa while the neglected children sulk and vandalize the Christmas tree. But I succumbed to the NYCB's technical perfection, and all the sugar. Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette did the (in)famous pas de deux with such perfection that it seemed unreal, and by the time the sleigh somehow took off into the sky, pulled by flying reindeer, I was moon - faced and staring in amazement along with the six year olds. Their parents played with their Iphones throughout, doing emails and even taking calls, and the child-weary ushers did nothing to stop them...

Aida at the Metropolitan Opera

More of Latonia Moore

Last night I went to see the great Ekaterina Gubanova sing Amneris in the Metropolitan Opera’s Aida, but I ended up being astounded by Latonia Moore. Back in March she stepped in with one day’s notice when Violetta Urmana got sick. Even though Latonia Moore was originally the understudy, the program note says she has recently sung the role at Zurich, Sydney, Covent Garden, Bergen, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, San Diego, Dallas and Tokyo. So no wonder she is good. Aida is her THING.

Brian Sebert at Bruno Walter Auditorium

Simultaenous Tap Dancing

This evening Brian Sebert, who is the dance critic for the New York Times, promoted his new book about the history of tap dancing by giving a lecture on the subject at the Bruno Walter Theater. He not only discussed the greatest tap dancers of all time, but also, being a trained dancer, demonstrated their signature steps himself. This was the first lecture I have been to which was delivered by someone who was, simultaneously, tap dancing, and I hope it is not the last.

"Flight" at Juilliard

The refugee awaits his detention in Juilliard's production of Jonathan Dove's "Flight." I'd never seen it before. It was as hilarious as it was tragic and topical and the huge orchestra was as absorbing as the people on the stage. Two old fogeys in front of me talked all the way through three acts and two intervals but the backs of their heads had that look which made me think there was little point in telling them to be quiet.

"Curtain Up" at NY Library of Performing Arts

Martha Swope / © The New York Public Library

The Last 40 Years of Theatre in New York and London

Having pushed my way through the barriers which encircle Trump and his nefarious cohorts in downtown Manhattan, I got to see this exhibition which celebrates UK/USA stage collaborations, so quite a crowd of show tune literati were in attendance to dance along to "A Chorus Line"... There was a free screening of the movie "Amadeus," too, which was incredibly long and incredibly good and had Cynthia Nixon in it as a traumatized maid servant. That was something.

Kinky Boots, Al Hirschfield Theatre, Broadway

Award Winning Musicals in Five Steps

How to write an award winning Broadway musical in 5 steps by Harvey Weinstein: (1) Convince yourself there's a story in a shoe factory making sexy boots. (2) Lard it up with emotional metaphors in which love rhymes with heaven above and soul rhymes with dark hole. (3) Throw this at the audience with all the subtlety of a cow in a catapult. (4) When that doesn't work, bring on the drag queens! (5) Yay! That works!

Summer Music in Winter at Juilliard

Sean Shepherd

Sean Shepherd

@shepseanshep

This evening the Juilliard ensemble played summer music to observe the start of the cold season: Samuel Barber, Sean Shepherd and Brahams. It was quite evocative. Shepherd's program note said he had written his Octet in France just before the weather turned and he had to cling to a tree to avoid being blown over by the Mistral. When he took his bow I could see why, because he is only four feet tall.

A Chorus Line

“A Chorus Line” original cast reunion at the Library for Performing Arts

 

I had a ticket to the Juilliard Dance Repertory and then heard that on the same night the original cast of “A Chorus Line” was going to talk about it at the Library for Performing Arts so I had to go to both. Don Pippin, the arranger, was sitting at a Steinway as Priscilla Lopez and Bayoork Lee reminisced about the famous all night auditions (which were like group psychotherapy), while they looked through the transcripts which turned into the script. Now and again they would literally burst into song and even, a couple of times, into a dance routine. When Priscilla Lopez came across the original draft of “Nothing,” the song about her experience at High School, she just stood up and sang it. It was enthralling. A woman kept saying hello to me. She turned out to be my neighbour but I did not recognize her because when she is at home she is a man.

Don Pippin and Priscilla Lopez at NYLPA

Check out the events calendar of the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts

Spotlight

I just saw this film and I can't remember a Hollywood feature more likely to create an impact. It not
only evokes Boston of the 1995-2005 decade with its universal distrust of public institutions and almost every aspect of Boston's social structure, but it snaps you into even more outrage at the canonisation of the presiding Pope, the superannuated retirement of Bernard Cardinal Law, who consciously protected almost 300 abusive priests, and the peculiar enthusiasm for the present Pope, who has appointed other known protectors to his inner circle. So far, the Vatican has not sued the distributors. So, what next? That's what the film makes you want to know, which is unusual, for Hollywood.

Regarding Julian Assange

I posted this at the beginning of 2011 after Assange had been publicly condemned by the Vice President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Australia.  I'm re-posting it now because, strange as it may seem, I don't know many people who take an interest in his case and it seems to me that it affects all of us.  There's no doubt that history will be very unkind to those who condemned Assange before he had been charged with any crime.  The issue is, how many others are going to share his fate before the public realises what has happened. 

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If you believe that it is inappropriate for the state to threaten people with imprisonment when they have committed no crime, then you ought to be concerned about Julian Assange. 

On January 6 2011 newspapers of record reported that the US Congress is setting up a Congressional Inquiry to investigate Assange's activities with the objective of prosecuting suspects for publishing leaked documents. The Congress has every right to set up inquiries of this nature and it remains to be seen how its investigative powers will be used. If retrospective legislation is adopted to make charges against Assange and others who did not leak the documents, but published them, this would not be unprecedented in the course of history but it would be most unusual.

It’s been widely reported that the US Attorney General has for several weeks been seeking grounds to prosecute Assange and has yet failed to find any. Regardless, the Vice President of the USA went on television on December 19 and called Assange “a high tech terrorist.”

Photo: Macdiarmid/Getty

Previously, on December 7, the Australian Prime Minister declared on television that Assange, who is an Australian citizen, was "guilty of criminality." Unlike the US Attorney General, who is seeking a crime with which to charge Assange, the Australian Attorney General has distanced himself from the matter by insisting on leaving it in the hands of the police. After a month of investigations the Australian Federal Police have been unable to find any basis on which Assange could be charged with a crime. On the other hand, Assange’s supporters believe they have a solid case against the Prime Minister for slander.

The failure of the US Government to find a charge to file against Assange is significant, considering the sweeping powers to detain suspects of terrorism which were introduced by the Bush administration, and which have been endorsed in practice by the Obama administration.

Julian Assange published information which was leaked by US government officials. He was under no legal or moral obligation not to do so. In the USA and in some other countries freedom of the press is a constitutional right. To this day WikiLeaks, which Assange leads, works in collaboration with major newspapers including the New York Times and the Guardian. Almost all the world’s newspapers have published the WikiLeaks revelations. The question arises, “why single out Julian Assange?” The answer may be that Assange is vulnerable whereas pursuing the newspapers would cause political uproar and, maybe even social unrest.

In 1971 the Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers saga led to massive loss of public support in the USA for the Vietnam War. WikiLeaks is having a similar impact on public support for various military activities by various countries around the world. It is not surprising that the US Government is responding to WikiLeaks as strongly as it responded to the Ellsberg affair, but it is interesting to observe the heavy focus on Assange while almost nothing has been said about the newspapers. Is this because trying to censor newspapers would cause public outrage? Is it assumed that pursuing Assange will cause less fuss?

If the US or Australian governments wish to punish someone for publishing leaked information they should pursue the people who leaked it, especially those who are government employees bound by the relevant secrecy legislation.

Considering the extent of prejudicial remarks made by heads of government in Australia and the USA, no less, it seems trite to mention the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. In this case Assange is publicly presumed to be guilty by the Vice President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Australia even as they acknowledge that he has been charged with no crime.