I Fail To Become A Balletomane, and Other News

Sunday Night Journal — November 27, 2011

About that ballet

A month or so ago I wrote about my intention to watch a George Balanchine ballet that was being broadcast on PBS. I recorded it then, and finally found time to watch it this week. I'm sorry to have to report that I didn't really get it. I can certainly appreciate that there is a great deal of beauty in the movements of the dancers, not to mention the enormous level of skill in the dancing and the choreography, but I can't say that I was captivated or very much moved. My reaction really didn't go much beyond interesting.

There were actually three pieces (is that the right word?) on the program: "Square Dance" and "Western Symphony" by Balanchine, and "The Golden Section" by Twlya Tharp. Here is a brief preview which gives you a glimpse of all three.

Watch Miami City Ballet Dances Balanchine and Tharp on PBS. See more from GREAT PERFORMANCES.

I liked "Square Dance" best. That probably had something to do with the music (Vivaldi and Corelli). "The Golden Section" was possibly the most purely interesting of the three, and even to my entirely untrained eye obviously far less classical than the Balanchine works. I suspect the fact that I found it more interesting does not speak well of it. As you might expect from a contemporary work, it was rather heatedly erotic at times, and I won't pretend indifference to that aspect of it. And in general the technique was, well, stranger than in traditional ballet, and...there is no way to say this without making myself look like a clod, but I may as well admit it: much of the vocabulary of classical ballet is not appealing to me. Part of the reason is that it involves prancing and fluttering that is often lovely, if occasionally prissy, on the women, but downright effeminate on the men. Combine that with the extremely skin-tight costumes of the men, and--I'm sorry, but I want to be honest--there is an off-putting gay vibe about the whole thing.  (And let me note here that Edward Villella, the founder and director of the Miami City Ballet and a former dancer of apparently considerable fame, was a good baseball player and boxer, twice-married and father of three.)

My wife, who has more interest in dance and a better eye for it than I do, watched the program  with me, and thought "Square Dance" was "fabulous" (and she was not using the word archly or ironically; she really liked it.) Neither of us cared much for "Western Symphony": we were not able to take seriously male ballet dancers in 1940s-style cowboy suits; it's the last piece on the program and we didn't finish watching it.

Not knowing anything about the art, it's not surprising that I would miss whatever it is that makes Balanchine different. If you didn't know anything about classical music and decided to start with "Rhapsody in Blue," you wouldn't recognize the mixture of the traditional and the innovative in it, because you'd have nothing to compare it to.  By the way, I'm throwing Balanchine's name around as if I know what I'm talking about, but I really don't. I only know that he was a choreographer who seems to have been something of a modernist in a Stravinksy-ish sort of way (as opposed to a Schoenberg-ish sort of way). He worked with Stravinksy, in fact: here is the Wikipedia biography.

So. That's that, I guess. And yet: it still sounds appealing when people talk about it.

OWS and Utopia

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street (or, as it spread, just "Occupy") movement. I think most people recognize that many of the specifically named complaints of the movement are justified: the middle class is shrinking, the economy was driven into a ditch by reckless-at-best financiers who, as the saying goes, privatized their gains and socialized their losses, etc. Yet I keep having the feeling that these things are not what the movement is fundamentally about. I don't claim to have followed it very closely, but I keep seeing and hearing things that remind me of the 1960s counter-culture, things that seem alternately amusing, pitiable, and disturbing, things that are rooted in a quasi-religion to which young people in modern times have been particularly susceptible: the belief that we can, as Joni Mitchell put it in her sweetly air-headed tribute to Woodstock, "get ourselves back to the garden." This piece in The Weekly Standard describe some of its intellectual-spiritual roots. I don't agree with everything in it, but on the whole I think it makes an important point. Read the Weekly Standard piece, then look at the Occupy Wall Street web site, and you can't miss the connections.

I say "disturbing," but it's not because I think anarchist ideas and their proponents really pose a signficant danger in any direct way. They disturb me because for a couple of years at the end of the 1960s I bought into that movement, in the hippie manifestation which is frequently echoed by OWS, and I hate to see its continuing power over young people who long for a noble cause and who turn their fundamentally religious zeal toward a hopeless quest for the earthly paradise. Too many people who shared my experiences in the 1960s (and early '70s) seem to be hoping still that one day they'll wake up and it will be 1969 again.

The slogan "We are the 99%" annoys me a little. Artur Davis, a moderate-to-conservative Democrat who might be Alabama's governor now if he hadn't offended the party machine, articulated the problem: 

it literally links the interest of a hungry child in the Mississippi Delta to those of a six figure accountant whose mortgage is underwater.

Like, by definition, almost everybody, I am part of the 99%. But OWS doesn't speak for me. Not only does it not speak for me, it doesn't even like me, culturally and politically speaking. But I suppose if you're going to do mass politics you have to have a simplisitic slogan, and not be too scrupulous about its relation to the truth. After all,  if you want people to buy your product, you have to advertise.

Newt 2012?

The phone rang this morning and I saw the phrase above, minus the question mark, on the caller ID. I was tempted to answer, just out of curiousity, but decided not to, afraid that if there was a person (as opposed to a recording) on the other end I would find myself in a conversation I didn't want to be in, answering "poll" questions such as "Are you in favor of the Obama administration's attempt to destroy the United States?"

A Newt Ginrich presidency, viewed from many angles, seems such a terrible idea that I was surprised to find myself the other day thinking Well, maybe... There is one reason I might consider voting for him: if I thought that he might be able to engineer a reform of our health care system that would be a real reform. I'm more and more convinced that the mess we have is a signficant factor in our economic problems. It has a paralyzing effect: people fear to take risks, on either the employee or the employer side, because of its burden and uncertainty. But I think Obamacare will make things worse. Why Gingrich? Well, for all his faults and weirdness, he is a very bright guy and willing to think outside the usual categories. But I suppose that by virtue of those same qualities whatever he might want to do with health care would probably be as over-complicated and unrealistic as the Democrats' plan.

Comments

[ex pat]

Ballet is something which it is very nice to take little girls to, because they enjoy it so much. But it is not enjoyable per se, in my op.

I was wondering whether we would agree or disagree on this, and am pleased that you have not disappointed me.

[Mac]

Glad to oblige. Most little girls want to be the ballerina, I guess. Not many little boys want to be the ballerino.

[Daniel Nichols]

I wouldn't vote for Newt Gingrich if he was running against Satan. Don't worry, I wouldn't vote for the Devil either (also "a very bright guy and willing to think outside the usual categories"). I would write in Wendell Berry, like I have the last two presidential elections.

[ex pat]

The Republican candidates are v. disappointing, not to say clowns. They are disappointing because I remember reading at the time that Obama became president that there were great younger Republicans coming up, ready to run next time around. Guys who were very believable. I don't know what happened to these great, younger believable guys, but they don't seem to be on show this time. The only name I remember is Jindal. The current lineup is so embarrassingly bad that it is very possible Obama could win again. In my opinion.

[Mac]

I think it's more than possible--as of right now I think it's somewhat probable. I had hopes for Michele Bachmann, as having some of the good qualities of Sarah Palin and fewer of the bad, but I doubt she would be an effective leader. And I have to admit to liking the Herminator, but I can't pretend he's qualified. If you read conservative pundits, you get this picture of nobody wanting Romney but everybody expecting him to win.

I do think a Gingrich-Satan matchup is unlikely. Gingrich sort of looks good in comparison to some of these others, because he's smart and a good speaker, but I don't think most Republicans like or trust him. So I don't think he's going to be the nominee. And even if he were, I don't think it's likely that Satan will mount a primary challenge against Obama. But you never know.

[Louise on the iPod]

Again with the names - who could trust a guy with a name like Newt?

[Mac]

Yes, if Newt and a woman were nominated, the Dems would have a great time with it: "a witch and a newt."

[ex pat]

I can't conceive of voting for a man named Newt. Gingrich makes me think of the Grinch who stole Christmas

[Mac]

Believe me, that resemblance did not go unnoticed when he was Speaker of the House and pushing government cutbacks. It really is about as unpalatable a name as one could invent. It's novelistic, like Dickens's names--as good (if you dislike NG the man) as "Uriah Heep." .

[Craig]

Although not quite as good as "Wackford Squeers".

[Mac]

Is that Dickens? Sounds like Monty Python.

[Craig]

It's the name of the schoolmaster in Nicholas Nickleby.

[Mac]

Ah, haven't read that one. I was going to be pretty annoyed if it was one I'd read and I'd forgotten such a great name.

[Louise on the iPod]

Male ballet dancers look pretty manly when they're lifting ballerinas but other than that they just look gay. Also I'm not a fan of men in tights. I mean the male body is great but here in Oz we have a term for those really small and tight swimmers men sometimes wear - "budgie smugglers". Says it all.

[Louise on the iPod]

Ballerinas otoh are lovely

[Mac]

"budgie smugglers" lol. Yes, the ballerinas are quite pleasant indeed to behold.

[J Dave G]

I liked Palin until she starting talking alot. Herminator is the same. "Uz-beki-beki-stan-stan" completely lost my wife for him. Willful ignorance describes them both rather well.

I'd have to think about Romney. I'd vote for Daniel's fave Ron Paul but he's got no more chance than Huntsman or Pawlenty. Everyone else is... wow

I'll go out on a limb here: I recall a video a few years back with Hollywood types supporting Obama. I thought it was insipid and silly, but you saw something in it very revolting. I could kind of see your point, but your visceral response was lost on me. I'm guessing that Bachman is the reverse. She is revolting to me in almost the same way as Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck, all of them hateful and deeply disturbing.

Wish I could comment more on OWS. Not surprisingly, there are aspects that I strongly agree with, and others I strongly disagree with.

In my absence, have you reversed your decision not to comment on politics?

[ex pat]

I think the same about Ron Paul, JDG. I met some people in Texas recently who were big financial supporters of him, and I just felt sorry they were wasting their money.

[Mac]

Sorry, I missed Dave's comment above until ex pat responded to it.

I should admit that I haven't actually listened much to any of the GOP candidates and am going mostly on superficial impressions. So I'm not going to knock myself out defending Bachmann. She does seem overly abrasive and simplistic, and my "overly abrasive and simplistc" is probably your "deeply disturbing."

Did I ever say I wasn't going to comment on politics at all? If so that statement is inoperative.:-) I remember saying I wasn't going to do it very much, or something to that effect. It comes and goes--sometimes it's hard to ignore. The OWS phenomenon is interesting for reasons beyond immediate politics--in fact I'm going to post something else about it later today.

I remember that Obama video and the discussion about it very well. Just in case there's any confusion, my horror was in reaction to the celebrities, not to Obama, whom I didn't and don't dislike in any personal way. It was the slavish dear-leader aspect of it, with the additional irritation of celebrity narcissism. I don't have any doubt at all that anybody on the liberal side of things would react similarly toward similar obeisance to a Republican president.

[J Dave G]

Yep, no confusion here. That's how I remember your reaction, too.

[Louise on the iPod]

Oh yes, that video was truly horrifying! Maybe Obama will be the first US emperor.

[Louise]

What on Earth happened to Jindal? I do remember his name from last time too.