Catching Up

 I've been keeping up with the subjects of this blog but not posting much so far this month, so here's what I have been doing.

Ballet.  I have been taking ballet classes twice a week virtually with the 92nd St. Y.  They are wonderful for many reasons, especially the concentration required; it keeps one's mind off the pandemic.  I also continue to watch ballets on YouTube, especially NYC Ballet, now doing a Spring "season," based on three sides of Balanchine:  the narrative, the classical and the neoclassical.  I have already posted about the narrative, Prodigal Son, and this week watched the magnificent Theme and Variations, with lead dancers Andrew Veyette and Tiler Peck.  This was originally done in 1947 for Ballet Theatre to the last movement of Tschaikovsky's Suite # 3 and in 1970 Balanchine added choreography to the first three movements.  I think Theme and Variations works best in the context of the entire suite, the misty and oneiric first movements lead up to Theme and Variations, both explosive and realistic, based as it is on Russian classical style that Balanchine learned as a youth.  In any case we do have this wonderful performance of Theme and Variations; I have said "the whole world is in this ballet" when talking about the complete suite, but I also think it is somewhat true of the final movement, a brief aria plus twelve variations and a repeated polonaise. I might write more about this wonderful ballet but for the moment Veyette does the repeated tours en l'air and pirouettes marvelously and Tiler Peck is radiant in her variations.  One still has a couple of days to see it; on Thursday we will have the neoclassical Stravinsky Violin Concerto.  Along with the Tschaikovky piece is a fascinating tape of Repertory Director Kathleen Tracy working with dancer Joseph Gordon in rehearsal.

Baseball.  In my last post I wrote about the state of baseball in 2021 and I must admit some anxiety about the upcoming season.  For the last few years there have been more strikeouts than hits in Major League Baseball; will the ball be deadened enough to change that?  I recently watched a Mets Spring training game between the Mets and the Marlins where in the ninth inning Mets pitcher Steve Nogosek walked three batters and struck out three batters; not a single ball was put in play!  

Movies.  We are always looking for films that the four of us would like.  Recently we watched Vincente Minnelli's Bells Are Ringing, from 1960, which my daughter didn't care for (answering services and bookies, what are those?) but the rest of us found charming, especially Judy Holliday (her last movie before her untimely death.)  Filmed on studio sets in widescreen and gorgeous color by cinematographer Milton Krasner (who worked with Minnelli on many of his films) from a Broadway play it has script and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolf Green and music by Jule Styne.  There is little dancing in the film but Minnelli uses tracking shots to give Holliday and co-star Dean Martin a feeling of movement in the minimal choreography.  This was the last musical for producer Arthur Freed, who had led a unit at MGM dedicated to musicals.

Books.  I just finished the fifth volume of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time and have been reading David Reynold's marvelous Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times.  I interrupted that to read Michael Connelly's superb The Law of Innocence, a fascinating mixture of police procedural and courtroom drama.  Lawyer Mickey Haller is arrested for murder and gets his half-brother Harry Bosch and two ex-lovers to help defeat the case, as he defends himself.  Connelly is vivid as usual in portraying the details of life and incarceration in Los Angeles (see my previous posts about Connelly novels) and the personalities on both sides of the law.