Thanks, Nora. I'm just doing what any other son would do when his dad gets sick. As for the 'About' page, I'll get round to it. Lazy lah.

i think that leonardio dicaprio is sourte of cute when he is young i wish that on my birthday he would be young and come to my school and sing me a song just like the Jonas Brothers did....i LOVE Leonardio Dicaprio

Wrong headline, this wasn't 'Accident', it was a deliberate act of terror.

On Saturday afternoon, The New Yorker Festival presented a discussion between dance critic Joan Acocella and Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky at Cedar Lake’s theater in Chelsea. Ratmansky is currently the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic director, and he’s created works for several companies around the world, including his recent Concerto DSCH for New York City Ballet. [...]

Tātad šodien apritēja precīzi pusgads kopš gopbike pirmā (sezonas atklāšanas) jama. Tad nu pagājušās nedēļas laikā visu tā kā saorganizējām mazai pabraukāšanai pēc lielā oficiālā street jama. Cilvēku skaitu neprognozējām tik lielu , kā 5.maija jamā , bet tas jau nemainīja tā visa būtību. Protams , daudzi potenciālie gopbaikeri atkrita visādu iemeslu dēļ - kā [...]

Thanks for summarizing! It was a special event -- I loved that Ms. Acocella contributed the clips she did, and I also, as you say, enjoyed whenever Mr. Ratmansky's more soft-spoken presentation-style made it through the sieve of Ms. Acocella's much more spirited one. (They were both terrific -- him being thoughtful, her being very evidently enamored of her subject.) A few more tidbits I remembered, and a question... Mr. Ratmansky spoke about the way that he chooses a dancer. Usually he will watch class to choose a dancer, though he acknowledges what you see in class can be very different from what you see on stage. He said that, after all his experience, he can tell so much of a dancer's character through just his or her first movements. The minute a dancer presents him or herself on stage, he can see who they are. He also said that if he is choreographing a new piece, he will prefer to work with a dancer with a sensibility similar to his own; whereas if he is working with an established piece, it is not as necessary for the personalities to be so compatible, because then the dance is less involved in creating the movement along with him. He also spoke about the way he prepares a piece of choreography. First he spends a very long time with the music. He will listen to it over and over again, sometimes with the score of notes in front of him, until he can imagine all the steps in advance. Ms. Acocella and Mr. Ratmansky spoke also of the use of different facial expressions in ballet. To a Russian audience member, a very high form of praise is to describe the dancer as "artistic." Ms. Acocella recalled having heard this description used repeatedly after one Russian ballet she attended. What she finally discerned the meaning to be was that the dancer had expressed a part of his or herself in the dance -- something Balanchine would have shunned (she quoted him as having instructed his dancers, "I want you to dance with your feet, and not with your face.") In Russia, the aesthetic of the ballet is considered to be enhanced when the dancer emotes -- facially, and physically -- imbuing the dance with the dancer's own "artistic" skills. I loved also when Ms. Acocella did draw out (even to her own surprise!) one of the choices that has made Mr. Ratamansky's tenure at the Bolshoi particularly contentious -- for the big story ballets that audiences of the Bolshoi company demand, with Spartacus as the most popular, Mr. Ratamansky has cast leading roles from dancers outside of the company! Namely, he cast Carlos Acosta (Houston City Ballet) as Spartacus. Understandably, this must have provoked aghast discomfort from the dancers under "life contracts" with the Bolshoi. When asked about the changing perceptions of more modern dance styles within Russia, Mr. Ratamansky highlighted that for Russians, the stage of the Bolshoi is like a "church." There is however, something of which Mr. Ratamansky is very proud, a new crop of young dancers that have come out of the changes he has brought to the repertoire. Lastly, I found it very interesting when Ms. Acocella questioned Mr. Ratamansky if his staging of "Bolt" (a ballet from the '20s in Russia which portrays a sea of orange-clad dancers simultaneously as machines and representative of the "Soviet man", if this ballet were in any way ironic or satirical. Mr. Ratamansky replied that no -- it has been 20 years since the perestroika (economic restructuring within Russia under Gorbachev), and that there was now no reason to be angry. Instead to Mr. Ratamansky -- The Bolt represented a particular and essential Soviet aesthetic for a certain kind of ballet. It was essential to him to preserve this style. (He seemed to balance the very political role of curating traditional Russian ballet -- a revered staple of Russian nationalism, culture and pride -- along with pushing and stretching Russian ballet to continue in its excellence -- to introduce competitors like Carlos Acosta wherever he saw performance quality could be enhanced; whenever he had the opportunity to challenge the resident elite of the Bolshoi company. Bravo! On both counts -- preservation and teaching. Lastly -- my question! Did Ratmansky say that Balanchine was the first to create the off-balance stance in ballet? I wasn't sure if he was crediting a specific ballet, or a choreographer. Though, I almost recall instead that he said it came from Mikhail Fokin?