Here is the link: http://www.eif.co.uk/E119_Festival_2006_News.php (Hope this is the best place to post this - I'm a newbie. My apologies if it's not.)

Thank you for this wonderful news, Bill! It's in the exact right place.

Here's the latest information from the Festival website. Five performances, August 26-29.

http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/international/

This is a very complicated and inconsistent website in general -- and NOT easy to use. You have to select an "artform" (dance), and the info on the Farrell company should appear.

Anyone planning to attend?

Wish I could! Edinburgh is exceedingly crowded then....but would love to hear reports......

on this side of the Atlantic, a core group will be at Jacob's Pillow doing some wonderful pieces......

I'd follow Suzanne anywhere, preferably to NJPAC or the Kennedy Center. But I can't make it to Edinburgh or to Jacob's Pillow for that matter. Like Juliet, I'd love to read some reports.

I'll be there..DD in corps...will see last two performances...Hope to catch two different Dulcineas. Will report in Sept upon return.
Cheers,
Watermill

Navigating to that site was worth it, to find this quote!

I'll not make it to Edinburgh, so I'm looking forward to that, Watermill!

But I expect to see most of the run at Jacob's Pillow and report what I see as best I can...

Bart is right -- the Festival website is complicated. But if you persist and get to the Don Q page, there are a few photos, presumably from last summer's Kennedy Center performances.

The site is complex, but I didn't find it so hard to use, although I got to it by a different address. If you use this link

http://www.eif.co.uk/

you get a page which looks the same but has a different slide show going in the middle of it. When I saw a slide of Don Quixote, I clicked on it and went to this page

http://www.eif.co.uk/E151_Balanchine_s_Don_Quixote.php

What's really nice is the seat-choice page you eventually get (it loads slowly) if you click one of the BUY links in the right column: You see exactly which seats are taken, which are available, and what their prices are, and you select the one(s) you want, like you do when you reserve airplane seats! I know of no American theatre using this technology.

But, where does one sit in this theatre? Where are the best seats? Is the main floor ("stalls") level, so you can be blocked? How far back is the "cicle"? Anyone here ever sat in the Edinburgh Playhouse? I suppose price is a good guide, but the top-price L40 (40-pound) seats are unavailable at the moment - sold, or never were? - so I'm wondering where to aim for.

Anyway, the bottom of the Don Quixote page has one of the nicest examples of "further information" I've run across:




That's my kind of festival site!

The PAC center in Newark, NJ uses something like this. You select a tier and then the screen displays the section ; seat by seat , row by row with the row numbers visible. The seats already sold are shaded a different color.

You select the seat(s) you want from ones still available by clicking on them and they go into your basket.

I don't know how long they are using this, I bought last March for Perm Swan Lake using this software.

Richard

Adding to Richard's description of NJPAC's on-line ticketing , you can also click to get an idea of the view from that seat. Of course, it's hard to gauge distance, but you can get an idea of how far to the side you'll be, or if you're in an upper tier, how steep the angle downwards. It's a great model for other theaters. I can't think of a feature I'd like that it lacks.

I love NJPAC!

The new Harris Theatre here has one of those virtual-view things, but I find it inaccurate.

Kennedy Center also uses it; I've found it helpful....

The Playhouse is (by UK standards) a very large venue, but not, I find, a very inviting one. I think it was a cinema at one point. The stage is wide but shallow. The public areas are very cramped and poorly lit.

The rear stalls can feel a very long way from the stage. Middle is best - the very front is a bit low for a good look at the feet. You might be better off in the circle. The audotorium is fairly wide, so if you are off to one side you may have a poor view.

Many thanks, Lynette H! Just what I need to know, that confirms and adds to some of the bits I've been finding on the Web, and explains why most of the front of the Circle is so well sold.

I have unexpectedly had to cancel my trip to Edinburgh. I am selling two single tickets for Don Q. They are both very good as I purchased them months ago. Mon Aug 28 front row Balcony a little to the side.
Tues Aug 29 Orch center row N. PM me if interested.

Sorry you won't be going, Watermill. I was looking forward to your reports.

(from Edinburgh, Scotland) The run got off to a slightly bumpy start last night, except of course for when the dancers themselves were in action, but before I get into that, let me tell you who the main ones were:

Don Quixote Momchil Mladenov
Dulcinea, Marcela Heather Ogden
Sancho Panza Eric Ragan

Juggler Jared Redick

Rigaudon Flamenco Erin Mahoney-Du and Runqiao Du
Danza alla Caccia Shannon Parsley, Benjamin Lester, Andrew Kaminski
Pas de Deux Mauresque Chan Hon Goh and Jared Redick
Courante Sicilienne Gina Artese, Melissa Barak, Elisabeth Holowchuk,
Alexei Agoudine, Radoslav Kokoszka, Neil Marshall
Ritournel Bonnie Pickard with Lauren Herfindahl

Knight of the Silver Moon Runqiao Du
Solo Maidens Shannon Parsley, Bonnie Pickard
Cavaliers Matthew Prescott, Jared Redick
Variation I Bonnie Pickard
Variation II Shannon Parsley
Variation III Jared Redick
VariationIV Heather Ogden
Merlin Benjamin Lester
Night Spirit Erin Mahoney-Du

The production was slightly reduced compared to Washington, owing to the smaller stage in the Edinburgh Playhouse, with fewer books in the Don's study; thus Marcela's Pieta (?) poses are done on the stairway, and Sancho Panza enters from the back instead of tottering charmingly down the stairway, and the red-eyed monster was absent entirely from III ii.

But the dancing! The dancing was present in every sense: When the villagers get into it in I ii, I start to think, "opera ballet", but it's better than that, it's better made and better danced than any opera ballet I ever saw. Easy, high extensions, large, clear, flowing, strong. And this part was another harbinger of the high level of the whole evening, the first being Mladenov's Don. In the first performances in Washington, I thought he grew into and filled out this huge role as the week rolled on, but here his first moves were a full realization of this energetic - driven, even - dignified yet naive old man; and Ogden as Marcela moved about his study fully in character from the start, too. (Robert Gottlieb, in his review of the premier, criticises Mladenov as sometimes "busy," but Nabokov's music is pretty busy too; what's Mladenov got to work from?)

Besides Ogden, whose phone number one gentleman I spoke to at the first interval already wanted, Mahoney-Du and Goh were the great standouts in this fine company, at least from my distance half-way back in the Circle (or First Balcony); Parsley and Pickard were excellent, too. (The generally attentive audience included a young woman behind me who said, just after the Mauresque "I liked that!") I was glad to see both again, especially after Mahoney-Du's (minor) injury at Jacob's Pillow and Goh's long absence, but even if I'd never seen them before I would have enjoyed their dancing hugely. That's the right word, I think, because the effect of their dancing was large across the distance, it seemed to eliminate distance, and yet it was contained and beautiful, especially Goh's. (I want to say more about Ogden's dancing of her large role, and I hope some language adequate to the job will occur to me soon.)

As to the (minor) problems, the start of the long evening was delayed a quarter of an hour while "a minor medical problem" was dealt with; the sight lines in this former cinema being a little marginal for the stage action, I couldn't tell what that was, and for the same reason I missed completely the period of several minutes when the very fine "Orchestra of Scottish Opera" played on just fine with one section in the dark (but I heard about it later).

Thanks, Jack! I'd been looking forward eagerly to this first report, and you did not disappoint! It's great to have the complete list of dancers of this wonderful company -- including the newly returned Chan Hon Goh and the apparently just arrived Melissa Barak. I don't want to get carried away, but the phrase "All-Star Company" did cross my mind. A toast to you (single malt, of course), Edinburgh, Ballet Talk, the SFB, and Suzanne!

(from Edinburgh, Scotland) Sunday's matinee (27 August) brought Natalia Magnicaballi into the Dulcinea/ Marcela role, Matthew Prescott into the Juggler role, and Bonnie Pickard and Erin Mahoney-Du exchanged Rigaudon Flamenco and Ritournel, with Andre Vytoptov partnering Pickard and Gillian Crighton accompanying Mahoney-Du. (The Ritournel role is a solo; a small child, behind the dancer, moves around to keep a half-umbrella of pink ostrich feathers over her head. Crighton, even smaller than Lauren Herfindahl in the first cast, was warmly received onstage by the matinee audience, which then promptly fell to attending the dance itself.)

I was delighted with Magnicaballi's dancing: Wonderfully clearly articulated in continuous flow to cumulative effect, her movement was deliciously phrased, in place and through space. "Breathtaking," I wrote in my program, and I remembered what my professional friend said at Jacob's Pillow after seeing Magnicaballi's Tzigane: "Magnicaballi was a beautiful dancer when I saw her a couple of years ago, and now she's better." In both roles, she makes characterization grow out of the moment in a competely natural-looking way.

I'm sorry to say that Matthew Prescott was not always in control of the sitation this time, in a short quick-moving role which requires a bit of catch with Sancho Panza, some juggling with three pieces of fruit, and some jumps; Prescott kept impressive line in turning leaps, but back on the ground the fruit tended to get away from him. Redick makes this little character bit exude flavor continuously, but Prescott needs to cook it some more.

Mahoney-Du is a taller, longer-limbed dancer than Pickard and makes the Ritournel more expansive rather than nuanced, within an envelope. There are some little jetes which seem to hang in the air in slow motion while she holds the hand of her partner, who stands at one side, and details like that which just blaze out to us repeatedly. We'd sure see a false move if she made one, but she doesn't.

In the evening, the first cast returned, although the printer had Magnicaballi in some middle scenes; somebody needs to remember to "search and replace." I warmed more to Ogden's dancing, or she warmed to the role; she brings a kind of cool, clear, young naivety to it while Magnicaballi feels it a little differently, gives it to us differently, not that I would ask for it either way, I'm happy again to have both, and Ogden's dancing later in the evening seemed to me better to connect phrases and so, to have more effect. With her, you see clear technique more; with Magnicaballi, it's there all right, but it's a little more subsumed; she's perhaps gone a little farther beyond it. (I'm still not satisfied with my description of Ogden's dancing, FWIW.)

Farrell Fan, that's far from a complete list! I'm such a poor typist, I just skimmed the huge cast, but as there is so much beautiful dancing before us, I keep feeling I must work at it some more, and let people know who deserves credit. At least, I can count up the sections and mention that next time. (I had imagined it would be pouring here, so I'd be online more; Rudolph Bing is said to have started the Festival to pump up the end of summer season business as the rain returns, but except for a light shower while I was on the upper deck of a tour bus, it's been pretty dry.)

It seems fitting that, as a mainstay of the company, Magnicaballi got to do the lead role in this loving restoration. Thanks for the wonderful report, Jack. I was pleased that the audience turned its attention to the dance after applauding the little girl with the half-umbrella. I've always found that hard to do, being too concerned with whether the child would be able to keep up with the adult dancer. And as someone who can't describe dance except in cliches, I am closely following your quest to capture in words the movement of Heather Ogden. I know you can do it.

(from Edinburgh, Scotland) Thanks for the encouragement, Farrell Fan; maybe while I'm seeing Ogden tonight - at least it's my assumption that she'll be cast - from a center stalls (orchestra) seat, more apt language will come. Meanwhile, speaking of language, I see I've given the wrong idea about the umbrella-bearer's reception - these audiences, like the residents of Edinburgh seem to be generally, are far too sophisticated about good, proper, modest, polite, civilized behavior to applaud something like that entrance: just a little subdued but warm vocalization ran round the theatre for a moment.

In the meantime, there were some more cast rotations and changes Monday night: Magnicaballi came back to her role and Redick to that of the Juggler, Lisa Reneau danced Rigaudon Flamenco with Du, and Pickard took over Danza della Caccia from Parsley, who nevertheless appeared as usual in Act III.

I was quite taken all over again with Magnicaballi, partly because I was watching from a closer seat in the stalls instead of in the circle, because she gives so much without seeming to, if that language makes sense; it's just there, so nicely modulated, too. At the end, just as the curtain comes down, she shows her real grief and love of the Don, not quite throwing herself on his body for a last embrace, and then sinking to the floor; not sobbing (too much!) but crushed. (I think this bit may be a change; I remember at some point, Marcela/Dulcinea, kneeling on the floor by the Don's bed, leaning her forearms against the side of it, clasps her hands and raises her gaze to the starry heavens in prayer.* (My often frustrating memory tends to collect images and words without their contexts sometimes.) But I don't mean to emphasise this detail: Her whole performance ebbed and flowed with life. No, several lives (read on).

Lisa Reneau was, if possible, even more effective in Flamenco than Mahoney-Du. This company goes from strength to strength, that is, when nothing is actually going wrong, as when Mahoney-Du herself, as it happened, couldn't continue at Jacob's Pillow several weeks ago, and a substitute had to be found, but part of me continues to believe this is all humanly impossible anyway. That's where, for me, some of the wonder comes from.


The Festival has been laying on some lectures apropos the performances, and while I missed Farrell's on Sunday afternoon, which began before the performance ended, some of what she said turned up second-hand on Monday in the animated and intelligent remarks of Dr. Giannandrea Poesio, a performer turned critic and dance historian. Certainly the revival of Balanchine's Don Quixote might bring up some questions additional to the usual ones about performance, and I gathered from Poesi that Farrell had said that once you notate a dance you leave no interpretive room. "I couldn't agree more," he said, but went on to add, so "my dance-notator friends won't kill me" that notation is okay, valuable, if it's not missused in the way Farrell warned about: No one should ever say, Poesi said, we don't have a record of that [move], so don't do it.

He gave his understanding of her claim that there's no pantomime in Don Quixote: The role is all pantomime, he said, but not [literal] pantomime, and he illustrated what that was by giving us some hilarious examples of literal pantomime, reciting the words as he indicated them. This way he made the point that this kind of thing can be ridiculous; but Balanchine's ballet is a tragedy.

Today, Poesio said, new choreographers take all sorts of odd bits, maybe even putting a curtain between the dancing and the audience, put them together, "and shake." The result is a pastiche. From an historian's point of view, Balanchine had already done it, in a less agressive way, in 1965 when Don Quixote premiered; it didn't look right at the time. Nutcracker was booed in 1893, likewise the first Swan Lake; Rite of Spring.

Don Quixote is a celebration of Balanchine's artistic passion for his new ballerina, he said; "[Marcela/Dulcinea], with its multiplicities of characters, is the hardest in the repertory." [Take some more bows, Heather and Natalia.]

* 30 th August 2006: Since I wrote this, I have become satisfied this prayerful version was never done! My memory and imagination were working overtime.

I'm all in favor of polite, civilized behavior, Jack, but have the audiences there given any indication of whether they appreciate Balanchine's "Don Quixote?" The reviews I've read on Ballet Talk links have been uniformly dismal. Of course this ballet is not a crowd-pleaser, but to just dismiss it as old-fashioned and boring because the dancers aren't in leotards shows a narrow, stereotypical view of Balanchine. Thank goodness for your reports!

I think it's interesting how Don Q seems to upset people because it doesn't conform with what people think of as Balanchine, but also because it touches upon some uncomfortable subjects (Ismene Brown did a good job going through them, although I disagree that Balanchine is not good at narrative). I think that people need to widen their perception of Balanchine's work. Yes, he's known for his neo-classical works such as Agon and Concerto Barocco AND takes on Petipa like Theme and Variations, but he's done so much more. What about Prodigal Son, with the long crawl home? Or the emotionalism of Meditation? I don't know, but DQ touched me. When I first saw it, as a young kid, it was the varations that amazed me. But in DC, as somebody with more experience, I recognized so many life moments in the ballet. And life is often uncomfortable and painful. It was obviously an important ballet for Mr. B, not just in his declaration of love for Farrell but as a way to express his feelings about God, love, sacrifice, growing old, disappointment, embarrassment, dreams...

I wish it could be danced at the same caliber it was when stage at NYCB, but Farrell has learned her lessons from Balanchine well. These are the dancers she has NOW and they are dancing for the NOW. And I liked many of the dancers in DC, in fact almost all but not the Dulcinea. She just didn't move in the Balanchine way.

. . . and ostracism and misunderstanding, which seems to be the fate of this ballet, in the eyes of some viewers.

Debra Craine's review in The Times (London) -- posted by dirac in today's Links -- includes a statement which may explain the great ambivalence with which so many people look at the Balanchine Don Q:

I haven't seen this since the original performances back in the 60s, but the music was a major barrier to enjoying and appreciating the piece then. It did not sing and seemed very not well suited dance. This was commented on frequently in the reviews at the time. Remember, this was a company accustomed to dancing to Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, etc., etc.

But almost no one mentions it now, either in reviews or here on Ballet Talk. Craine's comment is more the exception than the rule. Does the music somehow seem "better" in 2005-6 than it did then?

Jack and others who've seen the Farrell version, what do you think about the contribution made by the music?

I think our ears are different now. We've heard Adams and Torke and whole mash of stuff much more astringent than the Nabokov score. Personally, the music isn't the greatest but it didn't grate on me. It's sort of Eastern flavored - it sort of reminds me of Heinz's score for Ondine (not sure why, but it does).

Although Ms. Farrell has said, "Balanchine liked it," I don't think it is memorable in any way except a snooze. Pleasant enough in the divertissements, and lovely in the third act in scattered bits, but on the whole very leaden.
I would have liked to see it again in Edinburgh as I imagine they have refined and tightened it up even more since last year in Washington....and Magnicaballi must be simply beautiful in it. I saw both casts last year and thought Heather Ogden very lovely and expressive. Magnicaballi is a dramatic ballerina with great depth as well as subtlety and intelligence and I imagine she was perfect in this....

I am sure that many in the audience were surprised by the ballet, but I applaud Ms. Farrell and the dancers for their extremely hard work and belief in the cause.....

In his review of last year's performances at the Kennedy Center, John Rockwell called parts of the music "gorgeous," and some of it at the start of Act 3, is just that. But on the whole the music is no more than serviceable. The problem with the ballet is that it's not "Man of La Mancha." The mood is neither comic nor inspirational, but sad and gloomy. It must say something about me that I've always liked the ballet and still cry at its end.

Literary pun here: there's almost something quixotic about Farrell's quest to stage this ballet. She obviously believes very strongly in it, despite almost constant criticisms about the ballet's score and choreography.

I found the ballet very moving, especially the end when the figures emerge from the yellow light and move across the stage. The don rises on the pile of books. I was stunned and in awe. The music for the dream act has real beauty in it. I think the choreography is awesome. One thing I heard from people who saw the ballet in DC was that they felt betrayed by the emotion seen on stage, this from the cool neo-classicist. But I think Balanchine's work is soaked in emotion - the real kind - not the posturing kind. Just look at Duo Concertante or La Valse or Serenade.

I came to admire the ballet very much -- not love it, but admire it. I had the chance to see it three times, and each time I saw more in it. People who had seen the original faulted the dancing -- not just Dulcinea, but the divertissements, that the dancing made the choreography look underpowered. I have no reason to doubt that. But I agree with Dale about it being "soaked in emotion." I'm already hearing people say "we'll never see it again" -- but that's what they said after NYCB danced it for "the last time."

Alexandra, I think the NBoC has scheduled a run for next June, actually.

I'm sorry not to respond sooner, Farrell Fan, but have you noticed how things pile up when you're away, and then sometimes when you come back, the pile falls over on you?

The audience sounded appreciative of the dancing, mostly, including at the end of the first ensemble in the Act III scene i pas d'action, which is a "wrong place" for applause, and in all the right places, especially after the Mauresque, but they also laugh in two places (where I can't blame them much, although I don't join in), when the dummy "Don" falls from the windmill arm to the stage, and when a platform rises from the Don's bed to raise the standing Don. I don't remember any details from the old NYCB production, which I saw a few times (with Leland and Bonnefous, I think), so I don't remember how these bits were done then, but I wish there were better ways to do these moments. (There's a Fehl photograph of the raising business where the platform is so small you don't see it under the Don's gown, so that he may then have seemed to rise "in ecstacy, as mystics are by levitation," as Edwin Denby put it in 1965.)

I spoke with a few audience members. At the matinee, the nearest to me of four older women there together told me they'd chosen Don Quixote because it was a chance to see "something different"; one evening I sat next to a Canadian woman who said she was there because "I adore the ballet" and she didn't seem disappointed; and one evening, trying to sell a friend's ticket in front of the theatre, I was asked jokingly by one man, "Can't even give it away? Did you read The Scotsman?" I explained that I had seen previous performances and was back for more, but that a friend couldn't make it, and not to be discouraged by the first act. He and his companion brightened and went in.

And the reviews weren't all negative; Thom Dibdin's brief review in the Evening News for the 28th of August was upbeat, ending with "This is great to watch," although I'll have to admit someone posted a comment after Dibdin's review that she liked the Mauresque, but that was it.

Anyway, on Tuesday evening, at the last performance, we had the opening night's cast again, and I saw the performance from the center of row N in the Stalls, and several things were different from that close range. Mainly, I got much more out of Ogden's performance, especially in the tremendous Variation IV in the Act III scene i pas d'action.

Have you ever seen a film where, typically late in it, an actor makes visible, and so, accessible to us, a sequence of interior states, by a sequence of slight changes of expression, for example showing a series of realizations about what has gone before, passing through his mind? Not a lot of action, but as we empathise with the character, a lot of effect. This needs film (as well as a first-rate actor), rather than a theatre stage, for it really to work, because the director can bring us close to the performer, and when we see it, we may get a sense of how the character is carried along and even buffeted by events and the situation, and so, of how vulnerable he is to them.

From the closer seat, Ogden's performance of this "Variation" (a misleading title, like an understatement) was like this for me; her classical clarity and reticent purity understating the action but clearly differentiating and articulating the details in the flow, so that we empathise with Dulcinea's internal process and sequence, and the experience is vivid; Magnicaballi's eloquence, by its power, which had carried better in the large theatre, makes the character perhaps seem a little less vulnerable. (I hope I don't make it seem that the two dancers were completely different or even opposite when they weren't.)

This is the dance to dwell upon in that it grows out of all that's gone before, and would be diminished in effect if it were performed as an excerpt: We would wonder, What's she on about? (In continual agitation, she stretches her arms imploringly toward the wings, sometimes she looks as though she'd taken it into her head to throw it all away and fall on her ear, only to get on top of it again, and she repeatedly puts her face in her hands.) We need to have absorbed the preceding events for this to resonate. On the other hand, Balanchine inserted a short classic ballet, a Spanish dance, into Act I for a time, apparently in response to complaints about insufficient dancing in that act; Dr. Poesio mentioned that Farrell said she had this ballet and would like to stage it by itself, so maybe we will see it one of these days. Meanwhile, as narrative, Act I moves right along, and this is doubtless her purpose in leaving it out this time.

As the Dead Poet's Friend in Act I, Runqiao Du has a very small role, but his response to Don Quixote's threatening him with a dagger - for accusing the Shepherdess Marcela of complicity in the Poet's death - was sharply etched with his usual clarity but on a smaller scale, and I was glad to see this from closer range than from where his vivid high-energy performance in the pas d'action was effective - a little frightening, actually, as the story calls for at that point - every time.

About Goh's performances in the pas de deux Mauresque my only complaint is that it was the only thing she did!

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are supposed to make our sense of each the stronger because of contrast with the other, and when I read one of the critics' complaint that Mladenov gave us a sketch of the Don, I thought, an ink-and-wash-on-paper sketch, not all there (like the Don's mental state), silvery-gray makeup and costume (beard, armor, and ashen face) and much of his action on stage, nearly monochrome, compared to Eric Ragan's Sancho, a colorful stock character done as though in oils, and amply costumed in oversize peasant garments in earth tones. So the two were more effective than either could have been separately, but I wondered about something else.

One of the things Don Quixote is "about" is the series of visions of Dulcinea or Marcela which appear to the Don. When Marcela the Shepherdess appears, the villagers freeze in everyday poses, some even facing away from the action in center stage: They don't see her; she's a vision only he sees. Or is she? Ragan also reacts, and I wasn't clear whether it was to the vision of Marcela or to the Don's involvement with it. In the next scene, the one with the puppet show, the villagers imitate to each other some of the puppets' movements, so we know they see what we see. Part of the interest for me was the way we were "told" what was public and "real" and what was in the Don's mind only.

Watching the last few performances, I was surprised by how I began to like the music! Parts of it, like the pas d'action and the divertissements, but not just that; but by no means all, either. I suppose what happened there is that I associated the values of the dancing with the music at each point, like I did years ago, when Balanchine choreographed Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, a piece I never much cared for on its own. Now if I play a record of that music, I see some of the dancing in memory, but even where I don't I respond to that. Hmmm.

And I've also been struck by the quotations from Le Baiser de la Fee and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the choreography at the end of Act II. I don't know what to make of it, that is, whether we're to recognise it or not. I assume we're not, but I do anyway.

This was only my third Atlantic crossing. May I say I had a fine time in Edinburgh? The changing sky sometimes showering the city, making brighter and deeper the colors of the huge rock with the castle on top dominating the scene, not to mention keeping the greenery lush. And the Scots themselves: All the ones I met were full of smart energy and good spirits. Goodbye, Scotland! It was lovely, really.

Thanks, Jack, for bringing this thread to closure, thus dissipating the virulent effects of those reviews. I came to admire much about Mr. B's Don Quixote last year in Washington (as I had years before at the New York State Theater), including some of the music, and I was struck by your description of the Don as a wash drawing, compared to Sancho's portrait in oils. The ballet, of course, rises or falls on its various incarnations of Dulcinea. I saw Heather Ogden last year and much admired her. I'm sure Magnicaballi this year was also memorable. It would be nice to see that Act I mini-ballet some day. At any rate, Suzanne performed a noble endeavor in reviving this flawed masterpiece, and you've done a great service in setting down exactly what happened.

Yes, thank you, Jack----it was wonderful to read your impressions of this...

Well, Jack, if I couldn't be there (dd has stress fracture: Miss Farrell did not want her to risk it healing unproperly) you certainly helped make up for it. Great reports!
I was taken aback by the dismissiveness of some of the UK reviews. Having seen two performances at the Kennedy Center last year, I was suprised. Maybe this is just one of those ballets you "get" or don't. It's spiritual and has to be understood on that level.
Seemed like a (critics) group agenda to me. Anyway, you certainly gave us a refreshingly posivitive (but still critical) view of the whole run.
I remember speaking to some of the company after the KC run who spoke of a magnificent performance by Heather Ogden (the one in which she was dropped) in which she danced with the abandon most associated with Miss Farrell in that role. The word had spread through the company that something special was happening on stage and they had all gathered in the wings to watch Heather "go for it". Any hint of that in Edinburgh?
Would have really loved to have seen Natalia M and Goh.
I really enjoyed your film analogy. That's why I get those seats!

Cheers,
Watermill

Part of the UK critics' problem with this, aside from preconceptions about Balanchine, may be that the production was somewhat attenuated from the Washington premiere, because, I suppose, of the limitations of the smaller stage in the Edinburgh Playhouse compared to the Kennedy Center Opera House; besides what I mentioned already, the dragon was omitted from the Prologue, and, more importantly, the landing and stairs at the right the Don and Sancho enter Act II on was also missing. As the Washington run went on, Mladenov and Ragan began to get chuckles from the audience when they came on like the oddballs they are at court, because they were so incongruous with the courtiers, who had danced for a minute or two first; without this part of the set, their entrance was much less visible and less effective, and so we are less set up to be so appalled by the way the Don is treated toward the end of the act, and so the effectiveness of that was reduced.

I think the more that happens to us earlier in the course of this ballet, the more potential for resonance there is toward the end. Joan Acocella's characterisation, in her review in the July 25, 2005 New Yorker of the Washington premiere, though, catches for me most of the extent of the resonance: "Neither [Rodriguez or Ogden] was able to do what Farrell did with the great Act III solo. They made it psychological. ('Get up, Don Quixote! We've got to get out of here!') She made it spiritual. ('Get up, Don Quixote! Life is hell. Heaven is waiting. Get up, so you can die at home.') ... It wasn't Farrell, but it was a lot." Acocella saw Farrell, I didn't, except in the clips in Elusive Muse, but I think I can say Ogden still wasn't Farrell (no surprise), nor should she try to be; that would defeat anybody, and besides, it's not worthy. When I said "throw it all away" I did mean abandon (and more than a hint); but it was among those interior states made visible we could empathise with: psychological. Spiritual is another level. Psychological is still a lot, though, and all three dancers' performances supply part of the answer to the question, Is this worth putting on?

Not that I intend the question seriously. (Sometimes I get some "juice" out of an "experimental" approach to art appreciation, like, looking at a Dutch Master, how would the composition be affected if the man in the red cap had been omitted? Or, looking at one of my favorite American "masters," How would this dance "work" all by itself? Or if it preceded what it follows, instead?) And of course I'm not in charge. Some one else is, and she seems to me to have a sure sense of what to do and how to do it, and I continue to marvel at what her dancers show us onstage when I don't take into consideration how little time they all have together, and when I do take that into consideration, I marvel all over again. I suppose that's a large part of why I went to Edinburgh, rather than wait until June.

For me, another part of the answer is in Robert Gottlieb's review of the same premiere, where he makes the right comparison: "You need King Lear all the time, but every decade or so you also need Timon of Athens. Otherwise your understanding of a genius like Shakespeare - or Balanchine - is diminished, and so are you." (I take understanding in the large sense, in the sense of comprehension, not in the smaller sense of analysis, which is just a part.)

Thanks for those comments. It's a tribute to this ballet, and to what the Farrell Company is able to do with it, that it remains so vividly in your memory and gives us all so many things to ponder.

And thanks for this:
Very useful ideas to bring to the theater, in these days when there is so much "instant analysis" and non-reflective opinion-formation.