PI - Personal Injury. They specialize in pursuing cases for plaintiffs. It's a different mentality and practice than a criminal defense attorney. (I come from a family of lawyers - barely escaped it myself)

In fact, they gave you the monogram: LAW. You didn't escape completely.

The Bar's loss is the barre's gain.

Sorry.

Thanks, Leigh. Having such a lawyer in a case like this certainly seems misguided.

now i don't know much about this fellow but my first thought was to wonder if he was maybe something of an "ambulance chaser".

Facts on the arrest and the charges are beginning to trickle in. Here's the (New York) DailyNews.com, from dirac's LINKS today:

Everyone interested should check out today's Links for other reports - http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...mp;#entry207565. It's interesting how inconsistent they are. Apparently some reporters DO get better stories, and more quickly, than others.

IF this case makes it to trial, then a charge of "possession with intent to sell" becomes very weak with the lack of someone charged with "loitering with intent to purchase". A defense could start one of its points from there. Possession 5 is all that is alleged at this time, and it doesn't sound like the County Attorney is all choked up about mounting a prosecution. It might not even make it out of the grand jury room as a felony.

Also, remember, that in the US we don't use the "solicitor/barrister" system as in the UK and some other nations, but it is far from unusual to retain an initial counsel, and then take on additional counsel as needed.

I'm still with the "presumption of innocence" crowd. Trial by press or water cooler is far from binding.

Of all that I've read so far--in the Albany and Saratoga papers, the Daily News and Post, and the brief paragraph in the New York Times, the best and most accurate account was in the Daily News. For one thing, they were the only paper to get Peter Martins's title correct, silly though it is -- Ballet Master in Chief. The others, including the NY Times, had it as Master in Chief which sounds like a retired commodore. The News also seemed to know more about Amar
Ramasar, including that he's from the Bronx.

I just hope if the amount is crucial for so minor an offense, that it really is under the limit and they let it go as a misdemeanour with little or no punishment.. Unless the police are lying about an attempt to shuffle it under the car seat, it's likely that the cocaine itself, at least, was guilty. I don't have much sympathy with these absurd laws for such minor and commonplace acts (whatever they may be exactly), and any of the possibilities of what exactly was happening goes on so often that it's just a matter of bad luck more than anything. But Americans may still be like they were when Joycelyn Elders was fired partially for having the gall to suggest legalization of drugs. Even the Clintons couldn't manage all that good sense, so back to Arkansas she went.

I hadn't read till today the NYTimes Alastair Macauley published July 1, in which Nilas Martins gets some of the most truly brutal raking over the coals--comparisons with other fellow dancers not withheld with even slight mercy--that I've ever seen. What he says about Kistler's 'Serenade' was pretty apparent as far back as 2004, but the case of Nilas the dancer seemed almost to have finally come to a head in that wrap-up of the spring NYCB season. I find Nilas almost always uninteresting as a dancer, and many others have said the same, so this is not really surprising--but it's sadder in his case than what Macauley said about Darci, because she really used to be great, and last year I thought she really shone in 'Liebeslieder'. It's sad because although apprehended at 1:23 a.m. Tuesday, that's practically speaking still Monday night, so only a day after such a critical bludgeoning. On the other hand, I don't know how seriously dancers follow their critics; it must surely vary. But it's pretty clear that the career of Nilas Martins has not equalled that of his father and of many of his fellow NYCB dancers, so this is serious depression-inducing stuff, I'd imagine. People were talking about worrying about 'what this might do to career' in the case of Ramasar. I don't think it will affect either career, providing Nilas gets off as I hope he will. Nobody cares about this kind of thing--when drugs have been known to be used by dancers, nobody has deserted them--'Dancing on My Grave' had a lot of talk about cocaine, as I recall. And Peter Martins went full speed ahead, with or without popularity at BT and other venues, after doing something that was actually far worse, but I don't know about legally so--ugly marital altercations aren't the same as illegal substances.

Also, it getting in the papers is not going to make any difference, and I wouldn't say there is even the slightest resemblance to Paris Hilton's publicity and celebrity. In contemporary terms, there's not a single famous dancer at NYCB--they are famous in the dance realm and other elitist art realms, but even a totally ascendant brilliant star like Ashley Bouder, who is going straight to the top, is not going to be really famous in the literal sense. Nureyev, Fonteyn and Baryshnikov were probably as famous as dancers are going to get. Nilas Martins is not famous.

Patrick, 499 milligrams, and the charge is Possession 7. That's a class-A misdemeanor, and subject to considerably lesser penalties. In NYS, a "crime" is defined, on one level, as anything for which a prison term of longer than a year is authorized. And a misdemeanor can involve imprisonment for up to only one year. If the prosecutor isn't hot to trot to the grand jury for a bill of felony, things could simplify right there.

Yes, I especially liked all the solemn cop talk about 'securing the baggie.' Your tax dollars at work, folks. That said -- the law's the law.



Quite so.

Does anyone know who danced Apollo for Nilas?
Any reports would be welcome.

Charles Askegard

The New York Post today is quoting the Saratoga County DA's office as stating that Nilas Martins will most likely not face jail time:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07072007/news/...rrespondent.htm

'Martins - whose father is the ballet's mercurial master-in-chief, Peter Martins'

Well, Farrell Fan has the better taste, because I love it when journalists can't control themselves like this, and with the hyphens it's even more absurd. But I especially want to know precisely what he meant by mercurial. I want all possible meanings and innuendos, if any. I don't know that there is any ballet called 'Mercury', but there probably should be. Also pretty good is referring to NYCB as 'the ballet's...', when 'City Ballet's' was not going to take up that much space. This way you could almost imagine Lovett means an individual work.

Anyway, that's good news about the likely outcome, thanks, pmeja. I don't know many of the basics of the law, so is a 'not guilty' plea something you would always do even if you end up doing this sort of 'hammered out deal' which includes 'rehab'. I suppose the attorney advises that this is the better route.

i'm assuming that referring to peter as 'the ballet's' instead of 'the new york city ballet's' is because the full name of the company has been used only a sentence or two preceding in the same article. any journalist/writer out there who can confirm this for me?

pmeja--'New York City Ballet' was used only once in the beginning of the article, so it would have not been overdoing to just say 'City Ballet's' once more toward the end, but this is not a very formal sort of thing; anyway, it's not important--sloppiness in the New York Post is expected, and it's not even offensive. They have to dash things off. In any case, I found that there was a real Mercury Ballet, and Jennifer Dunning wrote about them in 1982:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...agewanted=print

"People who attend the ballet don't want to deal with controversy, and the appropriate decision was to move on without him," Jones said.

We could really nitpick and say that this sentence, which precedes the one about 'the ballet's mercurial...' uses 'the ballet' to mean 'any and all ballet'. If they don't want to 'deal with controversy', it just coincides with the fact that it's New York City Ballet here, because 'people who attend the ballet' refers to any balletgoers anywhere before it does NYCB, whereas the following use of 'the ballet's..' does refer to the New York City Ballet. But this was for the Post just a little throwaway piece.

interesting, though the way i read it i thought the 'mercurial' adjective perhaps referred to peter's previous experience in saratoga.

You are correct. Our Communications Office, which is in Albany, has a living horror of the same noun, verb, adjective, or adverb being within the same paragraph, or even about 80 words of one another. And Farrell Fan is right, "master-in-chief" does sound rather nautical. A "Master Chief" is a very senior Non-Commissioned Officer in the Navy.

Actually, that occurred to me too, and adds to the tastelessness, however. ..

consider the source?

Exactly--That's the last time they were really able to use him really effectively, with that cover story BALLET BULLY! I don't think they care about scandals on the order of 'Just for the Fun of It' and cellphone offenses very much at the Post ...

It could be an oblique reference to the fact that Martins created a character called Mercutio in Romeo + Juliet. Or maybe it is not.

Well, I'm glad he is likely to get off with little more than a slap on the wrist. But I hope if he has a substance problem, and if it's related to his not very well received efforts at NYCB, that he takes serious steps to resolve both those things.

I think this is just the Daily News trying to expand its readership. Having attracted the ballet audience to their readership with this scoop, they want to keep us by pandering to our sophistication by alluding to Giovanni da Bologna's sculpture Mercury that perhaps inspired Carlo Blassis's attitude.

The Post has been having trouble determining the master-in-chief's character. The other day, the adjective of choice was "imperious," bringing to mind someone domineering or even dictatorial. At least "mercurial" has connotations of "the artistic temperament." I think of Orson Welles's "Mercury Radio Theater."

And if he doesn't, rehab is going to be a useless exercise (but better than the alternative).

My Thesaurus describes 'mercurial' as 'bubbleheaded'

On the other hand:
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006
1. changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic: a mercurial nature.
2. animated; lively; sprightly; quick-witted.
3. pertaining to, containing, or caused by the metal mercury.
4. of or pertaining to the god Mercury.
5. of or pertaining to the planet Mercury.
–noun
6. Pharmacology. a preparation of mercury used as a drug.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME < L mercuriālis of, pertaining to the god or planet Mercury. See mercury, -al1]

—Related forms
mer·cu·ri·al·ly, adverb
mer·cu·ri·al·ness, mer·cu·ri·al·i·ty, noun

—Synonyms 1. inconstant, indecisive. 2. spirited.
—Antonyms 1. constant, steady. 2. phlegmatic.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

Or one of those Greek gods. Does it really matter which?

LOL. I always suspect that papers like the NY Post have software that automatically attaches a random adjective to any public figure's name in the event the reporter forgot one.

Yes, because, according to a Classics Scholar friend, Mercury was extraordinarily attractive as well as Apollo, and yet not that much attention has been given to fleshing a Mercury figure out. Peter Martins is too identified with Apollo to seem like Mercury per se, although he is obviously 'mercurial' in some ways. Nikolaj Hubbe is convincing to me as Apollo, although maybe, being shorter, he ought to begin to embody a Mercury while he's still got what it takes. And I know what MacAuley was talking about in his cruel comparisons, what with alternating Hubbe and Nilas--although most aren't going to go quite that far: Macauley is quite good, I see. On the other side--the eternal, fleshless one--there are Poseidon and Hermes, not necessarily great beauties; and I suppose these are in plenty of dances both in ballet, Martha Graham and elsewhere, but Apollo seems to stand out. However, it would have been unrealistic to expect the Post to know to describe Peter Martins as 'the ballet's Apollonian master-in-chief', for many, many reasons. I'd like to see Aphrodite in a ballet in which her Homeric persona as a 'weaker goddess', by comparison to Artemis and Athena, is brought out. I don't think that's been done. I know that this is , but so is almost everybody else by now.

Thanks, papeete. Your explantion was interesting and augmented my inadequate knowledge of classical literature.

For what it's worth, I was being facetious.

I know--- so was I; I'm just more verbose about my facetiousness whenever I can be, which does not cover up my inadequate knowledge of classical literature.

But then again, anyone who's worked with pure mercury knows what it's like to try to get hold of. Perhaps the journalists were trying to get a direct comment from Peter as company balletmaster-in-chief and father of the alleged perp, and were told that he's in New York/Copenhagen/London/Paris/Chicago/Reno/Puyallup.

Mercurial as a descriptive character adjective, means to me elusive, unable to hold or pin down as when you try to hold Mercury in your hand it always runs off onto the table or floor. However there are other interpretations relating to the god Mercury which start with having the characteristics of eloquence, shrewdness, swiftness and another attribute I would not wish to mention.

He's one clever Dane, knowing that in the Pacific Northwest he could blend into the Scandinavian landscape...

Was that his first time doing it with NYCB? I don't recall him dancing the ballet with the company before. If this was his company debut, then there's a silver lining to all the commotion, as someone new got to dance this prized male role. If only it had been Evans.....
-amanda

Our Links page brought me to a really in-depth article from the Albany Times Union that featured comments by former NYCB Principal David Otto, and arts administrator Bob Yesselman.

The July 6 NY Daily News also gives some detail we haven't seen before, particularly that Nilas is distressed.

http://www.silive.com/newsflash/metro/inde...orylist=simetro

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Dancer-Charged.html

Strange.

The attorney should know better....

In my opinion you are correct.

Well, you've got to like a judge who actually goes to the ballet:

The adjective that came to my mind was 'tacky.' But it's strange, too.

According to the NY Times, if the Saratoga Police wish to do so, they may now re-open the case and arrest Amar. Why on earth did this lawyer put Amar at such risk? One would think that Amar and Nilas, sitting in a car together, were friends (didn't Amar dance with one of Nilas' pick-up companies?)? What kind of friendship is that?

More important, what can Amar's future with the company be, now that Nilas has (indirectly) exposed him (a kid from the South Bronx) to prosecution? Can Amar work for Nilas' father? If the implication is that he is a drug user, who will hire him to dance? To teach?

I find those statements unconscionable. The whole situation is abysmal.

According to the AP, actually. I think it's an important distinction.

According to the article in the New York Times, there is no case against the passenger, identified previously as Ramasar, unless either the attorney or Martins tells city police this information. Since Jones, the lawyer, made the allegations "outside court," the case can't be re-opened solely on this basis.

Martins' lawyer is responsible to Martins, not his passenger. Whether Jones' statement will help Martins's reputation is to be seen. I found it noteworthy that unlike previous press reports predicting the terms of the deal, there is no rehab involved in the sentence.

I don't understand why Martins would do such a monumental thing as take the fall for that other person in the car and then his lawyer spoils that sacrifice by broadcasting it to the press. Now that person he pled guilty to protect is going to fall under intense scrutiny. I don't get it.

According to newspaper reports Martins was the one seen by a policeman to be attempting to hide the telltale baggie. He was involved in any case from a legal standpoint.

So far as I know, the Saratoga Springs Police Dept., the Saratoga County Sheriff, and the local barracks of the State Police have no one named Javert on the force.

Let's look at what we've got here

• A defendant with no prior record
• The actual charge is a misdemeanor
• The defendant occupies a prominent and beneficial place in the community
• The defendant was co-operative
• The passenger whatever his identity, could be charged with loitering to purchase
• That's a violation
• Martins might be accused of misprision of a violation or more seriously, obstructing an investigation
• Both of those are violations - too much trouble to prosecute for little return.

Perhaps one that will inadvertently spur Amar to seek help if he needs it, or to at least forgo something which could limit or destroy his career.

And speaking of the unforeseeably poignant, if you own a copy of Martins pere's "Far from Denmark," turn to the first page of the Introduction and note the photo to the left.