The site is back up, and we've made some significant changes to Ballet Talk.

First is that Alexandra and Leigh Witchel will take a more active role on the board again. Just as my job started to send me to another continent on a regular basis, technology opened a new window of time for Alexandra, and I am very grateful that she will share it with us.

The look of the board has changed, too. If you look down the homepage, the most significant change is that we are going back the original forum structure, combining all reviews into a single forum, "Recent Performances," and we've moved the Company forums into "Archives." News from all companies have a home in "Ballet News and Issues." We've moved the recent threads from the Company forums to the corresponding threads. Ballet is a small world, and much of what affects one company will have impact on the other side of the ocean or globe.

You can still read the threads in the Company forums. They've been made "read-only," but they are visible and searchable. If there are discussions that you'd like to revive, please create a new thread in one of the discussion forums. You can either link to the original thread, or PM or email us through the "Contact Us" link at the top of each page to do it for you.

We hope that with the consolidation, forums are easier to find and use, especially for newcomers.

Thank you for your patience during the downtime.

Thanks for taking on this huge job, Helene.

Thanks also to Alexandra and Leigh. The board has certainly felt the impact of their respective lower profiles.

Thank you Helene and to all the administrators, moderators and behind the scenes people who make this board possible with your attention, time, care and affection. Very nice to hear that Alexandra, The High Priestess Of BalletTalk will be more visible on the board as well. I missed her!

What perky said...

A special thank you to Alexandra and Leigh - a number of old threads have been revived lately and reminded me how much I have learnt from Ballet Talk and from Alexandra and Leigh in particular over the last years. Bravo!

I have a question -- if we are subscribed to an archived forum, what will happen? How do we get news of those topics?

Since there won't be any changes to the Archive forums -- they are read-only -- there won't be any more subscription notifications for them. Your subscriptions will be dormant.

To be notified when a new topic opens in "Ballet News and Issues," "Recent Performances," or any other forum, click on the forum name, and from the right-hand drop-down box called "Forum Options," click the bottom option, "Subscribe to this Forum." Then choose how frequently you'd like to be notified: immediately (default), once a day, etc.

You'll receive an email telling you the name of the new topic. There's a link in the email that allows you to subscribe to the thread with "Delayed Notification" (periodically, usually that day). If you want "immediate" or "once a day", click on the link to the thread, and click on the "Options" drop-down box. From here, select "Subscribe to this forum" and you'll be able to choose frequency.

Sounds do-able!
Thanks!

I was going to post something about NYCB's Opening Night (Nov. 20, 2007) on the NYCB forum tonight, but was admonished that I don't have permission to do so. Is that forum solely for NYCB publicity releases now?

The NYCB forum, along with the other company-specific forums, is now an archive and is therefore read-only. Please feel free to post your review in Recent Performances; I look forward to reading it.

We all do Farrell Fan - we're putting all reviews into Recent Performances during the season in the hopes that it will stimulate and cross-pollinate discussion. At the end of the season we'll do a housecleaning and put threads into respective company archive forums for easier retrieval.

We apologize that our software is missing the feature that suppresses the "Reply" and "Reply [Quote]" buttons when a forum is read-only. It is one of the more requested features, but nothing yet.

I've tried to make the error message a little more instructive.

I doubt I'll be posting a review of NYCB's Opening Night. In fact, what I was going to say was that I will in all likelihood, skip it. The "Guild Priority" mailing I wanted to comment on gave very little indication of what the program would be, except that Peter Martins would have a lot to do with it, and it "will bring to a close the Company's celebration of Lincoln Kirstein's Centennial." In effect, NYCB was asking us to buy a pig in a poke.

Thanks, Leigh for anticipating my question, which was going to be, is there a rule of thumb for how long a thread will remain reply-able? People like me who have second thoughts will need to have them more promptly, I guess. For example, I put words in Balanchine's mouth in the TSFB forum last June I'd like to take back.

But Hans's comment reminds me of another one, which Farrell Fan's comment illustrates. The forum is entitled "Recent Performances" but FF is anticipating something by three months. And bart is anticipating performances of Jewels this coming season, and wants to start discussion of that (those) ballet(s). So... maybe "Current Performances" or the like? With a subtitle informing visitors of Leigh's and other moderators' "housecleaning" intention come season's end?

But I remember when Alexandra was more present here, we'd see a re-arrangement every few months, so it seems like old times, and welcome back!

The idea is to keep doing what we've been doing -- which is put up one thread announcing an event/performance and then close it and start another one when the performance takes place. The difference is where -- the former (the announcement) would go on Heads Up! and the when the curtain falls, it's in Recent Performances. The Ballets forum has always been for discussion of a ballet separate from a specific performance. Make sense?

editing to add: I forgot to respond to Jack's comment about frequent changes. For those who weren't here in the site's early years, we had some exciting times. We had to move web hosts about every six months because we'd outgrow their capacity for bandwidth. The site itself actually has only been significantly reorganized twice before, although we have added forums as the board grew.

No one's brought this up, but it bothers me, so I will. Why did the "Anything Goes" forum, by far the most welcoming and inclusive on Ballet Talk, have to go?

Good question -- it didn't go, though; we renamed it. It's the Everything Else Ballet forum (and all the posts are there). We renamed it because there have been so many times when people took "Anything Goes" literally, and would post something -- gossip, off-topic posts, politics, etc. -- and be (quite understandably) miffed when we told them that well, not ANYTHING goes.

Board history: we called it that for purely technical reasons. The first Ballet Talk board did not allow ordering of forums. They went up alphabetically. I was going to call it Miscellaneous, but thought (wrongly, I now think) that I wanted it to be first, and that meant it had to start with an "A". And "Anything Goes" was all I could think of.

Thank you for asking, FF.

Thank you for bringing this up, Farrell Fan. I apologize -- I knew there was something I wanted to mention in the announcement.

Although the name has changed from "Anything Goes" to "Everything Else Ballet," the link to the forum remains the same, and for anyone who has it bookmarked, you'll go straight to the forum.

Thanks, Helene, for that clarification. And for the new title. Farrell Fan, the problem that came up frequently with "Anything Goes," was that often anything did go into it. This new title will actually be clearer for users. I hope that posters will be creative.

"Anything Goes" is an invitation to a banquet; "Everything Else Ballet," by comparison, sounds like an offering of table scraps and leftovers. I sympathize with the difficulties of coping with people abusing the banquet invitation for their own nefarious purposes, though, and trust the new name will insure they are never heard from again.

You make good points, FF, and if there's a way we can put a subtitle on it to make it really really really clear that Anything Goes is not an invitation to post, as one early Ballet Talker memorably did, "So, is Dancer X gay?" I'll consider it. Thank you!

Thank you for your consideration, Alexandra.

Can I ask why you decided to get rid of the individual company forums?

As Leigh posted above:




It's the way the board was organized in its first six years. We had a thread called Recent Performances to discuss performances from all around the world and we wanted to get back to that sense of community.

... "sense of community"... funny, I have been missing the ABT forum community for some weeks now. I hope I can adjust to being thrust out into the wider world of BT! It doesn't seem the same.

Think of it as a rearrangement of the furniture. It'll feel normal again in no time.

It's very good to see you again, Christine!

(from Washington, DC) I think I can empathise with christine174: The MCB and TSFB forums felt quite cozy, and I could quickly check what was going on about my favorite companies. This is not a criticism, but just a thought in passing, because I have great respect for the intelligence (not to mention the industry) of the people who run BT. We're going to seee how it works, anyway, and that appeals to my pragmatism

Jack, remember that we'll still have separate threads for news and for reviews of Miami City Ballet, Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and every company that someone wants to write (or learn) about.

There's still a lot of opportunity for smaller gatherings of fans within the larger community.

I looked at the News and Reviews, per Bart's post, and I see it's a general news forum. Is there any place for fans of a specific company? I really do miss the ABT forum, which I used to check daily. Now whenever I come to the board I feel a bit homeless and aimless. (it was nice to get a friendly hello from Carbro, though -- I was wondering if you were still out there.)

I know...

Wow! Big changes... guess I'll be reading more often, just to keep up

With the loss of individual co. forums, I wonder if the local/regional co's will get lost in the shuffle, or on the other hand they might get more attention. We shall see.

One question is where to post general comments about a specific co. - "I like co. X because Y but wish they would do Z..." that kind of thing doesn't quite seem to fit Heads Up or Recent Perf's either. Any thoughts?

Aesthetic issues?

Ballets and Choreographers?

Everything Else Ballet?

I think any of these would be fine, depending on the emphasis of your post. It's a less structured board now, and if a post is in a conspicuously inappropriate forum, it can always be moved.