I’d just add to that that women who can make it in ballet (and aren’t Grahamesque geniuses) are just fine with it, and are deified there more than any place else. Balanchine himself said ‘ballet is woman’, yet he did want a certain type, and certain bodies like Patricia McBride were the ones able to deliver to his almost monstrously demanding will. But still, he was always looking for ‘the ideal woman’ (I know the feeling, not liking the others that much, which means about 1% of them), and usually got his way. The problem in that case was the NYCB is comparatively dull when it comes to the virtuoso danseur nobles, and you see much better at ABT, where they’re not afraid to really show what the men can do. Nureyev wouldn’t dance for Balanchine, anyway he had to be center stage all the time, and his early Kirov partner Alla Sizova, hated him–and vice-versa, because there is a clip of a very old graduation ceremony in which she upstages him in ‘Le Corsaire’, which oughtn’t be possible. I recomment the old Kirov ‘Sleeping Beauty’ movie with Sizova as Aurora; never saw a better dancer.

I’ve been to scores of performances of New York City Ballet in particular, including many in the Golden Age with Balanchine still alive and still making pieces for the likes of Farrell, McBride, Verdy, Hayden, Villella, Martins, as well as much ABT, and some Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, the two big Russians Kirov and Bolshoi, Royal Danish, to name a few.

Everything you say about the rigour and the discipline is true and is one of the reasons why ballet is so inspiring. As a pianist, I used to play many ballet classes, although that’s dreadful in itself (and you quit…), you have to bang out beats (onstage ballets with piano, like ‘The Goldberg Variations’ are better on the pianist’s work, but still not like playing it solo). I wrote for 6 years at Ballet Alert! the top ballet discussion board in the world, and this has not only fans but critics from the Wall Street Journal, and occasionally dancers from the big companies (but not usually, since they’re being discussed.) I was thrown off there because ballet fans are much more unbearable than you may know or want to think; they moralize about the ‘horror of two POB etoiles being caught on video having a cigarette together’, and that ‘They must be ROLE MODELS!’ I said obscene things, and it was an “I quit, you’re fired” moment. Lots of dancers do smoke, btw.

“Swan Lake was revived by Petipa”

That’s true, but somewhat misleading, because ‘Swan Lake’ has long been associated as much with Petipa as ‘Nutcracker’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’, so it’s never associated with Julius Reisinger except by dance scholars. I like your emphasis on Petipa, he was probably the greatest ultimately, because that was the true Age of Ballet in Russia, just as Franz Liszt was the greatest in the greatest period of the Romantic Pianist (so great he ended up in the Vatican after the countesses.) Also appreciate your including ‘Don Quixote’, which I know well, but it had never sunk in that that’s Petipa, because I always have to steel myself for the Minkus. I tend to think of Petipa and Tchaikovsky together. I think ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the greatest, though, but ‘Nutcracker’ is by far the most popular single work in any field of the Arts, I think, maybe unless you say the Bible is the most famous book. All the little companies do it as well as the big ones every Christmas. Balanchine’s is probably the best, but I’m not a big aficionado of Nutcracker.

“Ballet is so tough and so wonderful that one could say modern dance was created as an angry reaction to it by women protesting ballet.”

Yes and no. If it weren’t for Martha Graham, I’d agree most likely, but her work is as great as the great ballet choreographers, and the pieces are often even called ‘ballets’.: They’ve gotten something you could not express in classical ballet. She’s got the only technique that’s a specific discipline. There’s, then, ‘The Graham Technique’, but no ‘Lar Lubovitch Technique’ or ‘Paul Taylor Technique’.

“The entire corps of the ballet company is stacked with dancers all trying to make it to Swan Queen, and ensemble pieces are synchronized beauty because of that.”

Not really. They usually know after not too long they’re not going to get out of the corps, and corps work has gotten very sloppy in many companies, and has been for years. You can tell this by seeing Paris Opera Ballet, which is perfect, stunning. They’re light-years better than our NYC companies by now, and consistently so even more than Kirov, which will hire prima ballerinas for mantis-like 180-degree extensions and little other major ability sometimes (Somova.)

“You cannot be a token and be a lead, and with how many gay men are involved, a woman rarely, if ever, could sleep her way to a lead.”

Balanchine did have 5 wives, all of whom were dancers in his company, although I wouldn’t say they ‘slept their way to a lead'; nonetheless, dancers being so physical, the fornication probably helped the dancing…but Suzanne Farrell’s refusal to marry (and sleep with, I guess) him led to her expulsion for 5 years, followed by a return to NYCB which was even more fabulous, so not ‘putting out’ helped her career (I saw her a lot.) But it’s not Hollywood Casting Couch, you’re quite right about that.

I was surprised, though, at the ballet board, to see that it was more common for the corps male dancers to be gay than the stars, most of whom seem to be straight. The most famous exception is Nureyev, of course, and he was probably also the greatest when young.

“Unlike other art forms and other forms of dance, there is no lull in ballet.”

I wouldn’t say so, and most agree that standards have indeed lowered (as my description of lazy corps work) and ballet still has to fight crazily for funding.

“Spots at the top are so few that there is always an eager new performer climbing for the top.”

That’s true of musical soloists and opera as well, and ballet being even more exclusive means that the stars are everything, and they do turn out fantastic new stars at ABT and the Russians, whether Marcelo Gomes, Natalia Osipova, Diana Vishneva, David Hallberg…

“There have been no new big productions, but the classics never fail to deliver”

Yes, there have, if by ‘new’ you include at least the 60s. Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’ is definitely as great as Petipa (and, at least, in that, NYCB is still great; I saw it again last May.) Balanchine’s one-act ballets are as great as the old full-length Romantic classics as well. And Frederick Ashton’s ‘A Month in the Country’ for RB, these are just two. Although, ‘seat-fillers’ are still ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Nutcracker’, etc.

There ARE lots of better regional companies by now, that’s one improvement. I’ve seen a few of these, and they’re well-trained but not as good as the big companies by a long shot (even NYCB, less than it was, is still much better than Pacific Northwest, which is so sterile I call it the ‘Microsoft Ballet’. )

Apologies for length, there was a link to this about the buildings. Since I read several you NRxers, but have never commented (and it’s not that likely I will know enough to ever do so again, anyway don’t identify exactly as such), I’ll just mention here that I liked very much the post on Architectural Harmony and that my neighborhood in NYC (West Village) has become almost completely white over the last 5 years noticeably. I can see 1 WTC out the window, where it seems less unattractive with only the top 1/3 showing. Just saw some very good posts that I’ll have to get to, like ‘Momma’s Boy SJW’.

Interesting that an NRx blog would talk about ballet, but it’s always been royalist once Louis XIV started pointing the toes to Lully and then the imperial Russians really developed it. In the modern day, David Koch gave $100 million to NYCB and got the State Theater named for him.

I’d add that ballet dancers have to do a lot of hard work without making it look hard. Effort that appears effortless is completely at odds with the zeitgeist, unfortunately. But, for some daring individuals this could be an opportunity.