proudpapa

I have a horror story about watching live ballet on television. The International Ballet Competition was held in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1980s, in rotation with other venues (still is held there, but not sure about the rotation now). During one of the performances, the soloist fell. The filmed sequence of the moments of the fall was repeated at least once, the "instant replay" so beloved of sports broadcasters, so the viewer can fully absorb the trauma, blood and gore a bonus!!

I must indulge in some trivia and put right the identity of the “very young children” in the Harlequinade video. As the proud papa of one of them (Alison Crosby, second from left, front row) I can say that at least the youngest were not from SAB, but rather from the Maryland Youth Ballet and other schools in suburban Washington. It was/is the practice of New York companies “on the road” to use local students when possible, and this was also the case in putting together the White House program (These same children danced at the Kennedy Center while Baryshnikov was in town that snowy week in February 1979). MYB has a rather remarkable track record as the training ground for three principal dancers with ABT (Susan Jaffee, Cheryl Yeager, and Julie Kent – Julie may well have been present in the video as another of the ten-year-olds). Another alumnus was Peter Fonseca, ABT soloist, whose mother, Tensia, founded MYB.