CriticalDance Forum

Egad! One would think the above should be substantiated before appearing in print.

This isn't ballet, though the use of a swan as an offensive weapon takes it close; the actor was (rightly in my opinion) sacked. Personally I don't think any performer has the right to assault/intimidate an audience member or critic, very likely this would have ended in an ABH (actual bodily harm) prosecution in the UK and probably the animal rights groups would have demonstrated in force over the killing of animals onstage.

Having said that I enjoyed the scene in the French film "The Last Metro", set in wartime France where Gerard Depardieu beats up a critic in a restaurant. As the critic in question was both a collaborator and an anti-Semite, I felt he got what he deserved. Although it's cinematic justice to give the bad guy what he deserved, this poor German critic in the link below was only doing his job.

Any comments?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2053365,00.html

I'm surprised that the beheading of rabbits onstage (described in the article in Cassandra's post, above) was ever allowed to happen onstage in Germany, seeing as Germany has guaranteed animal rights in its constitution.

An opera fan believes that music critics and editors are unfair in ignoring B-casts, even when they give more satisfying performances:

Second best
By Marcel Berlins for The Guardian

What a great fuss was made over the fact that the difficult Romanian diva Angela Gheorghiu was coming to the Royal Opera House to sing Tosca in a brand new production. And what a disappointment she turned out to be.....there was a "second cast", insultingly known in the trade as the B-cast, with Tosca sung by an American, Catherine Nagelstad, of whom I had not previously heard. She was terrific in every way.

click for more

The answer to this is simply that press nights are always for first casts at the opera (and usually the ballet too), by the time the second cast comes around the critic/reviewer is probably off attending another press night elsewhere: the writer of the article should know this.

I agree that first night performances aren't always performed by the best casts, particularly in the ballet, but dates for press tickets are not always negotiable.

In my experience opera critics are even less reliable than ballet critics and opera fans frequently tone-deaf. True Ms Georghiu doesn't possess the voice of a fog horn, but she was the most ravishing Tosca I've ever seen and her voice is one of the loveliest to be heard on opera stages today.

Actually, music critics and fans are probably worse than opera critics and fans... maybe because everyone thinks they know enough music from simply listening to them?

Listening to whom, Azlan? I think that I agree with you, but I do not understand what/who the antecedent of "them" is/are?

Ah, typing too fast again. I meant "maybe because everyone thinks they know enough music from simply listening to it?"

I am duplicating here a post I made on the thread about the Ross Stretton resignation, which has sprang back to life since an interview with Stretton has been posthumously published.

Ismene Brown, the Telegraph's critic, has taken it upon herself to defend Deborah MacMillan by attacking on-line posters:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jh ... ton120.xml

The comments seem aimed at another web site rather than this one, but there is a degree of irony in the fact that the "American web head" that she singles out, is actually far more knowledgeable about the art of ballet than is Ms Brown.

It seems the debate of the last few days has touched a nerve.

Ms Brown's comments deserve some debate, In my opinion.

Cassandra,

Here in the USA, we have a MAJOR issue of the divide between "professional" critics (e.g., reviewers that work for a major media outlet) and the increasing amount of reviewers who post their reviews on weblogs (aka the bloggers), which tend to favor more general public taste. A great example of this divide was the reaction to the television series Arrested Development: the "professional" critics loved the show, while the general public for the most part disliked it because its complicated storytelling made it difficult to watch (you only appreciated the show by watching the episodes straight through on a full-season DVD release set).

As such, Ms. Brown's criticism of the online community does not surprise me, trying to protect her reputation as a "professional" reviewer.

I found this very timely article in today's Guardian which seems to suggest that critics may soon become a thing of the past.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articl ... 08,00.html



This seems to bear out what Sacto7654 says about the professional/amateur divide in the US.

Cassandra,

What started to happen when the public Internet became widely available from the middle 1990's on was that non-professional reviewers started to post their reviews of movies and any arts performance often just hours after the show was completed. And these reviews frequently included people who attended world premiere and performances designed specifically for the press that showed up online long before we saw the review from "professional" reviewers in the newspapers or newsmagazines.

A legendary example of this is Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool News website, which often posted the type of "amateur" review I mentioned above since 1997, much to the consternation of the movie studios. Today, Catherine Pawlick of this forum often posts reviews of Mariinsky Theatre ballet performances sometimes just a few hours after the performance at the theater!

In short, we are living in a world of de-massified media (as author Alvin Toffler defines it) where anyone with a decent Internet connection can post reviews often way faster than any "professional" reviewer.

And that's the way it should be I think.

I very rarely lend any merit to the "professional" reviews (there are a few exceptions). Maybe because I have met too many critics and seen how petty and self-serving they can be (again, exceptions exist). I feel a pro critic should be as objective as any other journalist. Maybe that's just me. Too many of the critics I have met and read let their personal relationships and pasts color their reviews too much.

That being said, one of my favorite things to read is a well written review of something the critic truly hated. They get so creative with their language when they're really disgusted.

My all-time favorite review was Brooks Atkinson's review of the play <i>I Am a Camera</i>:

"No Leica".

The following was published in the Guardian while I was in Madrid (many thanks to the Criticaldance lurker who alerted me to this).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... rt.culture

Comments from a number of Critics are recorded here; scroll down for the thoughts of Clement Crisp who says:




No, it is not inaccurate. One of the joys of the Internet is that if an error is made (not that often) it is instantaneously corrected by another poster.

“The whim of irresponsible feeling”? For Crisp to have the nerve to say that really is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.