. . . just hate writing ballet reviews if they can’t figure out how to make it an opportunity to write about Balanchine. Other critics see choreography where the corps de ballet performs first arabesque saute and cry out to blessed relief, “Look at the Balanchine influence!” [Sorry, Mr. B didn’t actually invent the first arabesque saute for corps work; he just used it ad nauseam.]
Still other critics do little more than promote the usual agenda which is: a. whine if a visiting company doesn’t perform Balanchine, b. scowl and complain if it does, and c. wallow in the critics’ own celestially-bestowed gifts of choreographic insight as to what Balanchine intended here or intended there or intended in his underwear.
And one critic in particular wants the dwindling readership of his newspaper to know just how tired and bored and miserable he is when his job requires him to sit through a ballet performance that’s just not his cup of tea though the rest of the knowledgeable audience loves it. Don’t know why his editors let that sort of fartournalism toot through. One never reads elsewhere in that paper that a writer is miserable about having to write once again about Iraq or is so tired of having to cover the losing Mets day-in and day-out. It seems kind of like the critic is really resentful that the general audience doesn’t agree with him; so he’ll just use his dark wit to belittle the audience for appreciating what he doesn‘t – or can‘t.
Yep, no doubt about it, dance criticism in the big city's newspapers has become little more than a tiresome cup of tea made with old, used teabags. But at least it retains its diuretic properties judging from all the pissing that results.