While The New York Times is busy front-paging every sexual exploit it can find, could it perhaps reserve a moment or two to investigate its chief dance critic's arrest and jailing by the Scarborough police in England in 1998 for his unauthorized photographing of children on a beach? His hotel was searched. His computer was confiscated. The police in London were contacted and his home was searched. Can't the The New York Times investigate one of its own and report on it?
Alastair Macaulay wrote an article about his nightmare of being arrested for such innocent activity and published it in the UK's Telegraph complete with a smiling picture of himself. This was in 2005, fewer than two years before The New York Times hired him as its chief dance critic. Did they investigate that incident as thoroughly then as they are investigating all of the claims they have been publishing over the past month?
"At 6.15pm, I was detained by two policemen. It seems that, among all the people on the beach, one father and his brother had decided that there must be something wrong about the photographs I had been taking.
They had gone to the lifeguard. The lifeguard had rung the police. The police had activated a close-circuit television on the beach, recording my actions, and then they came to the beach to take action."
It was a safe strategy for Macaulay to write his side of the story because he knew that the police would never get into a public debate with him over their evidence or what the disposition of the matter was. Was he simply released without charges or was there a more ambiguous disposition of the matter — perhaps a warning of some sort or a caution or a stay-out-of-our-town mandate? We don't know, do we? But if this set of circumstances involved any other well-known figure in the dance world or on its fringes, you can bet that The New York Times would be writing about it with captivating click-bait clarity. The New York Times would be digging into whether and why the police, as Macaulay claimed in his article, destroyed all of the evidence.
"I speak of them now from memory, for my films were subsequently destroyed by the police and Crown Prosecution Service"
He writes that as if it were the most casual thing in the world.
Until very recently the article that he wrote was easily retrievable online. Today, curiously enough, the Telegraph can't find it for you if you ask for it through a regular web browser. However, ask for it through a new private window on a web browser, and voilà. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3638958/The-CCTV-recorded-me-taking-two-photographs-one-of-a-group-of-children.html . (Haglund will always be able to provide anyone with their own copy, if they want one.)
It seems that The New York Times has a double standard when it comes to investigating and reporting on its own.
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Speaking of fancy dancing, this lady is werkin' it from the window of the American Folk Art Museum gift shop across from Lincoln Center:
8 responses to “observations 12-4”
Pompous blowhard.
Pompous blowhard.
True. Afraid and hateful of beautiful women, attracted to children.
True. Afraid and hateful of beautiful women, attracted to children.
He’s a gross lech whose perversions can be seen in his “critiques” in the NYT. How he has glommed onto Sara Mearns and Teresa Reichlen, stalking dancers on Instagram, etc. It’s gross and as a dancer, I would want no part of it. I have all the more respect for dancers who quietly go about their careers without this buffoon touting them.
Can we also call out that pervert Nisian whose work and aesthetic very much resembles other sexual predator/ photographer Terry Richardson?
He’s a gross lech whose perversions can be seen in his “critiques” in the NYT. How he has glommed onto Sara Mearns and Teresa Reichlen, stalking dancers on Instagram, etc. It’s gross and as a dancer, I would want no part of it. I have all the more respect for dancers who quietly go about their careers without this buffoon touting them.
Can we also call out that pervert Nisian whose work and aesthetic very much resembles other sexual predator/ photographer Terry Richardson?
True about Nisian. At least he has stopped peppering his I-G account of sexually provocative photos of dancers with photos of children. Very disappointing to see women who know they have a following of children and teens so willing to stoop to participate in Nisian’s artless soft porn. They think that they are showing old-style bargaining power, but in fact are simply being exploited. It rather confirms the notion that ballet dancers can be very willing to bargain with their bodies as sexual currency, doesn’t it? Very disappointing and it makes people less inclined to buy tickets to their performances.
True about Nisian. At least he has stopped peppering his I-G account of sexually provocative photos of dancers with photos of children. Very disappointing to see women who know they have a following of children and teens so willing to stoop to participate in Nisian’s artless soft porn. They think that they are showing old-style bargaining power, but in fact are simply being exploited. It rather confirms the notion that ballet dancers can be very willing to bargain with their bodies as sexual currency, doesn’t it? Very disappointing and it makes people less inclined to buy tickets to their performances.