Ballet? I thought that died just like the swan. I guess at least the dancers at PNB aren't throwing acid in the face of their cohorts as they are elsewhere. Yet.

My only critique of this SLOG is that "Pol Pot of Poetry" would've been funnier.

I'm just sayin'.

Well, it must be serious if the word "disingenuous" has been trotted out.

@2: "Hitler of Poetry" comes out of a discussion after I wrote a negative piece about a poetry program years ago, in which someone called me the "Hitler of Capitol Hill Poetry." I agree that Pol Pot of Poetry is funnier, and I will aspire to that title in the future.

I take issue with critic who publishes a negative review of every production s/he sees. There is a Washington Post Critic who has published the most condescending reviews. If the production is great then it will receive a 50/50 review from her. If the production isn't great, merely good or fine, you would have thought people crapped on stage.

@4 Paul, once I retire from the theatre, I'll have more availability for whatever joke polishing jobs you might require.

My rates are reasonable.

Ballet has some modernity and relevance problems because a lot of people just don't want to see new work. Swan lake and Nutcracker bring in the masses but at a cost to innovation. Lots of donors like to see their fave pretty ballets over and over again because they're really only there for the parties and social cachet of having their names in the program. Parents who send their children to ballet school want to see them in the corps of pretty ballets. Every great ballet was controversial in its time but the art form as presented now has become so costly that a dance that fails to please is a catastrophe for a company.

This man is doing nothing to correct the negative way in which the media has historically portrayed those of us named Doug.

@10: <3!

Nobody else catch the "packchecks" typo?

Nice smackdown, Brendan. Artists who get negative reviews and then whine and cry like babies on comment threads need to grow the fuck up.

ha ha fucking HA, fullington, you dumb, thin-skinned little ballet twit. someone doesn't like pnb's boring staging of the oldest chestnut in ballet and you get your knickers in a twist. "I expected better from you" actually means "how dare you not shove your tongue up our asses". why don't you trot along to the men's locker room and pull yer pud?

swan lake anecdote: when pnb did this old wheeze in 1996, they hired charles askegaard from american ballet theater to dance the male lead, as none of the male principals were tall enough for pattie barker, the first cast odette. act one comes and goes. before the curtain goes up on act two, the stage manager announces over the PA that the role of siegfried (swan-lover) will be danced by paul gibson. what??? turns out chuck broke his ankle during a jete or something. he'd danced a total of two performances, and the company was out several thousand dollars in performance fees. chuck went on to marry candace bushnell of sex and the city fame, who dumped him last year because he couldn't keep it in his tights.

Now someone from the ballet needs to write back to criticize Brendan for criticizing their employee for criticizing the review.

If some one wrote a juvenile negative review of a classic movie would you snarkily write that people who were offended were part of the "film community"? I think not. Somehow though the attitude of this paper is that people who like dance (one of the most popular and ubiquitous forms of art there is) are part of a marginal community that you can dismiss for a laugh? Well, mission accomplished. If your mission was to provoke the "dance community" with a thoughtless article and then alienate them from ever taking your paper serious again. I mean, if you want thoughtful responses, try publishing something WORTH commenting on. (Hint: don't publish that article that's burning up your hard-drive on "How A Tale of Two Cities was just SOOOOOO hard to read sophomore year"- you might hear back from the literature community.)

Unregistered commenter @9 for the win!