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" Martha Graham, along with George Balanchine, is one of the two commanding figures in 20th-century American dance. For those much younger than I am, her genius as a performer will have to be taken on faith - and on the always-suspect evidence of film. What will last, if things go well, is her genius as a choreographer, as a woman of the theater. "

Robert Gottlieb

Two

Faith

" After all these years of saying the same thing about the Alvin Ailey company - terrific dancers, awful repertory - I'm finally accepting the inevitable: I'm not going to change my mind, and they're not going to change their ways. And why should they, given their juggernaut success all over the world? "

" What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal. "

" Writing happened to me. I didn't decide to start writing or to be a writer. I never wanted to be a writer. "

" You may feel that Peter Martins' 'Beauty' is too compressed and inexpressive, but it's loyal to the text. "

" Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy. "

" Raimund Hoghe is a little man with a spinal deformity who was once Pina Bausch's dramaturge. "

" All ballet galas are unbearable, but they're unbearable in different ways. "

" The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever. "

" Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs - and her violently checkered career - attest. "

Robert Gottlieb

Two

Demons

" Like all editors, I assume, I'm a reactor. "

Robert Gottlieb

Editors

Assume

" Larry Hart and Dick Rodgers were both bright Jewish boys from Manhattan who at one point or another went to Columbia, but there the similarity in their backgrounds ends. "

" If you like being battered, the work of Savion Glover - one-time child prodigy - should be up your alley. I don't, and it isn't up mine. "

Robert Gottlieb

You

Work

" I can't remember how many years it's been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn't surprising, since I can't really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I'm watching the second half. "

" With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal. "

" As for the once-revolutionary 'Agon,' after more than half a century, its lessons and revelations have been so absorbed into the language of ballet that it now seems almost conventional. "

" Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty. "

" Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard. "

" Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced. "

Robert Gottlieb

Far

Dancers

" It's a crapshoot, publishing. "

Robert Gottlieb

Publishing

Crapshoot

" Paris, as always, is swarming with Americans, and these days, it's also swarming with hamburgers. Oddly, though, it's not typically the Americans who are pursuing the perfect burger on the perfect bun with the obligatory side of perfect coleslaw; the Americans are pursuing the perfect blanquette de veau. "

" Increasingly, editing means going to lunch. It means editing with a credit card, not with a pencil. "

" Twyla Tharp is not going to take orders from anyone, not even Mozart! "

" 'Empty Moves' is elegantly and coolly inventive. Two pairs of dancers shadow each other in slow, deliberate rearrangements and manipulations of legs and torsos, only occasionally switching partners or breaking free of the formal patterning. "

" I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning. "

" I have no problem selling ebooks for authors directly as an agent, but partnering with them is another matter. "

" Blood is the leitmotif of 'Black Swan.' "

" Controversy sells books. "

" We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. "

" How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity. "