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" 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. "

Robert Gottlieb

Unhappy

Way

Bad

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" There's no point pretending that all of Martha Graham's pieces are equally strong. "

" Controversy sells books. "

" The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right. "

" It's always fascinating - and sometimes a little disquieting - when two first-rate critics violently disagree. "

" For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante. "

" Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition? "

" You don't have to be a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to figure out that when you title a memoir of your parents 'Them,' you're performing an act of distancing. "

" I was the only child, and I know my father had certain thoughts about me. He was a lawyer and extremely literary, but he would have been much happier if I had wanted to be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer. But what I wanted to do was read. "

Robert Gottlieb

Lawyer

Father

" 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. "

" There is no consolation for anyone in the Scott Peterson story, and no final illumination. "

" 'River of Light,' to a dense but powerful score commissioned from Charles Wuorinen and with ravishing lighting by Mark Stanley, has depth and resonance. "

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

" Wayne McGregor's 'Dyad 1929' is a good example of this capable British choreographer's work. "

" 'Porgy and Bess' has never been thought of as a dance show, and yet it's filled with dance. It uses dance to punctuate the action, or as background, or as atmosphere; even when it's front and center, it isn't crucial. "

" I first read 'An American Tragedy' in college, and in my entire life I had never read anything so painful. "

" Classics are constantly being re-imagined and transformed, and the originals are none the worse for it; they endure. "

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

" The first movement ballerina should be a paradigm of strength and authority. "

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

" In Georgia, apparently, men are men and women are women - at least in their folk dance. "

" The best thing you can say about Hubbard Street is that if you were a dancer, this is a company you'd fight to get into. "

" There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again. "

" Jodi Melnick is hotly self-absorbed. Her onstage musicians are much too loud, and like so many narcissistic performers, she goes on much too long: She's interested in herself; why wouldn't we be? "

" 'Eclipse' is overlong and overly self-conscious, but it isn't a fake or a zero; it just gets exhausting. It raises a crucial question: 'When does Concept morph into Gimmick?' "

" When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes. "

" Audiences love Paul Taylor, and so do I. Not everything, and not always, but year in, year out, he gives me more concentrated pleasure than I get from any other dance company. "

Robert Gottlieb

Year

Love

" 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. "

" How the English love playing at being naughty boys! "

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

" A lot of people have a lot of faith in Karole Armitage. They see her as bold, inventive, indefatigable. 'America isn't working out? There's always Europe. Ballet? No? Go modern. Keep going! Show 'em!' "