“mask”) denotes disguise, deception, hidden identities. But I doubt that the point of Persona is ... more “mask”) denotes disguise, deception, hidden identities. But I doubt that the point of Persona is to invite definitive interpretation. The point is to come close to faces, and explore what human complexities are expressed there. “Film means faces,” Bergman once said. In the prelude to Persona, one brief sequence shows a young boy arising from his bed and reaching up to touch and explore a giant image, an extreme close-up photograph of Elisabet’s face slowly dissolving into Alma’s face and then back again. What is that boy but an image of Bergman himself, caressing the beauty of two actresses, rendering homage to the sort of shot which defines his achievement as filmmaker?
(1954) and "Something Wonderful" from The King and I (1951), a dozen numbers hurtled by ("Somethi... more (1954) and "Something Wonderful" from The King and I (1951), a dozen numbers hurtled by ("Something to Dance About" itself, from 1950's Call Me Madam, curiously not among them), rarely lingering long enough to make an impression. In one exception, "All I Need Is the Girl," from Gypsy (1959), Ashley Bouder flirtatiously persuades Andrew Veyette she is the one; in another, West Side Story's "America" (1957), Sara Mearns happily kicks at the moon, even though her moves, not to mention her blond hair, lack the necessary Puerto Rican sizzle. Although Robbins's Broadway dances deserve a place alongside his ballets (NYCB already has his 1995 West Side Story Suite in its repertory), Carlyle's mashup is wrongheaded in just about every way but as a fashion extravaganza, with 124 costume changes. The numbers cleverly melt into one another, but without context. In 1989, when Robbins assembled the revue Jerome Robbins's Broadway, Jason Alexander provided narration explaining each dance's significance for its show, and also took part in some of the numbers. The 15 dances unfolded luxuriously over more than two hours and offered a kind of history of a generation of the American musical, from On the Town (1944) to Fiddler on the Roof (1964). With its speed, however, Something to Dance About relies on our recognizing the snippets of song and dance and providing the context ourselves, likely bewildering audience members younger than 50. More important, Carlyle's medley ignores three keynotes of Robbins's work for both Broadway and ballet stages. First, Robbins continued the innovation of Broadway choreography that began with George Balanchine's for On Your Toes (1936) and continued with Agnes de Mille's for Oklahoma! (1943), in which dances reflect and advance the musical's dramatic situation. Without that context, you can't understand the dances. Second, he created musicals about real people, often living in real, contemporary American situations-World War II sailors on shore leave in On the Town, New York street gangs in West Side Story-so that Peter Pan's "Neverland" introduces the dances misleadingly. No one could call Robbinsland "miles beyond the moon" or "not on any chart"; even when he ventured to feudal Siam or Russian shtetls, he had a clear vision of how real people might behave there, and how dancing might express their deepest emotions and truest identities. Robbins wanted everything, even in his fantasies and period pieces, to unfold in the here and now; as his note for his 1969 Chopin piano ballet, the brilliant Dances at a Gathering, insists, "The dancers are themselves dancing with each other to that music in that space."
Jay Rogoff did not initially model his poems after Emily Dickinson's, but he has grown incre... more Jay Rogoff did not initially model his poems after Emily Dickinson's, but he has grown increasingly aware of affinities between some of his work and hers. He details his admiration for Dickinson's certain slants: apparent ambiguities of imagery or meaning that nevertheless create ...
Not a bad definition of the comic spirit, “the answer is To Be.” Beyond all the verbal cleverness... more Not a bad definition of the comic spirit, “the answer is To Be.” Beyond all the verbal cleverness in Slings & Arrows is something cleverer still, the way each season re-invents elements of the Shakespeare play at its center. In season one, Geoffrey suffers episodes of apparent madness, fights a sword duel with a rival, holds converse with a ghost invisible to others, in other words not only directs but re-enacts Hamlet. The same holds true for the second season. Geoffrey resists putting on the Scottish play but then is accosted by an elderly crone named Moira, appearing out of nowhere to insist that he direct it; so too the three weird sisters press Macbeth onward to his triumph and doom. It’s typical of the sophistication of the series that the name Moira (Greek for “fate”) is left for viewers to parse themselves. I look forward to viewing the third season, in hopes of seeing an interpretation of King Lear which, unlike those by Mendes and Kozintsev, bids fair to be funny. The opening song seems very promising:
... hear me out, Terpsichore, on my kneebones: drive me crazy, cripple my days with beauty; naked... more ... hear me out, Terpsichore, on my kneebones: drive me crazy, cripple my days with beauty; naked relics clutched to my cheek, I breathe their reek of sheer ether. Jay Rogoff at Google Indexer on September 3, 2010 litimag.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from
The sonnet sequence in English, even its sixteenth-century instances, serves as a kind of prototy... more The sonnet sequence in English, even its sixteenth-century instances, serves as a kind of prototype for the modern long poem. A quarter-century ago, ML Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall identified the structure of the modern poetic sequence as lyrical and subjective, a grouping of mainly ...
A video recording of Jay Rogoff reading his work on April 4, 2012 as part of the Syracuse Univers... more A video recording of Jay Rogoff reading his work on April 4, 2012 as part of the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program\u27s Raymond Carver Reading Series. Running time: 46:40
“mask”) denotes disguise, deception, hidden identities. But I doubt that the point of Persona is ... more “mask”) denotes disguise, deception, hidden identities. But I doubt that the point of Persona is to invite definitive interpretation. The point is to come close to faces, and explore what human complexities are expressed there. “Film means faces,” Bergman once said. In the prelude to Persona, one brief sequence shows a young boy arising from his bed and reaching up to touch and explore a giant image, an extreme close-up photograph of Elisabet’s face slowly dissolving into Alma’s face and then back again. What is that boy but an image of Bergman himself, caressing the beauty of two actresses, rendering homage to the sort of shot which defines his achievement as filmmaker?
(1954) and "Something Wonderful" from The King and I (1951), a dozen numbers hurtled by ("Somethi... more (1954) and "Something Wonderful" from The King and I (1951), a dozen numbers hurtled by ("Something to Dance About" itself, from 1950's Call Me Madam, curiously not among them), rarely lingering long enough to make an impression. In one exception, "All I Need Is the Girl," from Gypsy (1959), Ashley Bouder flirtatiously persuades Andrew Veyette she is the one; in another, West Side Story's "America" (1957), Sara Mearns happily kicks at the moon, even though her moves, not to mention her blond hair, lack the necessary Puerto Rican sizzle. Although Robbins's Broadway dances deserve a place alongside his ballets (NYCB already has his 1995 West Side Story Suite in its repertory), Carlyle's mashup is wrongheaded in just about every way but as a fashion extravaganza, with 124 costume changes. The numbers cleverly melt into one another, but without context. In 1989, when Robbins assembled the revue Jerome Robbins's Broadway, Jason Alexander provided narration explaining each dance's significance for its show, and also took part in some of the numbers. The 15 dances unfolded luxuriously over more than two hours and offered a kind of history of a generation of the American musical, from On the Town (1944) to Fiddler on the Roof (1964). With its speed, however, Something to Dance About relies on our recognizing the snippets of song and dance and providing the context ourselves, likely bewildering audience members younger than 50. More important, Carlyle's medley ignores three keynotes of Robbins's work for both Broadway and ballet stages. First, Robbins continued the innovation of Broadway choreography that began with George Balanchine's for On Your Toes (1936) and continued with Agnes de Mille's for Oklahoma! (1943), in which dances reflect and advance the musical's dramatic situation. Without that context, you can't understand the dances. Second, he created musicals about real people, often living in real, contemporary American situations-World War II sailors on shore leave in On the Town, New York street gangs in West Side Story-so that Peter Pan's "Neverland" introduces the dances misleadingly. No one could call Robbinsland "miles beyond the moon" or "not on any chart"; even when he ventured to feudal Siam or Russian shtetls, he had a clear vision of how real people might behave there, and how dancing might express their deepest emotions and truest identities. Robbins wanted everything, even in his fantasies and period pieces, to unfold in the here and now; as his note for his 1969 Chopin piano ballet, the brilliant Dances at a Gathering, insists, "The dancers are themselves dancing with each other to that music in that space."
Jay Rogoff did not initially model his poems after Emily Dickinson's, but he has grown incre... more Jay Rogoff did not initially model his poems after Emily Dickinson's, but he has grown increasingly aware of affinities between some of his work and hers. He details his admiration for Dickinson's certain slants: apparent ambiguities of imagery or meaning that nevertheless create ...
Not a bad definition of the comic spirit, “the answer is To Be.” Beyond all the verbal cleverness... more Not a bad definition of the comic spirit, “the answer is To Be.” Beyond all the verbal cleverness in Slings & Arrows is something cleverer still, the way each season re-invents elements of the Shakespeare play at its center. In season one, Geoffrey suffers episodes of apparent madness, fights a sword duel with a rival, holds converse with a ghost invisible to others, in other words not only directs but re-enacts Hamlet. The same holds true for the second season. Geoffrey resists putting on the Scottish play but then is accosted by an elderly crone named Moira, appearing out of nowhere to insist that he direct it; so too the three weird sisters press Macbeth onward to his triumph and doom. It’s typical of the sophistication of the series that the name Moira (Greek for “fate”) is left for viewers to parse themselves. I look forward to viewing the third season, in hopes of seeing an interpretation of King Lear which, unlike those by Mendes and Kozintsev, bids fair to be funny. The opening song seems very promising:
... hear me out, Terpsichore, on my kneebones: drive me crazy, cripple my days with beauty; naked... more ... hear me out, Terpsichore, on my kneebones: drive me crazy, cripple my days with beauty; naked relics clutched to my cheek, I breathe their reek of sheer ether. Jay Rogoff at Google Indexer on September 3, 2010 litimag.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from
The sonnet sequence in English, even its sixteenth-century instances, serves as a kind of prototy... more The sonnet sequence in English, even its sixteenth-century instances, serves as a kind of prototype for the modern long poem. A quarter-century ago, ML Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall identified the structure of the modern poetic sequence as lyrical and subjective, a grouping of mainly ...
A video recording of Jay Rogoff reading his work on April 4, 2012 as part of the Syracuse Univers... more A video recording of Jay Rogoff reading his work on April 4, 2012 as part of the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program\u27s Raymond Carver Reading Series. Running time: 46:40
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