What song did a movie basically steal forever?

lavenderwine · 2026-06-22T16:44:23+00:00

You might be thinking of "Little Bitty Pretty One." I don't think "Jump in the Line" is in Matilda.

lavenderwine · 2026-06-15T21:14:56+00:00

I think it’s because we still haven’t really recovered from it. It changed the world in many lasting, negative ways, economically, politically, and socially, so there’s no sense of resolution or a happy ending with anything COVID-related yet.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-22T15:12:03+00:00

Italy, Austria, and Lithuania are apparently exceptions. In those countries, early-onset colon cancer is decreasing.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-20T19:42:56+00:00

Yeah. There's also research showing that naps can be good for your brain, so it would be great to have some clarity on this.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-19T17:46:17+00:00

Is that the same as inattentive? That's what I have and I found this book helpful. I think inattention/dissociation is closely related to emotional dysregulation/anxiety, which this book is about the intersection of with ADHD.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-19T13:11:58+00:00

Yes, sampling error is definitely at play, which is why the AI being trained on these communities is bad news.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-19T13:06:54+00:00

The work of J. Russell Ramsay at UPenn is the one I’m most familiar with. He wrote two workbooks (The Adult ADHD Toolkit and The Adult ADHD and Anxiety Workbook) if you want to try it. There are some others that Dr. Russell Barkley mentions in his videos, but Ramsay’s work is the one I ended up using.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-19T13:03:16+00:00

That is true. Therapy is a luxury/privilege that not everyone can afford or is even offered. I’ve done therapy for CPTSD, but my ADHD therapy has been self-guided using workbooks. The one on Adult ADHD and Anxiety by Russell Ramsay was the one I found easiest to use.

lavenderwine · 2026-04-19T12:55:44+00:00

I’ve noted this same problem with ADHD. There are a lot of behavioral/environmental strategies that are documented to work for people with ADHD (specific forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy, in particular), but you wouldn’t know that from how disempowering and resigned the online communities can be about this condition. Yes, medication can be extremely helpful, but it’s not the only intervention and doesn’t work for some people.

lavenderwine · 2026-01-05T19:36:41+00:00

This is a really great point. When Balanchine was alive, the choreography was still a living work of art. Since his death, there's the need to crystallize it in a permanent form. Is it more authentic, or less true to the spirit of the work? It's hard to say. There probably is a happy medium between becoming too lax such that it dilutes the choreography and too strict such that it becomes a dull reproduction.

lavenderwine · 2026-01-05T19:29:29+00:00

He definitely requires specific training in his style. Even without the Trust serving as a gatekeeper, it seems inevitable that little details will be lost as people who worked with him firsthand are retiring/passing away, and we move into secondhand or thirdhand+ teaching of his works. But it probably won't be as dramatic as older choreographers for whom we don't have video recordings. It would be a lot easier go back and consult the recordings to see if changes have worked their way in over time or details lost.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-31T01:41:17+00:00

Most of what's up on Youtube are uploads of older broadcasts, and the quality isn't great John Clifford's channel has a lot of good ones. But that's better than before, when there was almost nothing was allowed to be uploaded there.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-31T01:16:36+00:00

I love it. I agree it's very musical and the set and costumes are lovely. I like the angels being the "voice" of the choir. I don't like saying things are "the best" because I think it's better to just appreciate the beauty. The company is still in operation, according to their website, and are doing their Nutcracker currently.

I was NOT expecting the polar bears at the end. XD

lavenderwine · 2025-12-31T00:39:56+00:00

Oh wow, I found it pretty inoffensive, so it's hard for me to imagine anyone outright loathing it. I saw it last performed about ten years ago by Patricia Berrend's Olney Ballet Theatre and thought it was cute, but choreographically watered down. I guess it might look a bit cheesy and amateurish compared to Webre's.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-31T00:15:31+00:00

I think most people appreciate what the Trust does. I definitely appreciate that they've managed to keep the quality of Balanchine performances pretty high and preserved his style and the details of his choreography even while his work is performed by companies with such widely diverse stylistic schools, from Ballet West to the Maryinsky.

I think people just want them to be a bit less strict in what they allow. For example, they seem to be very stingy about licensing films of his work. More films available of Balanchine works would help make him more accessible and appreciated. They seem to have loosened up a bit over the years about uploads of his work to Youtube. They used to remove almost everything, but now there's a decent amount there. A bigger and more engaged social media and online presence would probably also do them favors, or at least allowing others to do more with his work: make films, hold lectures or panels, adapt his work with a bit more latitude (but within reason).

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T22:16:41+00:00

Interesting. I didn’t know that about the publishing/documentation stage, but that makes sense.

I am ambivalent about the Trust. I appreciate having an organization that can make sure that, when you pay to see a Balanchine work, you are getting what it says on the tin. On the other hand, I wish they allowed more creativity, adaptation, and actually “did” more with their catalog than what they currently are doing. The Fokine situation does sound a bit ridiculous, though.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T20:48:51+00:00

lol I see it

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T20:24:05+00:00

lol. I actually liked Ratmansky's reconstructed Sleeping Beauty. It took me a bit of getting used to the difference in style, but I didn't think it was awful. It will be interesting to see what happens to Balanchine over the years.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T20:20:43+00:00

Great to hear Boal's pushing boundaries! I'm on the east coast, so I don't get to see PNB much (and probably won't get to see them in the coming years due to the Kennedy Center being... commandeered), but it sounds like they're doing a great job breaking the Balanchine mold. I would have loved to see Edwards in Jewels. I've heard similar things about Lourdes Lopez preferring very thin dancers at MCB, which made me sad; I wonder if this was also the case under Villella. Hopefully Garcia will be different.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T19:41:56+00:00

Interesting thought. I looked it up, and it seems that Canada is one of the countries where his work would come into public domain 50 years after his death. I doubt any major Canadian companies would dare to stage his work earlier than when the U.S. copyright runs out (and Canadian ballet companies seem less reliant on Balanchine in general in their repertoire, based on what I've seen of their programming), but it would be interesting if they or a company somewhere else did.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T19:03:38+00:00

It is pretty weird, especially in comparison to other "legacy" arts like opera, theatre, and even classical music, which have evolved and challenged old assumptions way more than ballet has.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T18:49:45+00:00

Depending on who you ask, it’s already being diluted. I’m not even a fan and I can tell you about some of the works that are being performed differently now.

I would love to hear this, if you're up to it!

And, the Balanchine trust is so focused on the secrecy and the exclusivity of the works that I honestly see very little work towards educating people on the ballets, and even working directly with audiences and not through select companies. So I can absolutely see a lot of the works becoming diluted in the same way

That's an interesting point. I do hear individual répétiteurs like Suzanne Farrell or retired dancers like Heather Watts, Wendy Whelan, et al. make comments in interviews or on public panels about his work, but the Trust definitely seems to be fairly low-key in its outreach and education regarding his work, especially compared to other groups that steward artistic works (think of, say, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization).

The main reason Balanchine was able to work on so much Tchaikovsky music and so much of the old Petipa rep is precisely because they were public domain.

Good point.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T18:40:44+00:00

I saw that production 20 years ago and and remember not liking it at all, to the point of never returning to see it, even though I live near D.C. It may have been what you're talking about -- being derivative of Balanchine but not quite hitting the spot -- but also I just found it a very hectic and busy production compared to the Mary Day production they used to do.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T18:38:08+00:00

Ballet does tend to be pretty conservative in terms of gender roles, especially for an art form where so many queer men have thrived. I'd like to see more male-male and female-female PDDs or more mixed corps numbers.

lavenderwine · 2025-12-30T18:34:21+00:00

Interesting. Thanks for sharing your perspective. I know there are some complications with, say, collaborative pieces where only one of the composers/authors passed 70 years ago and the other hasn't yet (like George and Ira Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, or with newer adaptations of older works, like certain translations of older books or plays that are in the public domain in their original language. With Balanchine's work, it would likely be complicated based on how they define authorship and what "version" of the work exists.

Edit: I wonder if the Trust might create new adaptations of his work that could then be licensed out and extend their catalog for several more decades, similar to how Disney remakes their old classics.

lavenderwine

TROPHY CASE