When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Twyla Tharp set her sights on ballet, and ballet, hungry for major talent, succumbed. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Ballet is like any other art form in that we all start out knowing nothing about it. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
All ballet galas are unbearable, but they're unbearable in different ways. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
A lot of people have a lot of faith in Karole Armitage. They see her as bold, inventive, indefatigable. 'America isn't working… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. When a ballet company spends a lot of money on gimmicky pieces, it's stuck with… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
What 'War and Peace' is to the novel and 'Hamlet' is to the theater, Swan Lake' is to ballet - that is,… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
You can usually tell how healthy a ballet company is by the degree of your interest in the middle ranks of the… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
As for the once-revolutionary 'Agon,' after more than half a century, its lessons and revelations have been so absorbed into the language… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,'… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Ballet companies have their ups and downs, just like the rest of us. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Ballet Hispanico is a mixture of ethnic, ballet, social, jazz - you name it, it's doing it. The company has been going… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
The mystery of Christopher Wheeldon deepens. Yes, he's the most talented of the younger ballet choreographers - indeed, where's the competition? Yes,… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Paul Taylor's 'Offenbach Overtures' has lots of zip and charm, and its pair of dueling soldiers in red, who end up starry-eyed about each… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
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:… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Increasingly, editing means going to lunch. It means editing with a credit card, not with a pencil. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
'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… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
We know how Merce Cunningham works and how he thinks - we've been told, over and over again, by him and by others. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
When I was at Cambridge in the early fifties, there was a school nearby for training Army officers in Russian, and some imaginative genius… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, 'It sounds just like you.' But it sounds just like me after I've made… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
For me, the real pleasure in writing is in having an excuse to pursue my curiosity about people who have meant something to me. — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
