Author

The cows in Stella Gibbons's immortal 'Cold Comfort Farm' are named Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and that more or less is the verdict on 'Ocean's Kingdom,' the wildly hyped and wildly uninteresting collaboration between Peter Martins and Paul McCartney.

From Robert Gottlieb

'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot.

From Robert Gottlieb

Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets.

From Robert Gottlieb

One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind?

From Robert Gottlieb

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.

From Robert Gottlieb

Blood is the leitmotif of 'Black Swan.'

From Robert Gottlieb

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

From Robert Gottlieb

Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of Las Vegas by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who insists, violently, on being addressed as 'Ben.'

From Robert Gottlieb

Ballerinas are often divided into three categories: jumpers, turners and balancers.

From Robert Gottlieb

'Seven Sonatas,' with its flowing series of meetings between men and women in an identifiable emotional world, is in the mould of Jerome Robbins' glorious 'Dances at a Gathering.'

From Robert Gottlieb

Robert Gottlieb

Notable Quotes

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