John Guare
John Guare
John Guareis an Irish American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body. His style, which mixes comic invention with an acute sense of the failure of human relations and aspirations, is at once cruel and deeply compassionate. In his foreword to a collection of Guare's plays, film director Louis Malle writes:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth5 February 1938
CountryUnited States of America
I believe that the New York City Ballet, its practical value is that it's about expansion of human possibilities. It's about healing. It's about food.
The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.
I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.
And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.
I mean New York City is the financial capital of the world. It's where all the money passes through, the Dow Jones, whatever, that's where all the money goes.
However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.
And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet.
All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.
I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.
The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.
Does the New York City Ballet affect other places? Yeah, it lets people know they should come to New York.
And we remember it as it was when we first saw Maria Tallchief or Suzanne Farrell in it. And now it's Wendy Whelan, it's tomorrow's dancer.
Mel said, 'Just make it your own.' And she said, 'I'll kiss each several paper for amends. Aye, mira, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Mel and I just looked at each other - 'There's the show.'
The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force.