Until yesterday, we’d never heard of Nina Ananiashvili – the Georgian (as in Tbilisi) ballerina who danced her farewell over the weekend. Ananiashvili performed in Swan Lake with American Ballet Theatre at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House on Saturday night. At age 46, she’s being put out to pond.

Reviewer Alastair Macaulay of the Times was enthralled and wistful. In his review, we find a litany of the dancer’s gifts: “…radiance that her slender physique creates in arabesque, the wit she achieves in intricate rhythm, the thrilling effects of sharp timing and the light playfulness of her manner….”

And, we must add, a flair for improvisational floristry; Ananiashvili turned her final curtain calls into a human flower project.

The featured soloist often receives a bouquet – sometimes two or three—at the final curtain, but Saturday’s floral accolades for this ballerina were more loving and lengthy, and more imaginatively received than any we’ve ever heard of.

Nobody bows like a prima ballerina: Ananiashvili combined floristry and dance
Photo: Erin Baiano, for the New York Times

Here you can enjoy more than 17 minutes of Ananiashvili’s curtain call (the youtube contributor entitles it “Part 1”). Immediately as she comes back into the spotlight, long stemmed blooms fly up to the stage like sparks. A gentleman enters from stage right with two armloads of roses, red and white. Ananiashvili bows deeply, then turns to share the wealth, one stem at a time, with her partner Angel Corella, conductor Ormsby Wilkins, and other principals in the cast. Macaulay reports, “She then tossed the remainder of the bouquet, with evident gratitude, to American Ballet Theater’s orchestra players.”

Our acquaintance Alex Kinney, longtime theatrical director, gave us some background on the custom of sending flowers on stage. “I’m willing to bet it originated in ballet, and migrated to opera and theater,” Alex writes, “because ballet was originally of the courts, and theater more prole (fresh flowers grown for pleasure being highly deluxe items pre-19th century).”

Customs vary across the globe. We understand that in the U.S. it’s nearly taboo to present a bouquet to a male dancer (Wreaths are acceptable), whereas abroad both male and female performers are flower-able. There are also regional differences.

“San Francisco Ballet has maintained a strict control on bouquets,” writes a contributor to this ballet discussion group – “on opening night or premiere only. At the annual Gala, it’s a huge collective bouquet, usually in an oversized basket.” Do flowers come from the promoter or the ballet company itself, or are they genuine gifts from the audience? Depends….

“For premieres and debuts, the company provides the bouquets; it’s only for farewells that other floral contributions fill the stage.” The same author reports, “There used to be someone who walked down one of the three main aisles and threw a transparent plastic-covered bouquet on stage - wonderfully atmospheric; sometimes this happened after debut performances.”

Some especially flower-drenched farewells we’ve found include Darcey Bussell’s goodbye, at the Royal Ballet in June 2007, Damian Woetzel’s and Peter Boal’s finales at New York City Ballet (clear exceptions to the ladies-only rule), and last month’s farewell to Tina LeBlanc in San Francisco.

Nina Ananiashvili catches a white rose on the fly at her farewell performance, June 27.
Photo: Erin Baiano, NY Times

But none of these comes close to Ananiashvili’s nearly half-hour curtain call last weekend.

Her first two big bouquets were prelude to what became a floral ballet-after-the-ballet. One at a time, members of the corps criss-crossed before Ananiashvili, each dropping a long stemmed white rose at her feet. The prima ballerina acknowledged each one of them with a smile or an embrace, a bow or a lifted hand. With a small stack of blossoms at the front of the stage, many more blooms rocketed up from the audience.

“The best is to throw long-stemmed, well dethorned individual roses from the front side-boxes,” Alex advises, but for those of us without box seats? “Rushing down the aisles with arms laden is always appreciated.” Alex adds, “Where roses are concerned, I feel less than six dozen looks stingy, don’t you?”

No one at the Metropolitan Opera House could have been accused of that Saturday night!

In came Ananiashvili’s partner Angel Corella with a rowboat’s worth of pink roses, followed by another fellow with a huge bunch. Then conductor Wilkins entered from stage right with a yellow bouquet; presenting the flowers to Ananiashvili, he then conferred upon her his baton. Applause began splattering at twice the volume.

A gent in a long green cape then strode out with a bouquet of what appeared to be goldenrod for Ananiashvili, followed by a stream of women in non-tutu attire. Stage managers? Directors? Box office divas? Each brought a bouquet for the ballerina, and to each, she responded with a special display of happy “surprise” and gratitude. For one, whom Macaulay identified as Irina Kolpakova, “herself one of the supreme ballerinas of the 20th century and now a Ballet Theater coach,” Ananiashvili dropped to one knee and lowered her head in homage.

Onto a stage filled with flowers, flower petals rained for Ananiashvili
Photo: Erin Baiano, for the New York Times

In all, seventeen bouquets are presented to Nina Ananiashvili on this 17-minute video (remember, that’s just Part 1 of curtain call). In Part 2 (just posted) Ananiashvili receives a shower of flower-petals from on high and the audience cheers for another 6:50 minutes. Ananiashvili receives a bouquet from her tiny daughter, then steps out in front of the curtain with Corella for more applause. What reflexes! She manages to catch several sprays of flowers one-handed (lots of white roses, which NYT photographer Erin Baiano magically captured in midair). Proving once more her theatrical instincts, Ananiashvila picks up one red bouquet from the stage, holding it against her chest for another deep bow.

On Saturday, flowers due from adoration to achievement mingled with flowers of elegy. This wasn’t a funeral, but it was a moment of passing. As if to exclaim that with her very body, Ananiashvili asked the evening’s two leading men for a final, splendid gesture. Marcelo Gomes tossed her into the air, to be caught by Angel Corella – a living bouquet.

By Georgia Silvera Seamans

“So precise a balance of acid and sugar,” that’s how R.W. Apple decribes mangosteen, the southeast Asian fruit that “can’t get a visa.”

My friend L.I. sent me Apple’s story before I left for Singapore and Malaysia and Hong Kong. Busy as I was before the trip (my husband was graduating and families were in town), I did not read the article till my return. Now I can agree.

My husband fell in love with the “queen of fruit” in Malaysia and Singapore. (Singapore used to be a part of Malaysia.)  The taste! But magosteen is interesting in other ways, too, most notably its inner math—the number of lobes on the bottom of each mangosteen corresponds to the number of segments in that particular fruit.  My friend’s dad proudly disclosed this to us with several mangosteens.

Most fairy wrens, male and female, are renowned for their infidelity. Pairs put on a good front; they raise their young together and together defend the home territory for life. But nosy researchers who’ve tested the genetics of their progeny have discovered that most of their offspring are “illegitimate.” Also, spying human eyes have caught male fairy-wrens taking off to “court” other females, several others in a day.

To turn on the “other wrens,” males have evolved glitzy blue attire and come-ons, including “presentation of flower petals during courtship displays.”

But recently, scholars at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology in Germany and the University of Freiburg have found one “unqiuely faithful species,” among these Austraian songbirds.

By Craig Cramer

In case you missed it, there were elections in Iran on Friday and a coup d’état over the weekend. Popular challenger Mir Hossein Moussavi, who was Iran’s Prime Minister during the the bloody 8-year war with Iraq in the ‘80s, had strong support among the country’s youth and progressives. He had been expected to defeat incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a Holocaust-denier.

But as Josef Stalin supposedly said: Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything. Some are saying they didn’t even bother to count in Iran. Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a ridiculous 63 to 34 percent margin.

Agony has its rewards.

For some fine people (“fine” we can call them now) it builds character; for everyone, it changes capacity.

Like the capacity for Judy Garland. Back when the entertainment industry was still “show business,” she was IT, and we were very young – pre-agony. Her big stagy gestures, bow-shaped mouth painted red, the emaciated body and dyed black hair were horrifying to a ten year old in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky. How freaky. How needy! We were trying to acquire a completely different cultural temperature: cool. To be loved while gliding under the radar, not tap-dancing, arm-flinging, hair-twisting for approval. Judy’s blatant cravings – and vaudeville aesthetic – were side-show bizarre. We were kind of embarrassed for her, but mainly we were grossed out.

By John Levett

I’m writing this whilst listening to Morton Feldman’s “I met Heine on the Rue Fürstenberg.” These moments come and go. For decades I’ve been overwhelmed by the erudition of the presenters on the Beeb’s Radio 3—Bach’s breakfast preferences, the view from Mendelssohn’s house in Leipzig, where Mahler bought his ties, which shirt Webern was wearing when he lit that fatal fag. I’ve forever wanted that intimate connection with (just) one composer but realised early on that I’m not a one-guy-or-gal guy. In the late ‘50s I was for Wagner, then Mahler, then Vaughan Williams, Stockhausen, Bach (the whole family). Looking at the record collection, I see the only permanent fixture has been Bob Dylan which speaks of something.

Fact is I never stay long enough. Back in 2003 I decided time had come to blitz everything about Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle. Two cycles (at Covent Garden and the English National Opera), two CD collections (Solti and Krauss), two video performances (Barenboim and Boulez) and the five volumes of Sabor’s translations and commentary later I could confidently chat about it. Wagner’s the exception. I flit.

I’ve done the same with literature. Virginia Woolf got the ‘Ring’ treatment shortly after; Orwell and Larkin decades before. Feldman’s getting the treatment currently. Next stop Frank O’Hara.

A Thursday night in Prague: we were on our on way up Karolíny Světlé  to a restaurant in the guidebook when we found an inviting corner.

The sun had just gone all the way down over Old Town. You could see yellow lights inside this place and hear happy voices, friendly ripples (without the squeal of students getting off on their “pivo”). So we strolled up to look at the menu posted outside,  and stepped in.

Right away, we were greeted and shown a table for two in the small front diningroom, attended by a courteous gentlemen we later learned was the owner of this establishment:  Restaurace Stoleti. Over the next half hour, the front filled up, and other diners were shown to a larger room in back.