New York City | Princeton Magazine

“Crystal Cut and Clean” — Former Ballet Star Teaches Master Class at Princeton University

By Anne Levin

Wendy Whelan’s retirement from the New York City Ballet last fall was marked with great fanfare and emotional tributes. In her 28 years with the company, she performed a broad range of repertory and won loyal fans for her individualistic style and distinctive approach to her roles.

Teaching a ballet class Monday at Princeton University, a day before she was to appear at McCarter Theatre in a program of contemporary choreography called “Restless Creature,” Ms. Whelan made it clear that though she still loves ballet, she isn’t exactly bereft about no longer being a principal dancer with one of the largest ballet companies in the nation.

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy

By Linda Arntzenius

Illustrations by Jorge Naranjo

“You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews,” Eric Idle’s clever quip from Monty Python’s Spamalot never fails to elicit laughter from a Broadway audience. It’s long been taken for granted that the Broadway musical is a particularly Jewish success story. Idle’s observation was expressed decades earlier by none other than Cole Porter, the exemplar of Broadway song composers. Porter, who was not Jewish, was once asked how he would go about writing “American” music. “I’ll write good Jewish tunes,” he said.

Michael Kantor’s recent documentary, The Broadway Musical—A Jewish Legacy, celebrates the Jewish roots of this distinctly American form with a loving look at Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Kurt Weill, Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, and Jule Styne, among many other giants of the Broadway stage. more