Pianos were not just scarce where Mahani Teave grew up. They were unknown.

Born in Honolulu to a Polynesian father and an American mother, little Mahani was soon whisked away to the rock in the South Pacific that descendants of the original settlers—her father's people—know as Rapa Nui. It really is a rock. Located 2,200 miles due west of the Chilean coast, with a landmass of just 63 square miles and a population of around 7,700, Rapa Nui is the home of the 1,000-plus moai, monolithic stone deities arranged in rows on the shores, with their backs to the ocean. English speakers know the place as Easter Island.

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PERSPECTIVE – The ballets of George Balanchine pass from generation to generation through a lineage of dancers going back to the master himself, the founding artistic director of New York City Ballet. Seventy-five years on, the company has the implicit mandate to mix it up, and that is traditional, too. From the first, Balanchine, City Ballet's founding artistic director, welcomed novelties not only from company dancers feeling his Promethean spark but also from guests as distinctive in their approaches as Frederick Ashton, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham.

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Hello Matthew,

Your piece on Balanchine reminded me of a story with Marta and Jan. Balanchine was the choreographer for my parents' Merry Widowproduction at the Majestic Theater in 1943. Marta always said their biggest competition was actually the ballet! And Balanchine was, course, fabulous!

Marta and Jan had this famous scene where they begin a slow waltz to the familiar melody which then evolves into a furious and passionate whirl. So one day during a rehearsal Marta decided to ask Balanchine for his opinion on how they danced the waltz.

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A T-shirt on offer at the New York City Ballet gift counters lists, on the front, the names Bach, Stravinsky, and Bizet. The back is inscribed with the date October 11, 1948. What's the connection? As any dyed-in-the-wool City Ballet fan can figure out, the graphic souvenir memorializes the City Ballet's inaugural performance at New York City Center (ex-Mecca Temple), 131 West 55^th Street, which featured Concerto Barocco (Bach), Orpheus (Stravinsky), and Symphony in C (Bizet). To John Martin of the New York Times, the shows that night and the next "went off excellently, the audiences manifestly enjoyed themselves, business seemed good, the program was both substantial and vivacious, and a big step was taken in the right direction."

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Dear Readers,

Has this happened to you? You submit a customer review to Amazon, and it gets tossed.  "Hello," reads the email with the bad news. "We couldn't post your review because it doesn't meet our community guidelines. Please edit and resubmit your review. Before you do, make sure it meets all of our guidelines."

This happened to me a while back when I attempted to post a notice on the Paul Griffiths novel Mr. Beethoven. A few days ago, my comments on Mary Lou Falcone's book I Didn't See It Coming: Scenes of Love, Loss, and Lewy Body Dementia. Okay, so I post my samizdat here instead. For the Griffiths review, click here; for the Falcone review, click here.

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