'Tis the season to be giving.

Recently I turned onto the wrong block here in New York and just couldn't resist peeking into a towering landmark building. Inside, a memorial service was being conducted for a musician named Bill whose photograph showed what seemed to be the pipes of a trombone at his left hand. I slipped into a seat at the back and listened to the soft words of the priest, spoken gently and without amplification to the folks up front. On the theory that there are really no accidental wrong turns in our universe, I listened.

The speaker talked about the pleasure, inspiration, even solace, that this man's music had given others. He said that talent for an art such as music, dance, and drama was a great gift, and that those were very like the gift of faith. Just that--a gift unbidden, unearned, bestowed. Not traded or to be equaled or bested. Such gifts could be hoarded privately or they could be shared with others. The greatness, he suggested, and the chance at immortality, came from people sharing their gifts.

I drifted away some time after that, thinking about this time of year so filled with gifts and our dance community where everyone is a giver and a lifelong learner so they always have something more to give a student or an audience. There is also that gift of faith we have--that someone seeing our words or our dance will be lifted and be glad to be a receiver. We have written a good bit about efforts at immortality in issues this past year, in terms of legacies and how they are preserved and passed forward intact or in influence. We are aware that we stand on the shoulders of those sharers who went before--the mighty and the midget--and from that platform we leap into tomorrow.

It's all done with comparatively little drama. I was reminded of this when I saw a screening of The Company, the Robert Altman-directed film that employed forty dancers from the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, which opens this month. The film was very like a French art film--a slice of life, not artificial survivors or a violence-threatening tell-all-that gave a very real look at a professional company's daily and nightly ways. A dancer's life, as I see it, really has no beginning, middle, and end, and so very little drama as we see it today. And the film, as we write in our behind-the-scenes look (see page 52), showed that. One colleague remarked that the most exciting thing about the film was the dancing--is that a great review or what?

It's Nutcracker season again--So what's new? What's new is Jennifer Fisher's look at this endlessly kaleidoscoping ballet, what it means to North Americans, and why we keep doing it and care so much. For the first time, Fisher probes and notes not the technique or the special effects, but file cultural context of the ballet and the people who participate. She tells us interesting things we never knew and makes us think about it; and as a true scholar, she has contributed to the knowledge of the field. She has made us a fine gift of better understanding who we are.

For me, I wish you peace, both personal and political in the coming year

K.C. Patrick, Editor in Chief