Frau Obama denounces her daughter as overweight.  No doubt this was a dry run for the Khmeresque plans they have for the rest of us where, in good Communist fashion, we will be forced to sit in a circle and criticize our friends and family as our Maoist overlords look in, taking careful notes for each of our files.

The Obama hag's obesity initiative is called "Let's Move".  How about another called "Let's mind our own business".  Better yet, "Let's Stick To The Constitution".

If it's right for a 16 year old girl to have the baby inside of her salted, hacked to pieces, and vacuumed out without her parents knowing about it because it's "her body", isn't it her right to be overweight whether the Obamas like it or not?

A margarine ad lauds Denmark for banning transfats. Since gay marriage and prostitution is legal there, perhaps the Danes should be as selective about what else they put in their mouths.

If homeowners can be liable for and potentially fined over snow not removed from the sidewalk within 24 hours of a snowfall, shouldn't some sort of penalty be assessed against a municipality failing to clear the streets within the same time frame?

Bill Nye "The Science Guy" insinuates that questioning global warming is nearly unpatriotic. MSNBC certainly scrapes the bottom of the barrell in search of talent. Even PBS stopped paying attention to this quack in the mid 90's.

School systems considered canceling President's Day in order to make up a snow day. Would they consider doing this with Martin Luther King Day? More importantly, could it be done without a riot resulting?

If the Biology faculty at the University of Alabama where their colleague denied tenure went on a shooting rampage wants to condemn her for the act, they must renounce the materialistic determinism inherent to the Darwinistic wing controlling the academic discipline.

The homicidal University of Alabama professor was a devoted Obama supporter.  While Obama can't be held responsible for the shooting at the University of Alabama, the media certainly doesn't mind attempting to link conservative populist thought with acts of violence. So we should certainly return the favor by highlighting one of their's when there is a rampage.

Until Oprah gives up her personal chef, she should keep her mouth shut about the rest of us "living simply".  That is just another euphemism for communitarian wealth redistribution.

"Know Your Heritage" is a quiz show "focusing on Black History". With majority Black teams and a token White that wants to be Black, isn't such a program inherently racist by co-opting the pronoun "Your". Could one name a White-themed show that without Sharpton working the crowd into a homicidal froth?

Interesting how in a Howard Kurtz Washington Post profile admitted dyke Rachel Madcow criticizes Fox News of activist journalism that "inspires political participation".  Yet she herself  was applauded throughout the piece for advocating unbridled buggery in the military.

If Biden thinks we are not in danger of another terrorist attack, he's even more of a doofus than originally estimated. To make such an assessment of the world in which we live that he did makes Forest Gump seem like Sun Tzu.

If Biden is going to wear his Catholicism on his sleeve (or rather his forehead as evidenced by Lenten ashes), perhaps he should consistently embrace the more important aspects of that faith, transcending gaudy ostentations rituals, such as opposition to abortion and sodomy

Hopefully for the sake of America, Biden will give up stupidity for Lent.  Biden with his ashes looked like one of those “Indian fellas” he said worked down at the 7-11.

Stephen Colbert called Palin a "F-ing retard". Seems the appellation is more suited for Biden regarding his assessment regarding the terrorist threat.

The New York Times insinuated that the Tea Party movement is violent through the headline "Tea Party Movement Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right".  Can't say I closely monitor this media dinosaur, but one must ask if the old gray lady, as the paper is called, pointed out during the presidential campaign that some of Obama's supporters such as Bill Ayers have lit more actual fuses than any Tea Party attendee

If Disney is giving admission tickets in an exchange for a day of "service" to approved organizations, how is this different than providing these individuals with a day's wage? Better yet, how is charitable labor in exchange for an amusement park ticket any more noble than the compensated services Americans perform on a daily basis as part of their regular employment?

In his lecture "The Church & The Arts", cultural analyst Ken Meyers laments how in the New World we did not inherit the mother continents more contemplative disposition.   I guess dirt poor pioneers carving out an existence would have been too tired by the end of the day.  Besides, before more contemporary times Europe's more reflective classes built their lives of leisure on the backs of those that couldn't otherwise get ahead along various cultural fronts from religion, to political freedom, to economic opportunities.  What do you think drove those dullard working stiffs here in the first place?

Regarding the Mother Teresa Stamp.  How many other U.S. postage stamps are there of non-American citizens (those once broadly categorized as foreigners.  Furthermore, are there any commemorating Protestants or do we only pander to Catholics in this manner?  If not, where are the C.S. Lewis or Francis Schaffer stamps?

Olympic uniforms should not be cluttered with all kinds of extraneous personal messages no matter how patriotic such sentiments might be.  That is why they are called “uniforms“.   Supporting the troops should not be invoked as justification for wiggling out of reasonably agreed-upon rules.  The flags of their respective countries is the extent of the pride athletes should be permitted to exhibit.  We don’t need members of the Afghan or Pakistani delegations wearing “The Taliban Rocks” decals.

In response to their antics at the dog show, someone should unfurl a banner at a PETA event pointing out that organizations alleged involvement in atrocities against animals.

Interesting how one day the Huffington Post can distribute a mass email of Bill Maher mocking Sarah Palin’s baby and the next another condemning a speaker at C-PAC for joking about President Obama’s former drug use.  Disabled babies had no choice about being born with a deformity.  Crackheads make a choice to shove narcotics up their noses.

Liberals are free to verbalize the vilest of things regarding Sarah Palin’s baby. Yet no one was suppose to admit what a homely teen Chelsea Clinton was or even comment on the obvious that the Obama whelps enjoy school lunches markedly superior to those ingested by the average American school child.

A cyber-attack on world computers has been traced back to a Chinese vocational school.  Students in that country learn to take down their enemies' electronic infrastructure.  American students here learn that Heather has two mommies, to despise the Founding Fathers as slave holding Whites, and how to slip a condom over a cucumber.  What nation do you think will dominate the globe by the second half of the 21st century?

Unlike Michael Savage or Mark Levin, Glenn Beck almost sounds giddy and enthusiastic about the prospect of socioeconomic collapse.  As in the case of Pat Robertson, if there is a silly grin plastered across your face when discussing a topic that is going to result in massive casualties whether you explicitly mention body counts or not, discerning people are going to find you a tad disturbing.

A documentary about Yellowstone on Animal Planet said bull elk roll in their own urine to increase their masculine appeal.  One might not want to read the ingredients on a bottle of Old Spice too closely.

A Dodge advertisement claims Presidents' Day commemorates George Washington purchasing his first truck.  Could similar Madison Avenue frivolity be broadcast regarding Martin Luther King Day?

To refute the illogic of racism, it's pointed out that if you needed a doctor you wouldn't care about the physician's ethnicity?  Then why should I care if my pizza is made by real Italians?  Besides, what would an "artificial Italian" be?  To carry this to it's logical conclusion, ought a hamburger made by an authentic German actually be more desirable?

Letterman thinks the Iraqi rabble-rouser tossing a shoe at President Bush is still comical.  What would be really funny would be a process sever tossing a summons at Letterman to appear at a paternity hearing or sexual harassment trial.

A Maryland municipality plans to provide $10,000 to local merchants to replace plastic and neon signs with ones complying with anti-capitalist, Bohemian aesthetics.  Things might be going to Ghenna in a handbasket, but the important thing is to look artsy in our destitution and insolvency.  Am sure our Red Chinese masters will require nothing less.

A friend of the pilot flying a plane into an IRS building said on Greta that the kook was neither an introvert or extrovert.  Is refreshing to learn of a mass murderer not accused of being a loner, quiet, or staying to himself.

If Maryland Delegate Henry Heller wants to ban marriages between first cousins with the exception of those unable to reproduce and he has in the past supported legislation authorizing gay marriage, logically he would have to extend his blessing to gay first cousins that want to get married.  While we are abolishing taboos, why doesn’t he go ahead and endorse marriage between gay siblings.

Prince George’s Community College wallows in blatant bigotry and sexism. 
According to the 3/4/10 Gazette, the community college has established a leadership academy open only to Black and Hispanic males. The director of the program, Brian Hamlin, is quoted as saying, “We want you to stay in college.”  In other words, it’s hoped Whites and females will drop out. So much for it being content of character rather than color of skin that counts. If White residents aren’t able to enjoy all of the benefits for which the county’s notoriously high property taxes are extracted to cover, then shouldn’t Whites get a tax break

by Frederick Meekins

Seminary student Be Scofield challenges Chris Hitchens to debate some theologically current religious progressives. Cross posted from Tikkun Daily.

Despite having engaged in numerous debates with Christians, Muslims and Jews across the liberal/conservative spectrum Christopher Hitchens still holds to an amazingly ignorant understanding of the liberal religious heritage.

His understanding of who is and who isn’t a Christian is perhaps the most disappointing and surprising piece of evidence for his myopic interpretation of religion. While rejecting conservative Christians’ theological claims about God, the Bible and Jesus, he accepts their understanding of who is and is not able to be considered a Christian. In a recent interview with Marilyn Sewell, a Unitarian Universalist minister and self-professed liberal Christian, Christopher Hitchens paraphrased C.S. Lewis to explain the boundaries of who constitutes a Christian. It’s not surprising then that a recent blog post by Dr. Ray Pritchard of “Keep Believing Ministries” for a conservative Christian site called Crosswalk was entitled, “Christopher Hitchens Gets it Exactly Right.”

During a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, noted atheist Christopher Hitchens laid down some seriously good theology… In one of the delicious ironies of our time, an outspoken atheist grasps the central tenet of Christianity better than many Christians do. What you believe about Jesus Christ really does make a difference.

What did Hitchens say?

Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Why is Hitchens so quick to accept such an orthodox interpretation of the boundaries of Christianity? His brain seems to short-circuit when he has to think about religion in complex ways. He wants to hold firmly to an either/or dichotomy–the very same one which he is critiquing fundamentalism for. In debates he has stated that he is “Protestant atheist” meaning that he recognizes the validity of the various reformation movements which liberalized, expanded and diversified Christianity. But which denomination of protestant atheist is he? This isn’t clear but it is apparently not one which falls outside of his or C.S. Lewis’s orthodox boundaries of inclusion/exclusion. Isn’t it shocking that of all people Christopher Hitchens is in agreement with the many forces in history which have led to the extermination, torture and destruction of “heretics” for simply believing the “wrong” form of Christianity? Since when is Hitchens so concerned about who is and isn’t a Christian?

Any first-year seminary student could tell Hitchens about the incredibly contested history of inclusion/exclusion within Christianity. These debates go back to the early days of the religious movement and continue to the present day. And many post-reformation denominations have rejected the orthodox claim made by Hitchens. Liberal Christians have articulated their expressions of faith in powerful and meaningful ways while many of them don’t pass Hitchens’ litmus test. One wonders if he has ever read the great American Unitarian, Universalist and liberal reformers, William Ellory Channing, Hosea Ballou, Clarence Skinner or Theodore Parker. Or perhaps the German theologian Frederick Schleiermacher and the English Romanticist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. How about Paul Tillich, Henry Nelson Weiman and other process theologians? The Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller among others? Or the Christian New Thought movement which produced Unity, Religious Science and Church of Divine Science? How about contemporary feminist theologians such as Rebbecca Parker, Rita Nakashima Brock, Rosemary Radford Reuther or Mary Daly? Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong or Elaine Pagels? Liberation theology?

I’m leaving so much out but I will lastly mention Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I recently wrote an article for Tikkun which describes in detail how Dr. King rejected the orthodox divinity of Christ, didn’t believe in heaven/hell, saw the Bible as myth and saw Christianity as a mix of paganism, Judaism and religious cults of the time. And what of the millions of Christians who choose this label but don’t accept the orthodox or fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity? For some reason Hitchens sides with C.S. Lewis and joins the religious forces of exclusion, domination and institutional control.

Why would Hitchens take sides on a issue that he is obviously ill-prepared to discuss? Again, the complexity and diversity within liberal Christianity is too much for Hitchens and his either/or way of thinking. Christopher Hedges explains this clearly,

The new atheists, who attack a repugnant version of religion, use it to condemn all religion. They use it to deny the reality and importance of the religious impulse. They are curiously unable to comprehend those who found through their religious convictions the strength to stand up against injustice…The new atheists, like all fundamentalists, flee from complexity. They can cope with religion in its most primitive and abusive form. They are helpless when confronted by a faith that challenges their caricatures. [When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists p. 33-34]

Any serious engagement by Hitchens with the liberal Christian tradition would force him to admit that the premise of his thesis is wrong. And this of course cannot happen because Hitchens is as tied to his perspective as Pat Robertson is to his. By signing on to the orthodox version of inclusion/exclusion in Christianity Hitchens makes it more likely that he can protect his narrow-minded fundamentalist interpretation of religion. And aside from the liberal Christian tradition, Hitchens’ critique also ridicules and bashes atheists. He very likely does not know that Unitarian Universalism is made up of 19% of people who identify as atheist and agnostic. Yet they feel very comfortable expressing themselves in a religious tradition that is based on community, social justice, music and inclusion.

In order to discredit any practical function of religion he frequently returns to the question, “Name a moral action that a religious person can make that I can’t.” This is a great question for all of those dogmatic fundamentalists that he debates. But he poses the same question to Marilyn Sewell in the interview.

Of course Sewell, myself, and many liberal religious people don’t believe that religion or God is necessary to be moral. But it certainly can inspire people to live a more ethical life. But simply because Hitchens and other agnostics/atheists are capable of the same moral actions this doesn’t mean that religion is irrelevant. And it seems that Hitchens was trying to make this point in his interview with Sewell.

Another interesting aspect of the Sewell interview was his admittance of “something beyond our selves” and his discussion of the soul. Via Religion Dispatches:

It’s innate in us to be overawed by certain moments, say, at evening on a mountaintop or sunset on the boundaries of the ocean. Or, in my case, looking through the Hubble telescope at those extraordinary pictures. We have a sense of awe and wonder at something beyond ourselves, and so we should, because our own lives are very transient and insignificant. That’s the numinous, and there’s enough wonder in the natural world without any resort to the supernatural being required….everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there’s more to life than just matter….It’s what you might call “the x-factor” — I don’t have a satisfactory term for it — it’s what I mean by the element of us that isn’t entirely materialistic: the numinous, the transcendent, the innocence of children (even though we know from Freud that childhood isn’t as innocent as all that), the existence of love (which is, likewise, unquantifiable but that anyone would be a fool who said it wasn’t a powerful force), and so forth. I don’t think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.

I know many liberal religious people who find great familiarity and agreement in what Hitchens is saying. They agree with him wholeheartedly but yet choose to use religious language to express this.

Hitchens’ orthodox Protestant Atheism is hypocritical and his either/or critique of religion is childish. He fails to provide a definition of what religion is. Who does he consider religious? Who decides within each tradition who has the power to include/exclude? How about all of the liberal religious thinkers mentioned above? His thesis “religion poisons everything” sold books but just one example of how religion positively influences the lives of people refutes his entire premise. Needless to say this has been demonstrated time and time again.

Religion is merely a tool, like a knife which can be used to save a life in surgery or murder someone. Perhaps one day Hitchens will convert from his Orthodox Protestant Atheism to a more tolerant, inclusive and loving tradition.

Open challenge to Christopher Hitchens: Come debate myself and fellow students at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. You wouldn’t be afraid of a few young seminary students would you?

—————–

Hitchens has debated at least three liberal religious thinkers. Chris Hedges author of “When Atheism Becomes Religion” debated Hitchens in San Francisco in 2007. In December of 2009 he appeared on Bloggingheads.tv to debate/discuss God with Robert Wright author of “The Evolution of God.” And Marilyn Sewell is the latest. In my opinion these are some of the most interesting debates that Hitchens has engaged in. Click here for a link to over 500 religious debates, including more with Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens: The Orthodox Protestant Atheist4.552

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The public reaction to the Haiti earthquake confirms my belief in humanity's basic decency. Donations are pouring in to various charities. If you're still unsure of where to donate, I've heard Partners in Health is an excellent choice - they were already well established in Haiti with clinics and staff and were able to immediately respond. Doctors Without Borders, although also a fine organization, is said to have had just one clinic and it was destroyed in the earthquake...so I think for this situation PIH is a better choice.

You can donate to the Red Cross by texting 'Haiti' to 90999 to donate $10, through links on various sites, even through the White House. Text ‘Yele’ to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean's foundation for Haiti. The donations are pouring in.

If you want a ground's eye view of what's happening, this man's entries on Twitter are compelling.

Frederick Dupoux on Twitter

Haiti was already a devastated country, a crisis we all knew about but managed to ignore. Margaret Trost, head of the What If Foundation, told me the people in the village where her foundation concentrates are so poor that they were eating dirt. Literally eating dirt for the few nutrients it contains.

Haiti was a country that did something amazing; its slaves threw off their shackles and won their independence. But it came at a high cost. France demanded a massive yearly payment or it threatened to come and reclaim its slaves. Haiti's been paying ever since. It's had a series of corrupt governments. Its lush farmland and forests have been decimated, leaving the land barren and forcing Haiti to rely on expensive food imported from other countries. The people cannot afford that food.

So this earthquake is just a massive hand slamming down a country already desperate and dying. The fact that the world's attention is now there, that global compassion is being directed at a people who may well end up losing as many as a hundred thousand people, is wonderful.

I'm less impressed with our media. It has sprung into action, as it always does, bringing hordes of reporters and camera crews to document the disaster for the folks back home. Does each network need a crew of a dozen? Aren't they using up precious commodities - gasoline, water, food? Their reports certainly contribute to our understanding of the depth of the crisis, but do we need ALL of them?

And worse, how about the reporter who brags, "I witnessed an amputation today, an amputation done with only a local anesthetic, while the person who was trapped under rubble was awake." There's something about the way it was reported that turned my stomach. She was caught up in the "I was there!" mentality and lost her humanity. It was her phrasing, not so much that she was there, a sense that she'd detached herself so far that these horrors were just "news".

And then there are Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. I've seen the videos. Robertson has lost his mind. "They made a deal with the devil. True story." Really, Pat? True story? Pull the plug on this man. He's gone over the edge.

Limbaugh's hatred of everyone but Conservative White America was blatant. "We've already contributed to Haiti. It's called the Income Tax." Apparently we aren't supposed to reach out to suffering people if they're not us. He made other comments that were offensive, yet I could almost understand them if I attempted to view them from his fear-filled, hate-spewing viewpoint. But not that comment, not the one that makes it clear his initial reaction was that we have no business spending another dime to attempt to help a nation that is dying.

This is hate. This is what it looks like. It tries to turn a human tragedy into a political, ideological debate.

And meanwhile thousands of Haitians are digging through the rubble, hoping to find the people they love.

MacMillan's challenging choreography, teeming with dark and violent themes, jolted ballet out of its fairytale slumber – and split critical opinion right down the middle

In short

Kenneth MacMillan was a working-class boy who went to the top of the elite world of ballet, roughing up its conventional decorum with works featuring tortured psyches, damaged sexualities and a string of outsiders and misfits.

Backstory

Born in Dunfermline in 1929, MacMillan was the youngest child of a poor family. His father was first a miner, then a chicken farmer; when that didn't work out, the family fled to Great Yarmouth, where his father fared little better, and turned increasingly to drink. MacMillan's mother, an epileptic, died when he was 12. Young Kenneth turned to dancing. Exceptionally talented, he was accepted by the Sadler's Wells Ballet School, and moved to London, aged 15.

He began dancing with the Sadler's Wells Ballet (now the Royal Ballet), but debilitating stage fright brought an abrupt end to his performing career. MacMillan was nevertheless a precocious dance-maker, and even his earliest experiments – Somnambulism (1953), Laiderette (1954) – showed his distinctive choreographic flair. By 1955 he was creating works for the company, and he quickly became the second choreographer (after Frederick Ashton); he also created pieces for Western Theatre Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.

In 1965, he scored a huge hit with his first three-act work, Romeo and Juliet, but was deeply upset by the management's refusal to commission a piece to Mahler's Song of the Earth, a score they considered sacrosanct. Instead, MacMillan made Song of the Earth for the Stuttgart Ballet (directed by his old friend John Cranko), where it was an immediate success. Though the Royal Ballet quickly relented and staged the work themselves, MacMillan felt betrayed. He left in 1966 to head the ballet of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin – where he had a dismal time. Chronically insecure at the best of times, he became severely depressed, and drank heavily.

In 1970, MacMillan returned to the Royal Ballet as artistic director, but things scarcely improved. He was temperamentally unsuited to management, and many ballet fans and critics, unhappy about Ashton's dismissal from the post, resented him (one Ashton devotee stalked MacMillan through the streets of New York making vomiting noises behind his back). MacMillan subsisted on an insalubrious diet of alcohol, cigarettes, antidepressants and psychoanalysis – and yet still produced definitive works, including Manon, Elite Syncopations (a rare comedy) and Requiem.

He resigned as director in 1977, but stayed as the company's resident choreographer, a role to which he was much more suited. Furthermore, his marriage in 1974 to Australian artist Deborah Williams, and the birth of their daughter Charlotte, gave him new emotional stability – though he continued to explore dark themes aplenty in his ballets. Alongside his work at the Royal, he was artistic associate of American Ballet Theatre from 1984 to 1990. He survived a heart attack and throat cancer, and continued creating new works until his death in 1992 of a second heart attack – alone, backstage at the Royal Opera House, during a performance of his ballet Mayerling.

Watching Kenneth MacMillan

MacMillan was heavily influenced by postwar theatre and the angry young men movement (playwright John Osborne was a particular inspiration), and many of his ballets are psychodramas that have much grittier themes than ballet had dealt with before. He was interested in exposing raw emotion and complexity of character – especially the unacknowledged or repressed sides of the psyche. But he was also a ballet man, and part of the fascination of his choreography is seeing how far he stretches the classical style to make it expressive, without taking it to breaking point. Physically full-on duets were his forte. When choreographing, he would typically create a pivotal pas de deux first and fill in the rest later, sometimes sketchily.

MacMillan is best-known for his big narrative ballets – Romeo and Juliet, Manon, Mayerling – but he produced many shorter works. He was by nature a storyteller (even his most abstract ballets have suggestions of plot and character); but don't look for the familiar balletic pleasure of yearning hearts and idealised loves. Instead, you'll find corrupted innocents, social hypocrites, murderers and whores aplenty – as well as incest and rape. Don't look for consistency, either: MacMillan could veer between genius, excess and claptrap in a trice – and deciding which is which still divides opinion to this day.

Who's who

Margaret Hill was MacMillan's first muse, but his most famous and enduring was Lynn Seymour, who created roles in many of his works. MacMillan talent-spotted several very young dancers, notably Monica Mason in the 1960s, Alessandra Ferri in the early 1980s, and Darcey Bussell in 1989. Bolshoi-trained Irek Mukhamedov was also a great inspiration in his last years. Nicholas Georgiadis was his closest and longest-standing designer; Deborah MacMillan, his wife, owns the copyright for all his works.

Fact

Kenneth MacMillan was a dab hand with the knitting needle, and would jot down knitting patterns and stitch counts on the same scraps of paper that he used for choreographic notes.

In his own words

"There is a class system, an old-boy network to which I've never belonged and I never will."
Quoted by Peter Brinson, Independent, 1992

"What I wanted to put on stage had to have more reality than much of what I was seeing in the 1940s and 50s … Little of what I was seeing then had any contact with a real world of feeling and human behaviour. Ballet looked like window-dressing. I wanted to make ballets in which an audience would become caught up with the fate of the characters I showed them."
Quoted by Clement Crisp, 1991

"We have to challenge audiences who think ballet [is] light entertainment. A lot [are] stuck in an arrested emotional development at the time when they first saw Swan Lake."
Quoted by Sarah Frater, Evening Standard, 2002

In other words

"To his public, Kenneth MacMillan was an enigmatic figure. His ballets would lay emotions bare, challenging and provoking audiences, but the man who created them remained a mystery."
Jann Parry, at the beginning of her biography of MacMillan, Different Drummer (2009)

"MacMillan took the gritty realism accepted in theatre and shoved it into the fairytale decorum of ballet."
Nadine Meisner, Independent, 2002

"He was fascinated by social and sexual hypocrisy, and by loneliness, by what society does to people."
Lynn Seymour, talking to Zoe Anderson, Independent, 2004

"No other significant dance-maker of the 20th-century had such a wildly fluctuating place in the ballet pantheon – from absolute adulation to utter dismissal."
Allen Robertson, Dance Now, 2002

Do say

I think it's fair to say that he had "issues".

Don't say

Ballet's big Mac.

See also

Antony Tudor was something of a stylistic predecessor of MacMillan's, also making dramatic psychological dances using a classical style. Peter Darrell and John Cranko were student contemporaries of MacMillan's who both went on to make dramatic, narrative works – Darrell at Western Theatre Ballet (now Scottish Ballet), Cranko at the Stuttgart Ballet.

Now watch this

Lynn Seymour and David Wall in Romeo and Juliet, filmed in 1979

Alessandra Ferri and David Wall in Chanson (1981)

First part of a documentary on MacMillan, featuring interviews and clips

One of several clips of the Houston Ballet's production of Manon

Irek Mukhamedov and Viviana Durante in Mayerling, 1978

MacMillan's biographer Jann Parry discusses the man and his works.

There are also several videos on the new MacMillan website, an excellent resource for all things MacMillan.

Where to see him next

The Royal Ballet perform Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House until 16 March 2010. Then there's a MacMillan triple bill (Concerto, The Judas Tree and Elite Syncopations) from 23 March to 16 April 2010.

You can go ahead and watch it here , because I sure as heck can't bring myself to describe it again.

He's been voted the best Doctor Who ever, but David Tennant's rule as the Timelord is coming to an end. So how will he cope with life outside the Tardis? Johnny Davis, who has spent the past year trailing him, talks to Britain's most popular actor

Last month David Tennant sold off his bed. It was, he admitted, "not the most delicious piece of furniture". It sat in reception at London's Absolute Radio looking every one of its 15 years in age, its wonky wrought-iron headboard accessorised by a Dalek bedspread and a handwritten sign: "Do not sit on this: prone to collapse".

Tennant was hosting Absolute's Breakfast Show alongside regular presenter Christian O'Connell. By 10am he'd played ping pong in the back of a Ford Galaxy, answered a series of questions from 12-year-olds and encouraged the actor Anthony Head to call in and sing "Lean on Me". Then there was his bed, being auctioned off for Children in Need. Fiona from Tadworth had pushed the bidding to £2,001, but off air O'Connell had a confession to make. The previous night he'd hosted a corporate do for the show's sponsors, British Gas. Things had got a bit carried away and everyone had climbed on the bed for a photo. "And it just sort of went 'poot'," O'Connell explained. "It was 10 of them. They were all trashed."

"There's never been more than two people on that bed," said Tennant.

Now its slats were snapped, the frame buckled beyond repair. "It's not the kind of thing you can just bend back into shape," noted Richie, the show's producer. "I felt bad; I told them it was for Children in Need," O'Connell said. "But you've seen the state of that bed – it's got 'Prone to collapse' all over it!"

"It wasn't prone to collapse," Tennant said.

On air O'Connell came clean, and someone from British Gas called in to do the honourable thing: take the now-useless bed off their hands for £5,000. "How's your head this morning?" Tennant asked.

Four hours of breakfast DJing behind him, he signed off with the Proclaimers' "King of the Road" and went outside to sign autographs and accept gifts from fans. Some had been waiting in the rain since 3.30am.

"That's quite good," he said, unwrapping one in the car that sped him towards his next appointment, at Radio 1. It was a Housemartins T-shirt, one of his favourite bands. "I bet it's extra large – they always think I'm big. And I'm only little."

Tennant was spending the day promoting his final three episodes of Doctor Who, the culmination of which will see him "regenerate" into a new Doctor, played by Matt Smith. After a chat with Radio 1's Fearne Cotton, there was a round of interviews with the TV listings magazines. Tennant asked his publicist which journalist would be attending from one particular title. "Hmm," he said. "She'll always go for the 'Who-are-you-shagging?' type question."

At Radio 1, he bumped into Chris Moyles. "So handsome," Moyles said to him by way of a greeting. Tennant explained he'd come from hosting a rival station's breakfast show. "According to the papers I seem to be leaving every week," said Moyles. "So you might as well have mine."

Fearne Cotton appeared. "We'll get you in just after the news; some questions from listeners – nothing bizarre." Tennant explained he'd been doing the promotional rounds. "Do you ever get tempted to make stuff up?" Cotton asked.

"So tempting," he said. "'Have you given Matt Smith any advice?' That's all I get asked. What am I supposed to say?"

"That's ridiculous," said Cotton. She consulted her notes. "Cross that one off."

Tennant wondered about the listener questions. "Are there rude ones? Do you get sent rude pictures?"

"All the time," said producer Stuey. "A lot of penises."

"Especially if you ask for something specific," said Cotton. "We did this thing asking people to send in pictures of their teddy bears – 50% were cocks. You get willies and boobs all the time."

On air Cotton asked Tennant about a poll that had voted him Britain's Sexiest Man, above Daniel Craig and Ewan McGregor, but also Jeremy Paxman ("Well, that's taken the sheen off"), discussed manual vs electric toothbrushes (Tennant's an electric man) and asked how his "complete army of fans" would cope when he's no longer on Doctor Who. "You know what will happen? Everyone will go: 'Oh, it'll never be the same.' And then two weeks in [to the new series] they'll go: 'Matt Smith: he's brilliant.'

"That's what happened when I was a kid, when Tom Baker left," he said. "That's just how it works."

It's possible, of course. But even Matt Smith must figure Matt Smith's got his work cut out. Though it was Christopher Eccleston who jump-started Doctor Who's regeneration from 1970s wobbly setted laughing stock to one of the BBC's biggest properties, a brand now reckoned to be worth £100m, it was surely David Tennant who sealed the deal. Not only has the role seen him surpass even the immortal Tom Baker as "The Best Doctor Ever", as voted by readers of Doctor Who Magazine, and there's no sterner jury, it's seen him become one of our most respected, most loved actors.

"David is arguably the most popular actor in England," says Patrick Stewart, who appeared with him earlier this year in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet, the film of which is on BBC2 this Christmas. "There was more anticipation for that production and David's performance than anything I've ever been in."

Famously, it was Doctor Who that made the three-year-old Tennant want to act. At school he'd carry around a Tom Baker doll (though he was too shy to ask his parents for Baker's assistant, Romana). As a teenager he wrote Who-themed essays called things like "Intergalactic Overdose", as his English teacher, Mrs Robertson, helpfully showed the News of the World recently. Even when he got the role, he lobbied the producers to change the credits to correct a longstanding inconsistency that had always bugged him – everyone knows the lead character is called "The Doctor", never "Doctor Who". (One afternoon I recalled how Jon Pertwee's Doctor used to dispatch foes with a neat line in kung fu. "Actually I think you'll find it was Venusian aikido," he corrected, not entirely humorously.) While all of this might have made him ideally suited to the job, leaving it has traditionally proved rather harder. None of the other actors who've played the Timelord have ever really lived it down. Baker has confessed that everything since has been "a muddle and a disappointment, an outrageous failure", and fear of typecasting led Eccleston to crash back to earth after just one series. It was a problem not lost on Tennant – or his agent, who suggested that even a bit part on the show would mean "I'll never work again."

"It did take me a few weeks to think it through," says Tennant, 38. "But the only other option is you don't do the job. I remember waking up one morning thinking: 'I can't turn this down. Even if it's the wrong thing to do.'"

Yet his acting credentials already put him in a different league to his predecessors. Olivier Award-nominated at 31 and a veteran of the RSC, he has managed to fill the three remaining months of the year when he's not been in Cardiff filming Doctor Who with an impressively wide range of boldface gigs: the lead in Hamlet and Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost running on stage concurrently, a Harry Potter film and several weighty TV dramas, including playing Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington in Einstein and Eddington. As well as Doctor Who and Hamlet this Christmas, there's the Stephen Poliakoff film Glorious 39 and the role of dastardly Lord Pomfrey in St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold. Which certainly shows range. "It's all the same thing," Tennant smiles. "It's all acting. I think Shakespeare was a man of the people."

"When I started out, if you got known for one role, forget it," says David Morrissey, who co-starred with Tennant in Doctor Who and the 2004 TV musical-drama Blackpool. "But David's Doctor won't be the millstone around his neck that it's been for actors in the past. It might weigh him down in a personal way – walking down the street and stuff – but he's so gifted it won't ever restrict him professionally."

What's more, Tennant's popularity is now such that he occupies a fairly unique position among his peers. He is as likely to give an interview to the University of Cambridge's Shakespeare journal on Mark Rylance's 1989 production of Hamlet for the RSC as he is to appear on Top Gear's "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car", or turn on the Blackpool Christmas lights. In February he presented Comic Relief with Davina McCall – a remarkable thing for an actor to be asked to do. "Yes, but that's to do with Doctor Who," Tennant says. "I don't imagine I'll be in the frame for things like that any more. I'm sure in two years' time they'll want Matt Smith to do Comic Relief. I suspect I'm just passing through, really."

Perhaps. When he joined Doctor Who in 2005 it made the BBC News At Six. It may be no exaggeration to say his departure is a national event. "David is very sad to leave," says his friend, the actress Arabella Weir. "But when do you leave the party? When everybody has stopped asking you to dance and is going: 'Look at that sad old cow, he's still here'? You don't know, is the short answer. You just have to make that judgement." Tennant's final episodes will be broadcast on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Because filming happens non-sequentially, the last scene he recorded as The Doctor has actually already aired – an episode of spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, which went out last month. His final words were an unprepossessing: "You two, with me, spit spot." "It couldn't have been less memorable or less significant," he says. "It was robbed of any epic quality, but that was probably best. There are a lot of scenes in the final story that are very sad, and were very sad to play. If one of them had coincided with the actual final day, I'd have been a puddle."

Come 1 January, writer and executive producer Russell T Davies is counting on us feeling the same way – greeting the New Year in cheery fashion, watching Tennant expire at the hands of The Master. "I can't watch it without crying, literally," says Davies. "I was checking it for the music cues the other night, which must have been the 17th time I've watched it, and I ended up crying. It's heartbreaking."

BBC Wales makes Doctor Who in several large hangars in Upper Boat studios near Pontypridd – Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures are also filmed here. One stage houses a vast permanent set of the Tardis interior, and round the back there's an endless props area, an I-spy of half-exploded Daleks, killer Christmas trees, Ood heads. A fortnight before filming each episode begins, the cast and crew meet in a nondescript Cardiff hotel for a script read-through. There is some secrecy surrounding these meetings, for reasons best illustrated by the time they had to eject a journalist from the Sun who'd been discovered sitting among them, mid-read-through.

In early February I watched the cast read "The Waters of Mars", an episode transmitted in November, arranged around a long table with Tennant, boyish in a Dennis the Menace-style jumper. Two weeks later the script was being realised in three dimensions. Set aboard a Nasa-style base, it required Tony Award-winning actress Lindsay Duncan – last seen playing Margaret Thatcher in TV drama Margaret, today playing space-suited ball breaker Captain Adelaide Brooke – to be thrown around amid various explosions. "I can't roll on the floor because of the gun," she worried to director Graeme Harper.

"Dare I say it?" wondered Harper. "But are your knickers going to be OK?"

"I'm wearing an all-in-one," she advised.

Tennant was in the canteen ("The Blue Box"), not required for filming until after lunch. "You do get slightly institutionalised here," he said. "For four years I've always been going back to Cardiff at some point in the near future, so when I leave it will be like leaving campus. I don't mean to get things out of proportion, but I was keenly watching George Bush leaving the White House, and the thought of how his life is going to change… I'm not saying his life is like mine. I'm not the leader of the Free World, I'm really not…"

Which would make Matt Smith Obama, of course.

"Oh, that's not really worked out very well for me, has it? It's just the thought that you hand over… and it stops. Maybe I'll be whisked up into something equally all-consuming."

One thing he may adjust to more quickly is a reduction in his own visibility. "We always thought when the honeymoon period was over it would settle down, but with every series it seems to get more attention. The viewing figures went up last year considerably. It's sort of bewildering." While Tennant fully appreciated the level of attention Doctor Who would bring him personally, it's not necessarily something he regards as a perk. He was in the role for a matter of weeks before a tabloid reporter had him out of bed at 7am, threatening to run a story involving a brothel, prostitutes and drugs. "Funnily enough, they didn't have photographs." It's not what he joined Equity for.

"You know you're going to have to cope with it on some level, but until it happens to you I defy anyone to really know what it feels like," he says. "When I saw people who were famous, and people whispered and pointed, it felt as though a very powerful individual had walked by. And actually, once you are that person, it just feels scary. All the time."

He says he was helped enormously by having Billie Piper with him for his first year, playing the Doctor's companion Rose Tyler. "She'd been through it for years. And she had it much worse – women tend to. She had become such a great friend and a real help through the madness that was beginning to explode. And then losing her, and thinking: 'I'm on my own!'"

If Doctor Who saw Tennant join the select group of males favoured by the gossip pages, unlike, say, James Corden or Russell Brand, he's done a remarkable job of keeping his personal life just that. He's adept at giving nothing of himself away while remaining a charismatic personality.

He apparently dated Sophia Myles, who played Madame de Pompadour in the show, and has been linked to his assistant director and another BBC Wales staffer. It's likely he's currently seeing Georgia Moffett, who played the Doctor's daughter in one episode and is ex-Doctor Peter Davison's daughter in real life (at which point you may think he's taken his enthusiasm for Doctor Who as far as it can go – "It can be odd when David comes round for Sunday lunch and we all sit at the table; me, an ex-Doctor, with my wife, and David, another Doctor, and my daughter," Peter Davison revealed). And years ago he went out with Anne-Marie Duff, now married to James McAvoy. But you won't hear that from him. "Relationships are hard enough with the people you're having them with," he says, "let alone talking about them in public."

"I resisted jumping his bones," says Billie Piper, "but women really fancy him. He's got a gorgeous face, and an energy that's contagious – the spirit of a child. My girlfriends were all in love with him." One female critic described his Doctor as "the first Timephwoard". His favoured trick for dealing with the inquisitor who inches towards the aforementioned "Who-are-you-shagging?" type question is a kind of reproachful look. "He's avoided any scandal because he keeps shtoom," says Piper. "He very rarely talks about anything that isn't related to his career or acting. You never see him falling out of clubs. He's never off his face. He's got far more patience than I have," Piper adds. "I don't mind signing autographs, but it becomes the topic of conversation at every social event you go to. It starts off: 'So how are you?' Then it's: 'Anyway, about Doctor Who…' It's at that point I start reaching for the wine."

In April, Tennant was at BBC Television Centre to promote the first of 2009's Doctor Who specials, "Planet of the Dead", to air that evening. It was 8am on Easter Saturday morning, yet BBC reception was uncharacteristically busy. Specifically, it was uncharacteristically busy with children. Tennant was due on BBC Breakfast and arrived cheerful as ever, wearing a jacket and thin tie. "You're on after the Association of British Drivers," said Kate, Breakfast's producer. "The people who blow up speed cameras."

"I didn't know there was such a thing," Tennant said.

Julia, the editor of programmes, appeared with five children. "It's my day off," she explained. "But I came in especially."

Tennant signed autographs for everybody and posed for photos. He was ushered into the green room. "This is Frederick," said Kate. "He's reviewing the papers just before you."

"Can I be the first to ask," Frederick said. "Would you mind signing this for my sister? She's desperate to have your autograph."

Then Maxine ap-peared. "I'm one of the holiday newsreaders," she said. "Would you – I mean, you're probably fed up of doing this – would you sign this for my nephew?"

Tennant went on air and was interviewed by presenters Sonia Deol and Charlie Stayt. I watched from the control room. Stayt suggested that while the previous Doctors had been "interesting, quirky characters", Tennant was the first to be a sex symbol. "Lots of snogging you've done," he said.

"Not lots," countered Tennant. "More than Jon Pertwee did."

He was asked what he found scary in real life ("I'm not a fan of a rodent"), about changing his birth name from McDonald to Tennant for Equity by picking Neil Tennant's name from Smash Hits ("I could have been David Kajagoogoo") and whether he is ever able to go out in public and "be normal".

"Has he talked about the next Doctor?" asked someone in the control room.

"No. Can we ask him about the next Doctor?"

They went on Wikipedia. "It's Matt Smith."

"Matt Smith," it was relayed to Deol's ear. "The new Doctor. Very young."

"What about the new guy?" she said on air. "What advice have you got for him?"

"I don't think you can give anyone advice about stuff like that, can you?" said Tennant.

Afterwards he was collected by producer Kate. She was holding a pile of paper. "I shouldn't have walked through the newsroom," she said. "More requests."

"More requests? We're not going to be allowed to leave, are we?" said Tennant, not unkindly.

Kate seemed to be chewing something over. "I don't care. I've lost all dignity," she said to me. "I'm going to ask for a photo."

The smell that reminds David Tennant of childhood is his father's homemade chicken and leek soup. He grew up in Paisley, near Glasgow, the youngest of three. His dad, Sandy, was a minister and later moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. His mum, Helen, devoted her life to charity work and helped found Paisley's Accord hospice. She died of cancer in 2007, aged 67. There's a gap of six and eight years between him and his siblings, Blair, who works in the music business, and Karen, a nurse and teacher. His upbringing was grounding. "Not all men of the church are necessarily good human beings, but my dad happens to be. My mum was, too," he says. "I feel very thankful for that."

He gained a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama at 17 – their youngest pupil. It was a combination of this and moving to Glasgow with his sister that brought him out of his shell. "Leaving home was one of the best things that happened to me. I was a bit green. I wasn't a particularly worldly 17-year-old." At drama school he was "surrounded by all these exotic older people who seemed to know about life. So it was a really brilliant time." He acted Ken Stott off the screen in Takin' Over the Asylum, the 1994 TV mini-series set in a Glasgow psychiatric-hospital radio station, playing bipolar DJ Campbell ("This is for all you having ECT tomorrow: hope you get some 'Good Vibrations'!"). On set he met Arabella Weir, moving to London the following year to spend five years as her lodger. He complained she never put the heating on; she teased him about alphabetising his CDs. Tennant was soon being talked up as a rising star of theatre, notably for comic roles – Touchstone in As You Like It, Captain Jack Absolute in Sheridan's The Rivals. "Even aged 22 he had an unusually strong sense of self," says Weir. "Most actors are in the business of wanting people to like them. He was: 'This is what I can do; I'm not interested in doing other jobs.'"

He was mesmeric as love-struck policeman DI Peter Carlisle in 2004's Blackpool and head- turning as Russell T Davies's Casanova a year later. "No one could get it right," says Davies. "Everyone was playing the swarthy romantic lead – and here was this man who simply danced all over the script."

"I think I've just been lucky, really," Tennant says, "because I'm not conventional leading-man stuff. I'm slightly left of centre. I remember going up for Casanova thinking: 'I haven't got a chance – the other people are much more traditional square-jawed types.'"

Plus, everyone agrees he's a generous team player. "When you're playing the leading role in a play, you have responsibilities that go beyond saying the lines," says Patrick Stewart. "You lead the company; you set an example. The stress of Hamlet must have got to him, but it never seemed to. You'd see him in the wings beforehand and you would have thought he was preparing to go out for dinner, he was so relaxed."

"Everyone said I would adore working with David, and they were right," says Kylie Minogue, one-time Doctor Who companion Astrid Peth. "He made me feel at ease. I also felt he trusted me, which was important – it was a step back into acting for me. My time on Doctor Who was hard work, but I felt somehow I was 'home'."

Tennant was back at Upper Boat in May, filming his final two Doctor Who episodes, "The End of Time". "Three weeks to go now," he said. "Three weeks and counting." On set John Simm was doing something terrible as The Master that it would be wrong to reveal. "What have you done, you monster?" shouted Bernard Cribbins, who's returning as Wilfred Mott, father of Catherine Tate's Donna Noble. Tennant was feeling good about his final scenes. "It's all very heroic," he explained. "My final 100-yard dash." They were being even more wary than usual about leaks. Some on-location photographs had appeared that week, to everyone's disappointment. "And someone was discovered here the other day with a scanner," Tennant tutted. "They had tuned themselves into the radio mics inside the building and were writing down the dialogue."

In June, the month after filming their finale, Tennant, Davies and John Barrowman travelled out to Comic-Con, the annual "popular arts" convention in San Diego. (Doctor Who has a US fanbase, while Torchwood has become the top-rated show on BBC America. Davies now works for BBC America in LA.) While he was there, Tennant found himself an American agent and did some auditioning. "Just sniffing around, vaguely seeing what was out there." This resulted in him being cast as the lead in comedy-drama Rex is Not Your Lawyer, a role NBC had been trying to fill for months. Tennant will play Rex Alexander, a panic attack-prone Chicago litigator who starts coaching his clients to represent themselves. The pilot's being directed by David Semel, who did House and Lost. "I went to bed one night having had conversations that we could come to terms for this pilot, woke up, and it was on the front of the Hollywood Reporter," he says. "It's a different world in America."

"I'm sure Hugh Laurie's success with House is an appropriate comparison," says Catherine Tate. "David's a brilliant comic actor. America would be mad not to love him."

He's also likely to play opposite Simon Pegg in John Landis's black-comedy remake of Burke & Hare, about the 19th-century body snatchers, and the internet is convinced he'll be the Riddler in the next Batman. "I probably should be," he says. "But you'd think my agent would have mentioned something if it was true."

Tennant finished his chat with Fearne Cotton, remembering to plug the upcoming episode. That evening he was off to Stratford to see his friend Richard Wilson in Twelfth Night. In 10 days' time, visa permitting, he'd be filming his pilot in LA. But first it was off to Television Centre and Simon Mayo's Radio 5 show. Down one corridor he ran into a class of schoolchildren being given a guided tour. They couldn't have been more stunned if Tennant had stepped out of their own TVs. "And they've just seen the Tardis outside," their teacher beamed – a replica prop lit up outside reception.

"That's how I got here," mugged Tennant. "I've just arrived."

A lady from BBC promotions appeared. "If you don't mind, I've got a 16-year-old niece in Australia. She loves three men: you, some Australian footballer and Roger Federer."

"What an interesting combination," said Tennant.

"So if you could just sign…"

On Mayo's show they discussed the upcoming Glorious 39 and St Trinian's 2 with film reviewer Mark Kermode. "Did you like St Trinian's 1?" Tennant teased. "It was one of the worst things that's ever happened to me," said Kermode.

But what everyone really wanted to talk about was Doctor Who. Tennant explained he'd just watched his final episode, with some key crew (more tears). Beforehand he'd been nervous. Afterwards he realised they'd done what they'd come to do. They were handing it over in rude health.

"I feel like I've done all right by my eight-year-old self," he said.★

Doctor Who will be shown on Christmas Day and New Year's Day on BBC 1 at 6pm