It's always fascinating - and sometimes a little disquieting - when two first-rate critics violently disagree.

Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs - and her violently checkered career - attest.

Raimund Hoghe is a little man with a spinal deformity who was once Pina Bausch's dramaturge.

Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of Las Vegas by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who insists, violently, on being addressed as 'Ben.'

The first movement ballerina should be a paradigm of strength and authority.

I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.