Pointe shoe quiz September 23, 2010

Who is the maker of this dancer’s pointes?

Men and pointe shoes

Sweaty Capezio Glisse pointes

Fetishes - Men and pointe shoes: A few posts ago I offered to write about aspects of fetishes that members were particularly interested in that I hadn’t written about before. One subject requested was my experience with men and their fascination with pointe shoes and how they change the male view of a woman. From my experience men seem to think that once she puts on a pair of pink satin pointe shoes a woman changes from just another pretty girl with lovely long legs to a magical creature with a dual personality. One that is beautiful, soft, and feminine, the epitome of grace and strength commanding respect and admiration while at the same time being strong, smart and without shedding a tear capable of breaking him in half with her legs while he is having sex with her.

In pointes she can at times be exquisitely virtuous or unbelievably cruel depending on her moods and men in pointe-awe are in her thrall. To a male in pointe-awe a women en pointe seems infinitely desirable and forever unattainable and he longs for the touch of her fingers or the brush of her lips against his own. He dreams of fondling the engorged shaft of her clitoris nestled in the cleft of her mons veneris to get her aroused wet and ready for penetration as she balances on the platforms of her pointes. He brings her along gasping and quivering as his fingers stroke her raised clitoral shaft while she moans “Take me now” in his ear. His fingers move to the softness of her labia, feeling their warmth and fullness, wet with her natural lubricant as he spreads her inner lips to position his shaft for the thrust that will drive him deep into her hard flat belly. He dreams of driving himself into her depths, impaling her on his massive rod as surely as a butterfly is impaled by a pin to its specimen card in a museum while her legs are wrapped around his waist. And, inside his fantasy ballerina he plants his seed up against her cervix giving his DNA a chance at immortality if he can defeat her contraceptive precautions and impregnate her.

Two endings to a ballerina fantasy: Here I think male fantasies diverge. Some men are just happy to have been given a tight, hot, wet, deep vessel in which to release their seed while others want to dominate the ballerina of their fantasies by getting her pregnant despite her best efforts at contraception, proving (in his mind anyway) that he is a dominant male and since she carries his child she is his property. I think if pressed most men would deny they have any secret wish to impregnate their sexual fantasy, but if it should happen and she told him she was pregnant by him I’ll bet he would smile, give a fist pump and a Shout, “YES!” as that would be proof of his potency. Only then he would decide what to do about his fantasy ballerina’s situation before she got her baby bump and she was forced to take a leave of absence from dancing if she wasn’t fired. Of course left to make her own decision a woman having devoted ten or fifteen years of her life to a successful career as a ballet dancer would almost certainly terminate any accidental pregnancy and continue with her career showing her lover the indomitable and perhaps darker side of her being.

Men have confided that another common masturbation fantasy is having sex with a ballerina in a tutu and pointe shoes. Special thong-back fetish tutus are made for escorts or girlfriends who want to cater to this male fantasy. The tutu when viewed from above represents a seemingly impossible barrier to get past. However, when viewed from below the thong panty covers her vulva when she raises a leg in développé, arabesque or attitude, but when she raises en pointe and bends over her partner can ease the thong to one side exposing her vulva, spread her labia and penetrate her fully with a single massive thrust.

Toe-shoe scents: Then there are the more kinky aspects of pointe-shoe worship. Things like smelling the aroma of a dancer’s estrogenic sweat soaked pointes with the scent of damp leather, fabric and melted paste. That’s why so many men with pointe fetishes like their favorite fantasy dancer(s) to wear shoes made of traditional materials; satin, leather, paper and paste. High-tech pointes like Gaynors have their own fetish following, but the scents from a pair of sweat dampened GMs is nowhere near as rich with the full-bodied mixing of scents as are a freshly used pair of, say, Freed Classic pointes.

Semen and pointe shoes: Another kink in pointe shoe worship is ejaculating in a favorite fantasy ballerina’s toe-shoes. There are several ways to do that. If the man has a pair of his fantasy ballerina’s pointes purchased from one of the ballet company boutiques or just bought a pair from a local dance shop to use as a pleasure talisman he can ejaculate in them directly with no consequences other than his own sexual pleasure. If however, he wants to come in a girlfriends pointes that she is still using for rehearsals and class then she may let him squirt semen directly in the boxes.

Silicone toe pads

Toe pads: Or, she might want him to fill her toe pads with semen. Pointe shoe toe pads are made from a number of different materials, lambs wool, acrylic fleece, gel between layers of fabric and silicone gel pads among other things. Different dancers prefer different materials for toe protection during performances, but one thing most of us agree on is using silicone gel pads as containment vessels when semen is involved. With silicone gel pads no semen is absorbed by the material, the semen pools in the bottom of the pad and there is no evaporation as it mixes with the dancers sweat and toe cheese (the paste of skin cells that are rubbed off calluses and the lint from tights mixed with blood or puss from injured toes).

For the rest of this toe pad discussion I’ll be talking about a dancer using silicone gel pads for her lover to come in. Filling a ballerina’s toe pads will concentrate the man’s load (about 5-7ml a bit more than a teaspoon full) in a pool at the bottom of the toe cup so that when she pushes her toes into the pad his semen squishes up between her toes. The toe pads are worn under convertible foot tights so once a lover fills her pads with semen it is easy to slip her bare toes into the fluid filled pads and then pull the foot of the tights back over the pads to hold them in place.

Silicone pads under tights has become the preferred method of wearing pointe shoe ejaculate in Vegas if the man wants his ballerina escort to dance in semen filled pointes. His load contained in her protective pads might lengthen the life of her shoes a tiny bit as it is less fluid softening the boxes. However, a far greater advantage of ejaculating into silicone toe pads is that after she dances the pads can be used as part of a gag (for either him or her) or as part of an erotic strip-tease after which the man can suck on her sweaty pads tasting his lovers estrogenic sweat and toe cheese as he thrusts into her G-spot or cervix. A clean set of toe pads should be used for each client. Any dancer using a topical anesthetic like Nupercainal cream should be sure to keep these medicated pads stored separately to prevent giving her lover toe-pads to suck on that had anesthetic cream in them.

Dancers with lovers into toe-play need to keep in mind that calluses on a girls un-taped toes immersed in semen filled toe pads will soften quicker so that sort of game should be played only briefly or when she has no major performances coming up so that if her calluses deteriorate she can recover before she needs the toe protection her calluses provide.

Toe pads as souvenirs: I know we are talking eroticism here, but from an economic standpoint the substitution of toe pads as souvenirs rather than the pointe shoes an escort was wearing during a commercial encounter has certain advantages. First it makes the souvenir less noticeable when the TSA or his wife is searching a clients luggage and second it reduces the cost considerably as there was often a lot of life left in an escort’s pointes that were being given away after a 5K encounter. However, if the client asks the escort will give him the shoes she was wearing when he inseminated her.

Gay and Lesbian escorts

A gay submissive in a ‘prison stockade’ device

Gays & Lesbians as escorts: A long time friend and reader wrote: “While I enjoy your blogs, your training blogs mostly concern women. I think because, there are no men in your escort training classes. Since I am curious on most new things, this image [of a “Prison Stockade” with Fucking Rod is getting a lot of attention. This restrictive device locks the slave(s) hands, ankles and neck in steel completely immobilizing them.] brought on this query. How do you train a man to be a escort slave? Do they use the same machines? or same methods?”

Well, first, we do train both male and female candidates to be escorts. From the males is where I get a lot of my stallions for casual in-house encounters when I need to release stress during working hours. However, the heterosexual to gay ratio of candidates is about 10:1 to cover the far greater heterosexual demand. The Gay escorts are trained using the same training equipment commercially available to the gay/lesbian BDSM community, with the exception of pelvic trainers and strap-on dildos for lesbians. We insist that our lesbians strengthen their vaginal muscles even though most aren’t going to be sucking semen from a penetrating penis. A Sappho-slave being able to crush her Domme’s fingers when she inserts them in her slaves’ birth canal is one of her Signature offerings and our girls are in demand by lesbian CEOs who come to Vegas for conventions. Our lesbian girls are all expert as penetrators as well as being penetrated during dive sex so are fitted with gas guards to protect against water or air being forced into their uteri when penetrated by a strap-on during dive-sex.

Unisex training equipment includes the usual line of punitive collars, cuffs, corsets, gags, butt plugs, steel electro-stim anal plugs, gimp helmets and gasmasks equipped with various sizes of inflatable penis gags and latex rebreather bags and of course ballet boots. And then there are the rubber or leather encasement suits and diving equipment. Even the lowly silicone swim cap becomes a fetish pleasure toy for breathplay.

We have a small team of Gay trainers who take gay candidates through the course. We don’t train many gay men because the ‘accident’ rate is so high for slaves that it’s difficult to find acceptable candidates and the risks aren’t worth the expense. A male escort has to have a huge ego and be a great risk taker – in addition to having a lovely body - to be a gay slave for our clientele which is small but very demanding. They push the slave to edge of endurance for the human body and most gay subs don’t last very long. If they survive three or four encounters w/o being seriously injured they are considered very experienced. Most are so severely injured by their second encounter from things like: brain damage from lack of oxygen during breathplay, or a torn colon when an inflatable anal plug is over-filled, or a ruptured colon from too energetic thrusting from a very large partner using a performance enhancer, or semen in the lungs that causes pneumonia from not swallowing when he should have during fellatio, or their toes are crushed in hydraulic pointe-trainers that 'malfunction'. There are very few gays who need acceptance badly enough that they mind-fuck themselves into believing that they will be safe and that their partner cares.

Lesbians generally are not nearly as destructive of escorts and some strong friendships have developed between the Domme who rented the girl as her slave for the duration of her conference. We have a very popular line of personal assistant slaves for visiting lesbian CEOs. The girls are highly educated with elite social skills and are proficient in general office tasks. They dress in conservative business attire and carry a tote with the CEOs fave sex toys so when they are alone the slave can caress away her Dommes stress or accept punishment between business sessions.

NYCB’s 2010 Fall season

NYCB Maria Kowroski and Sébastien Marcovici in "Movements for Piano and Orchestra"

The New York Times
September 17, 2010
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

A Way With Balanchine (and With a Talking Dancer, Too)

"New York City Ballet is presenting no fewer than 27 works during its inaugural fall season, 10 of them during this opening week. By world ballet standards, this is astonishing. Here, nobody even remarks on it. On Wednesday night four of George Balanchine’s ballets re-entered the repertory, and suddenly the eye, the ear, the mind and the imagination were again all full.

First, as part of the company’s venture in making ballet more accessible, the young principal dancer Tyler Angle gave a curtain speech. In this new City Ballet experiment, a different principal will introduce each program this week. Mr. Angle was a good opener. He talks as he dances: affable, youthful, generous, not completely in control of all his effects but always appealingly personable.

Much of what he said was, beneath the charm, shrewd. He singled out the two most advanced modernist pieces on the bill — the Stravinsky duo “Monumentum pro Gesualdo” and “Movements for Piano and Orchestra” — as his favorites. He drew attention to the amazing inventiveness of the pas de deux in “Danses Concertantes.” And he offered a couple of human-interest items: Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, the lead couple of this “Danses Concertantes” performance, had become engaged, and Mr. Angle had throughout the summer watched Tiler Peck, Ana Sophia Scheller, Sterling Hyltin and Amar Ramasar rehearsing and dancing “Who Cares?” in different situations, once at 3 a.m.

If this gives new audiences a way into the ballets, I’m all for it. For those of us who’ve been watching Balanchine repertory since before Mr. Angle was born, the danger is that we tend to be distracted by Mr. Angle’s points, or to react against them. You certainly watch a pas de deux differently when you’ve just been told its dancers will get married; you look less for choreography than for gossipy clues to their relationship.

The high point of Wednesday’s performance came in the new assertiveness with which Maria Kowroski — excellently partnered by Charles Askegard in “Monumentum” and by Sébastien Marcovici in “Movements” — danced. Coolly, elegantly, she took full charge of both works, from curtain up. When City Ballet’s performance is compared with that given by the Suzanne Farrell Ballet this June, City Ballet’s dancers, especially the six women in “Movements,” do less to reveal the internal geometries and human impulses of the choreography. (They’re also inclined to dance with their weight relatively back. In Balanchine it cannot be too far forward.) But Ms. Kowroski — in her long-limbed grandeur always a physically breathtaking instrument for Balanchine choreography — is giving the most alert, powerful and eloquent performances of these works at City Ballet since Ms. Farrell herself more than 30 years ago.

By contrast, “Danses Concertantes” — like Balanchine’s “Serenade” on Tuesday night — has lost some of the remarkable freshness it had when it returned to the repertory in the spring. It’s fair to look forward to how successive performances of a revival will build: to see how artists, now knowing they’re more than capable, can develop its already impressive achievement. Instead, however, both “Serenade” and “Danses Concertantes” show slight signs of crumbling. “Serenade” should recover, but “Danses Concertantes” has many high-exposure moments of precision, and, notably among some of its supporting dancers, Wednesday’s performance had too many blips for us to relax in the abundant good humor of the choreography. And though Ms. Fairchild is sweet enough, she lacks wit.

Never mind the smudges in Wednesday’s delivery of the Gershwin classic “Who Cares?” What we should not overlook, however, is a pervasive blandness that now shrinks this ballet. The most exceptional of this cast was Ms. Peck, dancing the “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” solo and the “Man I Love” duet with her tremendous, and unfailing, velocity, skill and good cheer. Why is it that her heart seems closed, whereas Patricia McBride’s, in the original cast, seemed almost frighteningly open?

It’s hard to explain how a Balanchine ballet, in which dancers perform complex steps without acting, can become an encompassing drama, and it’s harder to explain how that drama can turn pale and polite over the years. The key lies not in technique — City Ballet’s dancers all move with a speed that few dancers elsewhere possess — but with the erosion of the more high-definition aspects of Balanchine style (where the weight is placed; how the dancer arrives just ahead of the beat; the drastic contrasts between closed and open, up and down, straight and angled).

My memory is that Ms. McBride was not unlike Ms. Peck — only 20 times more lucid, more enthralling, more unpredictable. Ms. Peck is a conscientious worker, and I don’t doubt we’ll watch her continue to build her performance impressively over the seasons. But will City Ballet help her do so, with top-level rather than routine coaching?

The blandest component of the cast is Mr. Ramasar: he makes no mistakes, and he does nothing I remember the next moment. Ms. Scheller, despite superior polish and charm, is along the same lines. Ms. Hyltin, in Karin von Aroldingen’s elusive and taxing role, is altogether more individual — with her big strokes of light-hearted initiative, she could be a screwball-comedy heroine — but she too needs guidance.

“Who Cares?” still bubbles over with fascinating craft and spirit; the audience isn’t bored. But this is a ballet where high art and low art meet, where you should feel Fred Astaire and Apollo passing on equal inspiration into the impulsiveness and charm of latter-day New York, where danger and exhilaration coexist at every moment. It once mattered as it now does not."


Personal comment: I’m posting this because it gives another critics perspective on how a pre-performance chat can change how even an extremely knowledgeable persons looks at dancers in roles:

“If this gives new audiences a way into the ballets, I’m all for it. For those of us who’ve been watching Balanchine repertory since before Mr. Angle was born, the danger is that we tend to be distracted by Mr. Angle’s points, or to react against them. You certainly watch a pas de deux differently when you’ve just been told its dancers will get married; you look less for choreography than for gossipy clues to their relationship.”

Also Alastair Macaulay’s insight about how today’s dancers compare with stars of the past:

“But Ms. [Maria] Kowroski — in her long-limbed grandeur always a physically breathtaking instrument for Balanchine choreography — is giving the most alert, powerful and eloquent performances of these works at City Ballet since Ms. Farrell herself more than 30 years ago.”

And of young Principal dancers:

“My memory is that Ms. [Patricia] McBride was not unlike Ms. [Tiler] Peck — only 20 times more lucid, more enthralling, more unpredictable. Ms. Peck is a conscientious worker, and I don’t doubt we’ll watch her continue to build her performance impressively over the seasons. But will City Ballet help her do so, with top-level rather than routine coaching?

Ms. [Sterling] Hyltin, in Karin von Aroldingen’s elusive and taxing role, is altogether more individual — with her big strokes of light-hearted initiative, she could be a screwball-comedy heroine — but she too needs guidance.

And this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it more clearly put about how the HD aspects of Balanchine technique taught at SAB change the dynamic of a ballet:

“It’s hard to explain how a Balanchine ballet, in which dancers perform complex steps without acting, can become an encompassing drama, and it’s harder to explain how that drama can turn pale and polite over the years. The key lies not in technique — City Ballet’s dancers all move with a speed that few dancers elsewhere possess — but with the erosion of the more high-definition aspects of Balanchine style (where the weight is placed; how the dancer arrives just ahead of the beat; the drastic contrasts between closed and open, up and down, straight and angled).”

Pointe shoe quiz 09-18-2010

Who is the maker of these shoes?

BDSM Fall Training Pt II

Double penetration with electro-stimulation

Anal and Vaginal hooks: There has recently been a great deal of interest in vaginal and anal hooks expressed by readers, so I thought I’d accompany this entry with an image taken at a lecture-demonstration last year during my Advanced Sexual Techniques class. This double penetration with a vaginal ram and anal hook is particularly diabolical because the woman’s hands are tied behind her back and to the hook so that if she tries to move her hands the hook goes deeper. But that’s not all. In the event she can keep from squirming from the ram moving in and out she is given a jolt of electricity to cause her vaginal muscles to spasm causing her to jerk her arms and set the hook deeper in her anus. Only a very few adventuresome students volunteer to try this arrangement once they hear the woman in the demonstration scream.

Desert training: In less than twelve weeks the first of our fall survival training courses will begin. That’s where the girls will be taken out in the desert wearing nothing but a latex body condom, hood and gloves their feet locked into leather ballet boots. They will be let out thirty miles into the mountains with only a GPS to guide them back to civilization. It’s fun to see who makes it and who doesn’t. The candidates are already strengthening their ankles for the ordeal. If you think walking in ballet boots on a smooth surface takes skill you should try walking on uneven and shifting rocky sandy soil. I’m really good at walking in ballet boots and I found it difficult. So this will be no stroll in the park even for professional ballet boot wearers.

Heavy Rubber survival: We are offering a new course on heavy rubber survival this year because there have been so many women drown or suffocate while wearing heavy rubber encasement suits. This won’t prevent Doms from intentionally sabotaging their Subs drysuits so they flood or from having their air shut off or hoses cut in a fit of rage. But careless things like over weighting, accidentally running out of air and neck-seal failures can be substantially reduced if not eliminated by attention to detail before diving and we will teach some things a woman can do that will improve her chances of survival if her partner tries to kill her in a ‘diving accident’ during a submerged tryst, something that is becoming distressingly frequent as more of the unstable elements in the fetish community become involved with dive-sex. We will be training using two maker’s rubber drysuits; the HydroGlove latex waist entry suit and the heavier Avon shoulder entry drysuit.

Femme Fatale alert: In a surprising reversal to a common fetish community problem there is a beautiful woman predator killing local rubber-boys. She is showing creativity by drowning one by flooding his rebreather bag, another by puncturing his heavy rubber encasement suit, slipping a shiv into his back between his ribs and twisting the blade to rip open his heart and the third by suffocation or possibly the side effects of being suspended from an anal hook. The victims seem to have been chosen at random, not from the short list of men who would immediately come to a local rubber-girl’s mind if she wanted to off a cruel rubber Dom. So far three handsome rubber-boys have been found dead either at the bottom of an encounter pool or in an encounter training room.

One, wearing a Russian gasmask hood that had been modified to take a rebreather bag, was found with his 3 liter latex rebreather bag slit. He was wearing a deflated Avon heavy rubber drysuit and was found at the bottom of the dive-well of his pool weighted down from wearing canvas and lead dive boots and a weight belt. He couldn’t have lasted more than 3 minutes underwater as there was no supply of air to his mask so he must have thought it was a breathplay encounter. But of course with his rebreather slit his mask flooded and he drowned.

Another man was found in his encounter room suspended over the bed. He was wearing a House of Harlot latex encasement suit with his hands zip tied behind his back and with the valve on his latex rebreather bag attached to his SGE 150 gasmask closed. She was able to do that by slitting the crotch of his rubber suit and shoving a large well greased anal hook up his rectum. Then, attaching the hook to a winch above the bed she hoisted him by the anal hook about 18 inches off the bad. He only squirmed for a few minutes and his screams were muffled by the ballistic polymer gasmask until he suffocated.

The third victim was knifed in bed and showed the least originality, except that she had made sure that the seals on his encasement suit (a HydroGlove drysuit) hood, gloves and booty seals were watertight so that when he bled out his suit filled with blood and none leaked on to the bed linens.

It’s thought her victims picked her up in local heavy-rubber clubs and the toxicology reports show all three had been given Rohypnol which explains how she was able to handle men twice her size and strength. So far there have been no sightings on security cams of the victims picking up a woman who could be their killer. The two men who had security cams running captured her image but she was completely encased in a black latex body condom with hood, gloves and booties. She has a dancers build long legs, short trunk, long neck and small head and breasts. She was wearing a SGE 150 gasmask so very little can be seen of her face. As far as can be told at this point she doesn’t seem to be taking souvenirs.

Breaking barriers

The mystique of the ballerina

The New York Times
September 16, 2010
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Hark! They speak!

Ballerinas Take a New Approach: Talking

Those ethereal creatures at New York City Ballet, who communicate solely with physical grace and train their whole lives to perform in silence, are now talking to the audience from the stage.

This week, the opening of the company’s fall season, principal dancers have been stepping out to say a few words about themselves and the coming programs.

The unusual move is part of a broader effort by City Ballet to humanize dance, connect better with the audience and, ultimately, sell more tickets.

“Ballet has always had this stigma, this mystique, this standoffish art form that you couldn’t touch,” Peter Martins, the company’s ballet master in chief, said in an interview this week.

The new approach, he added, is “about breaking barriers.”

But more than just ballet’s mystique is on the table. Conversational dancers fit in to a larger endeavor at City Ballet, the result of a round of strategic planning that led to several changes meant to turn ballet into a less formal experience.

At Tuesday and Wednesday performances, for instance, the number of intermissions will generally drop from two to one and the shows will start a half-hour earlier.

The preshow talking goes against a subtle tradition. For generations the culture of ballet has involved hiding the pain of dancing, keeping personal lives behind the curtain and suppressing the mundane aspects of the art form so that when the baton goes down, audiences enter a world apart — one of beauty and form and pure movement.

Dancers are trained to land softly and keep any sounds inside them as they move with vigor around the stage. Even the stages are designed to suppress sound. And forget about Dale Carnegies in tutus: public speaking courses have no place at ballet schools.

So it is no surprise that the move has failed to catch on with some of City Ballet’s 24 principals. Mr. Martins said that he wanted to institute the practice for the whole four-week fall segment of the season, but could not muster enough enthusiasm. “A number said, ‘Please don’t make me,’ ” Mr. Martins recounted.

Sara Mearns, who danced on opening night Tuesday, was one. “I’m not good with huge crowds,” she said in an interview.

Mr. Martins left open the possibility that preperformance addresses could be extended past Sunday, the end of the first week, depending on how audiences, and the dancers, receive them.

He said the idea was based on audience research, which included focus groups, surveys and individual interviews. But even he had reservations.

“I’m of two minds, truthfully,” he said. “I grew up in a world where we were told: ‘You guys dance. Just dance, don’t talk.’ But on the other hand, we live in a different world. The public really wants to know people.”

That desire has not escaped other institutions. More and more, orchestra members are being asked to speak to audiences from the stage or mingle with them before and after concerts. Microphones are making new inroads in sports, finding their way into boxing corners, locker rooms, race cars and dugouts during events. Artists are increasingly aware of the need to explicate their work.

Making dancers more accessible to balletgoers can be a good step, said Charles L. Reinhart, director of the American Dance Festival, but risks reducing the critical faculties of the audience. “If you go too far, then it takes away from the art,” he said. “You’re kind of influenced a bit in looking at the work — ‘that’s my kid up there.’ ”

Dancers, of course, have been talking in public in various ways — at special fund-raising performances, educational events and children’s programs. Very occasionally, dancers are given lines to speak or sing, as in George Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and Jerome Robbins’s “West Side Story Suite.”

Less well-known is that dancers often talk to one another during performances — sotto voce or turned away from the audience. Sometimes it is a “sorry” for a wrong hand clasp or a reminder of an about-to-be-forgotten step or guidance for a last-minute substitute performer.

“You’re not supposed to know that,” said Ashley Bouder, a City Ballet principal who will be introducing Saturday night’s program. “I’ve been talked through some pas de deux before.” Ms. Bouder is also one of a growing number of dancers who regularly give insight into their lives on Facebook and Twitter.

But audiences rarely experienced what was on display Wednesday evening at the David H. Koch Theater, when Tyler Angle hopped out sideways from the curtain and addressed the 2,500 people in the house.

Charming and self-deprecating in black jeans, an Austrian-style short-waisted jacket and sockless wingtips, he apologized for his “rehearsal hair” and joked that with Fashion Week taking place in Lincoln Center, the dancers were feeling self-conscious. “We’re used to being the thinnest, most fashionable people” in the area, he said.

Mr. Angle called that evening’s program one of “interesting things, small gems and a slam-bang finish.” He dropped a little gossip — two principals that evening, Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, were engaged — made a comment about each work and hurried off to the wings.

Backstage, during the opening work, several colleagues, sweaty and panting after exits, congratulated him. “You were really good,” said Tiler Peck, who embraced him. Mr. Angle said he felt completely comfortable, helped by the proportions of the theater. “The audience doesn’t feel worlds away,” he said.

At intermission, several balletgoers praised his appearance. “It makes it a little less formal, and a little closer to the audience,” said Kathleen Leslie of Portland, Me.

The new strategy includes meet-the-dancer talks before performances the first week. On Wednesday Ms. Mearns and Joaquin De Luz answered questions in front of about 75 people in the first ring. These listeners learned that Ms. Mearns was shown little appreciation by her teachers at the School of American Ballet and that she has a puppy, and that Mr. De Luz studied bullfighting, paints and calls his mother before every performance.

A new marketing campaign was also set in motion that features portraits of the principals as people — not in costume or stage makeup. The photographs appear in advertisements, brochures and an exhibition on the theater promenade. Some are also projected on buildings around town. City Ballet has even created a mini-Web site, nycballet.com/dancers, dedicated to each principal.

Ms. Bouder said that she was a “little apprehensive” about speaking on Saturday. But, she added, “I really like our new campaign pushing our dancers out there and making us friendlier and more accessible.” She acknowledged that the loss of distance between viewer and dancer could potentially dampen the experience.

“But to be honest, in the time we are living in, with all the technology and how everything is accessible with so many outlets, we’ve fallen a little behind,” she said. But, she added, “there’s still mystique at the ballet.”

Personal comment: I hope that Peter Martins goes slowly with making his dancers available. It’s not clear at this point if he understands (though his “being of two minds” about it is a hopeful sign) that if dancers lose their mystique it would be a major problem. We are already seeing that celebrities are withdrawing from Twitter and other Social Media because of its intrusive nature. I’m not suggestion that a ballerina’s occasional pre-performance chat with ballet-goers before a performance is as personally invasive as Twitter can be, but familiarity really can breed contempt, or at least disinterest, and disinterest in a performer is deadly.