The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Montanabw^(talk) 03:19, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

• ... that Bernice Coppieters of the Ballets de Monte Carlo is Jean-Christophe Maillot's muse?

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Lily Bristow
• Comment: for Women's History Month

Created by Ipigott (talk), Rosiestep (talk). Nominated by Rosiestep (talk) at 14:23, 24 March 2014 (UTC).

• Forgive me if this is just my ignorance of ballet and choreography showing but I'm confused by the wording of the line "... she inspired Jean-Christophe Maillot to create roles for her in many of his most successful productions: Juliet in Romeo et Juliet, the title roles in Cinderella...". For me, the phrase "to create" indicates that Maillot wrote the role specifically for Coppieters but how can he "create" the role of Juliet and Cinderella which have already long been created? Since Coppieters' role as muse is an important component of the hook, I would greatly appreciate the clarification. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 22:36, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

I can assure you the wording is correct. Choreographers develop dancing routines specifically for the dancers taking part in a new production. It is also quite common to say that a ballerina, for example, "created roles" in a ballet written for her. See for example this recent article from the New York Times.--Ipigott (talk) 06:05, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I suspected that this was, indeed, correct among the jargon of the dance world but for those of us not as familiar with this world it is a tad confusing. Is there a middle ground we can hit to keep it correct for experts like yourself and those of us who don't know the jargon? Like maybe something along he lines of "... she inspired Jean-Christophe Maillot to create routines for her roles in many of his most successful productions: Juliet in Romeo et Juliet, the title roles in Cinderella..." Agne^Cheese/^Wine 15:07, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Your formulation would not be correct. It is not just the individual routines but the entire roles he created for her. I see here that there are literally hundreds of Wikipedia articles about ballet using the phrase "create roles". I wouldn't call it jargon, just correct usage. Every field of art and science has its own terminology and usage. I think Wikipedia should reflect this in its articles. I am certainly no more of an expert in dance than in any other field. I am simply familiar with the terminology used. In the interests of maintaining a high quality of language and syntax, I think it would be preferable to leave things as they are. If you really want to lower the quality, then I suppose "develop" might go part of the way but it would strike many as being incorrect.--Ipigott (talk) 16:03, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I think I see where you are going. When I first saw Cinderella and Romeo et Juliet, I was assuming that the ballets were renditions of the notable works much like a theater play. If I'm reading your correctly, Maillot's ballets are original works based upon the notable works with the roles of Juliet and Cinderella being original characters derived from, but not, THE Juliet and Cinderella characters. It's a shame that none of these ballets seem to have articles written on them. It probably would have aided a bit in avoiding the confusion with a link since I doubt I would be the only reader to think these ballets would be renditions of the original notable works. Maybe instead of using the term "develop", which you're not a fan of, we could just clarify this tidbit about the ballets themselves? Also, as an aside, it is odd that there is currently no mention of Coppieters at all in the Maillot article. It doesn't even mention that they were married. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:29, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

There are in fact articles on all the ballets although they might not mention Maillot's productions and those of other associated choreographers: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev), Cinderella (Prokofiev), The Sleeping Beauty (ballet), Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov), etc. I've now wikilinked them in the article although I would have preferred to have waited until there were specific articles on Maillot's productions. I can see that for someone with little knowledge of ballet, the links may be useful. Thanks for spotting the bit about Coppetiers being Maillot's wife. As far as I can see, only one source makes this assertion and other sources refer to Valentine. I have therefore removed it from the article. As for explaining the "tidbit about the ballets themselves", I don't think this article is the place to cover it all. I have simply substituted "write roles" for "create roles" in the hope we can move on. This article, together with many more recent additions, was in fact a contribution to Women's History Month (now over).--Ipigott (talk) 09:47, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

• I appreciate the attention given to the article and aide in clearing up confusion. As someone who works with articles in a fairly specialized field (wine), I know that a slightly different view has to be given to articles that appear on the main page to be witnessed by everyone versus the articles that are searched for by readers who likely have more of a background in the subject. While things might not appear to be WP:JARGON to those of us who work with these articles and to the readers who regularly are the ones reading them, I do hope you understand how they might appear to be for the vast majority of Main Page readers likely unfamiliar with the subject who may have never came across a single ballet-related article before.
  

That said, the article passes all other DYK criteria for date, length and referencing with no signs of close paraphrasing or plagiarism. It's good to go. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 17:56, 3 April 2014 (UTC)