Another path for ballet?

[Alexandra]

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre has announced its 2004-2005 season, and the mix of rep -- "opera" ballet, a 19th century classics and rock/pop ballet -- is becoming one wing of the ballet party, it seems. I've not yet seen a complete season built on it. (The other "wing of the party" is a mixture of avant-garde and crossover dance with a more abstract kind of pop ballet.) this is the first company I've seen -- may have missed one -- that says it wants to have rock/pop ballet as its signature.

"Indigo in Motion," the trend-setting 2000 collaboration between PBT and the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, established a powerful formula using popular music, strong choreography and a contemporary lines ballet technique. It set up a pattern that was designed to attract new and younger audiences, one that PBT now hopes will become a signature style for the company

Here's the article:

PBT plans Paul Simon tribute

Here's the rep:

"A Tribute to Paul Simon" (new work; Simon's "Graceland," so this is an Elvis tribute)

Stanton Welch's "Madame Butterfly"

Ben Stevenson's "Dracula"

"Sleeping Beauty"

And Artistic Director Terrence Orr's "Pittsburgh Nutcracker"

We have a few people from Pittsburgh here, and I'd be interested in what you think of this, and what your sense of the home town feel is, and I'd also be interested to know, from others, what your sense of this -- is ballet going to have a "A Tribute to George Harrison" period? Is that the next new thing? Is it a good way to draw in new people? It's a discussion we've had before, but this is a slightly new twist -- basing a season on full-evening ballets, but it's different from the "Swan Lake"/"Romeo and Juliet" mix.

[sandik]

I missed seeing this when it was first posted.

If I'm understanding your question correctly, you wonder if we are in for a spate of ballets not just created to popular music, but somehow reflecting that aesthetic as well? And if there is or will be a company whose primary raison d'etre is to create those works?

Answering the second question first, the nature of most ballet companies (that most of them are based in a community, rather than primarily a touring org) means that they usually have to be many things for many people -- a representative of the breadth of the art form. So that the Pittsburgh repertory you list (a little classical work, a little pop-art-ish work, a Nutcracker or something else suitably holiday) seems very typical to me. During James Canfield's directorship, Oregon Ballet Theater was very close to a rock ballet company, and yet they performed standard classical works (and from what I've heard, Canfield's Nutcracker was a very traditional production)

As far as the first question goes, we've already seen a fairly steady stream of works to popular music, but the era of "popular" has ranged from early 20th (ragtime) to current. I don't imagine this will diminish -- what I find interesting is watching how choreographers deal with this material as it shifts from contemporary to historical. When Scott Joplin's work became better known in the 1970s (thanks, in part, to the film The Sting) it was used for several ballets. Some treated it as an example of its era, and the choreography tried to reflect that period. Other dancemakers used it just as "danceable music," without reference to its original time. The more contemporary the score, the harder it is for the choreographer to take that first path, to create a work that exemplifies a particular time, not our own.

[Alexandra]

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre brought its NEW! TAKING IT TO THE EDGE, PUSHING THE ENVELOPE, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE!!!! Sting ballet to Wolf Trap. Here's Sarah Kaufman's summary of the event in Thursday's (August 26) Washington Post:

A program note states that "A Brand New Day" has taken the company's "contemporary ballet program another step toward the edge, pushing the envelope yet again." Yet nothing has less "edge" than recycled familiarity. Pushing the envelope involves taking artistic risks, and performing mediocre choreography set to one of the biggest hitmakers in pop history is about as risky as serving ice cream to toddlers. You know they will lap it up, as the audience lapped up the Wolf Trap program. But what, in the end, has been accomplished beyond an empty treat?

[ninjarina]

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre brought its NEW!  TAKING IT TO THE EDGE, PUSHING THE ENVELOPE, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE!!!! Sting ballet to Wolf Trap.  Here's Sarah Kaufman's summary of the event in Thursday's (August 26) Washington Post:

A program note states that "A Brand New Day" has taken the company's "contemporary ballet program another step toward the edge, pushing the envelope yet again." Yet nothing has less "edge" than recycled familiarity. Pushing the envelope involves taking artistic risks, and performing mediocre choreography set to one of the biggest hitmakers in pop history is about as risky as serving ice cream to toddlers. You know they will lap it up, as the audience lapped up the Wolf Trap program. But what, in the end, has been accomplished beyond an empty treat?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

actually alot of european companies have done stuff like this - good to see that companies in the USA are starting to catch on.it can only make them better - and needless to say the opera becomes alot more bearable !!

[Mel Johnson]

I don't know that it's such a good thing. American companies have an annoying tendency not just to "catch on" to an idea, they tend to dive straight in over their heads, and produce whole evenings of featherweight stuff that's the equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons. The pop music of thirty-five years ago has a general trend of becoming "light classic" music anyway.

[kfw]

we've already seen a fairly steady stream of works to popular music, but the era of "popular" has ranged from early 20th (ragtime) to current.  I don't imagine this will diminish -- what I find interesting is watching how choreographers deal with this material as it shifts from contemporary to historical.  When Scott Joplin's work became better known in the 1970s (thanks, in part, to the film The Sting) it was used for several ballets.  Some treated it as an example of its era, and the choreography tried to reflect that period.  Other dancemakers used it just as "danceable music," without reference to its original time.  The more contemporary the score, the harder it is for the choreographer to take that first path, to create a work that exemplifies a particular time, not our own.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Speculating wildly in a different direction here, I wonder if and how the popularity of "pop" music and dance and its very different aesthetic/s might influence the dancing and staging of the classic works. Yes, classical technique deteriorates if it's not used. But what I'm wondering is if, for example, a pop aesthetic (an absurdly broadbrush term, I know) produced the travesty bits in ABT's Polovtsian Dances.

[Hans]

That sounds plausible, kfw.