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Balanchine, Martins and "modern" choreography


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A few thoughts on choreography, provoked by Tuesday evening's (6/15/04) NYCB performance of Concerto for Two Solo Pianos.

One of my favorite Balanchine sound bites this year was in the PBS special where he defends himself, light-heartedly, against the charge that he doesn't make "story" ballets. (This is a paraphrase, from memory) -- You have a boy and a girl on stage, a pas de deux, already you have a love story. How much story you want? --

Well, that's just about enough story for me. But in Peter Martins' Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, you have a girl and two boys on stage, the two both dancing with the girl, but somehow you don't have a story. Sometimes it seems as though something is going to develop, notably in the physical tension between Alexandra Ansanelli and Sebastien Marcovici, but then a curious thing happens: Ansanelli suddenly goes limp and appears to have lost all consciousness of what she's doing or who she's doing it with. Then the action begins again, only to be interrupted by another sudden psycho-physical collapse. In fact the ballet ends with Ansanelli draped limply over the two boys' arms, her head lolling as if she's in a stupor. I point this out because it was particularly frustrating, in a ballet with dynamic music, and with a ballerina of extraordinary sensuality and expressiveness, and also because I think it is a typical Martins gesture. It has a certain "modern" connotation -- the cutting off of empathy,, the episodic and spasmodic retreat from emotion -- but to me, it's a cop-out. This kind of thing is easier to do than to push the story forward, to make something or allow something to happen between the characters. It's the problem, I think with much modern choreography, both ballet and modern dance. Instead of a story we have the ruins of a story, wrecked by the choreographer's inability or unwillingness to show relationships developing rather than self-destructing. Or maybe it's just the problem with the "modern" age. (Let's not forget that that age is officially OVER.)

Balanchine never fell for it. Even in something like Episodes, where the relationships are literally turned upside down, nobody ever drops out of consciousness or relationship. Am I wrong?

Edited by flipsy
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No, flipsy, unless I'm wrong, too.

The only example I can bring to mind of Peter Martins couples in a relationship that is not based primarily on anger are the Zakouski pair and the Heather and Jock roles in Auvergne, which is quite saccharine. I've drawn my own conclusions, which are probably not appropriate to post here. :wink:

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Amen!

It's the problem, I think with much modern choreography, both ballet and modern dance. Instead of a story we have the ruins of a story, wrecked by the choreographer's inability or unwillingness to show relationships developing rather than self-destructing.

Oh, I agree. I think it might be that the problem is they can't develop anything -- not a narrative line nor a movement theme. Watching these ballets is like reading something -- whether it's a short story or a news article -- that's all topic sentences, jumping from one to another, and then just trailing off.....

Is this lack of skill, a character flaw, or something intrinisic to postmodernism, which encouarges a photographer to display every picture he shot, say, instead of selecting what he wants to show. (Who's to say what's best? YOU choose. I don't want to be directive.....) Aesthetic, or cop out? YOU choose.....

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I agree that lack of skill or craft is at the root of the problem of contemporary choreography, but it's also true that alienation and anger have become ingrained in our cultural expectations. It's hard to imagine a choreographer these days making a pas de deux that is unironically tender and loving. Perhaps that's why some younger members of the audience consider choreographers as recently with us as Balanchine and Ashton to be old-fashioned, because they made ballets that showed people as -- gasp! -- happy.

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That's a good point, I think, Ari. We're also not allowed to have resolved (much less happy) endings.

When I taught aesthetics at a local university to graduate students about a decade ago, they were absolutely stunned by Aristotle, and the notion that art should represent the ideal. They'd never heard of this before -- and some had gone to good undergraduate schools (Smith, Johns Hopkins). When they learned that this aesthetic had prevailed for, oh, a decade or two, they were even more stunned. Not that everything has to have a happy ending, but we're boxed in now. After the Romantic era, dance has centered around the pas de deux and love themes (the pre-Romantic era, when ballet was based on Greek myths, allowed jealousy, rage, treason, hatred and all manner of interesting possibilities) and after Modernism, none of this can be happy because we're all going to be Bombed and must mourn early. Time for a change. Unrelenting angst can be as wearisome as unremitting cheer.

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Flipsy -- I have a preliminary question on your specific example of Ansanelli last night and then a comment on your wider question, which does not depend anyhow on your response to last night's performance of Concerto for Two Pianos.

Re last night, I also saw the Martins - and I agree - I was struck with Ansanelli's lack of consistency in the role (which is why I called her performance idiosyncratic). What I noticed was that, amidst prolonged passages of the strongest sensuality, or psycho-pseudo-sexuality, she would suddenly go "cutsey," come out of character as it were, and give a goofy, ingenue, insouciante smile either to her partners on stage or to the audience. This mode would last some seconds. Then back to the hardcore grind. My question is, was this Martins' intent, was it coached, or was it simply Alexandra? Because I've seen Alexandra do that kind of thing before. It's speculation, but if Janie Taylor hadn't been hurt, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see Taylor in that role last night instead of Ansanelli. So what we had may have been Ansanelli dancing Taylor dancing ... who, Heather Watts? This is very old vintage Martins, debuted in 1983 according to the program.

The larger question is unaffected, however. I reckon that the lack of development in these Ballets is the trap of formalism. If you have an estalished story Ballet, you have the outlines of character development. It was the peculiar talent of George Balanchine that, in merely responding the musical themes and what they conjured up in him by association, or in "glossing" upon the Petipa-Fokine classics, he could conjure up an entire world of action and leave you with a kind of hieroglyph into which you, the viewer, would read a great deal of content. Everyone has their plot to most Balanchine Ballets. But that was almost a unique genius. In the hands of people less skilled, or imaginative, or schooled in the dance schools of the 19th century than Balanchine, or all three of these -- in the hands of almost all Balanchine's contemporaries and of nearly everyone who has succeeded him -- this recipe has proved most sterile. The imitation of Balanchine, his ghost, is mainly what ails contemporary classical Ballet. Not just Martins, I've never seen a Tanner Ballet, or a Ballet by the guy who just died (what's his name, my mind is a sieve) or a Wheeldon Ballet, or a Diamond Project piece by anyone whomsoever, that had Balanchine's resonance. Hundreds have attempted.

That plus the quest to be "modern," meaning MacMillan-esque has been fatal even in story Ballets. Thus revise - it is the ghosts of Balanchine and MacMillan who damn modern Ballet in both of its main streams. Reading the descriptions of Chris Wheeldon's Swan Lake for Pennsylvania, I couldn't help wonder Why in Hell someone with the schooling and knowledge of Chris Wheeldon couldn't just have made a straightforward Swan Lake? Probably because he was expected to deliver something new and by that it had to be cute, pastiche-like, intellectually clever, solipsicistic or something. There is plenty of room right now for somone just to stage a good La Sylphide.

The Soviet inspired physical high-jinks which would inseminate creativity into Ballet from the world of Ice Skating seem almost a source of creativity in the face of this. Which is why I don't mind ABT at all when they do this, however tasteless it seems, it is in my view comparatively harmless It's the Tribute to George Harrison I can't stand, but even that is I think less destructive than the endless lure of unsuccessful formalism.

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What I noticed was that, amidst prolonged passages of the strongest sensuality, or psycho-pseudo-sexuality, she would suddenly go "cutsey," come out of character as it were, and give a goofy, ingenue, insouciante smile either to her partners on stage or to the audience.  This mode would last some seconds.  Then back to the hardcore grind.  My question is, was this Martins' intent, was it coached, or was it simply Alexandra?  Because I've seen Alexandra do that kind of thing before.  It's speculation, but if Janie Taylor hadn't been hurt, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see Taylor in that role last night instead of  Ansanelli.  So what we had may have been Ansanelli dancing Taylor dancing ... who, Heather Watts?  This is very old vintage Martins, debuted in 1983 according to the program.

I think this "cutsie" moment came from Ansanelli (I haven't seen the revival yet, but will see it this or next week). Watts was not cutsie in this. It was one of her better roles and, over the years, I had thought this was one of Martins' better ballets, although it suffers from several flaws.

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Thanks for all these thoughtful responses. Two more thoughts of mine:

I agree that this is one of Martins' better works. That's why I felt it was appropriate to take it on -- NOT to talk about a flaw in a particular ballet, but an infection that has spread through a whole era.

I agree with Alexandra that unremitting angst is as tedious as unremitting cheer. The big question is -- how do we address life, on stage, in its depth rather than in its shallow extremes. I believe there are answers out there. (I'm going to lurk for some time and see if I can get my thoughts on this together ..)

Edited by flipsy
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The big question is -- how do we address life, on stage, in its depth rather than in its shallow extremes.

It is a big question. Is it possible to do this in ballet? 18th and 19th ballets showed that depth through allegory, generally, and pantomime, specifically. Balanchine made an end run around the question (at a time when one wing of modern dance was dealing with Big Issues) through form, by creating structurally pure ballets with evocative undertones. Turning form into content, thus satisfying both intellectuals and the general audience, who wanted Content above all. (I don't mean this was his conscious intention, rocks back in pocket, please.)

Another thing to look at though, is, does ballet have to address the big questions of life? What big questions does sculpture address? Beauty is. Form is. Is that not enough? One thing that struck me in Barbara Barker's "Ballet or Balley-hoo" (about the Italian spectacles popular at the end of the 19th century in New York) was an almost casual statement that the reasons that this art did not take root, is that the intellectuals of the day could not accept an art form of the senses and not of the mind.

But Content has been King since the Romantic era, perhaps the result of a new, middle-class audience (the old audience having been beheaded) that had little experience with the fine arts. They wanted piano music that they could play in their parlors, theater in language they could understand, stories that were clear on the surface, no messing with allegories or symbolism. Great art and music had those undertones, for people who wanted more than that, but not everyone did.

Echoing Michael, to me, the central problem is our lust for realism. It's so seductive. Show a rape or murder on stage, describe it in literature, blow by blow -- make us see it, show the graphic details, let us smell the blood. For centuries, art had been objective, at one remove from life, dealing with concepts on a theoretical or abstract plane. In a way, that made it "easy to relate to," in today's parlance -- not just someone who has been raped, or a murderer, but anyone who has known fear, or degradation, or shame.

Not in fashion these days. Too hard to do, and when you're working for a mass audience coming from many different backgrounds with many different points of view, you have to paint in broad strokes.

I hope others join in this discussion (and please don't lurk too long, flipsy!)

Edited by Alexandra
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Alexandra,

As always, you bowl me over with your intelligence and depth- you give me brainache!!! :)

Where do we draw the line between relating to an audience who thinks they know what they want, and educating that same audience about what might challenge and lift them, and ultimately make them better for the experience?

The problem seems to be getting them into the theatre. Once they are there, they will rise to the standard you ask of them.

But how to get them there????????

Clara

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Oops!

Forgot something! :)

The fact that university students as near as 10 years ago, were surprised by Aristotle's musings may be where the key lies: Education.

How difficult might it be to undertake a study of the creators of technological advancements throughout the ages?? Probably not too.....

For example: Leonardo Da Vinci. Renowned artist/eccentric created drawings of machines that couldn't have been made during that period, yet with the proper materials/knowledge that we have today, have been created and are viable working mechanisms.

Yes, he was a genius/crazy, depending upon who you ask, but was it the art that inspired him to look into the future and comprehend real human flight? No Icarus, he!

My thought is that we need to make the arts become important in everybody's minds- not because "it improves the quality of life", but that the arts are the impetus to the advancement of civilization!

The arts stimulate areas of our brains that would not become as developed without that stimuli. I submit: The arts are crucial to humanity.

Anyone else???

Clara :unsure:

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Are the arts crucial to humanity? I'd like to think so. I do think so. And if you took a poll, probably most people would say so. But do we mean it? What needs do the arts fill? A spiritual one, originally. And then it became (I'm thinking out loud here) a want and not a need. Excitement -- spectacles were the big thing 200 years ago; that's not new. They loved the shipwreck scenes, with "water" flooding the stage. And stars, from the early 19th century. That's now delivered, packaged and ready to consume, like candy bars, in pop music and sports. 24/7. Celebrities have replaced gods and kings, and fulfill our need (if it is a need) to worship. What do the arts provide, beyond this?

I think that's what flipsy is referring to -- meaning, depth. That's the one thing that pop arts don't give us. (But then we get back to the "is this possible in ballet, using an academic vocabulary?" question.)

I really think the battle for arts education has been lost. And although many of us like to think that if an audience is presented with filet mignon with truffle sauce in this corner, and a double cheeseburger with fries in this corner, they'll go for the truffles, most of them go for the burger. (I'm being optimistic here. We'd go for the cookies and candy, and the sandwich on Wonder bread, just as we did when we were 4.) How many times have you seen a ballet program with one or two masterpieces and one or two MTV ballets? Which gets the most applause? Even a rotten "Swan Lake" -- absolutely rotten, choose your own terrible details and imagine a corps de ballet which, only last week, was marching in halftime shows :wink: -- with Stars will have people cheering.

To end on a really upbeat note, and in reference to what Michael wrote above, many of the people running ballet companies today don't think deeply about their art form, don't understand its roots and its history, never thought beyond their own careers when they were dancers, still carry resentments of what roles they should've gotten but didn't, and have taken over companies without any training whatsoever in what it means to be a ballet master or company director. Casting? Who's my pal. Who screams the loudest if they don't get roles. Why not let them all do it? It doesn't matter. Anyone you put out there will get a good review from somebody and every dancer has his fans. Repertory? Who's my pal? We need something called "Swan Lake," anything will do. No matter how bad it is, someone will give it a good review. etc. All of this has contributed to the tumbling of standards, because if audiences never see first-rate works danced well and presented with care, how can they possibly develop a clear eye? At least if you go to an art museum you can run to the Rembrandt room or check out a Vermeer as a basis of comparison. So it's very understandable why the pop art is taking over (has taken over)?

AND, to get back to flipsy's original point, when those on the "fine arts" side of the house, in the tiny little corner that's left to them, make a ballet, it's often empty, bled dry of everything but form, with a veneer of cynicism that passes for sophistication.

Edited by Alexandra
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Peripheral to this topic I read an AP article published on the andante.com website entitled At Their First Joint Convention, U.S. Arts Leaders Trade Ideas for Attracting New Crowds by Charles Sheehan.

Artistic directors are taking sometimes extraordinary risks to bring more people into the audience. The Texas Ballet Theater, for example, performed to the music of the Dixie Chicks.

"Did that open us up to criticism that we were dumbing down ballet? I'll take the criticism," said David Mallette, executive director. "On the same program were two inarguable masterpieces by George Balanchine"

The Texas Ballet also has used swing and big band music that is every bit as sophisticated as Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, Mallette said.

Music by Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen have been used during recent ballets in Pittsburgh.

"There are examples all over the country of how the classical arts have intersected with pop and everyone wants to recreate this as some marketing tool," Mallette said. "No one here sees that as a dilemma or says 'Oh my God, I'm doing this art form a disservice'."

It made me think that there is a divide between two types of contemporary ballet, because I don't think the audiences that will be drawn to rock ballets, which are usually rather energetic and upbeat, are the ones who would be drawn to the pseudo depth of many contemporary rape and pillage ballets or to most of Peter Martins' choreographic output. However, if they'd be brought into the World of Balanchine as a result -- the Seattle audience that shrieked for Return also gave a hearty ovation for Serenade, even if it didn't "get" Apollo -- then maybe the situation isn't as dire... Given my druthers, if I was between a rock and a hard place, I'd rather see vapid than pseudo-intellectual psycho-sexual dramas, even if I find Boris Eifman's choreography to be an occasional guilty pleasure. (Although I doubt that the reaction he'd want to Red Giselle is an audience member with a big smile on her facing, thinking, "what a hoot!")

I think that where Artistic Directors are not choreographers fall into the "who is my pal" category more than those who are. And those who run companies like ABT, which are still dependent on a variation of the Star System -- balletomanes say "I've got tickets to Aniashivilli's Swan Lake" versus "I'm going to see Stars and Stripes" -- must put up with dancers who are good box office. Ironically, the casting seems less arbitrary: most of the principals get paired up for a performance or two. It's getting to that level that seems to be tied to cronyism, as those of us who are fans of Monique Meunier could attest :wink:

Choreographers on the whole seem to be more selfish beasts. I was taken by comments by Kent Stowell about choosing dancers who are willing to try what he asks. Balanchine seemed to choose dancers that he liked and wanted to spend a lot of time with, as well as those whose movement quality he liked. But even he could go overboard and be just as hormone-driven as the next bear, as during the period where he cast Farrell in everything, when he had other brilliant dancers all around him, their pointe shoes idle.

I've always been struck by this quote from Violette Verdy in Robert Tracy's Balanchine's Ballerinas:

Don't forget that Balanchine, apart from his beautiful creativity, is also a director running a company, and he knows his animals.  He has to deal with a zoo.  When you have a pelican and you have a hippo, and you have this one and that one, the bigger animal is going to eat the little one next door when you open the gate.  And sometimes it's necessary to let that happen.  The big animal has what he needs, and the little animal...well, never mind, you'll find another one next year.
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What needs do the arts fill?  A spiritual one, originally. And then it became (I'm thinking out loud here) a want and not a need. 

The following probably has few specific conclusions germane to the discussion, but I think this statement is much much much too narrow in its context, though not in its conclusions. I'd start much wider out and back.

The reason we make Art is on the Anthropological Level. Humankind (woman-mankind) is the Animal Which Makes Art. This more than anything else is the thing that distinguishes us from all other species. (Yes, Birds will take tinsel to make brightly colored nests, and this bears a relationship to our activities but it's not on our scale).

I doubt there has ever been a culture without its Art. You could call it an Anthropological "Need" but even that demeans it. When you do things basic and instinctive to your kind, you don't do them so much out of "Need" as out of your very Nature. Art is a Necessity of Human Nature.

That says nothing, of course, about the very specific and culturally determined ways in which that Nature is manifested in any given instance. That is the level at which Art starts to fulfill a particular culturally determined "Need." When you have a surfeit of things that meet your "Needs," you can start to call them "Wants." "I Want this or that to meet this Need."

Now, having wandered so far afield, I wonder what is left of the original topic? Flipsy, I would love to see (I want and need to see) some contemporary pas de deuxs which go somewhere beyond bump and grind (Martins), or grind and strangle (the recent Wheeldon), or swoon and embrace (choose what recent work you will -- see Sean Lavery's Romeo and Juliet pas de deux next week, in fact).

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Michael, I don't disagree with you at all. I think we're saying the same thing. back at the beginning of time, in the cave, we all participated in, and made, art (I'm very influenced by Suzanne Langer's theory of virtual power, that, to reduce it to one sentence, is that art is the way of channeling spiritual power through the artist, with the viewer getting a charge of that power from the artist, the same charge s/he once got directly.) I think we do need art. I need it, anyone interested in the life of the mind and in civilization as a concept needs it. But I think this is the product of education. Otherwise, there's just a yearning need that can't be named, but we spend our lives trying to fill it. Enter the Dixie Chicks smile.gif

From the Renaissance to a few sneezes ago in the West, we had fine art, which today would be described as art that has been made by .001 percent of the population (artists) and enjoyed by, at most, 10 percent of the population (people with the money, time and education, especially the latter).

Helene, I wouldn't worry about the "Dixie Chicks" ballet if I had faith in the artistic director. I think, in theory, the "get 'em in the door" idea is fine. The problem is that, too often, next year there will be two "Dixie Chicks" and one Balanchine (or ..... how does one phrase it? serious ballet? non-pop ballet?) and the year after that, none. Just a season of a pop ballet triple bill, a watered down Swan Lake, and a resident choreographer's Romeo and Juliet with a nice Dracula thrown in. I'm not making this up -- that's been the trend of the last 8 years, at least. (I've been comparing ballet company schedules since 1996 for Ballet Alert!)

I've been in audiences where there are two Balanchine ballets and one pop ballet and the Balanchine ballets (even well-danced) get a polite scattering and the pop ballet gets screams. And I don't say that to "blame" the audience. If I'm a member of that "target market" drawn in by something that I already like, that's the way I'd react; I have no context in which to compare.

I see ballet history as cyclical, not linear. It's not all progression, and it's not all one long downhill slide. I think that the bad drives out the good, until something great comes along. There's been a cycle, for well over 200 years, of: Creation (new choreographer, new theorist, excitement in ballet, dancers and audiences attracted); Formula (new idea turns into formula, attention shifts to the stars; creativity degenerates, all the attention is turned to technique); Malaise (everything degenerates, artists desperately grasp at anything that they think will work to keep the audience). And then something new comes along -- the Romantic Rebellion, Diaghilev from Russia, the new companies in New York and London in the 1940s -- and we have Creativity again. It takes a very great artist -- and a perfect alignment of the constellations -- to maintain a high level of art in an institution.

Back to bump and grind and bump and strangle -- great images! -- it struck me that this is a change from the pas de deux of the 70s and 80s, that were what I called "slam bam thank you ma'am." Not sure if that's progression or not.

I think we've been in the Formula stage for 20 years now; we're seeing repeat after repeat of the "Agon" pas de deux, and of Balanchine's black and white ballets. The pas de deux either needs reinvigoration, or a rest.

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To get back to Martins, I think everything that's been mentioned can be stirred into the pot. It's hard for me to name a Martins pas de deux where:

The relationship of the man and the woman remains stable.

There aren't other partners (either a trio or switching partners from another couple) are involved.

They remain unambiguously together at the end.

It's not that they don't exist (Four Gnossiennes?) It's that they don't seem to be where his interest as a choreographer lies (Fearful, Waltz Project, Guide to Stange Places - which did have stable couplings and still managed to be disturbing)

The reasons for this don't have to be entirely personal. To extend on what Alexandra said above from another angle, he's also faced with following a master in the genre. It makes you want to stake out your own turf.

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For Martins, is it also not a question of music and form? The former being taste, and the latter being necessity, to follow that taste? In his earlier ballets -- "Schubertiad," say -- there were pas de deux that were more traditional, but that was appropriate to the music. (I only saw that ballet once, 15-20 years ago, so I won't hang my hat on that statement!)

If the music is fragmented, with a dark coloration, it would be difficult to do other than the bump and grind, bump and strangle. Is there much contemporary music -- serious music, not pop music -- that would lead him down other paths? (I think that the desire to use contemporary music, music composed for the ballet, is genuine.)

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In his earlier ballets -- "Schubertiad," say -- there were pas de deux that were more traditional, but that was appropriate to the music.  (I only saw that ballet once, 15-20 years ago, so I won't hang my hat on that statement!)...

Schubertiad was a bit of a hybrid, with two trios who, if I recall, eventually paired off in the end, along with stable couples. From Martins' earlier output there were a number of examples, all driven by the traditional, classical style of music: The Magic Flute, Songs of the Auvergne, Rossini Quartets, Delibes Divertissement, and Balanchine Romance (which I thought looked better on TV than on the huge New York State Theater Stage.) There was nice partnering in later gala-type pieces like Sophisticated Lady, and Tango/Tango was rather playful. Valse Triste was more in the Meditation category, and Ashley was paired with both Luders and Parsons in Barber Violin Concerto, but neither were marked by the detachment or emotional brutality of Martins' later work.

If the music is fragmented, with a dark coloration, it would be difficult to do other than the bump and grind, bump and strangle.  Is there much contemporary music -- serious music, not pop music -- that would lead him down other paths?  (I think that the desire to use contemporary music, music composed for the ballet, is genuine.)

I think the ballets started to go south for two connected reasons: Martins' extensive use of Heather Watts as his muse and use of minimalist scores by Torke, Adams, etc. (Robbins, a pas de deux master, used this type of music brilliantly in the first two movements of Glass Pieces, so it can be done.)

Watts was a unique dancer, and two of her most marked characteristics were her detachment and her indestructibility: she could be tossed, turned over, lifted, thrown, stretched, spun, turned into a pretzel, and she always emerged at the end as if she were bulletproof, with a flat, unaffected expression, almost like a movie cyborg. Those qualities were clear enough in Calcium Light Night and Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, where there were Ives and Stravinsky scores to dictate phrases. But when Martins started to choose scores in which the musical phasing is repetitive and for ballet is rather arbitrary, I think the phrasing of the ballets lost meaning and became arch and pretentious, particularly in the Torke "Colors" scores. Mark Morris was able to take repetitive music and give it meaning, like in the folk-based line dance in L'Allegro, so again, it can be done. Martins' ballets in this genre seem to be me to be about an absence of meaning through superficiality.

As Martins expanded the size and structure of his ballets to include other principal dancers, I started to see Darci Kistler and Kyra Nichols, starting around Echo, Merrill Ashley in ballets like Fearful Symmetries, and even Suzanne Farrell (Echo again) reduced to looking like clones of Heather Watts, and that's when I stopped liking Martins' choreography. The only other parts of his opus that I've seen since I moved to Seattle nearly ten years ago have been televised and of the slash and burn variety to contemporary scores. Watching them, I don't see what they say about the dancers on whom he created the ballets, the way I can look at La Valse or the fourth movement of Western Symphony and "see" Tanaquil LeClerq dancing Balanchine. The ballets and the dancers look rather generic to me.

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even Suzanne Farrell (Echo again) reduced to looking like clones of Heather Watts, and that's when I stopped liking Martins' choreography.

Echo has a place in NYCB history becuse Peter Martins got Suzanne back to dancing on point again following her hip replacement. It was the last time she did so. With all due respect, she could never look like a "clone" of Heather Watts or anyone else.

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Let's say we go with the Suzanne K. Langer theory Alexandra so succinctly sums up. If we need art as a kind of indirect worship, then the reason we need it less as a society now is because our society is moving towards more direct religious experience--in other words, a society of evangelicals communicating directly with God (or engaging in pop mystical practice), needing neither priest, teacher, nor mediator, be that Balanchine, or Bach. (That would be the sacred music or dance part of worship spun off, but retaining its spiritual power.)Art as an investigative tool is also less needed, because who needs to investigate when already directly guided? I think I will go read some more now about Madonna and the Kabala....

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Nan, sadly, I agree. I'd forgotten about the Direct Communicators, thinking more of those who worship another Madonna -- but in any event, I think art is divorced from most people's lives. Even if we think they need it, they don't think so.

And back to Martins, because we've rarely had a serious discussion about his work here and I'm grateful for the opportunity -- thank you for the list, Helene. I also grew tired of the Watts persona, and I know what you mean about cloning, that it was a limiting role. It's like the current Whelan-Soto pas de deux. It's not that they all look alike as much as they all feel alike. Martins, to me, is a stepspinner. It's as though he has an infinitely long bolt of red plaid cloth and he can unroll it at will, and cut it here, or there, and make it into trousers or a vest or a bow, but it's still red plaid. (I have enjoyed watching some of Martins' ballets and I don't dismiss him; there are a lot worse things out there!! I'm talking about what separates a journeyman from a master.)

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I think the ballets started to go south for two connected reasons:  Martins' extensive use of Heather Watts as his muse and use of minimalist scores by Torke, Adams, etc. 

I respectfully disagree, HF, because long, long after Heather had left the scene, when PM turned to Darci as his chief Muse, we still got Heather. I think Heather was simply an effective conveyor of the Martins (pardon the term) aesthetic. Darci, so pink and fresh and open in everything she did during her early career (and finally returning to a mature version of that persona, thank you very much!) brought other qualities into the studio, and these were not exploited, explored, or even given an opportunity for expression in the works made on her.

A Muse cannot draw from the Master what the Master doesn't have.

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This is now off topic - but to continue Nanatchka and Alexandra's insightful comments on the place of art in society, I think part of the problem of ballet today is that the few people who do need to experience art as worship and who are also interested in articulating and investigating that experience (besides those on Ballet Alert) are not 'into' ballet. They are more likely today to be fans of some form of oppular culture and I think the many books and websites connecting philosophy and popular culture - from the Sopranos to Buffy the Vampire Slayer exemplify this.

Although even popular culture isn't what it used to be - reality TV (direct communication with God) is fast replacing scripted Tv (filtered through a priest or liason). :shrug:

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