The point of dance

[Kate B]

I hope this isn't too controversial...

My husband and I have an ongoing 'discussion' as to whether dance has any cultural or political significance to it. He claims it does not, saying that unlike art or literature, no ballet has contributed to a wider change in society or politics. He claims that choreographers are not philosophers, and that they are not saying anything more important than simply expressing the 'old cliches' such as love, hate, death, etc. He says that ballet is as significant as a TV mini series. He says that a ballet can mean less and change less than a pop song. He says it is the only 'closed' art - in that it only means anything within the dance world. Outside the dance world it is meaningless.

He is an artist, and doesn't want to go to watch dance with me anymore because he says it doesn't do it for him.

Now, you don't need to tell me that dance is fantastic and it can mean a whole lot of things, and you don't need to tell me to divorce him!

...but is he right that no dance performance has ever made a big difference in the way that a great book or even a pop song can? And how significant in the world do you think dance is?

Don't worry, I am not looking for more material for the argument - I am genuinely interested in what true dance fans and experts think.

[kfw]

...but is he right that no dance performance has ever made a big difference in the way that a great book or even a pop song can?  And how significant in the world do you think dance is?

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Introducing her restaging of Don Quixote last month, Suzanne Farrell expressed a wish that having seen the ballet, we would be changed. Pop songs may effect more people than ballet, but his argument would seem to presume that they have greater capacity to effect an individual than a ballet. Why? I what pop songs he thinks have changed the world, and I wonder if he's aware of how popular NYCB was with writers and artists in Balanchine's day.

[Hans]

I'm pulling the following ideas from the top of my head, so please excuse the disorderliness of this post!

Well, ballet has certainly influenced fashion a good deal. I'm sure Alexandra will be able to elaborate on this, but the very first ballets, back in the 15th and 16th centuries or so if I have my history right, were political statements--shows of power by monarchs--as well as elaborate entertainment.

The Rite of Spring caused a riot in Paris when it was performed, but I suppose it didn't really change society.

My sister (a theatre major) brought up an interesting point recently. She was speaking of playwriting, but I think it applies to anything involving a plot. She mentioned the idea that there are no new stories anymore--they've all become cliché, in a sense. What artists must focus on is not trying to make up a new story but rather to express the "old clichés" in new ways. And when you think about it...when was the last time you heard a story that didn't boil down to love, hate, life, death, &c?

So I don't think there's any point in attempting to express something that's never been expressed before, and I also don't think ballet needs to be political in a specific sense. Does anyone really want to watch presidential candidates debate via interpretive dance? Or a ballet about the Communist Manifesto? I also don't think ballet (or dance in general) has to cause a political change in order to be significant culturally. Dance is one of the earliest forms of human expression, and come to think of it, Native American dances are vital to tribal culture.

Some people say that the reason the arms are held so stiffly to the sides in Irish dance is so that the English would allow the Irish to continue their dance traditions--because they appeared not to be enjoying it. If dance weren't important culturally, would the Puritans have bothered to ban it? Would the Soviet government have forced the Kirov to change the ending of Swan Lake if ballet is just a meaningless, "closed" art form?

The defection of people such as Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and Makarova made newspaper headlines around the globe, so obviously ballet dancers have been big enough celebrities for their political actions to make a difference. That doesn't necessarily have to do with the art form itself, but it does show how important ballet was in the 60's and 70's.

I'm sure I'll come up with more to add later, but perhaps this will help get some discussion started.

[carbro]

Among the Bolshoi's offerings on its current tour are Spartacus and The Bright Stream. Spartacus is a cry against oppression. The Bright Stream, banned after its premiere as insufficiently Socialist Realist, now in its reconceived version pokes gentle fun at the genre.

I think that because ballet was, for at least its first few centuries (depending on the country, until well into the last one) entertainment for the aristocracy, it spent a few centuries depicting the glories of the status quo. It does not have the historical advantage of literature or more "popular" theatrical forms. I'm afraid your husband has a point , but probably not for the reasons he thinks.

[Leigh Witchel]

Art comes in several varieties, but what your husband seems to be saying is that the only art he's interested is the topical or temporal variety. All well and good but that's a matter of taste, not a measure of the worth of art. Mozart or Bach probably didn't change a thing outside of the world of music either. Some art is not meant to be of the moment, it's meant to step outside of time.

Your husband is welcome to his position, but I don't think his argument would bring anyone over to his point of view.

[Hans]

[Deleted by Hans - I posted at the same time as Leigh, and his post says the same thing mine did, but far more eloquently.]

[Cabriole]

Seems I remember being taught that there are only 8 plots and all literature just vary on established themes

Verbal language works for many, and depending on the language being used (often I have had a friend comment on how their 'native' language lacks a particular word or another comment that his language has many, depending on the particular situation...).

Non-verbal languages: music, painting/sculpture, dance, etc. express what words often cannot...

(That's why as hard as a dancer's life might be, it can't 'compare' with a dance critic's )

[redbookish]

* knock knock * Theatre historian hat on - in relation to what Hans has said about ballet as a display of power - it's been argued that the organisation of space in what we see now as the "traditional" prosc. arch theatre was a way of ensuring that the monarch in the royal box in the centre of what is now the stalls was the centre of attention & had the best sight lines etc. So the organisation of space in the theatre as a whole was a reflection of his/her power. In the mixed bills of the early 19C English theatre which included the truly Romantic ballet (eg Giselle as both ballet and spoken melodrama!), there are many examples of theatre and dance causing a row - to the extent that there was strong censorship - and you don't have censorship unless the powers that be are scared of something! And I imagine Alexandra can come up with some specific examples from the history of ballet.

But it might also depend on what you mean by "changing things" or how you might want to interpret any art politically. This is particularly the case with self-consciously innovative artists - you can read Martha Graham's work as an important precursor of 1960s/70s "Women's Liberation" - similarly for Mary Wigman's work, or even Isadora Duncan. I think what a contemporary choreographer like William Forsythe does physically with the certainties of a classical ballet style honed in the heydays of the great European empires - French, Russian, English - could be read as a radical destabilisation of the aesthetic certainiites of those cultures. Or Bill T. Jones' piece "I'm Still Here" (I think I've got that one right?) as an answer to certain hysterically homophobic responses to the HIV/AIDS issue. But then I tend to argue that the aesthetic is never diosconnected from the broadfly political - or what you might call the ideological.

Probably this way of arguing won't win you any arguments either ...

Kate

PS A colleague of mine has a T-Shirt which readds: "Stand Back - This Calls for a Theatre Historian" as an example of a slogan you'd never actually find on a T-shirt. But this conversation suggests otherwise perhaps

[carbro]

A colleague of mine has a T-Shirt which readds: "Stand Back - This Calls for a Theatre Historian"

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I love it!

[bart]

I love all the responses. I guess I'm thinking of the power of the best art to lift the spirit. For example, the piano recitals given by Myra Hess in London during the Blitz (and broadcast on BBC). Or, in a darker form, the effect of Wagner on Hitler.

In both cases, "abstract" music allowed audiences to connect directly to what they felt deeply were the most important values of their society. Insofar as it sustained them, uplifted their morale, stengthened their desire to live productively -- it did change society.

As to dance, why shouldn't the effect be the same? There are of course, polemic ballets like Joos's great "Green Table," but I imagine that these are more likely to confirm political opinions already held rather than create new opinions. Ballets that tackle sexual exploitation or drug addiction or greedy capitalists probably haven't changed behavior very much.

The dance that changes society is the dance that connects us to our best selves -- making us share the pleasure in human creativity. I don't mean escapism or sugar-coating -- though that has its place too. The discovery of Balanchine when I was 15 helped me to get through an specially stormy emotional period in mid-adolescence. Not only were his dances beautiful in a way I could not even have conceived -- they made me curious to see more of them and to stick around to learn more about the world in which they were created.

[Amy Reusch]

Isadora Duncan wasn't a philosopher? Flappers didn't change society? Louis XIV's ballets had no influence in court? And what about Salome...?

And what individual works of art have changed history? (I'm not sure political documents such as Jefferson's Declaration of Independence count as a work of art, being as it was more a work of politic than anything else).

I think perhaps your husband has made a faux pas.

[pj]

Or, perhaps your husband just doesn't see the beauty of dance. I'm saying this in the most unsarcastic way, so don't take me wrong. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so maybe what he sees he does not perceive as beautiful.

As an example, I see very little value or beauty in much (most) of what some people call avant garde visual art and I don't see it changing the world at all. Well, at least not in a positive way.

So perhaps that is how he feels about ballet....a pity though

[Kate B]

Some art is not meant to be of the moment, it's meant to step outside of time.

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...Which is exactly why I love dance! I don't go to the ballet to think about the state of the world or to see something topical in a new light. I read newspapers and books for that kind of thing.

My husband doesn't like entertainment for entertainment's sake. I agree that this is a shame!

All your responses have been very interesting. I promise not to use it as ammunition!

[bart]

All your responses have been very interesting.  I promise not to use it as ammunition!

In marriage, always the wise course. And one not taught in any ballet I can think of.

[Kate B]

All your responses have been very interesting.  I promise not to use it as ammunition!

In marriage, always the wise course. And one not taught in any ballet I can think of.

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[Hans]

All your responses have been very interesting.  I promise not to use it as ammunition!

In marriage, always the wise course. And one not taught in any ballet I can think of.

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Good luck expressing that in classical mime.

[Kate B]

...Maybe not classical mime, but I'm sure Forsythe could choreograph it.

[atm711]

  Does anyone really want to watch presidential candidates debate via interpretive dance?  /right]

Yes Yes The possibilities are endless---surely this deserves a topic of its own

[Hans]

I'll start a thread--it's August, after all.

[Mel Johnson]

From an old, old post on The Other Board:

Did you know that most theater historians consider that theater as we know it began with dance? It was called the dithyramb, and was danced in honor of the god Dionysos. After a few years of dancing the dithyramb, some of the veteran dancers dropped out of the active line, and sat there and watched. And lo! The AUDIENCE was born! Then, one year, Aristopodes (means "great feet") the Cranky said, "Ho, that's no way to dance the dithyramb! You should have seen how I used to do it in the old days!" And behold! The first DANCE CRITIC!

[sandik]

PS A colleague of mine has a T-Shirt which readds: "Stand Back - This Calls for a Theatre Historian" as an example of a slogan you'd never actually find on a T-shirt. But this conversation suggests otherwise perhaps 

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That's lovely -- I would love to have a "dance historian" t-shirt.

[redbookish]

From an old, old post on The Other Board:

Did you know that most theater historians consider that theater as we know it began with dance?

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Well, the word "tragedy" comes from the Ancient Greek transliterated as "tragoeidia" (I think that spelling is roughly right), which translates as "goat song" ie the song you sing while you're sacrificing a goat ...

[chrisk217]

Well, the word "tragedy" comes from the Ancient Greek transliterated as "tragoeidia" (I think that spelling is roughly right), which translates as "goat song" ie the song you sing while you're sacrificing a goat ...

Another equally plausible explanation of the etymology: the goat referred to is a satyr, the half-goat, half-man being (like Puck in MN'sD) that follows the god Dionysus. Thus, tragedy is the song of the satyrs that surround Dionysus.

I like this explanation of the etymology a bit more... no need to add a "No animals were harmed in the making of this tragedy" kind of disclaimer

[bart]

Brings to mind the Bacchantes -- groups of frenzied women devoted to (and dancing wildly while possessed by the spirit of) the god Bacchus (Dionysus). The first great theatrical festivals in Athens were in honor of Dionysus.

As any ballet featured them?

Sounds like a topic more suitable for modern dance. Or contemporary drug-induced raves, despite its "classical" associations. I cannot imagine any recent national politician, except possibly Bill Clinton, who might be willing to attend such a performance.

[Hans]

Bart, I think Giselle, with its long skirts and short running time, might be more the current administration's speed.