Danseur Noble

[fandeballet]

Ok....who were the dancers who were considered or talked about as a dansuer noble???? I will agree that that category today is really only an historical subject now. But, does anyone have someone in mind, who is dancing today, that would have a chance to be a d.n.? How about

Marcelo Gomes? I've become more and more impressed by his overall artistry.

[bart]

I am sincerely puzzled about one thing. With so many categories -- and so many different ideas and apparently misconsceptions about they mean -- do they continue to be useful tools for communication?

I find in my own local ballet school -- attached to a small but serious company -- much confusion or even ignorance about these terms.

[Leigh Witchel]

Out of curiosity is the opening theme couple in The Goldberg Variations a 20th Century imitation of the danseur and danseuse noble? Slow measured dancing, always done by the tallest dancers in the company.

[Alexandra]

I am sincerely puzzled about one thing.  With so many categories -- and so many different ideas and apparently misconsceptions about they mean -- do they continue to be useful tools for communication?

I find in my own local ballet school -- attached to a small but serious company -- much confusion or even ignorance about these terms.

I think this is a very good point, Bart. Many people writing today really don't seem to know the history of the terms or their correct definitions; there are national differences -- Russian and French emloy are different, for example; there are different nuances in different times. When someone reads in one review that a dancer who is five foot three on a good day and known for his quick bravura dancing is thhe epitome of a danseur noble, s/he is bound to be confused.

We used to have some very good, serious discussions about employ on this board -- don't have time to look for the threads now, I'm afraid.

[Mel Johnson]

Yes. Exposition was often the job for the nobles. It had a lot to do with the "pecking order" sequence of courtly dance. For example, in the menuet, the host and the lady of honor did the first one, then the hostess and the guest of honor, and so on down the social scale. The menuet was danced ONE couple at a time, so went on for quite awhile.

[Michael]

I would say that a system of classification has to be self-referential.

There usually has to be more than one term in order to classify. It thus has to be danseur noble as distinguished from something else, which is demi-character historically and as Mel says , also a third class, Grotesque in the historical language. And as Mel also points out, Grotesque as a male class has fallen by the wayside even more than the nomenclature for the other two.

If you have Noble and Demi-Character, you distinguish the taller dancers from the shorter ones, the princes from the jesters at least in what they do.

Just free associating here, but if these categories are to remain relevant, there must be just a few of them, they must be simple to apply, easy to understand and useful.

A big mess is that, in the transition from 19th century classicism to contemporary classicism, a third category has come into being -- the Classique dancers -- but can we have more than two categories and still have a useful system? And this doesn't even touch the girls yet, for whom the classification is even more fragmented and confusing. In NYCB terms, one speaks of the Farrell rep or the Hayden rep, or the Le Clerq rep, instead of using classical vocabulary. People use lyrical vs. acrobatic. Dionysian vs. Apollonian. Every kind of language has been applied to this ad hoc.

But back to Noble vs. Demi Character as a system. Since this at least is the historical language of ballet, it is useful to try to update it. Part of making classicism neo-classical. You shouldn't discard it any more than you discard the idea of the five positions.

Visually and aesthetically there is a principle here. Something about the size and apperance of the boy and the appropriateness of his casting and to some degree of what you have him do. Acrobatics, tricks and physical facility have become things across the board in contemporary ballet, they are no longer restricted to smaller dancers nor should they be. But certain things aesthetically about size and role don't change to the eye. There is a principle to this.

And historically, for staging and appreciating the older works, an understanding of this is even more important. There it really is analogous to the five positions, it's a foundation concept.

One way to proceed is, as someone suggested, to analyze the older works for the casting in those terms and then to work one's way forward in time.

[bart]

Veryful help[ful comments, Michael. I have a question about one point, however.

A big mess is that, in the transition from 19th century classicism to contemporary classicism, a third category has come into being -- the Classique dancers -- but can we have more than two categories and still have a useful system?

Why not? Isn't this done in science all the time. Such classifications are created arbitrarily to help us organize and understand our experiences of a complex world. The effort to force an infinite variety of individual characteristics into a simple two-category typology is useful only so far.

One example is the Apollonian/Dionysian typology used in many fields, ballet among them. This can be quite helpful, until you come to the dancers (or whatever) that do not fit comfortably or consistently into one type or the other. If "danseur noble" is becoming an extinct species among male dancers, then EVERYONE must be crammed into the alternative category. Making it meaningless.

When the exceptions and anomalies become too great, maybe it IS time to question -- or possibly expand -- the typology.

The problem is: who has the authority to do this, in a vastly decentralize ballet world?