48 replies to this topic

[Paul Parish]

miliosr, you're really onto something.... though it's not completely hopeless.  The more that young ballet dancers cross-train with contemporary dancers, the more they'll encounter "energy-work." I'm calling it that, not sure WHAT it's called, but in Butoh and also in the descendants of Ausdruckstanz, theyre's intense interest in being able to develop techniques of altering energy states -- to move way into the self, far behindhte surface, to be come very cold, or very forward, -- whatever, these ARE techniques, and it'swhat's missing most in the very facile dancers coming out of hte ballet schools now -- a ballet like Dark ELegies -- which by hte way the Limon company dances superlatively well -- requires that powerful, deeply withdrawn energy, to creat e that "after great grief a formal feeling comes" communal emotion whthout which the Tudor shapes would not have any force as gestures.

[miliosr]

Interesting post Paul.

In the Dancing Times article, Sarah Stackhouse talks about how the early modern dancers (i.e. Limon and Graham) were interested in capturing Expressive states and how they used these states to drive their bodies.  She admits freely that many of the dancers were "terrible" from today's technical perspective.  But she also says that they had an "engagement" with the material which animated their bodies.

I would love to see the Limon company perform Dark Elegies this Fall.  But, alas, it looks like their major non-Limon (or Humphrey) revival will be Anna Sokolow's Rooms.

[Amy Reusch]

What an interesting idea to have a modern dance company take Tudor into it's repertory...  which of Tudor's ballets could suffer having the pointe shoes removed?

[Amy Reusch]

Two reviews of Boston Ballet in Dark Elegies

Karen Campbell in the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.co..._boston_ballet/

Quote

Yet Tudor's expressive vocabulary never seems like mime. It is deftly, seamlessly integrated into phrases that cast the dancers in isolated anguish or bring them together in communal mourning. Heather Myers can't resist cradling a ghost child, and Larissa Ponomarenko tries to bear her grief with ramrod straight posture, flat palms pressed to her sides. Jared Redick interrupts angry kicks and jagged leaps with moments of stillness, arms open wide as if asking why. Toward the end, community comes together in a ritual-like folk dance, hands connecting, heel-toe kicks skewing side-to-side. And by the final tableau, there is a palpable sense of acceptance, the backdrop's blue and pink sky suggesting the light of a new dawn.

Jeffrey Gantz in The Phoenix (with photo)
http://thephoenix.co...ektid61675.aspx

Quote

Set to texts by 19th-century German poet Friedrich Rückert, they make circles (like Tudor in the fourth song) of grief and denial and submission