Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Technique or Personality?


Estelle

  

5 members have voted

  1. 1. Technique or Personality?

    • technique
      33
    • personality
      71


Recommended Posts

I thihk there have been extreme technique--moderate technique swings in the past. Late 18th century, extreme technique; early Romantic period, (Taglioni, Bournonville) moderate technique. Late 19th century, extreme technique (all those Italians with pointes of steel bounding off marble floors). Early 20th century -- Fokine, especially -- almost anti-technique. Don't get caught turning. And definitely technique subservient to artistic expression.

Ashton, always the middle man, loved virtuosity, but used it like a spice. Balanchine, once accused of being all technique, all the time, seems positively chaste today. Technique subservient to artistic expression in a different way than Fokine, but still primarily interested in artistic expression.

I think much contemporary ballet is exactly analagous to your punk/garage band description, dirac :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think there's plenty of "technique" involved in a Fokine ballet (like Petrouchka, for example). It's just more subtle and less obvious than high legs, big jumps and multiple turns. Virtuoso techinique is only part of the palette a dance artist has to choose from in order to fulfill a role and move an audience.

Rick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thare's an art, if not a technique, to moving in concert with other people -- I remember the Oakland Ballet, in Petrouchka, could make you believe that hte crowds were really CROWDS -- they had an animating spirit as a group, and htey'd get swept up in things -- the bear incident sticks in my mind hte best, because ... well, it was really kind of mysterious, but the crowd got INTO the bear, especially the children, and started moving like hte bear, and the children were the last to come out of it -- that had a great deal to do with the conductor's sensitivity to them, he was really directing hte whole scene -- it was Jean-Louis Leroux, who's a marvellous musician, but it's also because the company really trained for musicianship -- a distinct Ballets-Russes musicianship, more in hte body than the feet, derived more from Fokine and Massine than from Balanchine -- i.e., it's based on hte character side, rather than hte classical side, and consequently more involved with weight, momentum, the particular kinds of attack, sweep, swing, movement quality AND POSTURE that go with creating a sense of ethos through national dances -- how do you get people to feel like we're in hungary or Galicia, that sort of thing.... and there's definitely a technique to TIMING the mazurka step right, that brush-through does not happen squarely on the second beat...... the Viennese waltz has a very characteristic delay on the second beat, also, that marks it as definitely Viennese....

Most of the time, people tend to think of these things as style rather than technique -- like the tilt of Fonteyn's torso in the Les Sylphides prelude, as she leans to the side and lifts her hand to her ear -- is that technique or style? If it's NOT there, there's nothing much happening.... but there IS an art to varying your soussus -- and it makes hte "world" come into existence, so it's very important.... maybe this is "coaching" ("head is like scent of violets over left shoulder, dear"), or maybe it's "perfection," but it can and does need to be taught......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am excited by brilliant technique. But I remember personality.

Great art -- in both the fine arts as well as performing arts -- is something you connect with emotionally. Technique can be stimulating but a great personality can reach inside of your core and make you feel deeply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've refrained so far from commenting or voting on this thread until I sorted out what I think!

Now, at least I know what I think - I think that technique is the indispensible item; that it is the means through which the personality of the dancer is conveyed, and neither one is an end in itself, but are both media through which a fully realized performance take place.

The nice part about opinion questions is that your answer is always absolutely correct, because that's what you think. The only way I used to tell my Jr. high Social Studies students that they could get a bad mark on an opinion question was to say nothing at all.;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my training, technique and personality are one and the same thing. When learning how to turn out or stand on your legs, we analyze the situation and put our body parts in the right place. Same with "stage presence", "expression", "personality" and all those other things. We figure out where we want to put our body parts and how we want to move them (even small parts, such as eyeballs), and we do it.

For that reason, my "stage personality" is rather different from my "real personality". My wife noted this in our Nutcracker party scene. The way I behaved there was COMPLETELY different from the way I behave at a real party (and less conspicuous).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paul touched on engagement in his reference to modesty as a desirable asset in a dancer. I think the missing word in this discussion may be conviction. There have been dancers who -- even in the waning years of their careers -- have caused me to wonder, "Why does s/he bother?" There is no joy, no passion, no sense of any purpose whatsoever in their being on stage. God knows, there are easier ways to earn a living!

The description of Joanna Berman's Aurora -- which must have been as transporting for the audience as it was for the ballerina -- reminded me of some of Farrell's performances that appeared to involve such a profoundly private journey that it was almost embarrassing to watch. Ultimately, they were deeply moving and courageous exposures into the soul of an artist with an enormous capacity to invest her work with conviction.

Of Balanchine's famous maxim, "Don't act, just do," I think that he knew that all the elements for expression were there, but by laying artificial emotion on top of them, they would be smothered. They had to be allowed to emerge from within; by putting the ego aside, the dance's meaning (whether narrative or not) would emerge and the dancer could become her truest self. And here we are -- back at modesty.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...