43 replies to this topic

[carbro]

Interpretation.  Understanding.  (I looked it up.;) )

[Mel Johnson]

One o' them Eutic fellers from down the holler.  Hermen.  He spells funny, but he's a good ol' boy.  Name means "point of view", too.

[BW]

Thanks y'all! My handy Random House Webster's must not know the Eutic brothers, but I'm glad to have made Hermen's aquaintance.

As for style, method and/or system meaning the same thing from a teaching point of view, it seems we'll have to agree to disagree about certain schools having one or not. ;)

Just an FYI, last night I started to make my way through the current list of NYCB dancers and I'd say that there are not a few who have made their way through SAB from at least 12 (and earlier in some cases) and have actually ended up in the company. However, I do digress...  Darn them Eutics, they always do get in there!

[Mel Johnson]

I've been down into my deadly cellar, and pulled out some old programs.  Seems I saw an astonishing number of NYCB dancers when they were Polichinelles in the "Mother Ginger" sequence of Nutcracker, or party kids, or Candy Canes, and so on.  You can actually chart them over the years from supers to featured young dancers, to apprentices in Snow and Flowers, to being on the company roster on the masthead.  Some of these Polichinelles are even retired now!  Oh, the Age of the Mountains has descended on my shoulders.;)

About ol' Hermen, there was some tussle when he got hitched to his first cousin, Therap, but people will talk!

[Hans]

SAB has changed a great deal, though.  Once upon a time, the teachers were all French and Russian.  Now, they are (with, I believe, exactly three exceptions) former or current NYCB principals who mostly teach what Balanchine taught them in company class.  When I was there, almost none of the dancers in the upper levels had started their training at SAB.  It'll be interesting in another 10 years to see how many native SAB dancers there are in the company.  

I think I would say that Alexandra's definition of ballet, Graham, and Humphrey as techniques makes sense, but I would also say that whereas there are Russian, French, English, Danish, and Italian methods and styles, there are also degrees of style, if that makes sense.  For example, Russian style -> Vaganova method -> Kirov style -> Chenchikova's style (as a coach/teacher) -> Larissa Lezhnina's style.  That looks really complicated all typed out--it made so much more sense in my head!  However, I think that can be done with pretty much all of the major companies/schools today.  The Balanchine style is an anomaly, though--it's a combination of Russian, French, Danish, Italian, and Balanchine aesthetic.  It doesn't have a prescribed teaching method that I've ever come into contact with, but just like the Kirov and Bolshoi, the style can vary widely depending on the company.  I would classify it as a style because it is a stylization of classical ballet technique--certain aspects of it depart from the classical tradition, but these idiosyncrasies do not give it the status of a technique or method, IMO.

[Mel Johnson]

I know where you're coming from, Hans, and I agree with you.  It's a hodgepodge mixture of æsthetics, and, going back to my original criterion, it does not have its own "language".  A tendu is still called a tendu, a frappé is still called frappé.  There is the evidence of a giant intellect at the back of the SAB style these days, but no giant intellect there now to continue to codify it and modify it the way Balanchine did when he was alive.  I think many of the former NYCBers from the Balanchine days take, more or less, the last thing that they heard him say on a subject and consider that the highest development of form.  I don't think that's a good way to make an independent technique, no matter what some may call it.

Now when Hermen and Therap got hitched, there was some grumblin' about that white wedding dress, but he looked real purty in it.

[carbro]

Quote

Originally posted by Mel Johnson
There is the evidence of a giant intellect at the back of the SAB style these days, but no giant intellect there now to continue to codify it and modify it the way Balanchine did when he was alive.  I think many of the former NYCBers from the Balanchine days take, more or less, the last thing that they heard him say on a subject and consider that the highest development of form.

Wouldn't the difficulty of codifying the Balanchine technique/style  lie in his relentless experimentation?  I don't think he ever saw it as "set" but rather as something that would and should continue develop.  If that is your point, Mel, I agree.

[Mel Johnson]

Exactly.    One of the problems I see with today's "Balanchine dancers" is that there is an inambered quality.  Something is frozen and fixed and fossilized (already!) that was supposed to be live and flexible and breathing.

[carbro]

I would call it the main problem; it casts a pervasive grayness over the works.  It is not the fault of the dancers, who enter the company looking so promising.  Something happens -- :eek: --after they've been there a while.

Now let me go look up "inambered.";)

[carbro]

You contrived that word, right?  I took the "amb" root right away as pertaining to walking, but then it occurred to me that you meant preserved in amber.  Okay.

[Mel Johnson]

Right - it takes a prefix "in-" as "interred" "interned" or "inurned" and adds it to "ambered" as in "covered with amber" and came up with "inambered".  That's another example of a flexibility of a language that I think the present Balanchine generation's
"language" lacks.

[carbro]

Extending the vocabulary!

[Rachel]

I have read Suki Schorer On Balanchine Technique in quite depth, and if it does represent Balanchine's teachings well, I would say that his teachings form as Style. In Suki's descriptions of ballet steps, it generally seems that these same descriptions would work in a primer on Vaganova, Bournonville, and Cecchetti.

She stresses that Balanchine emphasized picking the foot up with the heel forward and toes back. Apparently this is a key element in Balanchine "Technique." However, if you ask any dancer, this would be called "utilizing one's turnout," wich is a fundamental in all school's. The only other difference that I found between Balanchine and other styles was the precise musical phrasing of steps. This phrasing gives the movements a different look than if the step were performed at an even tempo. But, the musicality doesn't change the mechanics of the step.

Of course Balanchine used crossed wrists and broken wrists and all sorts of unorthodox positions. I don't really believe that different arm positions distinguish between different styles. Cecchetti's third arabesque is different than Vaganova's, but this isn't why these are two separate techniques. The core differences between techniques are the different ideas on how steps should be performed. For example, Cecchetti insists that one's hips must remain entirely square for grand battement while Vaganova didn't stress this.

Rachel

[Mel Johnson]

That's sort of what I think, too, Rachel, although there are others who would hotly debate the point with us.  I believe that Schorer's book is an accurate presentation of what and how she teaches, but if, say, Kay Mazzo were to write a similar book, the results might have points of contact, but there would be more than a few differences.  Regarding the hands, wrists and arms, I have noticed the tendency of SAB to teach a rather strict port de bras early on, then in later years, let things all hang out.  Robert LaFosse noticed on his first sight of NYCB that he'd never seen so many arms on so few dancers in his life!  It seems to me that Balanchine is derived from choreographic elements in his ballets and has been cobbled together from that.  Objections that the Old Man taught that way are less-than-convincing to me, as he taught in order to feed his choreography, rather than establish a central parameter of technique for all dancers who would study ballet from the ground up.