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Is classical ballet almost extinct


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A little of both.

If you're taught to write with your left hand and then told to switch, it's difficult, unnatural even.

But to put a dancer in a different company, and ask them to keep the style the usually dance with, would be like putting an electric guitar in the middle of an orchestra. Not to say neither the dancer or the guitarist doesn't know what they're doing, they would just be in a foreign environment.

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Guest Balletmom24/7

Dido MommaJambe, my daughter feels the same way. She is 15 years old with wonderful technique and musicality, but most directors could give a rip. If you can't dance with your big toe in your ear while jumping thru a firey hoop forget it. I guess virtuosity means something else to me. Balletmom24/7

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Trying to change one's arms to fit in with a different style is rather like changing one's accent when speaking a foreign language--just about impossible. When I made the switch from Balanchine to Vaganova, I had to work incredibly hard, and after just a year in Vaganova, my friends said it looked as if I'd been trained that way for five years. However, I could still feel the difference in the way I moved--my dancing is a Vaganova veneer on a Balanchine base, and I can't change that. To this day, I have to struggle with the position of my hands, my epaulement, and all sorts of other things. So while it isn't impossible to imitate another style, it takes a great deal of work every time one dances. It's similar to singing in different languages--one must concentrate on the different vowel sounds all the time, and one still probably won't fool a native speaker of the language.

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Here's a question from a nondancer: Hans, if it took you a year to do this, and I have no idea if you are being humble or not, how do dancers who move around to various ballet companies do it? On the first level we have students who study at SAB and get positions at ABT or Boston Ballet? Or what about people such as Robert Tewsley who is now with NYCB... I realize you are not saying "it can't be done!" yet, so many seem to say it's either or: classical or neo classical; Vaganova or not...

Granted, changes take time, each dancer must have their own learning curve, but I have to believe these different styles (techniques?!) are not exclusively independent in perpetuity?

I suppose "the answer" to "how they do it" is with time.

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When a dancer has been trained in a particular method and then joins a company that dances a different way, it's usually pretty obvious. ABT, for example, is like a variety pack of ballet styles--when I watch their corps, I can pick out who was trained how. Taking company class helps, and I remember that Suki Schorer wrote that she used to help newcomers to NYCB who had been trained in other methods adapt to the Balanchine style. When I danced at SAB and (to use your example) Tewsley would guest with NYCB, he didn't dance like the rest of the company. Neither did Charles Askegard. Paloma Herrera still has Balanchine arms from the time she studied at SAB. I think it's easier to change styles/methods when one is in a school setting, but it's probably not such a great idea to move back and forth a great deal in the beginning as it can be very confusing for a young child. We've had some discussions about this in the Teachers forum. Company class often is more of a warm up for the day and less of a "these are the five Cecchetti arabesques" type of class.

I know firsthand that a large part of the difficulty is getting rid of habits. For example, it was a habit for me to lean forward, round and separate my fingers, and look straight ahead--in fact, when I auditioned for the Kirov Academy, I received a C on coordination! (Everything else--feet, flexibility, &c was in the B range.) Much of the difficulty was in breaking these habits and forming new habits that are normally learned between the ages of 8-10. Most ballet dancers reach a point at which they don't have to think "thumb in, middle finger in, little finger out, all fingers lengthened" or "okay, we're doing tendus to the front now, so my head should be turned to the right and inclined back." They just do it because they've done it that way from the beginning.

BTW, I definitely was not being humble (but thank you for thinking I was :))--a Vaganova teacher could still spot me in a Vaganova class as easily as if Carabosse had wandered onto the stage instead of Prince Desire! But for those not trained in the same method, it would definitely be harder to tell. In fact, I remember one of my classmates who was in his third year who still had RAD arms--no matter how hard he tried, his elbows stayed stiff and his fingers remained stuck together.

Again, it's rather like speaking foreign languages--if a child is trained in Vaganova at age 10 but at age 12 moves to a Cecchetti school, it won't be that difficult to learn the new method. As one ages, it gets more difficult because more habits are formed.

PS: Not really relevant to the topic, but fun--I remember an audition at SAB for Boston Ballet's SI during which I amd a friend of mine had several hours to wait between registration and our audition. We decided to do a warm-up class taking turns thinking up combinations, and we did each combination in a different style of ballet until we couldn't think of any more and then started at the beginning again. We did Balanchine, Vaganova, Cecchetti, Paris Opera, RAD, and Bournonville. The other students probably thought we were crazy, but it was really fun!

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Bravo, Hans. It is indeed clear. You've also hit on something that goes to the root of many disputes or misunderstandings about ballet. The more one knows, the more refined one's eye becomes. To you, the difference between RAD and Vaganova fingers is the difference between Carabosse and Desire. To the general audience, they're fingers. And the rest of us are somewhere in between. When I read late 19th century letters or commentary I am Giannina Green at the way they can distinguish among styles -- about ten times the number of styles we have today. They could not only tell the style and the school, but WHICH POB teacher had trained the dancer.

I once saw a film about the training at POB, and there was a class of young girls, probably 10 and 11, moving their heads. That's it. Turning to the left, turning to the right, looking up, looking down. To the music, coordinated with arm positions, of course. And it hit me (duh!) that what the class was doing was building muscle memory so that later, when they needed to turn their heads (and god, they were gorgeous :( ) the muscles would do it automatically; they wouldn't have to think.

ABT does have a style in the sense that the company has opinions on things, and knows what it wants. I've heard complaints from Vaganova-trained dancers that the company "de-Russianizes" them. BUT as long as the dancers come from many different schools, they'll never have a very refined style, because you can't teach 18 year olds from scratch. This, combined with moving into the Met and the emphasis on the big steps at the expense of the small ones, is the company's current classical problem right now, to me.

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Ari just posted this on today's Links:

“‘The Four Temperaments’ is so different from what most people think of as ballet,” said former Cardinal Ballet President Diana Movius, a junior. “It is the opposite of classical music and puffy tutus. There is modern movement, loud music and minimal costume.”

Just another example of one of the reasons classical ballet is threatened today. Think of it: "We are a ballet company. We're proud to be presenting one of the great ballets of the 20th century. Of course, the best thing about it is it's not a ballet. It's got loud music and is really modern." Or: "We are a tire company. We're proud to be unveiling our newest tires. The best thing about them is that they're not round. They're in really cool shapes and colors."

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Yes -- and they were not at all minimal! But they disappeared very quickly because, according to Reynolds in Rep and Review and other sources, they obscured the lines of the body and inhibited the dancers' movement. (They were very elaborate, almost stuffed costumes, from the photos, variations on medieval themes, the kind of thing that might have worked wonderfully in a demicaractere ballet with simple movements, so that the costumes danced and did a ballet on their own, but not for 4Ts.)

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Just out of curiosity, are they finding some loud music and using it in place of the Hindemith score? Even at the time of its composition it was considered relatively traditional. It is an odd description, because the music of 4Ts is classical and the movement is neo-classical - there's a lot in it that's inventive and unexpected, but it's a ballet. Then again, more innocently, they're probably trying to figure out a simple way of explaining to people who rarely or never see ballet that there aren't tutus or a story, and that the work is "contemporary" - for lack of a better word to describe it.

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Ah, yes. Contemporary. 50+ years old, but....(I personally think 4Ts DOES still look contemporary in the sense that its aesthetic is alive, but if someone's idea of ballet is pop ballet, I think it will look a bit stilted.)

I wondered about the "loud music" too. Maybe they'll just play it loud, or on a synthesizer or something.

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I think they might be referring to the fact that the brashness of the horn/wind instruments. If you're not used to hearing it, I'm assuming most of these people assume Tschaikovsky was the only ballet composer and then here Stravinsky and Hindemith and wonder what happened to the violins.

Just a guess. I've had friends who've said the music was startling to them the first time they heard it. That's it's not very "soothing"

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But. . .but. . but . . .

Four T's is scored for strings and piano. In fact it was first performed in Balanchine's apartment as a piano quintet. There are no brass or winds in it. Just a very loud piano?

Or are they rescoring it? Alexandra used to chide me about the scoring of Agon for a consort of viols in my own personal ballet Hell. Does it also contain the brass band Four Temperaments?

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