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Lewis Segal in the LA Times on what's wrong with ballet


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It does happen, though maybe not with those words, and not every day. The people that I spoke to in the original cast of Agon knew they were in something special and groundbreaking, at least from what Barbara Milberg recalled the audience did too. But that's only part of a whole career. Later in the same season, Balanchine made Gounod Symphony. Though artists do try to break boundaries (especially their own) I think this more proves than disproves Mme. Hermine's point. It's about saying what you need to get said.

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The people that I spoke to in the original cast of Agon knew they were in something special and groundbreaking, at least from what Barbara Milberg recalled the audience did too.

That's really a different thing, though, I think. They weren't making something new for the sake of making something new. They were making a new ballet that turned out to be groundbreaking.

It's about saying what you need to get said.

That's it, I think. The genius does what he does.

The Martin Scorsese film about Bob Dylan was on PBS a few weeks ago, and I think Dylan was an exemplar of this. He took one of the oldest song forms imaginable -- the ballad -- and made it new, not on purpose, but because he understood it so thoroughly that he picked up the lute, as it were, exactly where it had been put down, strummed the strings, and sang in the voice of his time. (Ahead of his time, of course, but that's also what geniuses do. They smell/sense what's going on, it speaks to them and they to it, and 25 years later it's hard to know which came first.)

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The more I think about this, the more I wonder whether we're still dealing with the underlying resentment at the Ford Foundation mega-grant for ballet training in the US that was distributed in the 1960's almost exclusively to Balanchine-affiliated company schools, even though ballet class is/has been standard training for the majority of modern dancers. Add to that the institutions behind ballet as it matured: the real estate, endowments, continuing grants, government support (varied by country) and "friends of" groups with substantial funds (see: Mariinsky underwriting for its recent London tour).

I suppose in this financial climate ballet is supposed to say, "We're a moribund art form. Here, you take the money, upcoming geniuses of relevant art. We'll just keep watching that old archival film of Anna Pavlova's Dying Swan on YouTube while holding onto our walkers and ruing what has been."

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The people that I spoke to in the original cast of Agon knew they were in something special and groundbreaking, at least from what Barbara Milberg recalled the audience did too
This is supported by a letter to Stravinsky written by Diana Adams, and quoted in the new Stephen Walsh biography of Stravinsky.
... Diana Adams, who had danced the 'Pas de deux" with Arthur Mitchell, wrote of their "pleasure and excitement in perfomring Agon. I wish it were on each program. We are still not 'note-perfect,' but we seize Kopeikine (Balanchine's rehearsal pianist) and the stage at every opportunity and our concentration is intense, so we improve! The audience response is tremendous, they seem to love it, and several more performances [actually 6] have been added. I do hope you have seen the notices, they were marvelous. Congratulations, and thank you for our beautiful, beautiful score."

Alexandra, the Ashton statement is superb!

There's a lot of kind of dancing now that I really have no sympathy for, not that I mind, I mean, let anybody do whatever they like. I'm not one of those people who say dancing has to be one style only, not at all. So long as I don't have to see it, I don't mind, that's the really great thing. I fight to preserve the classical idiom, because that's my language, so to speak, and so I fight for that.
I suspect that many critics of ballet are a kind of reverse-side-of-the-coin to Ashton: they just don't like what they see when they watch ballet. These critics seem to struggle to find ways to turn ballet into something they WOULD enjoy, a kind of "not-ballet." My own feeling is: If you don't like it, follow Ashton and give your attention and support to other forms of dance that you do enjoy.

After 2 years of membership on Ballet Talk -- and greatly increased viewing, discussing, reading, etc. -- I find just about everyone I've ever encountered to be quite interested in a variety of forms of dance expression. Preference for ballet -- and the sense that, somehow, it is the "mother" art of dance in the western world at least -- does not mean ignorance of or unwillingness to taste the pleasures of other forms.

Indeed ballet dancers tend to be the MOST responsive of all to a variety of choreographic styles. For a striking example, read the interview with Aurelie Dupont in the Spring 2006 number of Ballet Review. When asked about the teachers who have influence her, she enthuses over Pina Bausch. When asked which choreographers she loved working with, she mentions Kylian, Ek, and .... Bausch. This from one of the great classical dancers of our time!

As to the Rockwell piece, he raises the spectre of "fanatic balletomanes" and then caricatures it.

For them anything but classroom ballet technique degrades the form, and a search for relevance is a descent into gimmicry and perversion.
I'm sure there are such people. I don'd read many here or in the ballet press. Instead, I find a great deal of complexity in the way ballet fans -- ESPECIALLY those who have the opportunity to see a variety of performances each year -- respond to attempts to use the classical vocabulary in new ways. True, there is criticism when it does not work (see Leigh's reference to Dracula above), but that is quite different from damning new kinds of work even before they are performed.

EDITED TO ADD: Helene and I were posting at the same time. Your point, Helene, about resentment following the Ford Foundation grants sounds plausible to me. In the same Spring 2006 number of Ballet Review, there's an article by Joseph W. Polisi, "An unsettled Marriage: the Merger of SAB and Juilliard." At one point in the negotiations to move Balanchine's school to Julliard, there were serious plans to junk the existing Juilliard dance program. Those involved handled this, it seems to me, in an insensitve manner. Rumors about what was being considered created a storm of outrage.

This situation grew more and more heated during the next eighteen months, until, by spring 1968 it burst into a firestorm of critical letters from members of the dance profession from Dodge City, Kansas, to India. Luminaries Ted Shawn, Pearl Lang, Agnes de Mille, and others wrote [Peter] Mennin [,President of Juilliard] [William] Schuman [, president of Llincoln Center], even New York City Mayor John Lindsay, haranguing them not to delete the current Julliard Dance Division. In truth the effort was hardly spontaneous, but rather had been carefully coordinated since the time of the SAB merger by [Martha] Hill and Julliard dance students as well as many Julliard dance alumni.

There is no doubt that the ill-feeling against the Balanchine enterprise was real and intense. At Julliard, the Dance Division remained and was given facilities on the same floor as SAB's. SAB seems to have wanted little to do with this other dance program. To wit:

The separation of Juilliard from SAB was so comlete that a door was erected by SAB, permanently dividing it from the rest of the third floor.
In a similar vein, Balanchine does not seem to have deigned to have much to do with the Julliard Dance program after the move there. If there's hostility to ballet in the dance world today, it may be a reflection of some of those long-ago resentments, based in a time when "ballet" was indeed on top in terms of money and respect, and when the ballet establishment may have shown just a touch of arrogance towards its non-ballet dance brothers and sisters.
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It does happen, though maybe not with those words, and not every day. The people that I spoke to in the original cast of Agon knew they were in something special and groundbreaking, at least from what Barbara Milberg recalled the audience did too. But that's only part of a whole career. Later in the same season, Balanchine made Gounod Symphony. Though artists do try to break boundaries (especially their own) I think this more proves than disproves Mme. Hermine's point. It's about saying what you need to get said.

Yes and yes.

"The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth. The very name Troubadour means a 'finder,' one who discovers."

-- Ezra Pound

I don't agree entirely with the above, but conscious breaking of boundaries does indeed happen from time to time. (And on the other side you have an artist like Manet, who seems to have been genuinely flummoxed at the fuss he caused.)

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I'd be very interested to read some quotes, BY, not about, an acknowledged master, who said, "I consciously set out to break boundaries and making something new for the sake of making something new is why I work." I've never come across that. [Editing to add: Except the current generation of Boundary Breakers, of course!)

A lot of interesting points have been made on this thread. I think the Ford Foundation wake may still be going on, resentment coming from those who weren't working at the time. There is resentment in the modern dance community (understandable, if I don't agree with it) that ballet gets the lion's share of the resources (which is true) and that this is why more people attend ballet performances (which I don't think is true).

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The genius does what he does.

The Martin Scorsese film about Bob Dylan was on PBS a few weeks ago, and I think Dylan was an exemplar of this. He took one of the oldest song forms imaginable -- the ballad -- and made it new, not on purpose, but because he understood it so thoroughly that he picked up the lute, as it were, exactly where it had been put down, strummed the strings, and sang in the voice of his time.

What a documentary that was!

Alexandra's likening of Dylan to Balanchine brought to mind another similarity -- their shared insistence that their works spoke for themselves. Dylan's turning back to his questioners "What do you think it means?" is his version of "All my ballets are about dancing."

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I agree with the parallel, Carbro, but before we get some "how can you compare Dylan and Balanchine?" posts, I hadn't meant to compare the two as artists, but to give Dylan as an example of someone inventing something without consciously setting out to break boundaries. :blush:

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I'd be very interested to read some quotes, BY, not about, an acknowledged master, who said, "I consciously set out to break boundaries and making something new for the sake of making something new is why I work."
It's clear that Stravinsky wished to make a significant break from the musical language that dominated Russian composition in the pre Revolutionary period. It's also clear that this had something to do with his decision to live and work most of the time in the West in those years.

At the time he was composing Rite of Spring, he wrote a letter to his friend Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov (son of the late composer, who had been Stravinsky's most important teacher) who had expressed upset with Petrushka. In it he said:

What could be better or more pleasing, than the development of the established art forms? Surely only one thing -- the development of new forms.

This isn't a very dramatic quotation, I admit. But it does support the idea that creative artists who break barriers are sometimes quite conscious of -- and even proud of -- what they are doing.

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I'll try one more time and then I'll stop :blush: I don't think I've expressed what I'm trying to say clearly.

Every artist wants/hopes/tries to do new work. What I'm objecting to is the notion that they do so MERELY FOR THE SAKE OF DOING SO TO GET ATTENTION or for marketing purposes. I agree, there are a lot of artists who consciously develop new forms, and certainly know who which of their works are within a tradition and which are not. Stravinsky would say things like, "I believe that music expresses itself only" which certainly was a new notion then, and his works furthered that idea. But I don't think he sat around for months thinking, "What can I do that will be different, will get me front page coverage?" The idea was to allow his creativity free rein.

I've written (here and elsewhere) that, although we often say that this artist breaks the rules, I don't think artists think that way. For them, there are no rules -- that's one way of saying it -- or there are rules, but they have a much wider interpretation and understanding of them. The rule isn't, for example, "You can't mix blue and lime within two square inches in a painting" or "you have to use the color wheel" but that one has to use colors in a way that -- terrible word -- "works." Some artists can make the very juxtaposition of two warring colors look natural, and when others do it, they look like they don't know what they're doing. The second artist needs the rules, the first one doesn't and we'll say he creates a new rule -- juxtapose colors in this or that way. But to him, he's just painting and using what he needs to do what he wants to do. This is very far afield from Lewis Segal's article, in a way, although if ballet choreographers stopped BOTH following and consciously trying to break rules, as if there were a list of them and they've got to find one that hasn't been broken yet, we might be getting somewhere.

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Alexandra's likening of Dylan to Balanchine brought to mind another similarity -- their shared insistence that their works spoke for themselves. Dylan's turning back to his questioners "What do you think it means?" is his version of "All my ballets are about dancing."

As a proud Dylan fanatic, I'm pleased to say that this point made here. :blush: Stravinsky and Eliot and other modernists wanted to, so to speak, to submerge personality in the work itself. Come to think of it, isn't that just a variant on the age old idea of the artist channeling a muse? In a similar way, Dylan immersed himself in the tradition (and as recently as 5 years ago still performed traditional songs), furthered the tradition with up to date topical songs performed by modern instrumentation, and has always insisted that his work speaks for itself and should not be confused with him.

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Stravinsky and Eliot and other modernists wanted to, so to speak, to submerge personality in the work itself. Come to think of it, isn't that just a variant on the age old idea of the artist channeling a muse?

Yes, and other very fine ways of looking at the 'Artwork' as having its existence beyond the human artist himself are to be found in Adorno's work, who expresses it especially well, as in 'Negative Dialectics.'

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I've written (here and elsewhere) that, although we often say that this artist breaks the rules, I don't think artists think that way. For them, there are no rules -- that's one way of saying it -- or there are rules, but they have a much wider interpretation and understanding of them.

Maybe it is more precise to say that the artist expands the rules. To contemporaries it appears that the artist isn't following the rules. In retropect that artist is seen as following an artistic progression. The Impressionists were attacked for departing from strict realism. Subsequent -isms continued the divergence from realism.

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A lot of interesting points have been made on this thread. I think the Ford Foundation wake may still be going on, resentment coming from those who weren't working at the time. There is resentment in the modern dance community (understandable, if I don't agree with it) that ballet gets the lion's share of the resources (which is true) and that this is why more people attend ballet performances (which I don't think is true).

That sounds quite similar to the dance situation in France- except that here there was no Ford foundation grant, but state subsidies. Modern dance appeared quite late in France compared to the US, and had at first very little financial support, and there must have been some resentment about the huge POB subsidies. Even now, if I remember correctly, the Paris Opera (opera, ballet and orchestra) gets by far the biggest cultural subsidy of all French institutions... But outside Paris, the number of ballet companies is small and shrinking, and the audience has fare more opportunities to see modern dance than ballet (and for example this is obvious in summer during the season of the festivals). I don't know if more people attend ballet performances, given the small number of performances outside Paris. And I feel that now the institutional support is far more on the side of modern dance than of ballet (except for the POB, which is protected by its status as an old traditional institution- but well, its repertory includes more and more modern dance too), many newspapers won't even review ballet performances, etc. The lack of important French ballet choreographers after the generation of Petit and Béjart surely didn't help (but it was nonetheless striking to realize in the last programs of choreographies by POB dancers "Danseurs chorégraphes" that all the works were modern dance works, not ballet ones...). And in a period of shrinking subsidies, modern dance companies cost far less... Also it seems to me that another factor which might have had a role in France might be the influence of theater (e.g. most theaters - except operas- are directed by theater people, not music or dance people, and such directors might feel more familiar with modern dance works, which are often influenced by theater in France, rather than with ballet).

Well, sorry to get a bit off-topic from Mr Segal's article, but frankly I was really annoyed to read an article which seemed to voice about any silly prejudice against ballet I'm so accustomed to hear (generally from people who never attended a single ballet performance, except perhaps their little 6 years old cousin's Dolly Dinkle school performance).

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Well, sorry to get a bit off-topic from Mr Segal's article, but frankly I was really annoyed to read an article which seemed to voice about any silly prejudice against ballet I'm so accustomed to hear (generally from people who never attended a single ballet performance, except perhaps their little 6 years old cousin's Dolly Dinkle school performance).

Well said, Estelle!

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Some great responses here. But no one's addressed Bart's 3rd point, distilled from Segal's article:

3) Dancers work on an "assembly line, automatic and unyielding." They are treated like children and are disposed of as soon as they get too old, too fat, or just too ... something.

I think this is generally true and part of the reason I retired from the field--specifically, I felt that for a profession, ballet ranks low in terms of consulting its own resident experts. Symphony orchestra sections always audition new members; ADs wouldn't even think about asking a company dancer what they think about potential hires. It's just not part of the culture. The lingering persistence of autocratic practices like this--practices that don't always yield satisfying artistic results--are part of what Segals evokes for me when he talks about the "decay" of ballet.

And another point of decay, riffing off of Leigh's comment about the Dracula problem: what, exactly, qualifies a particular ballet choreographer to oversee a muti-million dollar comission? I won't name names but SO many times as a dancer I've wondered "who is this person and what standards have allowed him (and it is usually a him) to choreograph aside from his 'eminence' in company X"? This laxity of standards at the top is what drags ballet into the realm of middlebrow art. [Funny story: one of these parvenu choreographers told us corps dogs in the room--18 strong--to "make a star." That was a long day!]

So I guess we need to recognize, as many of us have already, that Segal's article is a screed, designed to move us to thought and action. This list aside, the culture of ballet is not accostomed to productive self-criticism or institutional reexamination.

Ray

PS The point about Segal omitting opera is excellent, except that opera in the 19th and early 20th centuries could be highly politically charged--think many Verdi operas, Poulenc's Dialogue of the Carmelites, and even Puccini's Tosca. When we think about "political ballets" we always recur to the Soviets (or the PRC), who usually combined politics and dance in hamhanded ways.

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Where to begin! Segal was presumably trying to be deliberately provocative, and some of what he said I certainly agree with--so many classical productions seem DOA (like every production of Swan Lake in the last 20 years!). But that isn't the art form's fault, because there are plenty that are simply wonderful. The idea that ballet dancers are brainwashed little automatons is just absurd, as he must know. I do agree that there is too much of an emphasis on youth and technique, but that isn't ballets' fault--just do more Bournonville with all those wonderful grown up mime roles!

And the juvenile insults (flatulence indeed) of the ballet audience reminds me of the old lawyer joke--if you have the facts, argue the facts, if you have the law, argue the law, and if you have neither, pound the table. For arts critics, it seems that if you have neither, insult the audience. It certainly smacks of a reverse sort of elitism--"you and I aren't like those geriatric hidebound old fogeys, we are much better than that."

As for art having to be relevant, well, just think of the great works that he will have to live without.

"Excuse me, Mr. Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth is violating civil rights all over the place, and you want us to watch a play about a woman in love with a donkey!" As for Fred and Ginger, well, I don't see how anyone can bare to watch, knowing about the bread lines and the Hoovervilles and the Depression. All I can say is that next time Swing Time is on TV, Mr. Segal had better be reading the collected works of Clifford Odets.

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As for art having to be relevant, well, just think of the great works that he will have to live without.

"Excuse me, Mr. Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth is violating civil rights all over the place, and you want us to watch a play about a woman in love with a donkey!" As for Fred and Ginger, well, I don't see how anyone can bare to watch, knowing about the bread lines and the Hoovervilles and the Depression. All I can say is that next time Swing Time is on TV, Mr. Segal had better be reading the collected works of Clifford Odets.

I see what you’re getting at, cargill and quite right too, but I'd add, off topic, that the escapism of American cinema in the thirties was not so much a denial of the existence of the Hoovervilles as a response to them – and to the increasingly heavy hand of the censor over filmmaking. (And even in Fred and Ginger World, Rogers calls a police officer a “Cossack.”) “Swing Time” is as much a product of that terrible era as “Waiting for Lefty." (And there were writers and directors in Hollywood who were frustrated at having to focus mainly on fluff at such a time.)

Very interesting post, Ray -- thank you.

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Ray, for an illustration, albeit extreme, of why ballet companies don't ask company dancers what they think of new talent, see the memoirs of Mathilde Kschessinskaya. She was sort of a version of Zero Mostel's sketch character, the Italian tenor, Mostelli. "Mr. Mostelli, what did you think of Enrico Caruso?" "'ee's a PEEG!" "Giovanni Martinelli?" "'ee's a PEEG!" "Jan Peerce?" "'ee's a PEEG!" "Robert Merrill?" (sweetly) "Baritone...."

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In simplest form, I'm with Betsy Krut of Santa Monica who wrote to the LATimes re Segal: ".............put him out of his misery. Then you could hire a dance critic who actually enjoys dance and would have the ability to write an informative review."

I'm still reading and enjoying everyone's comments here on Ballet Talk. They are SO informative and SO passionate, and all ring true in their individual ways. Any of you could have written a better article for the LATimes.

Alexandra hit every nerve in my body when she wrote what Segal should have, including: "Every artist wants/hopes/tries to do new work. What I'm objecting to is the notion that they do so MERELY FOR THE SAKE OF DOING SO TO GET ATTENTION or for marketing purposes."

Everything Segal wrote was shameless, uninformed bashing.

As usual, I was pleased to see Rockwell's attempt to write something supportive of ballet in return, but it doesn't have the depth that most of the Ballet Talkers share here.

Bravo to you all of you for caring so much!!!

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The weird thing about Segal's article is that it seems like a much smaller Critic's Notebook type article, meant to be carried as a reflection inside, that suddenly got blown up and placed on the front page because either an editor wanted to spur discussion, or they didn't have anything to run on the front page (in the print edition it came with huge stock photos).

But Segal really does love ballet - when the big companies come it gets very well placed coverage, and when Segal likes it he really does like it. And he goes to multiple casts frequently (even if the reviews don't get carried by the Times).

He's expressing, though, disappointment with the form. Some of which I agree with, even though I still keep going to see the same old ballets. I groan when the Kirov brings another "Romeo" or ABT tours to California with another tired story ballet even though it is doing much more interesting things in New York (to be fair, we lucked out this year when they brought Sylvia).

LA may not have its own company, but we're in a fairly rare position of getting regular visits from major companies (only DC and maybe Berkely can compare). Very strong presenting organizations regularly bring the Kirov, Bolshoi, Royal, ABT and NYCB to our corner of the country - so we get to see a lot. Sometimes its thrilling (the Royal's Giselle real life!), sometimes its plain boring (ABT's Romeo seems to have been a test run here for their Met season... I completely see and sometimes agree with Sega's assessment of ABT's performances here).

But more to the point: while I see how Segal's article could incense a lot of folks, he makes some good points and I don't think they're entirely unfounded. My two cents.

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I'd be very interested to read some quotes, BY, not about, an acknowledged master, who said, "I consciously set out to break boundaries and making something new for the sake of making something new is why I work." I've never come across that. [Editing to add: Except the current generation of Boundary Breakers, of course!)

Yes. but in reference to the earlier request for another Diaghilev, he was the one who asked his artists to "Astonish me."

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I found I had less to say about Segal's article than about Rockwell's riposte - it lives here: http://www.leighwitchel.com/blog/archives/...d_and_fury.html

Of Segal's points I found I reacted least to the third - ballet is infantilizing and mechanizing, etc. I guess I've heard it so many times that now I think, "Oh, this one again?" And I guess it would be too much to explain that ballet isn't infantilizing - ballet directors are. Hire better ones.

Regarding Rockwell, I wish he'd can the "fanatical balletomanes" meme he's stuck into what seems every fourth article. Either cite chapter and verse or enough with this particular straw man.

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