Are there ballets that should no longer be staged?

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Just to be clear, I don't believe that Balanchine meant to demean Japan or Japanese culture in any way. I might even go so far as to say that he meant well. I still don't like how he chose to make use of what he found there.

Because Bugaku is not abstract, it looks like it's trying to convey something about Japanese culture specifically rather than simply serving as a gloss on the characteristics of traditional Japanese dance that caught Balanchine's eye. The latter is worthwhile: who better to call our attention to some of the intriguing markers of another dance tradition than an observant and thoughtful choreographer? But the former?  Well, not so much. Whatever is going on in Bugaku's central pas de deux could be going on in a Macmillan ballet. 

Bugaku's costumes are no more Japanese dress than Gamzatti's tutu is royal Indian dress: to my eye it's dress up rather than a true homage. The dancers wear traditional ballet dress spiked with some japonaiserie to signal that they are representing (idealized?) Japanese people, much as their ballet steps are overlaid with gestures taken from Japanese dance. To me it certainly doesn't look like an exploration of or homage to Japanese dance so much as a more or less standard western ballet with some Japanese inflected trappings. 

PS - I lived in Japan for three years and travelled there often on business. 

[Quiggin]

31 minutes ago, Helene said:

If Bugaku is more than the look of its set and costumes, ie, is something more than a Balanchine leotard ballet in set dressing, then the tone and qualify will come through the movement, as long as the costumes don't constrict/interfere with the movement the way the original 4T's costumes did.

I was just thinking of this in conjunction with western painting's borrowings from Japanese woodcuts in the late 19th century. The techniques of flattening the picture plane led to deep structural changes in how subject matter was presented in oil painting, pastels and prints – with Manet, Gauguin and Bonnard. Not just a pastiche of Japanese pictorial patterns or motifs.

If Balanchine's borrowings were structural, and not just dress-up, and helped take his ideas beyond "Agon," they might indeed show in a black and white leotard version of "Bugaku".

Also it's interesting that before the mid-19th century, western borrowings from other cultures were pretty much limited to two: ancient Rome and Greece. They were the models for poetry and architecture. With the rise of the upper middle class and financial speculation in, and trade with, the east, the whole world seemed to open up as a costume and wallpaper shop for the arts.

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Quiggin

[Kathleen O'Connell]

2 minutes ago, Quiggin said:

I was just thinking of this in conjunction with western painting's borrowings from Japanese woodcuts in the late 19th century. The techniques of flattening the picture plane led to deep structural changes in how subject matter was presented in painting – with Manet, Gaugin and Bonnard. Not just a pastiche of Japanese pictorial patterns or motifs.

Also Van Gogh, who made copies of Japanese ukiyo-e prints and then incorporated what he learned into his own work.

Jerome Robbins' Watermill dabbles in Eastern traditions, but I don't think he came away from the experiment with much to inform his later work. It dabbles in the  Robert Wilson variety avant-garde of, too, and that didn't seem to stick either.

[dirac]

4 hours ago, kfw said:

The other issue with doing the ballet in leotards sans set, or sans that set, is that it would be the first instance, at least that I’m aware, of anyone radically altering a Balanchine ballet after his death, i.e. without his input (unless one counts the change in Tea, a much smaller change). Yes there have been set and costume changes to other ballets (have any of these ever been a critical or popular success?), but none I’m aware of that radically alter the look and tone of the ballet, or strip it of a previously integral element. Do we really want to go down that road?

 

That's a fair point and I hadn't thought of it that way. I agree it's a path to tread with caution.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

4 hours ago, kfw said:

The other issue with doing the ballet in leotards sans set, or sans that set, is that it would be the first instance, at least that I’m aware, of anyone radically altering a Balanchine ballet after his death, i.e. without his input (unless one counts the change in Tea, a much smaller change). Yes there have been set and costume changes to other ballets (have any of these ever been a critical or popular success?), but none I’m aware of that radically alter the look and tone of the ballet, or strip it of a previously integral element. Do we really want to go down that road?

I honestly don't know the answer to this question. In the case of Apollo, for instance, people seem comfortable going back to a version of the work that Balanchine himself abandoned. Older ballets and operas are reworked and reshaped all the time. And I'm not just talking about the notorious "Eurotrash" productions here: for a while it was deemed wholly appropriate to lop the de capos off of de capo arias, cast baritones into roles written for castrati (when a mezzo or contralto would have been truer to the music), and eliminate the repeats written into baroque and classical musical compositions.  Is it simply the temporal distance from us that makes those kinds of adjustments palatable? Could Bugaku be revived on its 100th anniversary as a leotard ballet with no one blinking an eye?

[pherank]

5 hours ago, kfw said:

The other issue with doing the ballet in leotards sans set, or sans that set, is that it would be the first instance, at least that I’m aware, of anyone radically altering a Balanchine ballet after his death, i.e. without his input (unless one counts the change in Tea, a much smaller change). Yes there have been set and costume changes to other ballets (have any of these ever been a critical or popular success?), but none I’m aware of that radically alter the look and tone of the ballet, or strip it of a previously integral element. Do we really want to go down that road?

 

I've been wondering about the legality of this same thing myself. The Balanchine Trust has allowed their individual répétiteurs to set the version of a ballet that they know and are comfortable with - it does not have to be the last version of the ballet (as if that is the final, etched in stone version). But in the case of Bugaku, there is only one version to use. I would think that if any company would be given leeway in this matter, it would be NYCB. Obviously the use of black and white 'practice' clothes is something with a long history at NYCB, and wouldn't be a bizarre approach. As far as Balanchine's costume ballets go, foreign companies often create their own versions of the original (usually Karinska) costumes, for example, the POB using Christian Lacroix-designed costumes for Jewels (based upon the originals though, not wholly different in look). Bugaku presents us with a special case in that the costumes and makeup/wigs are considered problematic and are getting in the way of people's appreciation of the work. That's a problem - as it was with the original Four Temperaments costumes.

[pherank]

4 minutes ago, Quinten said:

Then there's the problem of people who might be offended by a leotard ballet. 

You just reminded me of something I read recently - I can't remember which Balanchine ballet it was, but during the late 1960s, an audience member complained about the use of practice clothes because it looked like a "hippie ballet". No one would make that connection now.  ;)

[dirac]

58 minutes ago, Quinten said:

Then there's the problem of people who might be offended by a leotard ballet. 

[canbelto]

Hmm I often find that with ballets like Raymonda or Bugaku that the energy the performers bring to the plate often tips the balance between "offensive" and compelling.

When I saw the livestream of the Bolshoi's Raymonda I was frankly appalled by the brownface Abderakhman and the visible disgust Maria Alexandrova had towards the Abderakhman. I have however seen other Raymondas where it's clear Raymonda is turned on by Abderakhman, and the ballet becomes much more complex and ambiguous than "Muslim villain tries to rape Hungarian princess." I have also seen productions where the chemistry between Raymond and Jean de Brienne is so non-existent that the wedding pas looks like an arranged trophy marriage, and the entire balance of the ballet is tipped towards those thrilling moments Raymonda had with Abderakhman. 

Glazunov further mixes things up by making the second act music by far the most exciting and teeming with life. 

[kfw]

3 hours ago, pherank said:

You just reminded me of something I read recently - I can't remember which Balanchine ballet it was, but during the late 1960s, an audience member complained about the use of practice clothes because it looked like a "hippie ballet". No one would make that connection now.  ;)

I love it.  

Quote

Bugaku presents us with a special case in that the costumes and makeup/wigs are considered problematic and are getting in the way of people's appreciation of the work. That's a problem - as it was with the original Four Temperamentscostumes.

Are Japanese or Japanese-American balletgoers expressing discomfort or offense, and giving explanations for why? I think that's what it would take for me to, regrettably, reconsider my position here.

Kathleen, I knew you weren't saying Balanchine meant to be demeaning, and I meant to say so but forgot to. Sorry.

[dirac]

1 hour ago, Quinten said:

Yes, that is the bottom line.  If there are scholarly articles, academic surveys, minutes of international meetings, etc. describing any problems any actual Asians might have with the piece whether or not they've seen it, it would be interested to see them. In the absence of a factual basis it would seem strange for us to infer that Asians do not like Bugaku because they see it as presenting unflattering Asian stereotypes.   Is it possible that this feared Asian discomfort is actually a projection onto Asians of the embarrassment felt by westerners who read our history as a regrettable exercise in domination of other, better cultures?  This embarrassment is well-founded, imo,  but I think we westerners should own it and refrain from assuming without facts that others feel the same way.

I'd suggest that it's embarrassment felt at the coy Orientalisms in the ballet - those little bows, for example. I'd be embarrassed indeed if I had to wait for an Asian friend to point such things out to me before I noticed them!

As observed above, you do want to be careful when retrofitting a ballet, so to speak. But that's better than having to banish it from the stage because it's beyond saving. I don't think that's true of Bugaku, but there are issues....

[Drew]

13 hours ago, kfw said:

 

The other issue with doing the ballet in leotards sans set, or sans that set, is that it would be the first instance, at least that I’m aware, of anyone radically altering a Balanchine ballet after his death, i.e. without his input (unless one counts the change in Tea, a much smaller change). Yes there have been set and costume changes to other ballets (have any of these ever been a critical or popular success?), but none I’m aware of that radically alter the look and tone of the ballet, or strip it of a previously integral element. Do we really want to go down that road?

 

ETA: I guess the MCB Nutcracker production is pretty radical in looks, but it's in the same spirit.

The MCB Nutcracker is an interesting example. I wonder about the same company's Midsummer Night's Dream 'under the sea' version of Balanchine's ballet. It seems to have sold well in at least some of its performances and to have gotten positive coverage locally. Of course, those aren't the only criteria of success. People on this website disagreed about its value, but at least a couple of the people who actually saw it also enjoyed it. I confess that reading about it made me want to see it even if the idea seemed a tad wacky.  (I also love Spongebob so maybe I'm the target audience for things that live "under the sea.")

At NYCB the "black" tutus for the swans were introduced into the Balanchine one act Swan Lake after his death (though I believe the company website has some spiel about Balanchine buying the material for black tutus and it being probably his idea to use them in Swan Lake--something he is not around to confirm or deny). That was a pretty radical change to my eyes. The new backdrop for that production (which I find gorgeous) doesn't count as a dramatic re-do--the ballet always had a backdrop--but putting an entire corps in black tutus has a pretty big impact on the look of the whole thing. Successful? I'm guessing a lot of people think not, but again it has stayed in the repertory for a long time and did receive some positive reviews at least if my memory doesn't betray me. It certainly is very striking.

But dancing Bugaku without its original designs and accoutrements--though it might be interesting--seems more along the lines of Balanchine's own experiment with putting on Les Sylphides as Chopiniana in black and white practice clothes and with a piano accompaniment. No-one seems to think that experiment worked though and it did not remain in repertory. There, the design seems absolutely integral to the ballet and that is, after all, what Fokine's aesthetic was about...

 

Edited January 6, 2018 by Drew
Cut a bunch of stuff that was even more off topic--re redesigning Balanchine.

[kfw]

8 hours ago, dirac said:

I'd suggest that it's embarrassment felt at the coy Orientalisms in the ballet - those little bows, for example. I'd be embarrassed indeed if I had to wait for an Asian friend to point such things out to me before I noticed them!

I understand the embarrassment, but nothing looks coy to me danced to Mayuzumi's score.

[Olga]

The black tutus for Balanchine’s swans are a travesty. I hope they go back to white. 

[dirac]

13 hours ago, Drew said:

But dancing Bugaku without its original designs and accoutrements--though it might be interesting--seems more along the lines of Balanchine's own experiment with putting on Les Sylphides as Chopiniana in black and white practice clothes and with a piano accompaniment. No-one seems to think that experiment worked though and it did not remain in repertory. There, the design seems absolutely integral to the ballet and that is, after all, what Fokine's aesthetic was about...

True, but Balanchine wasn't altering the designs because Les Sylphides reflected dated  attitudes, but still had much worth preserving. 

(if I may quote from l'histoire earlier in the thread):  

Quote

I would love to see Bugaku as a leotard ballet, truly, versus how it exists now, which is basically a leotard ballet trussed up in bizarre clothing (horse hair wigs and cocktail umbrellas and flowered bikinis - Seriously? 

These are things that can be addressed.  If a leotard experiment doesn't work --there are other options and it can always be dropped. 

[Birdsall]

On 1/5/2018 at 7:32 AM, mnacenani said:

(As someone who has been an opera-goer for 30+ years before being captivated by Russian classical ballet)  May I suggest that there is serious socio-political satire in Madama Butterfly in Act 2 Scene 1, when MB is speaking with Sharpless and Goro regarding divorcing one's wife in the USA. Before the advent of surtitles many people who didn't know the libretto well missed this bit I think.

 

I too have been an opera-goer for about 25 years and that is the scene I was referring to when I suggested that Madama Butterfly does show some spunk and is actually quite sadistic toward Yamadori. She has contempt for the Japanese man who claims to love her. But then she is quite masochistic when it comes to Pinkerton. I think Puccini was giving a kick to America and using the story to do so. Yet he was also fascinated with America as La Fanciulla del West indicates. So you can have both love and disdain for a culture. I think most people view Madama Butterfly as an Italian's idea of what American imperialism was doing to Japanese culture (and maybe even world culture), and most Europeans I have known (when I lived in Germany and Austria) had a certain amount of love-hate with American culture. However, mixed in there is some beautiful music. I think Puccini definitely intended to be totally sympathetic toward Madama Butterfly but inadvertently perpetuated a stereotype. However, as I said, I think he kept the part I am referring to as sort of an attempt to show she is not just this passive wilting Butterfly at all times. So for me that redeems the whole thing somewhat. And the music, of course, redeems the whole thing. 

I guess what I am getting at is that these works of art can often be flawed but if there are redeeming qualities they (to me) deserve to continue to be staged and seen......afterall, Madama Butterfly has probably helped many people fall in love with opera. 

I think it is the same with individuals. Great artists can be total jerks. We can love the art and dislike the person (Wagner is a prime example for me). 

Although I hate the passive, long suffering and long waiting Asian woman as a stereotype (which is NOT AT ALL my experience of Japanese women.......) I do enjoy a good performance of Madama Butterfly although it is often sung by sopranos who are way too light for the role.......in fact, I don't think many sopranos around can actually do it justice, so I am more likely to pass on Madama Butterfly because often I have deep reservations of who is cast in the soprano role or have never heard of the soprano so suspect it is a young singer who doesn't know what she's getting herself in for...... A search on Operabase shows how it is often an unknown soprano even in decent houses. So I would rather shelve it for lack of singers who can actually sing it rather than for stereotyping. 

 

[California]

7 hours ago, Olga said:

The black tutus for Balanchine’s swans are a travesty. I hope they go back to white. 

Balanchine himself ordered the black fabric for those tutus. When asked why, he just said "there were black swans, too." I've never found any more of an explanation. In several versions of the ballet (including the Ratmansky reconstruction), there are 4-8 black swans in the last act. I've never been sure what that's about - mourning? sadness? but they all show that through the movement. So, I don't know. 

[canbelto]

I think many swans are black when young ... 

[pherank]

37 minutes ago, Birdsall said:

Although I hate the passive, long suffering and long waiting Asian woman as a stereotype (which is NOT AT ALL my experience of Japanese women.......) I do enjoy a good performance of Madama Butterfly although it is often sung by sopranos who are way too light for the role.......in fact, I don't think many sopranos around can actually do it justice, so I am more likely to pass on Madama Butterfly because often I have deep reservations of who is cast in the soprano role or have never heard of the soprano so suspect it is a young singer who doesn't know what she's getting herself in for...... A search on Operabase shows how it is often an unknown soprano even in decent houses. So I would rather shelve it for lack of singers who can actually sing it rather than for stereotyping.

I don't think anyone has mentioned stereotypes of women WITHIN Japanese (or Asian) culture. The stereotypes didn't just come out of thin air the day a European artist decided to work with an Asian-ish subject - the stereotypes often have a long, long history.

The theme of the "abandoned courtesan" has got to be one of, if not the MOST, popular theme in Japanese and Chinese literature and drama (and that can be an abandoned wife or young woman too). It's like singing the blues I suppose: there are male writers writing about the woman they've wronged, and either feeling guilty or 'casting them off like wilted flowers'; men writing from the point of view of the women; female writers deploring their sad state of affairs (and sometimes contemplating suicide); stories of women who get even and are often portrayed as murderous witches; and women who get even with their ex-lover/husband in an honorable/righteous way, which means to say. they end up killing themselves. It's endlessly morbid. And, there's great beauty in much of the writing, which gives it a different feel from Afro-American Blues lyrics.

The I Ching: "Great Righteousness is shown in that man and woman occupy their correct places; the relative positions of Heaven and Earth."

Here's two poems I really like by the Chinese proto-feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin (Chinese: 秋瑾). You'll see how they both fit into the tradition I mention above, while also being 'modern', and purely autobiographical laments.

Don't tell me women are not the stuff of heroes,
I alone rode over the East Sea's winds for ten thousand leagues.
My poetic thoughts ever expand, like a sail between ocean and heaven.
I dreamed of your three islands, all gems, all dazzling with moonlight.
I grieve to think of the bronze camels, guardians of China, lost in thorns.
Ashamed, I have done nothing; not one victory to my name.
I simply make my war horse sweat. Grieving over my native land
hurts my heart. So tell me; how can I spend these days here?
A guest enjoying your spring winds?

[She left her family in China for a period to study in Japan, which was something good Chinese wives just didn't do]

Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark;
Our women's world is sunk so deep, who can help us?
Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas,
Cut off from my family I leave my native land.
Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison,
With heated heart arouse all women's spirits.
Alas, this delicate kerchief here
Is half stained with blood, and half with tears.

 

[Helene]

Cio-Cio-San shows a lot of spunk throughout the opera.  She's a young woman who is self-supporting: she's only running out of money after three years of supporting a household, including Suzuki and her child, since Pinkerton paid the rent for a short time and disappeared, and it was the overhead that drained her.  The men treat her like property, even though she works hard and is earning her own living, yet before her marriage to Pinkerton until she's disowned, she's stuck with Uncle Bonze calling the patriarchal shots.

Unfortunately, she is wrong, but she thinks he is her ticket out of being a geisha and starting afresh in a different country.  She has a superficial idea of how an American Christian husband will behave -- unfortunately, she doesn't realize that he doesn't consider her a "real" wife -- and what her life will be like somewhere else.  It was a horrible time to be Asian in the US, but she didn't know that.  She drives everyone crazy throughout the opera, because she's got plans and is quite determined.  

 

[Olga]

5 hours ago, California said:

Balanchine himself ordered the black fabric for those tutus. When asked why, he just said "there were black swans, too." I've never found any more of an explanation. In several versions of the ballet (including the Ratmansky reconstruction), there are 4-8 black swans in the last act. I've never been sure what that's about - mourning? sadness? but they all show that through the movement. So, I don't know. 

 My impression is that Balanchine ordered a lot of black fabric and when asked to justify it he made a comment that even swans can be black. (That is basically whaT the company’s website says.) I interpret that as an offhand comment, or even perhaps a semi-cryptic remark indicating he wasn’t going to answer the question directly. I do not believe he ever said he was going to change the entire corps’ costumes from white to black. I think it’s a big step to go from that comment to the current costume scheme. And I think it ruins the visuals and possibly alters the meaning.  Peter’s sense of costume and set design is not one of his stronger points - witness his own Swan Lake. I do believe in some Russian productions there are a few black swans mixed into a predominantly white field. I havent seen Ratmansky’s Swan Lake.

Edited January 7, 2018 by Olga
To better track NYCB language and clarify my thoughts abit.

[sandik]

On 12/28/2017 at 3:29 AM, Ashton Fan said:

At the moment I should just like to see Fokine's Petrushka restored to the stage in a form which makes it a viable piece of theatre. This would seem to require either that the Moor retains his costume and loses his make up or the black face make up is retained as part of an historical staging. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory but one needs to be selected if Petrushka is to be restored to the stage because with the right cast, stager and coaches it is not simply an interesting bit of dance history but an extraordinarily effective piece of dance theatre. 

 

Sorry for the delay in replying to this -- life is just getting too complex.

I think we actually agree, but I just wanted to say that Petrouchka is a fundamental example of an important period in our history because it's an effective piece of dance theater.

[sandik]

On 12/29/2017 at 10:03 AM, balletforme said:

YES!  

This all goes to the very nature of art and its purposes. 

Should art chronicle, disrupt, query, confront, disturb? 

What is art should  intentionally harm the artists in the making? 

This is why I have such trouble with the Streb stuff. 

 

I appreciate your argument here, but I think with Streb it's not a matter of difference but of degree.  All extreme physical activity has physical consequences for the performer -- her presentation is significantly more straightforward than most (especially the early stuff) but there it is -- the dancers take risks, and we watch them do it.

[sandik]

On 12/30/2017 at 3:53 AM, Mashinka said:

Nevertheless the sight of several women being sold is stomach turning and is not a feature of other versions I've seen.

As I understand it from the research Doug Fullington has done, this is a part of the original work.

[sandik]

Wow -- a girl takes a couple days off and things really move along!

I'm not sure if this is true across the US, but I do know in Seattle the Asian American community has been very vocal about productions with Asian characters and/or themes.  Mikado, Madame Butterfly, Miss Saigon have all been criticized -- some for their casting practices (Caucasian actors in Asian roles) and some for their content.  It's been discussed in the local press (both in features and reviews), and in a couple of cases has been the jumping off point for some significant public education on cultural appropriation and white privilege. 

Pacific Northwest Ballet will be performing Possokhov's RAkU later this spring -- I'm curious to see what the response will be.