l'histoire

Of course many facets of identity are culturally constructed. The IDEA of what a man or woman SHOULD be (you know, "gender") is a cultural construct, which is what I was saying (and I'm not saying you have to pick one or the other, though in functional point of fact, in many places you actually DO have to pick). I wasn't debating the fact that people can feel "in between" (to say the least); I was objecting to the idea that gender - as a construct - is somehow inherent in human existence or linked to what genitals you're born with (it's not). The reason people feel that "people with penises should be like THIS" or "people with vaginas should be like THAT" is a CULTURAL construct. It's not inherent in biology.

First of all, gender is not "an identity," it's a cultural construct. Second, a "dan" is a ROLE, it has nothing to do with the sex or gender of the performer. You can have a dan who has identified as male since birth (like Mei Lanfang), or a dan who has identified as female since birth (like a great many dan in the modern era). Women were, from the 18th century on (until the 20th century), BANNED from Chinese stages, so you had no choice BUT to have men playing "women's" roles until the mid-20th century (when women started playing dan roles again). Yes, Mei Lanfang was one of the "great four dan," he also had a lot of reasons for throwing about his masculinity (if interested, please look at Joshua Goldstein's fabulous monograph, _Drama Kings_, published by UC Press). And please don't conflate "Chinese opera" with "Peking opera." Peking opera itself (never mind its status as "the" Chinese opera) is a relatively recent invention. If we're going to bow our heads to anything as "Chinese opera," it should be kunqu, or as it's often called in Chinese - "Mother of a hundred [styles of] opera."

Realize I'm several weeks late, but no, I still don't understand what Balanchine's obsession with Farrell with was "bizarre." Bizarre in what way? Balanchine had fallen in love with young ballerinas before, that was nothing new; he'd done a lot of choreography for them, too. Farrell wasn't the first. I'd just like to know why the Farrell/Balanchine affair was "bizarre," when his others - with LeClerq, Tallchief, etc - weren't.

This is all assuming he WANTED (or felt like he could) write about all that (or "as told to" all that). I agree it's a shame he never published anything, but perhaps it's the historian in me - we simply can't expect such riches from our sources. OTOH, if his archive is safely with Columbia, suffice to say, scholars will pull out of it things Mitchell never would've dreamed of speaking about. The autobiographical archive is fetishized in the field of history & generally overvalued, though it is of course valuable.

Why "bizarre"? There's a reason the documentary made of her is called Elusive Muse - I actually think that captures Balanchine's presentation of Dulcinea in Don Q to a 't,' from what I've seen/read of the ballet. I can appreciate the fact that Balanchine's Don Q wasn't the bravura-fest that most versions of the ballet are (even if I think its potential of being revived handily are slim to none).

I feel this way about the Peony Pavilion (a famous Chinese opera, which is a supreme & beloved achievement as a work of literature & as excerpts in traditional Chinese opera), which the National Ballet of China made into a ballet. As highly stylized as Chinese opera is, it's still not ballet (and I've been horrified by what parts of the ballet I've seen, insofar as "telling the story") - it is a glorious piece of literature that is "undanceable."

I'm an East Asian specialist, and have never read Don Quixote in its entirety, though I think we were forced to read excerpts in HS. Regardless, I appreciate you highlighting that Balanchine had his particular twist/emphasis, just as Petipa has his .... Much like many of the sprawling works I read, it seems well-nigh impossible to distill the "entirety" into an evening's ballet, so you have to pick some angle. One reason I'm such a Balanchine devotee: one doesn't have to have these conversations watching Concerto Barocco or Serenade.

I'm not surprised. Here's a quote from one of the critics I study, re: 16th century drama, which is often incredibly long, dense, and stupidly complex (seriously, the "origin" play I l study has 34 acts. Thirty four. That's a lot! We're talking 18 hours at a minimum to get through the whole thing!): I mean, isn't Don Q read against Balanchine's maxim that "there are no mothers-in-law in ballet"? Don Q (the novel) wasn't MEANT to be a ballet (I have the same issue with things like Mayerling - you're seriously making a ballet about THAT? Well, godspeed ...). I appreciate that Mr B. gave Farrell this love letter, but I don't think Balanchine's focus on the Don & Dulcinea is any more admirable than Petipa picking out the parts he was interested in. They're just artistic decisions about what to focus on in a work that was never intended to be presented to audiences in such a manner.

I mean, I've always gotten the impression this is one reason the ballet was/is disliked: people walk in expecting one thing, and get something totally different. I study various 20th century adaptations of one play, which was originally written in the late 16th century; the primary "adaptation" (which has generally been wildly popular) that has been passed down since then could probably be said to be like Petipa's "distillation" of the original Don Q novel. That 16th century play is also radically different from its late 14th century source material. This is just how things work - cultural workers take what they like, interpretations take root, and so here we are, with more focus on Kitri's variations than the Don & Dulcinea. The latter isn't necessarily "better," just different.

Drew, I sincerely hope I didn't offend you. I absolutely understand the value of looking at things that aren't looked at often - I've literally made my career on things (plays, in this case, which are sometimes not so different than ballets) that haven't ever been seen, or published, or written about since the early 1950s. They're not necessarily great, but they are valuable (but, as I said upthread, I can make more sense of *some* of their value because I have scripts, which are not all equivalent to ballet - how do you make sense of a ballet without dancers in front of you doing it, or at the very minimum recordings? Notations are ... not really sufficient, at best. Yes, I realize there's a recording of the Don Q premier, which helps a bit. What would we be saying if there was nothing?). I'm not saying it wouldn't be "useful" for NYCB to revive it, but the question remains: what does it replace? What does that do to ticket sales? A "suite" sounds like an appropriate replacement. But then, we weren't discussing how to excerpt it to make it more palatable. I agree 100% with Gottleib's assessment that one SHOULD be able to revisit an entire corpus, but how often does that happen - for a company, and more importantly, an audience? Capitalism is dreadful & I hate to think of artistic groups deciding on what-to-do-when-and-how based on a financial logic, but let's face it, that has a lot to do with programming choices. How many of the current NYCB ticket-buying audience is willing to purchase tickets for a revived Don Q because "You need King Lear all the time, but every decade or so you also need Timon of Athens" (I grew up in the DC area & don't ever remember seeing Timon of Athens advertised by the Folger, though they've performed it in the past couple of years). It's an "academic" mindset because people who spend a lot of time thinking about these things recognize the importance, but the people who are buying the tickets don't necessarily.

I've never read a review of the ballet as anything other than a curiosity (you know, the sort of thing academics might enjoy ...). I personally think Farrell revived it because (a) she's the only one that can and (b) it's a personally important ballet to her, which is fair enough to me. I'm glad she got to coach some people in the role of Dulcinea, just like I'm glad she got to coach some people in Meditations. Of course, all the reviews find beautiful parts in it, but does anyone speak of it as a viable, revivable production? I haven't seen one review that even gestures towards that as a possibility - maybe you have. If so, I would love to see them (really). I do believe "seeing" is an important part of understanding choreographers oeuvres, but this is the difficulty ballet faces. There's a very complicated triangulation that goes on deciding what to stage & when. I'm sure there are things NYCB's home audience would find interest in. But it's a big, elaborate, full-length ballet - we're not talking reviving "PAMGG." What will it replace on the schedule?

IIRC, one of the constant features of the reviews of Farrell's revival of Don Q was that "hey it's nice to see the genius not at his best, in an emotionally important moment" (someone upthread I believe described it as a "time capsule" - it does seem so, when looking for the transcendent). But, I think of Acocella's review of it from the New Yorker ("Backstory," 25 July 2005), where she is discussing the solo we are all raving over & how Farrell ("She") differed from her ("they") dancers: Anyways, as a cultural historian who has to spend a lot of time reading *really not good* cultural products (far worse than Balanchine's Don Q, I assure you), yes, there is much to be learned by things that don't quite work (or don't work at all). I've built my career on studying things that weren't terribly successful, actually, because they are often more revealing than the "hits." As I like to remind my students, "I don't care if you LIKE it, that's not why we're watching or reading it." But obviously, someone going to ballet for an evening of pleasure is not going to want to pay money to see something they aren't going to like for some educational reason. The big problem is, unlike the plays I deal with (which I can just read in script form - it loses something, but I can still take in something the original author wanted to convey), you can't just "read" a ballet without having it in front of you, with dancers. Even if you have notations: way different than dealing with a drama script. What IS the answer for ballet? I really don't know. But ultimately, they CAN'T "revive" it without her permission, at least as far as I understand.

I didn't see Farrell's revival with her company, but I do remember reading a New Yorker (I think??) article about it. I wish I could find it now, I've been searching for it the past few hours & it's not popping up, so I gave up. Regardless, there was a lovely article after she revived it for SFB that described how *she* danced it, and how the people she coached danced it. There was a wonderfully poetic comparison between Farrell & her dancers. The description of Farrell in the role of Dulcinea was haunting. I'm not surprised she didn't "give" it to NYCB, which I think was the initial "Oh but we invited her to ..." invitation. The way she & others talk about it in the 'Elusive Muse' documentary, and watching her on screen, yeah - it's special for her. I don't blame her for going "No, you can't have it" to an organization that, based on New Yorker et al. publications, had actively turned her out (for whatever justified, or not, reason).

Farrell owns the rights to Don Q, or did (I don't entirely understand how the Balanchine Foundation works - it's possible she's since signed over 'her' rights to them? Same thing with Meditation). But at that point in time (when NYCB was considering doing Don Q again, back in the 90s or early 2000s, non?), she wasn't "invited" back to stage it - they asked if they could perform it (and she apparently said 'no'), because no one other than her had the rights TO perform it without going through her. I'm pretty sure this was pretty explicitly taken up in a New Yorker article, though I don't have the time to lay hands on where this was spelled out in detail.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to go back and rewatch Elusive Muse - Bejart says that "she's like a violin, the music comes out from her body." The interview with him in the documentary is quite lovely.

This isn't a 'hmmm,' at least not to someone who has viewed several EEO complaints (I am certainly not saying this particular case made it to the EEO, however) - there's often a 'OK, if we give you THIS much [could be financial, could be something else], you'll go away after we meet your demands & won't file suit & will sign an NDA and won't talk' agreement. I think complainants generally want to get this stuff over with & aren't gunning for the courts - at least in my experience. Can you really blame them? Look how this society treats victims of sexual assault. It's all nice & well to say "Well, the complainant should die on their sword!", but that's not really fair, is it? It's perhaps not the most 'morally pure' thing to say "I'll take money to have this chapter in my life ended and won't talk about it publicly," but it's understandable, I think. My best friend filed a suit against her former employer with our state labor board & set out the terms - none of which were financial, or caused her any benefit - but I'm quite sure she could've asked for XYZ payment from her employer to "settle the matter to avoid adverse publicity" (especially if she'd signed an NDA) and the company would've CHEERFULLY have done it. I know they've offered in previous cases they've had. At this point, she's very free to talk to potential employees about her experience, should she wish to. The difference between her case & this NYCB shakeup is that no one cares about some random tech startup, whereas the NYCB is covered in the NYT. One male principal resigning rather suddenly + 2 on "probation" is a much different matter than "Shakeup at a tech startup you've never heard of in a city you've probably never heard of!"

I know no professor of history who doesn't teach this stuff in the way Drew describes. I am not in favor of just being like "Whoops, the 19th century with all their ideals didn't exist!!!" If I taught class on dance, you can bet your bottom I would teach it as they describe, and would feel free to show blackface & non-blackface versions. And talk about what's going on in a much more sophisticated way than "But Petipa!". In fact, I teach plenty of Chinese movies with "white" face/"Japanese" face. And we talk about all the issues wrapped up in it, and why a c. 1960 Chinese film depicting either is different than, oh, I don't know, a 19th c. ballet depicting "Africans" in blackface, at least where absurd makeup is concerned. I show plenty of "racist" stuff. Actually, one of my acknowledged specialities is teaching with propaganda. I'm actually quite good with taking outlandish representations & TEACHING with them. I don't say "But well you know, back in the day!! This was OK!!" No one I know does. I've probably spent more time watching Leni Reifenstahl's films than most people on this board. I simply have no patience with the "but we've been doing it THIS way for that long! That's the way it should be!!!" I am admittedly a Balanchine devotee when it comes to ballet, and while Balanchine *certainly* isn't free from problematic points (either in choreography or his personal life), the corps at least isn't painted up to make them look "black." I find Bugaku incredibly problematic on multiple levels (which I've discussed on this board), but at least Balanchine didn't feel the need to paint them yellow.

Precisely, Drew. To act as if it's only the US that has "issues" with blackface representations is naive, at best. An (American) friend of mine (who has spent more time living abroad in Europe & Asia than in the United States) was working in Leiden and her first run-in with Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete") at Christmas-time was quite shocking for her. Her toddler daughter was also rather shocked! There are plenty of Dutch activists working against the continuation of this tradition. It's not just American "hysteria."

While I agree with much of what you're saying, I'm also thinking of Suzanne Farrell in Elusive Muse, stating that (at one point, early in her career) Balanchine said to her (paraphrased from memory; can't drag my DVD out at this hour): "You're going to have all these people to listen to - your mother, critics, the audience, telling you different things. They're all going to be telling you different things. So - just listen to me." And - she did (and I don't think anyone except the most die-hard fan of Russian ballet can say it didn't work for Farrell AND Balanchine?), but I wonder if there isn't an element of this going on with Copeland. She's probably listening to the person she "should" be listening to - her AD (question is, is her AD advising her in a way that she's presenting herself best, and vice versa? I think Farrell trusted that Balanchine would never make a fool of her, and Balanchine trusted that she would never make a hash of the choreography).

This discussion (not canbelto's comments in particular) reminds me of Croce's comments on Farrell's late-early years at the NYCB (late '60s), after Farrell's return post-exile (mid-'70s): "She wasn’t joyously vulgar, like an old-style Bolshoi ballerina; she was carelessly vulgar, with no idea of the difference between one ballet and another" (can be found in the New Yorker archives and/or Croce's Writing in the Dark collection; essay is "Farrell and Farrellism"). I don't think Croce meant any of that as a stab at the Bolshoi's performance traditions; rather the opposite. They're not the Mariinski; there's a flamboyancy there, and that's good - it's part of the theatre. And there's joy there. Isn't that something? I adore the little film we have of "vulgar" Farrell, but it seems quite different to me than the "vulgarities" discussed here. Though maybe not; just a different era's "vulgarities."

Truly, that's fine to say (I would say it's privilege to be able to say that - I don't have that privilege, because I'm an historian) - I agree "we're all humans." A lot of my teaching is "we're all humans." I try really hard to impress upon students, c. 2018, that someone who lived 2000, 3000 years before them was a human with emotions just like them. But at the same time (as I also impress upon my students), we must recognize that it means something radically different to exist in the US, c. 2018, vs. the PRC, c. 1958, vs. the Hei'an period, c. 1128, vs. the Song dynasty, c. 1028. These things are not all the same. They are simply not. As much as we might like them to be. You might treat them as though they're the same, because humans, but they are not to someone who has to sit down with sources, write this history. It's nice to say "oh we're all the same," but - we're not. We can't be. For a variety of political, cultural, and social reasons. In any case, my original point was simply that yes, certain things are really problematic, no, that doesn't mean they should be taken of the stage, but they should be recognized as such. It's not shaming the original production to go "Gee, I don't know, Allegra Kent in a flowered bikini in an Orientalist marriage night fantasy is kind of problematic here." (Really, if Bugaku was one of Balanchine's leotard ballets, I probably wouldn't even BE here talking). We can't just say "oh well we're all humans, ergo this has no power dynamic to it & thus is neutral." I can't figure out how to quote Drew here, but this gets to the heart of it for me: "discussing creatively and respectfully how to produce them in 2018. That's something different from censorship--call it not "live and let live" (a phrase Quinten used) but "live and discuss," "live and learn," "live and re-imagine" etc." My entire academic career is built around talking about how people reimagine culture, both within a specific cultural context & also transnationally. Some of it IS censorship. A lot of it is not - just people trying to figure out how to reinterpret centuries-old things (much, much, much older & more ingrained than Bugaku) into THEIR context. Which is not ours. Just like the moment of creation of Bugaku is not OUR moment. I guess it looks old & dated at this point, but as someone who deals with old & dated things, they still have power.

Forgive me if I misunderstood your reason for quoting her; my assumption was that it was the "tradition [you] mentioned above" re: abandoned courtesans. Yes of course she echoes other things. She is a highly literate Chinese person c. late 19th/early 20th c. writing in classical Chinese, writing classical Chinese poetry (she's actually nothing special in many respects. We think she's special 'cause she got her head chopped off & was a woman. In fact, there were many women doing the exact same thing as her - who didn't get their heads chopped off. Xu Zihua, who I mentioned earlier, is a splendid example). There is nothing else to do in her literary tradition BUT echo things that have come before - that doesn't mean you can't do something interesting & new, but Qiu Jin is nothing "new" in most respects. She's doing what generations have done before her. If you're looking for "radical" in her poetry, well .... Maybe it looks radical in translation. Japanese intellectuals writing "kanshi" - Chinese-style poetry - c. the same period are doing THE SAME THING, even if they are men. Chinese men are doing the same thing. Many WOMEN are doing the same thing. Li Bai can look really modern. The Shijing can look really modern, too. So can Catullus, or Sappho (among others), for that matter. I teach Sei Shonagon (from the Hei'an period), and my students love her - she's a 10th century Tumblr! She's crazily "modern." And? So? She's still not. She was a Hei'an aristocrat. No matter how much her snarky commentary may read well to us, she's still not - will never be - one of us. She couldn't be. She's been dead over a thousand years.

Hello again, sorry to pop my head up again at inopportune times (semester has started again & I have a lot of my own work I'm attending to, thus super interesting BA discussions are taking a back seat. I missed this discussion earlier). 1. We're not talking abandoned courtesans. And bluntly, the trope of "abandoned courtesan" has a COMPLETELY different inflection if we're talking Madame Butterfly (which is not about what's going in Asia, let's face it) vs. one of the great Ming-Qing (courtesan) poets, of which there are many. Dorothy Ko's _Teachers of the Inner Chambers_ is splendid in discussing this. If we're talking "lovesick young women," still different. My primary area of focus is ghost operas (guixi), the most of which focus on young women dying for various reasons & then returning in a ghostly form. Seriously, I've spent a lot of time looking at these things. They're not "Madame Butterfly" just written by Asian people, I promise. 2. I'm not sure why we're quoting the Yijing. I can quote a number of quite famous poems from the Shijing that are - bluntly - about sexual desire and love - correct places be damned. And, a good whack of the Shijing is older the YIjing, so .... You also can't separate ANY of the Classics from Confucianism as a whole. I give a lecture entitled "From Romance to Bromance," which is on later Confucian & neo-confucian interpretations of "the classics." These things are old. They've been read & re-read many times, and reinterpreted many times. I can give you multiple examples of a poem that is _obviously_ a love poem being "reinterpreted" - and reinterpreted through the ages, century after century - as some claptrap about a ruler and his official. 3. Qiu Jin is great (truly). I love her, I teach with her. Basically all my classes read her. I admit I have more fondness for her very good friend, Xu Zihua, who is the one who went to collect her beheaded body & bury Qiu Jin ("Who will come with me to bury Autumn?") & had to carry on (and did). But Qiu Jin was not an abandoned courtesan. She was a woman from an elite family who CHOSE to leave her family to go pursue other things. And she did. Don't trot out Qiu Jin to say something about "abandoned courtesans." She was neither abandoned, nor a courtesan. She was a HIGHLY literate woman from an elite family & made her own choices. The "don't tell me women are not heroes" poem is actually addressed to a Japanese man she met while traveling. She is 100% engaging with - for the time - current international relations via her poetry. She is not a weeping, lonely courtesan & to paint her as such is ... pretty absurd.

Well, no, that's not precisely what I'm saying. But the issue of transfer from, say, China to Korea or Korea to Japan circa (pick an ancient century: 3rd c. AD, 7th c. AD) is fundamentally different that Balanchine being saddled with a Japanese score & having to do "something" with it. We're talking a very different flow when it comes to Japanese court writers in the 8th c AD, HAVING to borrow from China because 'oh hello we have a very minor tradition of written language - which is YOURS to begin with' versus Petipa in St. P, creating Raymonda. There are 8 billion reasons for this. I will not bore with you talk on Chinese literary forms & how that was THE accepted form in China, Korea, AND Japan for many centuries (classical Chinese was THE literary language in China, Japan & Korea well into the 19th century), but I will say it's not really "borrowing," not the way we're talking about here. Same thing with Japan (or China or Korea) "borrowing" from the West in the late 19th/20th c. (artistically speaking). Yes, it's quite true they took on forms from the West. But it was most often to make a comment on domestic society (I would add a few paragraphs here, but everyone has been delightfully patient with me & I don't want to wear out my welcome!). They're not "borrowing" from the West to reinvent the West, or provide some vision of the West. They take the form (something new to East Asian culture) for the purposes of dealing with the East Asian present (the Japanese "I" novel would be a splendid example: borrowed from the West but reinvented for Japanese purposes - and has now become a Japanese "thing"). FYI, I'm just as agog at Chinese dramas, c. 1955, that feature people in whiteface (yes, such a thing exists) as I am at Bugaku. And at least Bugaku has lasting artistic value. Whether we like it or not, there's a very serious power dynamic in place when in comes to "the West" (I realize Balanchine once characterized himself as "an Oriental," and bluntly - you're welcome to disagree with me - it's one of the few, possibly the only, Balanchine quotes that makes me roll my eyes and go 'Oh come ON.' I'm familiar with "Russians that are Russians but don't live in St P or Moscow," and revisiting that quote hurt me). This is what concerns me (not the ballet, but the idea that some cultural production couldn't reinforce already problematic ideas). It presents a certain view of "the Orient" & that ought to be complicated. As a related, but different, example, I love - LOVE! - Orientalist European art from the 19th century. I also recognize that it's incredibly problematic. I hang it in my house (via exhibition posters) with impunity, but would NEVER show it to my students without a serious discussion attending it. Obviously, people who spend even a small portion of their free time on Ballet Alert are not the kind of people I would feel anxious about looking at these things. But they ARE problematic. I think this is the discussion we're ultimately having? We're not talking "to each other" in the sense that someone who spends time on Ballet Alert will need to be convinced Orientalist art is potentially problematic. But what does it mean for people who don't spend their time on a ballet board? Ultimately, I'm a cultural historian - that most hated breed of historian, at least in the current academic climate - so I DO take culture seriously. Even, as someone said earlier, a rarely seen ballet (so who cares, right? I do agree that Bugaku "isn't important" vs. any popularly viewed TV show, or even versus Balanchine's great, famous ballets) . But it all matters. I'm not saying Bugaku needs to be taken off stages in any respect, just that - we need to think about it in its context. It is by far not the most problematic ballet (to me) that has been brought up in this thread, but we can't just think about it as pretty tutus, drink umbrellas, flowered bikinis, and nice choreography. I give Balanchine way more of a pass than I do contemporary stagings of various classics featuring blackface in Russia (!). It's true that ballet goers are, in general, a lot more sophisticated than the students I teach; I probably wouldn't have to say to anyone on this board, for example, that the shorthand "Japs" for "Japanese" is rather problematic (something I dealt with last semester, so - not far off). But Bugaku is interesting: it says something about a certain moment (its creation) about East-West interactions (interesting!), but it's still performed, however rarely. What does it say to contemporary audiences? How does it say it? Is that message problematic? So ... what do we do now? These are the things I'm interested in.

Also please forgive me, there were a lot of interesting posts I wanted to quote specifically but I've been having trouble with the board software on my laptop. I've been reading Ballet Alert for many years, and have always appreciated the thoughtfulness and intelligence of contributors (still do, obviously), and am a little embarrassed that my first foray into what is apparently a somewhat hot topic has led to me being unable to respond in the way I'd like to.