Hans

I wrote that way in order to be clear--I have suspected for a long time now that ballet's classical period was in the 18th century, but late 19th century ballet is so often referred to as classical that I didn't want to confuse anyone. Perhaps we could make this into a different thread, but does that then make Petipa neoclassical (it's actually a rather apt term, IMO) and Balanchine neoromantic? I've thought for a while that neoromantic fits Balanchine better than neoclassical (and not just because of the hand position ;)).

Yes, that is true. And to think the Nutcracker used to be criticized for making the audience wait too long to see the ballerina! However, I do see what you mean--it's not easy to view the tutu (especially in its present form) as a shortened version of the wide skirts all women used to wear, and the idea of both showing the legs and keeping the male partner a decent distance away is definitely an old-fashioned one. One thing that might explain the popularity of opera but not ballet is that while opera was in its Romantic period (Verdi, Wagner, &c), ballet was having its Classical (or Neoclassical, depending on one's perspective) period with classical tutus and the like (strangely enough, Classical ballet is danced to Romantic music). Therefore, while opera was becoming less and less formal in structure and more extreme emotionally, ballet was becoming more formal, up until the 20th century. Then all hell broke loose ;).

Brendan McCarthy wrote: Yes; and the fact that they are not taught to think for themselves is a mistake, in my opinion. Brainless dancers are the most boring kind to watch, and they are the kind that are mostly bred today. So many ballet dancers never learn to think for themselves artistically that the art is stagnating, and it has been happening for so long that people think that ballet is inherently stagnant. Part of the blame for this lies with teachers and directors, but part of it also lies with the dancers themselves, who do nothing but take three technique classes a day and think that it's enough to prepare them for a life in the arts. Yes, focus and dedication are necessary to achieve a very high level of quality, but that doesn't mean that one's life must be lived in a studio following orders. I think that part of the education of a dancer is a study of choreography, just as musicians study composition. Ergo, I reiterate my point, which is that dancers are not trained or educated as well as other artists, which thus explains the lack of creativity and self-renewal.

Alexandra wrote: Exactly. It's like saying writers aren't creative because they don't invent words. As in my post that Alexandra quoted above, I believe the lack of creativity today has more to do with an equivalent lack of education--those involved in the dance community don't know where ballet has been, so how can they figure out where to take it next? This is very different from the education of a musician or painter--they learn about the histories of their arts and so have perspective on where they stand relative to how they got there. As for the highly disciplined nature of ballet, all the arts are like that--and in music for example, many composers have also been celebrated interpreters of others' works. As far as culture goes, it is true that disciplinarian governments tend to squash art, but such an environment can also drive people to create.

Well, I can't say I'd object to a new staging of Laurencia or La Vestale...;). By the way, Balanchine, Bournonville, and Petipa were all dancers, so I can't really say I agree that ballet training intrinsically stifles creativity. All dancing is creative to some extent, whether you're Shade #37 or improvising a solo. To be a successful dancer (or any type of artist), one must by nature be a creative person. If you don't dance very well, you might stay in the corps for a long time, but if you dance like a robot, you won't get into the company. (On second thought, considering the way ballet is performed these days...:rolleyes: ) PS: Oops, Alexandra, we must have been posting at the same time.

One could also say that there is a difference between enjoyment and appreciation. For example, someone off the street might enjoy watching a ballet very much, but to really appreciate it, a fairly extensive education (and not the kind you get in a public school) is necessary.

I think that Alexandra mentioned the existence of such a video on the Sylphide thread. Does anyone know if it is currently commercially available and how to obtain it if it is?

SAB has changed a great deal, though. Once upon a time, the teachers were all French and Russian. Now, they are (with, I believe, exactly three exceptions) former or current NYCB principals who mostly teach what Balanchine taught them in company class. When I was there, almost none of the dancers in the upper levels had started their training at SAB. It'll be interesting in another 10 years to see how many native SAB dancers there are in the company. I think I would say that Alexandra's definition of ballet, Graham, and Humphrey as techniques makes sense, but I would also say that whereas there are Russian, French, English, Danish, and Italian methods and styles, there are also degrees of style, if that makes sense. For example, Russian style -> Vaganova method -> Kirov style -> Chenchikova's style (as a coach/teacher) -> Larissa Lezhnina's style. That looks really complicated all typed out--it made so much more sense in my head! However, I think that can be done with pretty much all of the major companies/schools today. The Balanchine style is an anomaly, though--it's a combination of Russian, French, Danish, Italian, and Balanchine aesthetic. It doesn't have a prescribed teaching method that I've ever come into contact with, but just like the Kirov and Bolshoi, the style can vary widely depending on the company. I would classify it as a style because it is a stylization of classical ballet technique--certain aspects of it depart from the classical tradition, but these idiosyncrasies do not give it the status of a technique or method, IMO.

That last argument goes both ways-- how many people try to trill or sing the "Exultate, Jubilate" in the shower? Whereas plenty of people go to clubs and "dance" the night away. Just as it is painful to watch ballet dancers with sickled feet and stiff arms, it is just as painful to the classical musician to listen to the squeaky, raspy, slightly off-key or otherwise unexceptional voices that make up pop music today. Also, what type of opera is most popular today? Is it the romantic Italian operas of Verdi or the baroque comedies of Mozart? The style of Romeo and Juliet has more with the former, whereas Sleeping Beauty is closer to the latter in terms of its classical, harmonious structure. If you want to see extreme, Romeo and Juliet is the ballet with double suicides, murder, duels, and secret marriage (and it doesn't hurt that the play is very popular). Sleeping Beauty isn't extreme at all except perhaps in the sense of being extremely restrained. Also, IMO, some of it goes back to the way ballet is taught and performed (perhaps I should say "executed") these days. Ballet dancers think that they dance with their arms and legs; therefore, their movement tends to be superficial, almost arbitrary wavings of the limbs. Opera singers (and modern dancers) know that the torso is where the art must begin. I would even venture to say that classical singing is more of a "full-body" art than ballet is (at least as ballet is currently danced--the way ballet should be danced is something else entirely). It is this that makes the difference, and it is important. One's heart is not located in one's arm or leg, so how is it emotionally expressive to do an arabesque? The gestures of the limbs must be extensions of what occurs in the torso. Based on videos I've seen, this used to be much better understood than it currently is, whether it was a conscious understanding or not. Therefore, I think that it is perhaps the way opera is performed that makes it more appealing to younger people. Maybe I've been a dancer for too long, but could someone please explain just how the mere sight of a tutu could put someone off? I don't really understand how its presence could be so offensive.

I like the Vainonen snow pas--I'd much rather see that than a hospital bed with ruffles glued on to it rolling its dreary way around the stage to cymbal clashes--it reminds me of Tchaikovsky's overly dramatic music for those silly wooden pull toys in Act II of Swan Lake. I also wonder if there is any Nutcracker in the world that lives up to all of those exacting specifications. I could go on about what is/isn't in the book, whether or not they're mice or rats (who cares?), &c, but it would probably give me wrinkles and gray hair, which frankly I'm surprised I don't have already! ;) Juliet, thank you for the balanced post!

I don't think anyone would complain that "Stars and Stripes" or "Western Symphony" are uncouth, and they're about as American as you can get!

I agree entirely, Alexandra and Rachel. One thing that bothers me is the widespread (though fortunately not universal) notion that "choreography" means "not ballet." Of the choreography classes I've had, one was particularly excellent in helping the members of the class to concentrate on something specific and express it through movement--any movement we chose. Another was horrifying--we were encouraged not to blend music and movement to communicate an idea but rather to "break free" of classical restraint and "open up." The "choreography" (it pains me to type the word in such a context) consisted of conjuring up the two weirdest poses we could think of and moving between them for eight counts of silence. When we'd thought up our movements, improvised music was arbitrarily applied to the surface. The resulting "dances" were devoid of meaning, incoherent, and amazingly boring. I suspect the teacher might have meant for us to come up with subjects to express on our own, but the most advice she offered was something like "try using more round shapes in your dance." Not terribly inspiring. Another thing that offends me at ballet schools is the "something for everyone" method of class schedules. You get a ballet class in the morning, then jazz, modern, spanish, character, and maybe men's, pointe, or a pas de deux class that usually features more contortion and weight-lifting than anything remotely relating to art--because "not everyone wants to be a ballet dancer." This prompts two questions from me: Why, then, do they go to a school with "ballet" in the title? (It's one thing if you're twelve and you like ballet but think tap is fun too--not that they're necessarily mutually exclusive--but serious ballet training must begin somewhere.) And "What about those who do want to be ballet dancers? Do we get mime classes, music lessons, or unbiased dance history?" No. I don't mean that one person can't have lessons in modern and ballet; in fact, I think they should, but it does a disservice, as Alexandra said, to ballet and modern (and musical theatre, and jazz &c.) to turn everybody into a jack-of-all trades, master of none. It is high time to look at what that system really accomplishes, and I'm glad we are, even if ballet companies aren't (much). *takes deep breath, tries to pull wildly off-topic post back to repertory* In other words, what I'm trying to say is that until dancers are trained to perform ballet intelligently--that is, with an understanding of its history, music, &c--I don't really see how we can expect companies not to take an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to repertoire. It's simply what their dancers have been trained to do, and especially considering that most artistic directors are former dancers, they're just doing what they think the public wants and continuing what they've learned from their training--that ballet is old (& therefore irrelevant) and unprofitable, and not just in the financial sense. Addendum: Yes, there are ballet schools out there that do an admirable job of training ballet dancers, but they are unfortunately few and far between, and are often either thought of as crumbling away or insignificant in terms of widespread influence.

Edith Wharton is my favorite author, so I was really interested to find these paragraphs on pgs. 320-322 of her autobiography A Backward Glance: "One of the loveliest flowers on the bough so soon to be broken was the dancing of Isadora Duncan. Hardly any one in Paris had heard of her when she first appeared there, but in me her name woke an old memory. Years before, a philanthropic Boston lady who spent her summers at Newport had invited her friends to a garden party at which Isadora Duncan was to dance. “Isadora Duncan?” People repeated the unknown name, wondering why it had been used to bait Miss Mason’s invitation. Only two kinds of dancing were familiar to that generation: waltzing in the ball-room and pirouetting on the stage. I hated pirouetting, and so did not go to Miss Mason’s. Those who did smiled, and said they supposed their hostess had asked the young woman to dance out of charity—as I daresay she did. Nobody had ever seen anything like it; you couldn’t call it dancing, they said. No other Newport hostess engaged Miss Duncan, and her name vanished from everybody’s mind. And then, nearly twenty years later, I went one night to the Opera in Paris, to see a strange new dancer about whom the artists were beginning to talk… I suppose that liking or not liking the conventional form of ballet-dancing is as little to be accounted for as one’s feeling about olives or caviar. To me the word “dancing” had always suggested a joyful abandon, a plastic improvisation, the visual equivalent of Like to a moving vintage down they came, Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame… in Keats’s glorious bacchanal. The traditional ballet-dancing, the swollen feet in ugly shoes performing impossible tours de force of poising and bounding reminded me, on the contrary, of “but, oh, what labour—Prince, what pain!”, and except in Carpeaux’s intoxicating group, and Titian’s “Triumph of Bacchus”, I had never seen dancing as I inwardly imagined it. And then, when the curtain was drawn back from the great stage of the Opera, and before a background of grayish-green hangings a single figure appeared—a tall, rather awkwardly made woman, dragging a scarf after her—then suddenly I beheld the dance I had always dreamed of, a flowing of movement into movement, an endless interweaving of motion and music, satisfying every sense as a flower does, or a phrase of Mozart’s. That first sight of Isadora’s dancing was a white mile-stone to me. It shed a light on every kind of beauty, and showed me for the first time how each flows into the other as the music merged with her dancing. Although the immense rapt audience one felt the rush of her inspiration, as one feels the blowing open of the door in the “Walkyrie,” when Sieglinde cries out: “Wer ging?” and Sigmund answers: Einer kam. Es war der Lenz!” Yes; it was the spring, the bursting into bloom of acres and acres of silver fruit-blossom where a week before there had been only dead boughs. And I believe it was that fertilizing magic which evoked our next and last vision of beauty before the war: the Russian Ballet. Every one who saw the Imperial ballet in St. Petersburg, in its official setting, has assured me that when Diaghilew brought his dancers to Paris he infused new life into them, broke down old barriers of convention, and taught their exquisitely disciplined steps to flow into wild free measures. It is hard to believe that Isadora’s inspiration had no part in the change." I can only imagine what she would think of the ear-slapping extensions and convoluted, gymnastic jumps of today! And that quote brought to mind one from Choura by Danilova, that she thought ballet was more athletic in her day, "with Pierina Legnani commanding the stage like a fire engine with her forty-eight fouettes."

"Harvard of the dance world" "tour jete" "lame duck" Those last two probably aren't quite what you had in mind, Alexandra, but I would not be sorry to see them go!

If this actually occurs, does it mean DC will become the new Dance Capital (pun intended) of the US? We already have the Kirov for the next nine or so years, Suzanne Farrell, a revamped Washington Ballet & School, the Universal Ballet Academy and a really big project in the works for the Kennedy Center. Anyway, I voted for Eifman because of his entertainment value--the same reason I still have my tape of NYCB's Swan Lake.

Perhaps they don't or can't look past the illogical 'fairy' stories to see what the message of the dancing really is. Ballet, especially classical ballet, whose meaning isn't waved about on a banner, requires the people of the audience to use their brains to read between the lines, which is something the few people who aren't English majors do anymore. Maybe that's the tragic flaw of art--the very thing that makes it art as opposed to entertainment is that entertainment has little or no deeper meaning, and art does. This makes art both more interesting and more difficult to watch/listen to/&c. It takes more engagement on the part of the audience, whereas many people find anything requiring them to actually think instead of sleep with their eyes open to be boring. Ballet used to be enormously popular, especially, as we all know, in Russia. It isn't elitist; you don't have to be nobility to practice, attend, or understand it (how many of us are related to kings?) but it does require active mental engagement. The fact that it began in the courts of Europe means nothing--it began there because those people didn't have to worry about how they would live one day to the next, and they had the time and money to cultivate their minds. Far, far more people (especially in the US) are in that position today; education is much more widespread and the standard of living has improved dramatically since the 15th century. However, enormous amounts of cheap entertainment are also much more widely available at a lower financial price and that require less physical effort (and that's just getting to the theater!). So while we are more educated and better off financially today, we have used our advantages not to cultivate ourselves but to make children obese diabetics in front of a glowing box. This is not to say that all entertainments of court life in Europe weren't frivolous; plenty were. But live theater in any form takes more active participation from the viewer than TV, which doesn't even require applause, or that the audience be awake to 'experience' it.

I think so, Glebb.

Wrong de jambe - self-explanatory Pirou-wet - fast turns by a perspiring dancer--usually occur during the coda

Perhaps one reason so many men don't like ballet is that it makes them feel like cretins--they recognize that they are boorish, not beautiful, and to make themselves feel comfortable, they exaggerate the difference between themselves and the people onstage. The statement that art is viewed differently in Europe is definitely valid. In Prague, for example, it is not at all unusual to go out to the theater for an evening's entertainment, whereas here in the states, it's a Big Deal (probably because one must actually comb one's hair and put on something other than jeans to do so). Part of it is just culture--at the school I attended in Switzerland, there was nearly a 50/50 split between boys and girls among the second-year students, and almost all the guys were straight. None of us that I know of were ever harassed for being dancers; everyone I spoke to thought it was great. I don't mean to insult the US, but people in Europe definitely seemed to be less confined to their televisions and cookie-cutter houses and take much more pride in being an individual rather than going along with the majority like lemmings off a cliff. This doesn't mean they forget their obligations to society--rules about work, cleanliness, &c are very strict in Switzerland and other countries, and people are initially more polite than friendly, but I'll end with this paraphrase from "Choura" by Danilova, which can apply, IMO, to much of European culture: 'Russians are very restrained in private life and unabashed onstage. Americans are just the opposite.' I think this explains a great deal, and on more than one level.

And here I'm still trying to figure out where 2001 went! The only ballets I saw live were from the wings: varied Bejart Ballet Lausanne repertoire and Washington Ballet's Nutcracker. I'm saving my money for the next time the Kirov comes to the Kennedy Center--they had better bring Sleeping Beauty (my favorite ballet, which I still can't believe I missed when it was at the Met) and La Bayadere. So I guess for me, the highlights of 2002 would be seeing Washington Ballet grow and mature very beautifully, and the unforgettable experience of being onstage in Europe, even as a supernumerary, with a very exciting company under an extraordinary director.

I think Tamara Karsavina wrote an autobiography, but I can't remember its title. Also, the memoirs of Marius Petipa are interesting, although practically impossible to find. His book is really irritating, though, because when he gets to describing the ballets he created with Tchaikovsky, he merely lists them and goes into no detail, even as he acknowledges that it was his creative high point!

Gladly, Alexandra .

Just two things: I want Asylmuratova to have carte blanche as director of the Vaganova Academy, and I want ballet to be as popular as football.

Ulanova was the only one I have not at least seen a short video clip of, so I voted for her. I've seen the clip of Spessivtseva, too, and agree that nobody dances that way anymore. It reminded me of what Asylmuratova said in an interview--to paraphrase, it was something like 'the technique is all there, but something else too...one might almost call it "singing with the body." And I agree on Beriosova--I have the tape of her dancing Black Swan and D&A, and wow! Why don't they do it like that anymore? It's true that dance must progress, but can't we keep what's good in the process?

I will do that, Leigh. Thank you for the suggestion. In the meantime, maybe someone will get me a composer for Christmas.