citibob

So many of the ballets I dance are "semi-narrative". There is no libretto and no unbroken narrative thread through the ballet; however, a narrative is not lacking either. It's like taking the "willies" scene and extending it throughout.

The ballet vocabulary is absolutely beautiful. Anyone executing ballet movement is beautiful. I am taken aback time and time again, usually watching in the studio. That is why I am a ballet dancer. After that basic vocabulary, everything else --- interplay, costumes, etc --- is secondary to the beauty of ballet. You can have bad costumes, stark music and boring choreography, yet the dancers and the dance is still beautiful. This is off topic but tangentially related: I think catching the audience's breath is a matter of theatrics. If you do something flashy, they clap. This is highlighted in our Nutcracker. After our tree grows, the stage lights all go off and the tree lights go on. The audience is taken aback and claps, even though there is no dancing going on at that point.

LMCTech: I think that is a very insightful comment. Congratulations, fendrock! You have every reason to be proud! Freshness is an issue. Every time we do the party scene, we must act like we've never seen a nutcracker before. Mateo seeks to keep us fresh by always imploring us to improve. We just had a great opening weekend, but we were back rehearsing the dances again today. Next Thursday's show needs to be better than last week's shows; you can never be satified that a performance was "good enough". Mateo has no shortage of corrections to give to the dancer willing to listen.

It is commonly known that professional photographers take many pictures for every "keeper". An short write-up on the subject in National Geographic made a comment: it doesn't matter how many pictures the photographer took; all that matters is the final picture. Same thing with dancing. From an artistic perspective, it doesn't matter how many pairs of pointe shoes you go through. For that reason, GMs are a hard sell from the logevity standpoint, because longevity of the shoe is one of the less important characteristics. But some dancers seem to prefer them for other reasons, that they fit better. And other dancers they don't fit very well at all. C'est la vie.

I see. So the setup you have on the PC does analog-to-digital transfer right on some card you have plugged into the PC? In that case, I suppose a camera would not be needed.

Tights show off your body (legs). You can't help but look masculine in them because you have a masculine body. Ballet is one of the few art forms in which you not only CREATE the art, but you also ARE the art. Women are used to being a piece of art and presenting themselves as such. I think this is a much harder concept for men today, so much so that anything involving making your body the art gets labelled "feminine".

Today's iMacs with SuperDrive can burn DVD's; a system with such capabilities costs about $2000. You can also do it with PC's, but the PC is more trouble than it's worth compared with the iMac. To burn the DVD on the iMac, you have to first get the movie into a digital form. That can be done by many Mini-DV cameras today. You plug the VCR into the analog input of the camera, and you plug the camera into the computer with a FireWire cable. Again, it's easy with an iMac. The camera will cost you about $500 today. So with those two pieces of equipment --- a camera and an iMac --- you can do VHS-DVD transfer. This is the system that many professional videographers and moviemakers use these days; it is a WHOLE lot cheaper than the old methods involving film. Since the format of the DVD depends on the software in the iMac, I would expect that future DVD formats could be supported by a change in the iMac software. That is a lot to spend just for transfer. But the combination can do a whole lot more, as well: make home videos, read email, store your CD collection, word processing, etc.

I dance for Mr. Mateo, and have been working with him now for almost three years. I know very little about Boston Ballet, I have never studied or worked there. I hope this post helps build further understanding to SusanB's original observations. I am always willing to discuss these things further. Compare and Contrast: Mateo & Nissinen I don't know about the tone of Mr. Nissinen's statements; that is a matter of great subjectivity and personality. I can say that, as far as factual matters go, Mr. Mateo could have said much the same thing. For example, both directors expressed a reverence for the score. All of us [his dancers] agree, Mateo is very demanding. He demands in a soft-spoken way. The demanding standards are developed and applied from within each of us, rather than imposed from the outside. I think some of this came through in Mateo's quotes in the article. But let there be no doubt about it, in the end Mateo gets what he wants from his dancers. He is very much in control, right down to the details. Like Nissinen, Mateo also frequently alters long-standing partnerships. In fact, he will pair up dancers differently within just one show, because he doesn't want the same two dancers being seen together in separate unrelated pieces (in the repertory performances). In contrast, there are some things of Nissinen's that Mateo would never say. He would never attempt to build a Nutcracker that goes beyond any other in scope and size; he simply does not have that kind of funding. Our Nutcracker is frequently called "warm" and "intimite" in the press. That is partly because of our smaller size, and partly due to certain conscious choices Mateo made. For example, even in the context of a Victorian set and costumes, Mateo sought to make the interactions between characters in the party scene more "American". That is, somewhat less formalistic. This is a subtle difference, I'm sure, one I do not completely understand. But look at the Kirov's Nutcracker video tape, and you will see a very different approach from ours. A New Classicism I can understand that Alexandra, having grown tired of the "stop, drop, roll" routine of "Ballet Moderne", would be distrustful of change for the sake of change. But I think that if she were familiar with Mateo's work, she would find it quite relevant to her own well-publicized concerns about ballet today. I quote from this very web site (and apologize in advance if the elipses have changed the overall meaning of the writing): Without being familiar with Mateo's work, it is unfair to claim that Mateo just "takes what he doesn't understand and chucks it." Mateo is a brilliant and thoughtful man. While he was a dancer, he saw many things he would like to change, and he is now changing them under the title of a "New Classicism". He has a reason for every change he has made, just as Alexandra has a reason for every change she would like to see. In many cases, he is not the first person to be making these changes; some go back to the Ballets Russes. I can discuss specific changes with anyone who is interested. In any case, the critics like the results; these are the same critics who watch the Boston Ballet. But in case anyone thinks otherwise, this Nutcracker is not some type of deconstructed "Notcracker". It is a truly classical Nutcracker. Mateo is more like Fokine than Eliot Feld. Fokine called for reform and fresh approaches in the paridigm of classicism. Mateo is deeply interested in classicism, that is all of what we do. We are not "classically trained dancers doing modern dance." Mateo may be one of the few post-Balanchine choreographers seeking to carry forward Fokine's original mandate. Other Points The single authorship Mateo points to really is a distinctive characteristic of his Nutcracker. He is a ballet master in the 19th century meaning of the word: teacher, choreographer and rehearsal director. There is a tight integration between our training, the choreography and the execution of the dance. That integration is possible because it is all done by one man. This integration is much harder in a large ballet organization, in which one person simply cannot serve as teacher, choreographer and rehearsal director. Do we enjoy the ballet as Mateo claims? Beyond the inevitable griping and expressions of dancer anxiety, I'd say most of us really do. One of his principle dancers told me once that she stays with him because he really cares about us. I would second that assessment. If you feel cared for, you come to genuinely enjoy what you're doing and you give it your 110%. I would certainly think long and hard before dancing for someone else. Mel Johnson is absolutely right: each approach attracts different dancers and audiences. Dancers who are more used to big ballet companies often can't stand working with Mateo. As for audience: Mateo's Nutcracker can sell about 20,000-30,000 tickets (and that number has been growing over the past decade), whereas BB's is at about 130,000 (and shrinking over the past decade). But it's not a matter of subscribers "switching Nutcrackers". Mateo's audience is a different demographic: younger, more family-oriented. It includes many people who are new to ballet. I think that is ultimately a good thing: to attract people who have never seen ballet before, and to do it with real classical ballet. PS That is great news to hear that Eva Evdokimova is now a ballet master at Boston Ballet. She has a spectacular and deep background in Russian ballet. I unfortunately never took her class in New York.

Here is the URL referenced above: Secrets of the Nutcracker Boston Globe Date: November 29, 2002 Page: E17 Section: Living

In our company, Mother Ginger is handled by a special guild, separate from the dancers. Mother Ginger walks on stilts, and dancers do not walk on stilts. When they need more "fodder", they annouce a call for auditions to find more volunteers.

I would suggest you also find some printed books about her. Web sites make terrible scholarly references because they can change all the time; someone reading your paper 1 year from now may not be able to access the web sites you mention.

Forget the dancing. Let's sell tickets to a fashion show instead...

I believe Appalachain Spring was originally written by Copland for Martha Graham.

* Dave Brubreck's "Take Five" * Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto, 1st movement

In my training, I knew over and over again I didn't want to be engaged in Modern Dance. Various people told me you have to do it or else no ballet company will ever hire you. But I figured, why should I commit to a professional ballet career dancing dances I didn't want to dance? So I didn't study modern dance. And now, I dance for a ballet company that does not use modern dance movement. Our movement vocabulary is entirely classical.

I'm in love with the technique and the art. If the technique is good, then every movement will be beautiful. But technique is measured not by how many turns you can do, but by much more subtle issues. I know dancers who obsess on turns and jumps, and think they have good technique because they have flashy turns and jumps. And yet, they can't even land their pirouettes, after going around five times. That is NOT technique!

The rational 4Ts gave for lowering ticket prices was that increased volume could more than make up for the lower price to result in higher total revenue. It's hard to tell, but it's possile that is true. Our ticket prices are dramatically lower than BB's; maybe too low for now, because we sell out every show.

Dream sequences are common in mid-century American Musical Theater as well. I'm thinking Roger & Hammerstein here.

Reminds me of what I do to computers.

Hey, I don't know why smoking is considered a contentious issue (it is elsewhere also). There is no doubt that it's bad for you, that it makes it harder to dance, that it costs precious money, and that it shortens life. So what's there to disagree about here?

That's right. And my company isn't big enough to distinguish between 25% and 28% with any statistical significance. What's more interesting is that none of the dancers in the affiliated school's Youthworks pre-professional company smoke. Or at least, not that I'm aware of.

Note that the smoking rate I quoted (still the only solid numbers on this thread) are about 25%. That is about the same as for the US population in general, and I would presume, also universities.

Hey, I'm not implying any rules here. I really don't know what goes on in Mateo's mind when he's making dances; probably something like what's going in your mind. I'm taking a more empirical approach, describing what he has done without guessing why he did it. I don't think Mateo is making a progression towards "modern" pieces either. I just took the liberty to describe two of his starker works in this thread.

I cannot say what the statistics are, and find it hard to believe from my own experience. But I HAVE heard people say they don't "get" ballet and they like modern dance better. Of course, if you ask a traditional ballet audience, you'll get another story. There seems to be general malaise about problems getting a younger generation interested in ballet. Meanwhile, modern dance shows, generally by nationally-known companies on tour, seem to sell quite well (the Joyce Theater is ALWAYS packed in my experience). I must very much disagree on the idea that some thing are better suited for modern dance, and some for ballet. That is because with Mateo, I have participated in dances that deal with "modern dance" subject matter. Since it is unlikely that many others on this board have seen those dances, it's hard to have a meaningful discussion about them ; such is a problem with dance. Anyway, I will discuss two examples, trying to give a sense of the danes. Both examples use standard ballet vocabulary, especially in the legs and feet. You can at least listen to the music and read the Boston Herald and Boston Globe reviews, to get some idea of the dances. 1. "Isle of the Dead", to Rachmaninov's score of the same name, based on a painting of the same name. Mateo knows the painting and the score. The dance uses some "signature moves" in the arms. It also involves a little bit of rolling around on the floor (although no contractions). Other than that, it's standard ballet vocabulary. But if you saw a picture of the dance and didn't notice the pointe shoes, you might think "Modern Dance". The ballet is all about dead people, so I will compare it to other "undead" scenes from the classical ballets: Giselle and La Bayadere. The classical "undead" scenes seem to romanticize death into a very beautiful scene. What could be more beautiful than the shades descending on the ramp in La Bayadere (one of my favorite scenes)? "Isle of the Dead" gives a more "raw" view of death, more of a stark kind of beauty. Isle of the Dead was first performed in the early 1990's, and was considered one of Mateo's masterpieces at the time. It was revived for "Hallowed Dances", presented in the Fall of 2001. By dumb un-luck, this was the season that immediately followed 9/11. We got the only bad reviews I've ever seen with this company (not enough rehearsal time devoted to the things we were performing; maybe 9/11 just hurt everyone's vision last fall). But it was also clear that the audience was ABSOLUTELY MESMERIZED by the dance. It was 100% effective. Coming while we were all still in shock over 9/11, it struck a common chord. 2. "Dark Profiles", to Beethoven's "Great Fugue" for string quartet. This is about the last piece of music Beethoven wrote before he died, and was originally written as the final movement to his last quartet. It is 150 years ahead of its time: stark, very difficult listening. So difficult that the publisher asked Beethoven to write a more "friendly" conclusion to his quartet. He did, and the Great Fugue was published separately, on its own. Many modern performances use it as the final movement of the quartet, as Beethoven intended. Dark Profiles deals with the inner angst of a woman involved in a tumoltulous relationship with a man. She is nothing special; we see a similar sort of tension between three other couples. But the relationship between her and her man is the one the audience gets to see in depth. Costumes are stark. The men wear just biker shorts and flesh-colored shoes, as exposure of the body reveals exposure of the turmoil. Movement for the supporting couples is all stark and fluid, steps continuing one after another. Same for the leads, although they go through a wide range of movement qualities as well, as the depths of their relationship is explored. The lead woman ends up as she started: alone and lonely on stage, all others forced out of her domain. "Dark Profiles" premiered in the "Resurgance" program, Spring 2001, and was made to feature Meg Flaherty-Griffith as the lead. Movement is incredibly athletic. Watching the video tapes in slow motion, I would notice that the athleticism normally associated with figure skaters was showing up in Meg's movement. It was a true tour de force, both in strength, power and duration. "Dark Profiles" was revived for "From Worlds Within" in the Spring of 2002. Meg took the lead again; I cannot imagine anyone else doing that part at this point. Since the press had such a recent memory of the dance from just the year previous, it was heavily promoted as being part of the new program. Pictures of Meg were everywhere; a picture from the previous year was used as the signature photo for the show. The press wanted to know more about "Dark Profiles" and about Meg. Everyone was excited about it because we knew it was such an effective, yet stark, dance. Views on the music varied among dancers. Just like the original reviewers in the 19th century, we all thought it sounded like incomprehensible noise when we first heard it. Many dancers hated the music as much by the end as at the beginning. Having worked so closely with it, I have come to appreciate it. It now sounds beautiful and lyrical to me, yet still stark and strong. The Great Fugue is truly a masterpiece, for those who go to the effort to listen to it enough.

I dance for the other ballet company in Boston, Jose Mateo's Ballet Theatre. It exists to produce the work of its own artistic director/choreographer, and for the past several years has received excellent reviews from the very same Christine Temin and other dance critics. The company has no problem selling seats and is not running into budgetary "surprises" due to lack of ticket sales at the moment (although admittedly, it has much fewer seats to sell). Mr. Mateo has his own ideas of what's wrong with BB. Most of these problems are things he thinks is wrong with most of the way ballet is done, not Boston Ballet specifically. At the risk of sounding critical of an organization I know little about (BB), I will repeat, these are things wrong IN GENERAL with ballet, not with any specific organization: * Outdated acting style (acting has changed in the past 100 years in other theater arts, except for ballet) * Outdated narrative style. * Full-length ballets are too long for a modern audience. * Too much performance of works by dead choreographers. (Ballet is a living art, and seems to work best when the choreographer is alive and can be right there working with the company). * Lack of choreographic consistency in Nutcrackers (most are done by many choreographers) * Movement style that reads as "unnatural" and "aloof" to an audience (modern audiences respond better to the "personal connection" more common in modern dance). * Lack of integration between training of dancers and the choreography danced by those dancers (Balanchine had this, but many large ballet organizations do not). BB could very well be a top ten company. That means it has a good budget and is able to hire great dancers with it. John Cranko was no slouch of a choreographer either; Onegin is considered a real masterpiece. All that could be true. But if the Boston audience isn't "there" with the company, it just won't come. Boston audience is notoriously difficult for dance, so please give BB some credit for its efforts. People I know who saw Onegin were pleased with it. The Wang Center might be a mistake. However, getting an "appropriately sized" theater in Boston is really hard. Maybe the Emerson Majestic, at just under 1000 seats, would be more appropriate for Boston Ballet's rep performances. I do not know whether they have investigated options other than the Wang.