laureyj

From here, I must confess I am fascinated by dancers' politics for about as long as it takes to read the article, then find it unpardonably easy to let it all fall away when I see them on stage. I think I would be more worried if my homeopath was a racist fascist, as appears to be the case from the Guardian story. I would be in trepidation about what I'd said in the last consultation and what he had mixed in my remedy. Bart, UK newspapers have had a long tradition of going undercover to find things out, eg in police force, criminal networks, extreme groups. For one thing as we have not had a constitutional freedom of information as the US have, and many organisations even the courts increasingly pick and choose a reason to close their doors even to very routine information. (On the British Article 19 website at the moment, someone has been in vain trying to get Channel 4 TV to reveal audience figures for their dance programmes!) Sometimes the tabloids get into very dubious ground, investigating things not in public interest but publicly interesting, eg sex or plastic surgery, and there is one Sunday tabloid reporter who is notorious for dressing up as a sheikh and fooling VIPS into bribery, corruption or indiscretion. He has been famous for it for years & though last year he was reprimended and exposed in a court case it is amazing how many so-called intelligent people have continued to be fooled by him. Arguably almost as much a good thing that such dangerous gullibility is exposed as a bad thing that he lies & deceives, which is his newspaper's justification. The press here is self-regulated by an official complaints commission and when a case is considered to overstep the newspaper gets hauled in and most of the press will publish a big debate about it. I read the original Guardian report & found it fairly straightforward in the UK tradition; sometimes pantomimic in its writing style, but opens a bit of light on an organisation that is easily taken for granted especially by naive people, and evidently has deception at the heart of its identity-makeover. I didn't think it was surpsing that Simone Clarke got the resulting attention as it was the shocking contrast of images between fascist pit bulls and pink-shod ballerinas that has attracted public interest. As for the "sack her" calls, I think after a media investigation there is very often a knee-jerk "sack somebody" followup. A woman who used to run the London Dungeon I thought sounded much nastier, but she's not in that job now and besides dungeons & nastiness go together.

What struck me from the Russian interview was a general tone indicative of the almost monastic atmosphere of the theatre and general life in which ballerinas like Zakharova emerge, how sheltered she appears to be for a woman of 27. She talks of how she likes to go shopping with her mother, how her mother and brother protect her fiercely and prevent her from driving, insisting that she has a chauffeur. She tries to grab the occasional chance to drive, if the driver's having a day off, but says it is useless because of the family's close watch on her. How many 27 year olds do what their mother and brother tell them? On the health question she says that the theatre's regime of "don't eat/drink/walk about unnecessarily" is aimed at the dancer keeping in the best shape physically and mentally for daily work in the theatre - the same as an office worker turning up for work with a clear head. (We would say don't eat too much, they say don't eat more than is necessary - a psychological difference? We say, it's down to your personal judgment, they say, there is a line set down.) I also remember Lopatkina saying in a London interview that when the Kirov was on tour she did not go sightseeing because walking on hard pavements was bad for the feet. I wonder if this quite prescriptive focus over there on nannying a kind of hot-house physical condition and the institutional-historical narrowness of intellectual exposure ingrained from Soviet times and which was culturally set from earliest Soviet philosophy to dismiss any sacrosanct Tsarist artistic style may leave dancers of superior natural qualities today too easily tempted to fall back on perfecting their physical flourishes rahter than searching for something to do with them. Great dancers always have very interesting minds, which they release through their bodies' eloquence (never mind Fonteyn couldn't talk, she had an absorbent imagination, shaped by the even more fascinating Ashton). Unlike Lopatkina who evidently has a rich inner life and Guillem who is a great reader and enthusiastic eclectic, in interviews Zakharova doesn't seem to divvy up much information about her own aesthetic resources. Again I remember being struck by an interview in the past when she explained about her habitually high leg that it "just went up there". That just seemed so dumb. Having said that, she was surprisingly gorgeous and charming in Pharaoh's Daughter in London, which is of course Pierre Lacotte's pastiche of Petipa rather than "real", and as he made her his star on the revival, I suppose its light-hearted, decorative excess could be considered a showcase for her essential qualities. I thought it suited her much better than the profounder roles. She's maybe what in opera would be a lyrical soprano who's been pushed into dramatic roles, and has overegged her facility for coloratura to hide her discomfort to the point where she no longer feels discomfort (and has hundreds of thousands of fans to quash any lingering self-doubt). It seems to me that the matter of preserving classical style may have much to do with revaluing the tentative steps to "authenticity" taken by the Kirov in its Sleeping Beauty and Bayadere reconstructions, and deciding to hallow and isolate the stylistic colours of the 19th century- which would then free the 20th and 21st centuries to create new works in their own, more modern technical idioms. It would be similar to the "authentic' movement in classical music which has done so much to clarify performances of 19th-century music, let alone that of earlier eras. However, this must depend on a consensus of older teachers in major institutions who've been raised in a very different tradition, the one that allows for so many changes to suit and showcase their proteges that the original vanishes very quickly. This new seriousness may never happen, and I am almost resigned to it. Intellectual base in dance is not highly valued and the lack of it will be the art's death. I am certiain from watching their ballets that Balanchine and Ashton both had it, but were not surrounded by people who understood the consequences for the long-term future.

Calliope, why is a port de bras different at NYCB than at the Royal? or do I mean how? Do you mean that a RB dancer CAN'T do a NYCB port de bras? or that they DON'T. Y ou can change arms more easily surely than you can change your voice on a G between French vowels and German ones. :confused: PS it's LauREY not LauRA

Thanks Victoria but no thanks. you missed what I meant. It's so boring just to say it's about the classics or the new, that was NOT what I said. Forget it, no surprise ballet is in such a mess when nobody discusses anything interesting tho I notice there are a 1001 things to say about pointe shoes. In music we never stop thinking about how what's right for Schubert is wrong for Schumann.That's why the whole process is so great to study AND to listen to. And that's why singing a new composer is different from doing Britten or Tippett. So knowing about past stuff gives you more interest in new stuff. Obvious really . :rolleyes: :D

Can anyone tell me why opera and music and theatre do notseem to have the same traumas with doing old work that ballet does? I go to these various things and I have to say that I think you ballet people really make such a meal about "old-fashioned" and "the past". An opera singer trains to know the different styles - maybe he or she prefers to do Mozart or baroque, or her friend likes to do 19t century Italian or German repertoire. There is Shakespeare style and there is Harold Pinter. Orchestras have changed how they play Beethoven because of the early music movement. I find where I lose interest in ballet companies is that I have this feeling that they are all dong Giselle or Sleeping Beauty or Manon in one style, Company Style about which they go on and on as if it's something holy. And they don't show me at all that these ballets were all done centuries apart. I'm learning singing and I know you don't treat Wagnern like Rossini or Verdi ---- I mean you really do not actually WANT to. Whydon't balletdancers just enjoy the differences more? I think I would go out to classical ballet with more enmoyment and it might make dancers' training life more interesting for them, sounds like. why should be any more boring for them to study something of a certain time than it is for me to learn an old opera? I'm crazy about old opera!!! BTW before someone tells me ballet has to be new, and so it is unlike opera etc, well I believe most of the operas and plays I go to were new in their day too. And they're still being written now. Is this a good question?!! Sorry this is so long.