Alexandra

Some links for those interested in the Royal Danish Ballet: The Royal Theatre The company's web site, with a detailed English section (also in Danish, of course). Bournonville Photos, mostly from the 1992 festival (at this writing) as well as information on the ballets and other articles. Photos by David Amzallag The RDB's official photographer in the late '80s and early '90s, these are mostly from that period, although there are some recent ones as well. Bournonville in Hell Not for the squeamish, this series of three articles by Alexandra Tomalonis originally published in DanceView in 1998 (a shorter version, in two parts, appeared in DanceNow shortly afterwards) offers a history of Bournonville stagings as well as a commentary on the political changes and problems form 1992 through 1998 in some detail. The afterward is a review of the 2000 Bournonville Week originally published in Dance Magazine. Also, of historical interest perhaps, this is the link to the photo gallery for my biography of http://www.danceview.org/Kronstam/kronstamp1a.html

Balanchine is quoted as saying once that he wished all of his dancers danced the way Diana Adams did. I've often thought of this, imagining a corps de ballet full of Diane Adams. And so I'd ask, what would you like your corps to look like, if you could design the individual dancers? What is your ideal ballet body -- proportions, etc. What is the way that ideal body moves (fast, graciously, with daring, like a queen, whatever). Ballerina Factory open for a limited time. Get your orders in now, please.

I've added web resources for art, music, theater history and history of literature, and made the original thread a sticky. I hope that there will be further questions and discussions. I've moved this thread into Discovering Ballet and would ask that we keep the thread general; all questions and comments welcome. If people would like to discuss a particular period in depth, or get into sub-levels and scholarly detail, I'd ask that it be done in Ballet History or Aesthetic Issues and that this thread remain BASIC. If such topics arise in the course of the discussion, I may split them off and move them into another forum and I hope this will not upset anyone. Thanks! Cliff and Amy had raised some good questions when this discussion began. Feel free to repeat them if you'd like.

Web resources. (I haven't read every page, but a cursory view indicates that these are solid.) Art History(a very comprehensive site. Check out his definition of classicism and its misuses) Music History Theater History The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (sorry to be so parochial, but I couldn't find a comprehensive, world literature site)

Thanks, Hans! You're right. I checked "Movement and Metaphor" and he says it "began at ten at night and lasted until three in the morning" so my 12 hours was way off; I only remembered the three in the morning part I think Master of Revels is a fine title!

I've never known why the "Ballet Comique" is always given as the starting point. Kirstein has details on several earlier ones in "Movement and Metaphor" -- now called "Four Centuries of Ballet," I think. It might be because it was intended to be art and not merely an entertainment for a wedding? (That's purely a guess.) I think it was 12 hours long -- there's an original libretto at the LIbrary of Congress, if you ever have the time. I hope when you take your early dance classes you'll talk about them here -- I'm sure you'll find out a lot about measures and floor patterns and steps and carriage and will be able to relate them to what we now consider ballet.

I used to have several but I couldn't find them last night. I've become fascinated by the whole "classical follows Romantic" issue. So many of us remembered reading that in the '70s and '80s -- I wonder if more current histories have changed. In the 80s, too, Bournonville came in in 1979 (!!!!) because of the Bournonville Festival (in American texts, not Danish ones, of course). The Clarke and Crisp is the first one I've seen that considers him in his period. Before 1979 he was a sentence or a footnote. I would also imagine, since there has been so much research by early dance history scholars in the past two decades, that what's generally considered the "ballet de cour" period covers an awful lot of territory. I'm sure now it's easier to make distinctions. This may be too much of a generalization, but I think most artistic periods last only for a generation; or, to put it another way, each generation has created its own "movement," some more important or more exciting than others.

This will be a totally useless post -- but I did want to thank citrus for finding this thread and raising it to the top again by asking that question, and to Mel, RSE and rg for all your digging and prodding -- this has been so much fun to read, and it's a great addition for the Archives. Thank you all!!!

A request: if anyone has a general ballet history text available (and the time) could you post their timeline -- what each period is named? I'm curious if we'll find a consistency. (I don't mean to ask anyone to go into detail, unless you want to. Just a list would be interesting.) Thanks!

Yes, or to turn it around, couldn't one apply the same principle to science -- looking at it one way, someone makes a discovery that overturns old "rules" and creates a new series of them. But to the gas that's just been discovered, or Nature itself, it's not a question of rules; they know they're there, and they know their secrets. We just haven't discovered them yet. Funny Face -- I liked the stupid/genius joke

ballet de cour (16th, early 17th century) Long court entertainments, often celebrating a wedding or a political event, or just to salute the monarch. The dancers were courtiers (including some monarchs; Louis XIV was a dancer). Music, verse, dancing and design were all part of these entertainments. opera ballet (late 17th, early 18th century) When ballet moved into the theater, professionals took over; Louis XIV had created an academy in 1672 to train them. Ballets used the danse d'ecole (what is commonly called ballet or classical ballet; a codified vocatulary of steps that proceed through the five positions of the feet) and also grotesque dancing and pantomime. The dancing itself was a series of entrees (as had been the fashion in the ballet de cour; its descendant is a classical pas de deux or trois or quatre today). Some ballets were a string of entrees -- solos. Mlle Prevost had a famous one in which she portrayed a variety of characters, from a young boy, to an old woman, each a separate "entree." From the beginning there were three genres of dancers (noble, demi-caractere, grotesque). Your genre was dictated by your height and build. Each genre had specific rhythms related to that genre. The nobles (the hero/ine, tall, slender) had the slow measures; their dancing required perfection, especially perfection in line. The demicaractere dancer was a bit shorter and had a slightly thicker -- though still elegant -- body and would perform roles like Mercury, or a shepherd/ess; their measures were faster, a courante rather than the noble's sarabande. The grotesque -- well, need you ask ballet d'action (mid-late 18th century) Several choreographers were experimenting with creating a unified drama (to compete with opera). The one who is most discussed today is Noverre, although there were many others plowing the same field. Works such as Noverre's "Jason and Medea" told the story of the myth using pantomine (to tell the story) and divertissements. You can read Noverre's letters and get a sense of the dances -- they're the roots of later corps choreography -- a squad of nymphs or a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses. The male dancer dominated -- Gaetan Vestris, "God of the Dance," is from this period. This was an age of great virtuosity; technique "expanded" -- MORE pirouettes, MORE entrechats. anacreontic or transition period or neoclassical-romanticism (early 19th century) The common man replaced the gods as the hero after the French Revolution, although he's still idealized. Popular ballets included love stories ("La Fille Mal Gardee" and some myths "Flore et Zephyr". Dancers flew, on wires. Women began to experiment with pointe work. A fourth genre began to emerge, a combination of the noble and demicaractere called "semi-caractere classique," shortened to "classique" -- and the source of yet another confusion of the word "classical" which is still very evident today. "He's a classical dancer" is sometimes used to contrast a demicaractere dancer -- they're both classical dancers, and the demicaractere genre always had a full quotient of stars. Auguste Vestris (Gaetan's son) was demicaractere (as, much later, were Nijinsky and Baryshnikov). Note: some sources lump all this together as "Pre-Romantic Ballet". Not a step of this repertory survives, at least not under its original name. By the late 15th century, a Jesuit balletomane had written a history of ballet describing 400 works. I think of ballet as a walking Library of Alexandria, torched by each generation. ROMANTIC REBELLION (1831-1848) Here, at least, a firm date. 1831. It began with the ballet of the nuns, part of Meyerbeer's opera "Robert le Diable." It introduced Marie Taglioni to Paris and an entirely differently way of dancing -- Romantic dancing. Light and (with Taglioni) chaste. Taglioni was a jumper, but what thrilled audiences was that she danced on her toes. All female dancers had to begin to take pointe work seriously. While men continued to hold the stage for a few more years, they began to leave the Opera in droves. Audiences didn't want to watch male dancing; the new audience was uncomfortable with it. Male dancing survived in Russia and Denmark, but there were very few opportunities for men elsewhere, and they became "porteurs" -- porters, lifters of the women. (One theory is that many of the ballerinas didn't want the bother of a male rival; they would dance alone, or with another woman, often "en travestie," i.e., in male attire.) Fanny Elssler -- the "pagan" to the "Christian" Taglioni, in critic Theophile Gautier's famous phrase -- was the next superstar. The Opera eagerly promoted their rivalry. Fanny Elssler was a "terre a terre" dancer -- meaning she wasn't a jumper, in addition to the fact that she was considered earthy. She was known for her taquete footwork. [sorry, I'm forgetting the codes for the accents on all this. Apologies to readers as well as the French language.] The subject matter of Romanticism was the world of folk and fairy tales -- used as metaphor -- of "art for art's sake" (it's fine to be pretty; one doesn't have to be meaningful). Other ballets were travelogues, taking the spectator to exotic countries. As pointe work developed, virtuosity became more important. Definitely the Age of the Ballerina. It was also the age of gaslight, which replaced candles as the lighting in theaters and produced a blue ghostly glow perfect for the subject matter of the ballets. The Age of Petipa (Russia, late 19th century) Four and five-act spectacles with pantomine, processions, classical and character dancing. Development of pointework and technique generally brought in by a bevy of Italian technicians (all trained by the great teacher and theorist, Carlo Blasis, or with his system; Blasis, like Bournonville, was a neoclassicist working during the Romantic era and all he cared about was beauty and harmony) Marius Petipa, a Frenchman who spent most of his life in Russia, created a body of works that still forms most of ballet's canon; to many, it IS classical ballet, and the passages of classical dancing for the female corps, and the female variations are among the treasures of Western art. There was ballet in other countries, too. In Italy and Vienna, and even, for a very brief time, America, had multi-act Spectacles, also with classical and characgter dancing -- and lots of special effects. Diaghilev Era (1909-1929) Revolutionized ballet in Western Europe; we've never recovered. Much less of an effect in Russia, because of World War I, the Revolution and its aftermath. Diaghilev was the impresasrio. Fokine, the first choreographer. The dancers were all from the Maryinsky. Fokine, like Noverre, was a reformer. He rebelled against what he saw as empty spectacle and technique for its own sake, among other things. Diaghliev was a modernist, and .... anyone rading this will know about Picasso, Matisse, Stravinsky, all the painters and composers whom he discovered. His track record on choreographers wasn't bad either: Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, Nijinska, and Balanchine. One thing to remember -- artistic movements vary from country to country and from art form to art form. Artists do not always reflect their time period -- there are questions of sensibility (the Romantic rebel, the harmonious classicist) and some dichotomies have existed from the very beginning -- content versus form, expression versus technique, the pagan and the Christian. Elements of other arts, and aesthetic movements, influenced dance: the roundness of the Romantic line, for example; the ornamentation of the Baroque can be seen in the way the fingers ares held. There are times when precision is valued over everything; at other times, it's quantity. At others, it's never letting any effort show. All of those things reflect the period -- and the country and the dominant artist too. There's also the question of the trend setters and the followers -- movements begin in artistic capitals and filter out to the provinces. In dance, there are so few great choreographers that outside of the Romantic period -- where every opera house in Europe had a resident choreographer and each could produce watchable Romantic ballets -- the period seems to be dominated by one or two artists. I realized we could do a history of dancing through lighting -- hey, Jeff! Torches, candles, gaslight, electricity, and now neon. Each lighting device seems suited to its era, too.

My sources for dates are Mary Clarke and Clement Crisp's "Ballet, An Illustrated History, Hamish Hamilton, 1992; and Walter Sorrell's "Dance in Its Time," Anchor/Doubleday, 1981. HANS -- if you want a book that ties it all together, I'd highly recommend the Sorell. He covers nearly every artist of any note in Western civilization It's a very personal view, but also very reliable. Timeline: Most books will give you the following: ballet de cour (16th, early 17th century) opera ballet (late 17th, early 18th century) ballet d'action (late 18th century) anacreontic or transition period or neoclassical-romanticism (early 19th century) Romantic Ballet (1831-1848) Russian Imperial Ballet (late 19th century) Diaghilev Era (1909-1929) ROUGHLY these would correspond to: ballet de cour -- the Renaissance opera ballet -- the Baroque ballet d'action -- the classical period neoclassical romanticism Romanticism Russian Iimperial Ballet and the age of spectacle -- does NOT match what was going on in other arts, namely Realism Diaghilev Era -- Modernism Although the start date for ballet is usually given as 1581 (the date of "Le Ballet Comique de la Reine Louise") there were similar entertainments before, well before, going back to the 15th century. Sorrell points out that the ballet de cour was a manifestation of Mannerism -- he dates this period as beginning either with Machiavelli's "The Prince" (1513) or the death of Raphael (1520) or Luther's declaration (1521) or the year that Copernicus began to circulate his manuscript (1520). The Baroque period, the Age of Reason (18th century) was when ballet moved into the theater. Neoclassicism, beginning in 1748 with European fascination with the findings at the ecavations at Pompeii, produced another revival of classicism -- Noverre's work, attempting to produce pantomimes (another Greek revival) using myths and heroic themes, were done during this period. This leaves out a lot, of course -- the English court masque, where poetry dominated (from Jonson's "The Masque of Blackness" to Milton's "Comus"), whatever you want to call what was going on in France, and, derivatively, in the rest of Europe after the Romantic fever began to subside until "Coppelia" (1870). And no one writes (in English at least) about Paris between 1870 and Diaghilev; they write as though the opera were a ghost town, yet I doubt that that's the French view. I'll do a brief summary of what was going on in each period in a new post.

Yes, I believe he did go to Denmark at that age and I don't know where he took classes. The choreographer Birger Bartholin had a studio and was a very respected teacher during that time; a lot of people taught there as guests (including Danilova!) and many dancers would take classes there. Or perhaps he started at the Pantomime Theater at that age. I've always wanted to learn more about his teachers in Iceland -- they did a very good job! He's as much a Danish dancer as if he had been trained there, to my eyes. I should add that the Danish ballet did take non-Danish dancers beginning in the mid-1960s, when Flemming Flindt took over, but it was made clear to the foreigners that they would never become solodancers.

Hans, I'm 99% certain that's not so. At the time, the Danish ballet school was closed to foreigners, and he's an Icelander. (I also interviewed Tomasson for the Kronstam biography and we discussed his training, so I guess I'm 99.99 percent sure ) Both of his teachers in Iceland, however, were Danes trained at the RDB, and so he has Danish training. Tomasson danced at the Pantomime Theater in Copenhagen as a young man, but never with the RDB (again, because of the prohibition against foreigners, not because of any lack of talent).

Yes, exactly. We're looking in the rule books, and Baby Genius comes out and throws paint at the walls in patterns that we've not yet seen. I'd also been taught that Genius studies the rules and then breaks them, but I've come to think that's an oversimplification. I genuinely believe that Genius doesn't see "rules." (And that doesn't mean that Balanchine didn't learn everything from watching Petipa, and used it, or negate Ashton's "private lessons" from watching Sleeping Beauty.)

Maria, you said dissertation and then you said thesis -- what level? (It makes a difference, at least in American terms, because if it's for a college term paper, there are dozens of topics that you could do. I probably could think of some for a thesis (what we'd do for a Masters degree; it doesn't have to be as exhaustive as a doctoral dissertation). If it's for a long, thorough paper, then you could do something on the Danish male dancer. If it's for a book-length, in-depth scholarly analysis (which is what I thought you meant) that might be more difficult. Why don't you email me or PM me?

There's a reference in Bournonville's "Theater Life" to a ballerina standing on a wooden flower (I believe it was in Kermesse). (It was Juliette Price, and she sustained a career-ending injury when she fell off said flower.)

Thanks very much for that, Patricia. I wish I'd seen that!

Carbro, I agree that genius doesn't have to look up rules (that's in essence what I wrote above) and they've assimilated the "rules," they're thoroughly grounded in their craft, but I think there's more to it than that. By "they Get It" I mean their view of the world and of their art is much more broad than that of ordinary people. They know the real Rules (what is art) in a way that the rest of us can't know. (We then try to turn what they do into more better rules ) It's that they see the whole sky, the entire world, and the rest of us can only see what is over our back yard. I think it's more than just assimilation of what's gone before; it's seeing what has never been.

Exactly! One of the problems that I have which much new work (aside from the fact that much of it isn't really new, but recycled old stuff; I got a press release a few days ago from a company claiming that their new ballet this upcoming season will cause a revolution -- it's putting modern dance on pointe for the very first time! Think of that!) But also because they are, in essence, banging on a piano and creating dissonance, yes, but not making the pitches matter. (The whole article gives a broader context for this, of course.) I'm also tired of New for the sake of New -- as silly, to me, as "anything old is good." But this gets at the bones of what's wrong -- it's smashing rules without knowing what the rules are, and not understanding the general principles that would allow you to expand the rules, change the rules -- which is, I believe, what genius realy does. (Genius has no rules. They Get It; the rest of us need rules to follow what they know.)

The prohibition against more than two pirouettes lasted well into this century -- Bruhn was booed for doing four pirouettes in the second solo in Napoli in the late 1940s. It wasn't that they COULDN'T do them. It is because Bournonville thought they were vulgar. Brenaa was known for "bringing back" the trick of spotting. But Bruhn said he knew how to spot instinctively -- no one taught him. No vulgarity in Bournonville, nothing acrobatic, nothing showy. Maybe he gave them the helmets so they couldn't do more than two pirouettes He made them sew a thread in the skirts so they couldn't lift the leg higher than he wanted it lifted. An anecdote. On one of my first trips to Copenhagen, I was walking up Bredgade (one of the streets spoking out of Kongens Nytorv, where the Royal Theatre is located) and went into a courtyard. There, on the door, was Elfeldt studios -- Elfeldt was the court photographer who captured dancing Danes with his brand new movie camera in the very early 20th century. The studio is right down the street from the palace. I've always wanted to go back and knock on the door and see who's there now

I'm coming very late to this thread, but wanted to thank Alymer for taking the time to write -- I love your "rather like driving a new car." What a perfect image for many a good company taking on a new ballet. I'm surprised to read about the sight lines at Covent Garden. I would think there would be an uproar since so many seats have poor views! Thanks to everyone who wrote about the Kirov, from those of us who couldn't be there. In DC, unfortunately, we're getting their new Nutcracker and Swan Lake, and ABT's La Bayadere.

Monday, August 25 – Sunday, August 31, 11 AM – 6 PM, South Park Blocks between Main and Salmon, Downtown OPEN-AIR BALLET AT OBT EXPOSED! Meet OBT’s New Artistic Director, Christopher Stowell WHAT: OBT Exposed!, a nine-year, Portland summer tradition returns to the South Parks – this year with new Artistic Director, Christopher Stowell DATE: Monday, August 25 – Sunday, August 31 SCHEDULE: 11 AM - 12:30 PM Christopher Stowell leads company class: the dancers stretch, practice technique and work through warm-up routines 12:45 – 4 PM Patricia Barker, principal ballerina with Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet, rehearses Matthew Boyes, Kathi Martuza, Anne Mueller, Alison Roper, Tracy Taylor, and Artur Sultanov in Duo Fantasy, a work to receive its company premiere at Christopher Stowell’s debut program, “New Beginnings.” 4 – 6 PM Twenty-five kids, aged 9 – 16, from OBT’s Project F.I.N.D. (“Find and Inspire New Dancers) Summer Dance Camp rehearse their own choreography, to be performed Sunday, August 31 in two free shows at 1 PM and 2 PM. LOCATION: South Park Blocks between SW Main and SW Salmon. In one of the most remarkable and delightful events of the summer, Oregon Ballet Theatre presents OBT Exposed!, a week of open-air dance rehearsals, on a tented stage in the South Park Blocks. The easy-going informality of this free event draws approximately 15,000 people each year; strollers, kids-in-hand, office-mates, friends and family, dogs, and brown baggers abound. OBT Exposed! is also the first public appearance for OBT’s new Artistic Director, Christopher Stowell. He joined OBT on July 1 and launches his 03-04 season with “New Beginnings,” October 11 – 18 at Keller Auditorium. Box office: 503-2-BALLET (222-5538).

I still haven't read it, unfortunately. The book is over a year old, though. Why not post your question and put SPOILER in the subject line? (That's internetspeak, I've learned, for people who are on the East Coast and want to post the results of a football game, an election, or Big Brother and want to warn West Coasters not to read the post if they don't want to know.)

From today's NYTimes, Anthony Tommasini writes about new music. Looking for Just the Right Bit of Nastiness I wonder if Mr. Hartke could be persuaded to give a few similar talks to young choreographers?????