Alexandra

Re mothers-in-law: Balanchine wasn't saying there aren't any, as Mel pointed out, just that it's difficult to express anything that's not simple and direct through classical mime. There's nothing wrong, though, or "cheating," to me, about showing that a character is a mother-in-law through having her look down her nose at the daughter-in-law's poor excuse for a cake while being overly attentive to the son. That's what drama is. To make it more contemporary, two men face each other over a body. One is the murderer, one the victim's father. How can we tell? One is holding the gun, the other is about to rip his face off. That's how. One of the things that's gotten lost is stage irony -- I'm sure there's a technical term for it in theater, but I don't know it. I mean showing one thing through reaction, not action: showing that the earth moves because the person's body moves in such a way that we know that the earth has moved, rather than bringing in the special effects team and heaving the stage around. DeMille used this -- and I can't remember the specifics, just that when I saw "The Informer" I recognized the technique. And from the bits we have of 19th century repertory -- and Ballets Russes repertory it was the way stories were told. A performer can do it, too. One of my clearest memories of Anthony Dowell in "Swan Lake" is that you saw Odette change from bird into woman before you ever saw her, because you saw it in his face. Saw the desire to shoot change to puzzlement and then to astonishment and wonder. It was a mainstay of 19th century ballet (and earlier, I'm sure) and one of the clearest examples I know is in the first act of "Napoli". The two lovers (Teresina and Gennaro) have gone out in a boat; a storm has come up. The boat washes ashore. In it is Gennaro, but not Teresina. She is presumed drowned. Her mother comes out of the house, not knowing this. She pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders so that you know it is now cold. She looks across the square and sees her two friends (we know they're friends from earlier in the act). They quickly look away; they cannot face her. There's no mime speech saying, "Your daughter dead is, drowned in sea." Just a glance, but it tells the story. (The mime speech comes later, when she shakes Gennaro and curses him for treating her daughter negligently; later still, there's his penitent rage at the gods and the stars, which was known as a mimed monologue.) So 19th century choreographers used a palette of dramatic techniques to suit the scene and the rhythm of the ballet. Sometimes it's a mime speech, sometimes it's a glance. I've written about Bournonville's mother-in-law scene before, but I'll drag it up again. In the first act of "La Sylphide," there's a mother. You know she's not the maid, she's too old to be the wife, and there's a wedding going on. She's got to be either the groom's mother or the bride's. The program tells you which, of course, [Anna Reuben, mother of James Reuben] but it also is shown on stage through the costumes. The ballet is set in Scotland, and before the wedding, the mother is wearing the same kilt as the son (groom) and the bride is wearing a different kilt. The bride goes upstairs to change, and comes down wearing the same kilt as the son and mother (about to be mother-in-law). Things go badly. In the second act, there's a wedding procession -- the bride, now married to her fiance's rival, walks on wearing a different kilt. And so we've seen not a mother-in-law, but a mother-in-law to be, and a mother-in-law that never was. The "There are no mothers-in-law in ballet" line is often thrown out as a squelch to mean "narrative ballet is silly and old-fashioned; only abstract ballet is intellectually sound and worthy of our attention." But I don't think that's what Balanchine meant. Only that it's hard. The more direct you can be, the clearer your story is to the audience. Don't drag in unnecessary characters; keep it simple.

I'm stealing this idea from Grace who proposed it on another thread. I don't think we've had a thread about comic ballets -- at least, not in awhile. There aren't many. Can we find 1 dozen? Two? There's a story that one night, when Bournonville was leaving the theater after the premiere of one of his more ambitious, mythological ballets, the night watchman told him, "They want a good laugh, Guv'nor." And so, at least with Bournonville, it's his comic ballets that have lasted -- "Far from Denmark," "Kermesse in Bruges," and "The King's Volunteers on Amager." "Kermesse" is one of the few ballets at which I've ever laughed out loud. KVonA (usually called "Lifeguards;" the Danish word is Livjaerne, literally [the King's] Life Guards") isn't slapstick, more a gentle, domestic comedy. What comedy ballets have you seen? Which are your favorites?

Thanks for those reports, Kevin. It's good to know they have a new "port of call" -- and that audiences enjoyed the performances.

BW, movies might turn out to be better models for narrative ballets than novels -- at least they're already VISUAL. Katharyn, I'm so happy to see you post -- you haven't been around in ages. The best dances sound silly when put into words, so you may well have something there! Grace, I don't think we've had a thread on favorite comic ballets -- it's a good idea, and I'll steal it and start one We've had companies here do audience surveys, too. I believe it was Cincinnati ballet a few years ago that had a Subscribers Choice program -- people had voted, and the top three ballets were put on the same program. ABT also did a poll a year or two ago that simply asked people "which would you rather see, a mixed bill or a full-evening work." I didn't mean my statement "it might be good for directors to know what the audience wants" to be taken so literally. Like foreign policy, I don't think art can be decided by polls. But I do think there is a lot of guessing that's NOT based on data (not that an internet message board is data), such as young people ONLY like rock ballets, old people ONLY want to see "Swan Lake." I wonder if a young choreographer setting out to make a work would be surprised to learn that there are audience members who want to see something beautiful -- would that idea be scorned as silly and old-fashioned? Or would it seem new? I taught a graduate seminar in aesthetics once where the students had never heard of Aristotle, never confronted the notion of beauty and that particular view of the purpose of art. They were intrigued.

Yes, I agree -- the newer ones do. The Post had a writer who was the assistant to their fashion editor for YEARS. At least a decade. And when the fashion editor died, they put the writer through their regular internship program before letting her write (and she was already a good writer). I think you need journalism training. Grace, I think the 7 stories discussion is hopeless here -- perhaps you should try to start a new thread in Teachers? It would be nice to know where it comes from. On reflection, my Bulgarian friend was taught that everything was Vaganova; his training took place before glasnost. It also could be one of those "after-Vaganova" things. Volkova never wrote anything down, and much of what dancers say is "Volkova" is an explanation by one of her pupils. So it's Volkova, but it's not, if that makes sense. (The next version of this software, which is now in beta, will have this same kind of long, one-sheet per thread list of replies, but also what is called "threaded view," which means you can go up a few posts and reply to a specific post; it should help keep things in order while letting us ramble. Both are valuable, but it is hard to find things sometimes, much less keep a conversation straight.)

Yes, it is recoverable. They did it about three seasons ago -- Monica Mason coached the Firebird. There was a TV film of it (with Dowell coaching Shadowplay).

Thank you for this, Estelle! Not exactly a classical program, though an interesting one! Flindt got Aureole for the Danes, too -- because there is something light about it, and though it's not balletic, it's steppy. I haven't liked the ballet companies I've seen do "Aureole" because they seem to break it down into solo, pas de deux, pas de trois, etc. while with the Taylor company, it all flows. But I would have liked to see this program! Thank you very much for posting about it.

The Royal did it a few years ago, Ken, and it's available on video (DVD?) RG will know the title; it's one of the Royal Ballet tapes, and it's with Fonteyn and Somes, with Ashton as the Kotschei. I hope someone else can speak to the comparison. I haven't analyzed either ballet, so I can't compare.

Good points, FF. And there is a long and honorable school of thought that says that the only thing that matters is what goes on on the stage. Bournonville has a great quote about opera and ballet. I paraphrase; too lazy to get out Mit Teaterliv tonight. "It is ballet's tragedy that its audience will not put up wiith the same nonsense that opera audiences love."

Hello, fabiana! Thank you for posting that. We don't hear enough about Italy and Italian ballet. I hope you'll write after you've seen the performances and tell us what you thought, and some comments on the dancers. You won't find a forum for any Italian company in the International Ballet Companies forums not because we're not interested, but because we don't have any Italians!!! It's interesting that more and more European companies are starting to do Nutcracker at Christmas. You're right -- it hasn't been a tradition there.

Good question, atm. Poor CW. He spent his life trying to write the ballets down, assuming that future generations would want to stage the work, not "ballet using the music and names of the characters from Swan Lake No. 503."

In the hopes of getting away from talking about one writer and back to Ray's original very interesting question, I'd like to comment on what Grace wrote several posts back: I don't think that's true here. The critics I know don't have journalism degrees -- although the critics now coming up do, and I think newspapers are more comfortable hiring them. (Two generations ago, most of the major newspaper writers here had no journalism degrees, and many didn't even have college! It was more a trade, and one learned on the job.) The former critic for the Washington Post, who hired me (Alan M. Kriegsman) had a background in music and mathematics, and had written music criticism for other papers primarily, although also some dance, before he became primarily a dance critic. The current WP dance critic, Sarah Kaufman, does have a degree in journalism, but she had written criticism, and had a dance background, before that degree. In Europe, there seems to be a distinction between the arts journalist and the critic. The former does the previews, interviews and news stories, and the latter does only reviews and commentary. We have that kind of a division in news and politics, but not generally in the arts, especially not in dance. They'll barely hire a dance critic -- many, if not most, are part-time -- and they're certianly not going to hire two dance writers! I'm all for this division, btw. (And, Grace, btw, when I was a child, I would have spelled "stories" in this context "storeys," which would have avoided the confusion, but I've been told by editors that we've "simplified" that spelling here now.)

We've been troubled by the whole Homans issue. It has been raised several times, and I've been contacted off-board by people who've sensed an undertone in the articles and wondered what was going on -- many think it's because Homans was a dancer. I posted what I did above -- and I'm sure Leigh's reasons are similar -- to stop speculation rather than further it. It's not to defend articles that have attacked Homans, but to give a possible explanation for them. Had her pieces been in, say, Ballet Review, I doubt there would have been so much comment. But when one jumps in at the deep end, it is likely TO cause comment. Personally, I think the work should speak for itself. I agree with others who've said any article about dance that gets people talking is good for the cause. We certainly need new writers about dance, and Homans seems to genuinely love the subject. (Nobody goes into dance writing to get rich!)

Good for you, Maxi. I hope you'll tell us about them. Some of the most interesting Nuts I've seen are from the smallest companies. They're not grand ballet, so often subscribers to larger compoanies won't go, but they're full of the joy of dancing.

One word -- the final one, from me at least -- on Ms. Homans' biography, since it has been raised so often. Her husband is a contributing editor at The New Republic (where Ms. Homans is the dance critic) and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. I'm not posting this for discussion or speculation, just to complete the background that Mel posted above.

The seven stories is not an urban legend, Mel! It's one way, at least, of the way Vaganova-trained dancers talk about the alignment of the body. Grace, I first heard it from a Bulgarian dancer from their National Ballet School, who was describing a young dancer and said she had as perfect a placement as he'd ever seen, "You know, the seven stories of Vaganova? Each one of them was in perfect alignment." I hadn't heard of it, and we talked about it. Since then it's come up in several interviews with dancers. (Obviously, I'm not a Vaganova-trained dancer or teacher.) It becomes a short-hand to correct one errant part of the body -- "Watch your 4th story?" "Pull in the 5th story," etc."

Thanks for posting this, FF. I agree -- the photos are gorgeous!

Back to romantic/sexual pas de deux for same sex couples, someone suggested Bintley's Edward II -- if not a model, it certainly is about a homosexual relationship. Eifman springs to mind, too.

Nan, isn't Farber the one quoted in "Repertory in Review" that she cried when she saw City Ballet do Summerspace? Some revivals are different, some are more different than one can stand Mme. Hermine, I don't think so -- at least, not in the same way that the Balanchine Trust functions. (I don't mean to say that that's the only way to serve as guardian of a repertory, but right now, it's one of the few formal ways to try to do so.)

I hope we're not boycotting Nutcracker this year! 'Tis the season. What's your Nutcracker like this year? Please report!

Since that post was so long, I thought I'd address Ray's question about other art forms in a separate post. (And thank you, Ray, both for posting the link to the article and for your questions -- and good to see you again ) I think there are several problem with artists in writing about their own art, which may be why so few do. For one thing, to be an artist you have to have a point of view and believe in it, so it's hard to view others' work objectively. Reviews of dance by dancers are often of the "if I made this work I'd do this" variety, which says much more about the writer than what s/he's writing about. Secondly, artists are reluctant to write what they really think for fear of offending someone who may have control over their own careers. It's also almost impossible to write objectively about friends! And thirdly, artists are in the awkward position that if they criticize someone negatively, they'll be accused of "sour grapes" ("she didn't like my piece because I got the choreographic fellowship and she didn't"). I think those are the reasons -- aside from the fact that if you're a choreographer or dancer you'd probably rather be choreographing or dancing than writing. Critics and commentators on dance, as in any other art form, are primarily writers, and I don't thnk we have to apologize for that. I've reviewed books for 15 years; I just wrote one. The next review I write is going to be no better or worse for that experience. I didn't learn anything about writing from writing a book -- although I've learned a hell of a lot about publishing! (I learned how to structure a chapter-length article -- learned by doing -- from writing an article for Ballet Review about a decade ago. That was agony. Somehow I internalized all the lessons I'd learned, and have never had a problem structuring a long piece since. That's just one personal example, of course, not a universal truth ) I also think that, whatever one's background, one has to look at the art form as a whole. I gave a video lecture to a class of dance students a few summers ago and was surprised to learn that they didn't look at anything except the dancing -- how would I do that step? How is she doing that step? -- They had no training whatsoever in watching choreography or analyzing a ballet. For my book, I interviewed more than 100 dancers who had grown up in the Bournonville tradition. Some of them certainly saw things that I hadn't seen. Many of them saw things that I had, which was comforting. And there were just as many who were absolutely clueless, who did not know anything about any role other than their own, or have any informed opinion about the ballet as a whole -- by that, I mean they didn't know what the changes had been, they didn't care. It was All About Me. So being a dancer doesn't insure that you have a critical viewpoint. So no one has to look at the whole picture, and each writer comes to it from a different perspective. Which is why it is so important to have different voices writing!! I hope the length of this will not discourage others from answering -- these are good questions, and just once, on a thread about writing, I would love to hear from people who are not working critics. Humor me! It's Christmas

I wish more dancers would write about dance. One of the best reviews I've ever read was in a criticism seminar (I was a guest lecturer and got there early and was invited to listen to the "read and talk about your piece" segment") written by Holly Willilams, a former dancer with Laura Dean. The assignment had been to write about the performance the preceding night...which happened to be by Laura Dean. AND one of the works on the program was a dance that Williams had been in, in the original cast. Now, that alone didn't make it a good review, of course. She had to have insight (which she did) and she had to be a good writer (which I think she is). But put all that together and you have a review that was interesting, and invaluably informative. I don't think the criticism leveled against Ms. Homans, or any of the grumblings among dance people about her sudden appearance in major publications, have anything to do with her having been a dancer -- although being a student at SAB does not automatically qualify one to make statements about Petipa. Nancy Reynolds, who is tremendously respected within the field, is also a former SAB student. She writes brilliantly about dance and has a rich historical background and the ability to place things in context -- meaning the instinct to know when someone makes a statement that he will contradict the next day, or that is specific to one purpose, and not seize on it as though it is Revealed Truth and build a New Important Theory on it. The dance backgrounds of critics I know varies. A few have studied -- not seriously, but taken classes. I don't know of any newspaper/magazine critic with a serious dance background -- but I may just not know about it. I also don't think academic training is an issue. Most of us don't know what the others do "in real life" or know the backgrounds, until you get to know the person, of course. You're judged on your writing -- I've found that critics are very good at sniffing out fakes. Maybe not after the first review/article or two, but it's hard to sustain a body of work if you have only a superficial knowledge. It's quite possible to judge dance, like painting or films, by eye from the outside, matching pictures, as it were, of this performance against that one. One can train the eye -- it helps to observe classes, which isn't easy to do. Dance history has been written by amateurs -- like Cyril W. Beaumont, a bookseller, or Lincoln Kirsten, a Kirstein. (I have no idea into which DOL category he would fit!) Or Marian Hannah Winter, who spent her entire adult life going from manuscript to manuscript, and traipsing through the graveyards of Europe to trace the dance families of pre-19th century ballet. There isn't any training for dance critics/historians and, worse, because there is still NO comprehensive department comparable to music or art at any university in this country where you can study dance history with dance historians, people who want to study dance history do it on their own with tutors, the old-fashioned way, and people who want to get credentials go to a university and get a Ph.D. from another department -- often theater, sometimes music, but do not have the opportunity to study with anyone in their field. [And before I get 7 posts on "this or that department has a Ph.D. program" there are a couple, but they don't teach dance history. They skip that step and go right through to performance analysis and political issues in dance.] I've read a few dissertations in fields in which I'm knowledgeable, and they're full of -- not so much errors, but misconceptions, something that, had the person been studying in a university department, a professor would have corrected. I did a master's thesis on ballet history guided by a Ph.D. in English with a keen interest in the arts, who taught several interdisciplinary seminars about the arts. He could suggest books about the arts in general, and could judge if I made a general historical misstep. But I had colleagues (other dance writers who I knew knew dance history) read my chapters for comments on the dance content. I did the same with my book. A book published by a university press must be peer reviewed. So it was sent out to readers -- but there is really only one other person in America who is primarily a Bournonville specialist. They had to turn to historians whose specialty was in other periods. On my own, I sent my manuscript to a panel of readers, some of whom were scholars in other fields but also very knowledgeable about dance and had at least seen the Danish ballets I was describing; some chapters were read by dancers who had lived through the times I was discussing. So if you're responsible, you vet your work on your own. The problem with magazine writing today is an editorial one, I think, and tied to the death of the importance of a liberal arts education. A generation ago, editors had some personal connection to the arts. They knew what was going on and who was important. Today, that's not the case. One could write a piece "proving" that Gumpher De Grovis [not a real person] had really founded the New York City Ballet, and that, say, Tanaquil LeClercq had "really" choreographed everything credited to Balanchine and if you have connections, if people whom the editor knows personally speaks for you, you could get it published.

Very good point, Estelle! And a related point to that is when there have been non-romantic pas de deux for a man and a woman, current stage practice, and critical viewing, tries to turn them into something romantic. I'm thinking about the pas de trois for Elgar's wife, Elgar and a male friend that originally depicted comfort and friendship and now (reportedly; I haven't seen it) gives hints that the friend is sleeping with one or both of them, and that Ashton was either too shy or too emotionally constipated to make this overt. I hope this is a phase, but if it is, it's been a long one. The other problem is lack of what we call "out of the box" thinking. It's so easy to fall into following models: a ballet must have a romantic pas de deux. It's hard to break out of that.

I haven't know whether I should say anything or not :confused: But I just had to thank all of you -- first of all for reading it. It's not a short book!!! And second for posting about it. I know it's awkward -- Leigh says the same thing every year around the time of Dance as Ever's performance. All comments, or questions, are welcome, positive or negative. It's very nice to know that, after working on it for 9 years, people are actually reading it!

Okay. I'll go first I look at plot and characterization first. I often will not read the libretto the first time I see a narrative ballet new to me -- not always wise; the first time I saw "Manon" I thought Des Grieux and Manon were brother and sister-- to see if the ballet makes sense on its own. It almost never does, but it's great fun to find out later who all the characters were supposed to be. I should look at costume and set first, I know, but I seldom do unless they're either breathtakingly beautiful or hideous. It's on the second or third viewing that I'll pick up subtexts, or worry about how the ballet is structured below a superficial level - again, unless something is so off that it smacks you in the face at first viewing. I think the more skillful something is assembled, the longer it takes to see its bones. Of course, if I'm reviewing I have to concentrate on analyzing what I'm seeing; I'm writing here as a civilian What about you? What do you "see" first? What's important to you? To repeat Leigih's questions: