Alexandra

Calliope, that was only an aside in the article, a throwaway line The article isn't about NYCB.

Ah, words again. I think it's usually described as "neoclassical" as opposed to "contemporary" as in Lines Contemporary Ballet. I really just put that comment in to avoid diverting the thread to "NYCB is not a contemporary ballet company" (or "is"), to point out for those who weren't aware that the company only showed its Diamond side in Edinburgh. [ December 31, 2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

This was posted on alt.arts.ballet this morning: Nureyev Monument To Be Erected In Ufa RFE/RL's Ufa correspondent on 19 December cited sculptor Zurab Tsereteli as saying that he will erect a monument to classical ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev in Ufa. Nureyev (1938-93) studied in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, an ethnic region within Russia.

A (sometimes funny) commentary on the classical-contemporary dance question, from the classical point of view. Let us have the great ballets One might ask what is the point of having a Scottish ballet company if it doesn't plan to do the great ballets. It is like the English Shakespeare Company saying it is sick of doing Shakespeare. It would be much cheaper to do something with a lot fewer actors that didn't require such a big theatre. I enjoy contemporary ballet - such as the New York City Ballet which visited the Edinburgh Festival this year with an entertaining set which included a fun piece set to fiddle music. http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features_frame.html (I was, of course, struck by the characterization of New York City Ballet as a "contemporary," in the sense of not classical, company, but one must remember that NYCB went to the Edinburgh Festival this year with its Diamond Festival repertory.)

Thanks, Susie, for posting that, and welcome to Ballet Alert.

I think the origin of "variation" was that, once upon a time, before the choreographer became King, dancers inserted solos that particularly suited them into ballets. A star would have several "variations", as she would have several costumes. It's similar to "cadenza" in music. During the 19th century, there would be one place, usually in the coda (I think) that would be marked "cadenza" and left up to the individual artist. It would have to be in the same key, and bear some relationship to the rest of the sonata or concerto, but it was the place for one to show off ones arpeggios, or trills, or whatever the particular skill was. One of the most famous examples of a near-contemporary choreographer who changed solos for dancers is Balanchine. "Tchaikovsky pas de deux" has several different solos made for different dancers. After the choreographer dies and isn't around to custom-make variations, then one or two become the 'set' one.

Thanks for posting that, Jane.

It's an interesting question. I think Balanchine and Ashton (and Bournonville ) made works in which their faith was assumed -- not in the sense that they thought everyone who saw the works were of the same religion, but that their religion was so much a fabric of their being that its assumptions -- and other ethical or moral assumptions -- are part of the fabric of the work. Other works (Neumeier's "St Matthew's Passion" perhaps -- I say "perhaps" because I've only seen selections on tape) despite overtly religious trappings -- subject matter, symbolism, music -- doesn't seen very religious to me. Neumeier may well be a devout Christian and I don't mean to imply otherwise, but the ballet seems external. I'd say the same for Glen Tetley's "Voluntaries" or MacMillan's "Requiem" -- the first, to the Faure, which I liked, and the second, to the Andrew Lloyd Webber, on which I gagged, all seemed external. Eliot Feld made a few Jewish ballets in the 1970s. One I remember vaguely was called "Tdadzik" (sp?) and had Orthodox costumes and props. There was a lengthy program note which I don't remember, and I was as fascinated by it as I am by Indian temple dance, as it was completely foreign to me. Apparently it had comic elements, because at least two-thirds of the audience (I saw this at the Public Theatre in New York) howled and seemed absolutely delighted. Bournonville used religion a great deal, both in the assumed way -- we are all Christians -- and in the plots. "Napoli" is the most famous (and it's not about Bournonville's religion, but Catholicism). In the second act, Teresina is bewitched and loses her humanity, yet a shred of it remains; the soul cannot be destroyed by magic. Gennaro has an amulet given to him by the local priest and when she sees it, memories of her faith -- a symbol of her humanity -- stirs within her. There's a very moving moment, in some productions, where Gennaro and Teresina, walk arm in arm around the Blue Grotto with the amulet raised, and the nymphs and Sea God bow before it, aware of a Higher Power. Also, in "A Folk Tale," Bournonville uses Christianity as a symbol of humanity. Hilda, raised by trolls, is a Christian inside -- sweet, loving, forgiving, and given to putting sticks together in the shape of a cross. I'm sure there are people who would be offended by any or all of this. I think it works when, in Balanchine's "Mozartiana," Ashton's "The Quest" and "Dante Sonata" (which I've never seen, but only read about) and Bournonville's "A Folk Tale" the religion is part of the choreographer's very being.

Good to see you again, antoP. We don't hear from you often enough I agree on the style issue as well. We're losing steps, too. Footwork is out, all the small steps. It's all about big effect. Dirac wrote that the "no personalities" complaint turns up "every couple of decades or so," and I agree with that, but that doesn't invalidate Crisp's complaints. I think there's a notion that every generation scoffs at the next one coming up, but this isn't so. Stars are recognized when they appear. Nobody ever said Nureyev didn't have personality They do seem to come in waves. Taglioni, Elssler, Cerrito. Although there will always be individuals who disagree, the consensus was rapture -- no one was complaining "she's no Bigatoni." In fact, Taglioni was treasured becuase she DID remind people of the stars of a generation or two ago. And after the first stars of the Romantic Era, there was a lull. A very long lull, broken only by the tragically brief careers of Emma L and Guiseppina B, both of whom were the kind of dancers that, even as 16-year-olds were Stars. There weren't complaints about Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky and Bolm, nor about Markova, nor Alonso, nor Lifar (there were lots of complaints about Lifar, but lack of personality or individuality was not one of them). And when Margot came along people didn't write, "Well, she's nice, but she's certainly no Markova." When Nureyev first danced in Russia there were sighs of, "Finally! Another Chabukiani. We can revive some of his roles." I think during the lulls -- and I very much agree with Crisp that we're in one, have been there for a long time, and the dancers who are called "great" now are not, in my opinion, at the same level of their predecessors -- one hears "oh, they always say that and he's an old **** and don't pay any attention." But the moment the real thing comes along, people recognize it.

I was hoping someone else would jump in here first, but since they haven't...yes, BW. I disagree with some of Crisp's opinions on individual artists, but not on his general take on things. I think the break in lineage is the most important, and saddest, thing I've seen in the time I've been watching ballet (since the mid-1970s).

So far, Sleeping Beauty has not received the battering of other Petipa works. There's John Neumeier's "the Prince in blue jeans" relevant and up-to-date version (which I've never seen). And there's Marcia Haydee's absolutely ghastly, Carabosse as Kabuki monster who never leaves the stage version. Otherwise, the trend seems to be to cut lots of female choreography and replace it with dances for men (Tomasson). Actually, writing this -- thinking out loud, as it were -- there ARE a lot of revisionist productions out there -- Nureyev's in addition to those mentioned above. Yet, to me, "Sleeping Beauty" remains "Sleeping Beauty" despite all the fiddlings and twitchings. What's your position on this? Granted that what we know as "Sleeping Beauty" in America dates pretty much from the Sadler's Wells version, which was thought to be "authentic" but had already undergone some changes.

Hey! Great idea. We'll make it the ballet of the month in Ballets in Detail, starting January 2. There is indeed a story line, and we should have the first Ballet Alert! pop quiz to see how many people can remember it without cheating [ December 27, 2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Pretty much everything. Ismene Brown unleashes Mr. Crisp for an interview on ballet.co.uk. http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_01/de...t_clement_c.htm What do you think?

Also, at the time, many critics hailed "Billboards" as being the wave of the future of ballet. It was very popular initially, and then people seened to get tired of it. Its successor -- "Legends" ? -- did not do as well, and then the tide, as they say, turned. But initially, this was the "answer" to the "oh no! Kids who like rock music aren't flocking to the ballet" situation. (Frankly, I think we -- rock 'n' rollers and balletgoers -- should exist happily in our respective spheres.)

An article in the Washington Post (that's also posted on Links) about aging audiences and reaching out to the young included the following paragraph: "Everyone is well aware of what could be called the Joffrey Syndrome -- a few years ago that dance company, in a move to attract younger audiences, commissioned a work to music by Prince. That work, "Billboards," toured college campuses and was a brilliant success. But the company's core audience was alienated, the kids didn't come back for more, and before too long the Joffrey was facing bankruptcy (though not entirely because of "Billboards"). The company survived and moved to Chicago. "The message from that experience was to avoid playing exclusively to any single audience segment." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2001Dec21.html The writer writes on the arts but is not specifically a dance person, so I was surprised at the terminology. I've heard people, in conversation, refer to "Billboards syndrome" but I didn't know it had entered common parlance. (My take on this article: Despite a rather off-putting, to me, opening, it's one of the first I read that emphasizes that older people have ALWAYS made up the audiences for music, theater and dance, and that the reason young people aren't coming to performances is that they haven't been brought up to view theatergoing as something that's a normal and pleasurable part of adulthood.

It did go through quickly, didn't it? I can't imagine, though, that the issue of censorship is dead, especially considering the bent of this administration. Ken, on side switching, it seems to me that both sides -- left and right -- both want censorship and fight it. I've had so many discussions with colleagues about this -- I really do think I'm in the middle; I can both see and be frustrated with both sides. On the issue of tv and film censorship, I've heard liberals who pooh-pooh the notion that explicit sex might be something that has no place in prime time, or mainstream movies, yet scream foul if there's an unflattering portrayal of a protected group. And I've heard conservatives who would like to take every sex scene out of every movie scoff at the notion that violence has any effect. It seems to me that we all agree that the media has some societal effect. I think there are some who are in denial about this -- YOUR stupid stuff has an effect, but mine, oh, get real. Of course it doesn't. And I don't think that creates a climate for debate. I think both the left and the right can be anti-art, depending on the debate. On the right you have "we don't want to spend government money on anything" as well as "I am not giving a cent to that trash". On the left, there's also the suspicion that art is elitist, and that starving children should come first In the wake of 9/11, if there had been an either/or choice, I don't think the arts would have fared well.

I think your "Merry Christmas" point is well-taken. There are many on the left who are very happy to censor ideas they consider racist, sexist, anti-environment, or pro-religious and see that as furthering the good of society, while viewing those on the right who are aghast at anti-religious, anti-government, anti-values art are considered not only to be fascist pigs, but stupid and ignorant fascist pigs to boot. I do think that's a very fair point. I trust that there really are people who can look at two squares of black and tell which is art and which is not. I hope they are the ones making the judgments. To me, it's a "who guards the guardians" question. I think we'd all concede that throughout history, there has been art that's considered shocking in its day that is less shocking to succeeding generations. We all look at content first, the underpinnings second, if at all. One hopes the Guardians aren't doing that. Ken, to be fair to the article, I do think that in Washington this is the way the NEA issue is portrayed by both sides. It's the single unresolved issue. One step up from "Should we support the arts at all?" I remember that controversy from the 1960s during the floods of Florence. There the left/right debate was: Left, how dare you give money to try to save those old statues when people are destitute? We've got copies. Right: poverty will always be with us, but Michaelangelo comes along only once every 3000 years or so. People die anyway, art endures.

I'll start it off. Yes, I think that the nation should commit itself financially to development of its most cutting-edge art, whatever form it takes. I know there are problems with this position -- who's making the decisions? Are they giving grants to their friends rather than really looking at the whole field? That bothers me more than if this or that work of art offends a particular group. All art doesn't have to be offensive, but much great art is, and when you let the government get involved in making that decision, I think you're in trouble. More sinister, to me, in this article is the statement, which I think is true, that even a liberal administration found itself backing away from controversial art because the critics were so harsh and loud and powerful that doing otherwise would have put the NEA in jeopardy. I don't mean to second-guess them, and the NEA was in real jeopardy so they may have made the right decision, but I think one must stand up for what one believes, and that that is the only way to fight the howlers. Others? Especially those who think that the government should exercise more control in making grants? (That side is often under-represented here.) [ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

These paragraphs are extracted from the NYTimes article about the NEA and its new head. One sentence, which I've put in bold, struck me as discussable. I'd really like to have a variety of opinions here. ------------------------- The immediate spur for those fights was the agency's support for a handful of provocative projects and artists. One of those artists made a name for herself in part by coating her nude body in chocolate during a performance; another took pictures of a urine-immersed crucifix he had constructed. But at the heart of the battles was something deeper: a long-running argument about whether the nation should commit itself financially to development of its most cutting-edge art, whatever form it took. For now the answer is clearly no. But it was not always that way, and the dividing lines have sometimes broken in unexpected ways. President Richard M. Nixon greatly increased financing for the agency without notable federal say in the art it supported. President Bill Clinton's appointees to head the agency often found themselves shying away from controversial art as they tried to save the endowment from its critics. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/24/arts/24N...todaysheadlines

Laurencia was quite popular for awhile. I think this was a Chabukyani vehicle -- with Dudinskaya. Perhaps it was so associated with him that it didn't stay in repertory. It was revived for the very young Nureyev (also withi Dudinskaya). I don't know how long it stayed in repertory after he defected. I saw a film of it once, but I barely remember it. Lots and lots of ballet-Spanish dancing. I read a review once that called it "Don Quixote on steroids." I've never seen "Shurale" and know nothing about "Storking." Anyone else know?

Well that's two fans I'm sick of deconstructionism too, and way sick of postmodernism. (I had a small fondness for its minimalist phase in modern dance; the palindrome pieces were fun.) I'd be curious to see Ballett Frankfurt now, though. The Kennedy Center has not been open to the Bejart-Ek-Forsythe wing of dance, and we should see it. (BF has played Wolf Trap in the summer here, but not the Kennedy Center.) I've written before that my only objection to Forsythe isn't his fault -- it's those who write about him. This notion that he's Balanchine's heir -- not just in the sense of ability, but in the sense that he's part of the same aesthetic. That, I disagree with. There's certainly a craft there, but I'd agree with what Leigh wrote on the Heaven thread -- I've never been moved, and I find the constant energy empty after awhile. I'm glad you went, Farrell Fan. It's always good to see new things, even if you don't like them Did anyone else go?

No one else went to any modern dance concerts this year?

I'm looking forward to an all-Balanchine Kirov season at the Kennedy Center sometime in the not too distant future. Four programs, please.

Cliff, I have to say I was a bit taken aback by your answer at first, but the more I thought about it, I think you're right. I'd add that I don't think it's the most admirable thing about ballet, but there's definitely a link between the rise of the middle class, leisure time, and ballet (and baseball). And the dominance of the steam engine and rail travel coincided with the Romantic ballet movement, certainly. There's certainly the aspect of entertainment and competition (as with sports), and the idea of selling theater -- as distinct from dance as a form of worship -- is, I believe, Western. If you go back two centuries to ballet's beginnings, though, it came out of the same forces that gave birth to the Renaissance and had the same concerns. Western -- ingenuity or hubris? worship of the individual or denial of divine law? humanism and development of individual style or capitalism, greed, discovery and conquest -- all of these things are double-edged swords. The patterns we see now are the great-great-grandchildren of the Renaissance court's attempts to organize the universe. They describe astronomy as a dance. The aspect of turnout, too, at least in the sense of the impetus of movement being out of the body, away from the body. and not inwards is Western rather than Eastern. (I believe classical Indonesian dance, at least, also uses extreme turnout, but in the performances I've seen it's static and the focus of the eyes and psyche seems inward.) Agnes DeMille, in her not-error-free history of the ballet claims turnout as the Triumph of Western Man and links it to the development of armor, which allowed men to walk upright with the chest exposed, not huddled over. (But there are Eastern cultures who developed armor too, and probably earlier than the West did.) But there is an outward impetus in Western dance. There's a link to chess that I've never quite nailed down. The moves of a knight are really fourth position, for example. What are the origins of the notion of the arched foot as beautiful? The long, curved arms held low were part of the "ordinary" stance of 17th and 18th century aristocrats. Even what would today be considered a negative quality and for centuries was ballet's glory -- the erect carriage of the body (today: inflexible, static) is deeply rooted in Western culture. There's a video called "Dance and Human History" by someone whose name I long ago forgot that divides the world into three bands of one-dimensional, two-dimensional and three-dimensional movement, linked to ancient work patterns (ice fishing and spear throwing, wheat thrashing and rice harvesting, respectively). Other notions, connections, thoughts? [ December 22, 2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I'm going to give this another try, although it obviously isn't holiday fare. What does ballet say about Western civilization? What, if anything, distinguishes it from dance forms of other cultures? (Realizing that there probably aren't very many people here who are experts in the dance of other cultures.) I posted the same question on another thread, but we never got past the article in which the question was raised, so I'm trying to put the question here as an issue separate from that article issue -- please. Sorry. I'm sure it was my fault that the issue got confused. Cliff did respond to the Western civ aspect, and I'll post his answer: ------------------------------ CLIFF POSTED THIS: I think that what ballet implies about Western civilization is the same as what baseball and other professional sports imply: The West invented a usable steam engine. Almost two centuries ago the industrial revolution started in Europe. This produced a large number of people with leisure time and money to spend. Professional entertainment - ballet, baseball, et al. - flourished. On the subject of how the West came to its place in the world, a fascinating book is _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ (subtitled "The Fates of Human Societies") by Jared Diamond. It covers the geographic reasons as to why different cultures developed differently. [end of Cliff's post] [ December 22, 2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]