SanderO

This question topic is somewhat of a tautology in that ballet is not part of popular culture, not intended to be, very much the way other forms of high art are not.

The two types of cultures carve out and define the broader way we define a culture in general. The USA is dominated by pop culture which only occasionally makes a foray into what is considered high culture to borrow technique, metaphor, images etc... established cultural icons. But it will al most always revise, reform and re invent them. Modern dance has this relationship to classic ballet.

Dance in popular culture seems mostly about participation of the people in a social context - doing it - as opposed to the performance "arts" which are viewed from a seat in a theater. Pop culture is in a constant process of renewal and redefinition and classic ballet is more about preserving, perfecting and protecting a bit of history... something that is an anathema to pop culture. Of course some creations from pop culture do have staying power and become the "classic" of their era, define it and the rest of it seems to fade.

The issue for those interested in the high arts is preserving it. Unlike a painting or a building, dance is of the moment, lining is a stretch of time, and even video recordings are but a shadow of the real experience. The tradition and knowledge of ballet requires rigorous training, and it is essentially being passed from person to person through time. This is one of the special things about classic ballet which makes it so precious to those who love it. And this process is completely absent in pop culture which is completely fad driven.

Elitism has an awful sound to it and ballet being associated with the elite is most unfortunate because it puts beauty as the currency of class struggle.

Frankly, I think we are drowning in pop culture and could do with a lot more "high culture" in the mix.

This is an interesting problem. Pop culture and the classic arts do not mix like oil and water. They might, at best inhabit the same "media" at times but merge they can't. There will always be cross over efforts and the new guys will always find themselves reaching back into our cultural past for "things" to re package and re use in their own present / modernist manner.

Marketing is another matter altogether and here ballet companies are faced with getting people into the seats to stay in the black or not bleed to much red and depend on "hand outs" from gov and arts patrons. What marketers are doing is trying to find ways to package classical arts which appeal to the "unwashed masses".... ooops I mean the popular culture raised on MTV and so forth. Of course many of the "artists" in classic companies are also "interested in" and participate in popular /crossover efforts.

What we need is a media which presents classic arts, to a receptive educated and respectful public without dumbing it down foe the MTV crowd. My two cents.

JDF has such a squeaky clean almost young boy look to him and a clean demeanor which seems to endear the audience to him and of course his singing is great.

Anna Netrebko and Renee Flemming have some of that prima donna attitude which the audience senses and in a way are looking for them to make a mistake of some sort. Yeah it's caddy stuff, but it's hard to be a "diva" and be "innocent" the JDF comes off.

Talent goes to their heads, doesn't it?

I like her work very much, but was not thrilled at Beauty and I found the tattoo on her left hip bone creepy. She also has so much muscle definition in her arms she is looking like a body builder and not a ballerina. Perhaps this type of definition becomes inevitable when on has no body fat and well developed muscles. Unfortunately, to my eye, the female body loses much of the elegance of form and softness. On the other hand, Desmond Richardson looks perfect.

Some of the make up is weird and not especially attractive on a young woman seen close up. I don't think you notice it as much when the dancers are in motion and you are sitting back in the theater.

But many of the photos have coarseness to say the least, and it was not the impression the live performance gave.

The term classical when applied to the arts carries with it the implication that the work is strictly from a past era. If we were to erect a building in an accurate classical style, it would probably be termed neo classical.

But neo classical seems mostly applied to the arts which is classical motifs and elements and are created with some contemporary elements as well. In architecture the dumbing down of classical motifs has resulted in some post modern rubbish in my opinion.

Ballet is a performance art and its roots are from the past when all the "rules" were establish and the great choreographers created the masterpieces we still love and see today. A classical company would, it seem, attempt to reproduce with complete accuracy every aspect of ballet as it was done back then. When we see them perform it should be like stepping into the way back machine, much the way we do when when we step into Gothic cathedral.

With the repertoire being limited and the possibilities for dance and ballet so expansive, others have come along and used the classical "language" of ballet to create new works. As time marches on and these artists "improvise" and create something "new", the works lose some of their classical elements, I would think. And we have "interpretations" of older works which may diverge from the original. This obviously can be in any number of aspects which make up a ballet, from the body types, "steps" and so forth, costumes, sets, lighting etc.

Today's cinema hardly resembles the first silent films, but they are all cinema. Same with dance and architecture. I suspect ballet companies struggle with the notion of being antique reproductions and at the same time providing a setting for creativity for the artists - dancers choreographers etc. Obviously, staging an antique requires enormous level of training in technique and apparently, the Mariinski is or was attempting to preserve classical ballet and this is something which has to be passed on like an oral tradition since it is a performance art and we don't have (I suspect) sufficient documentation of the classics. Unlike architecture we can't study a classical ballet today the way we can a classical building.

I am very pleased that some artists are trying to preserve the classics in ballet and at the same time, I enjoy seeing the neo classical interpretations and even completely modern works which use ballet technique which seems to have identified much of beauty and grace in the human form in motion and repose.

What do I know?

I was fortunate to receive a ticket for the dress rehearsal in the orchestra 4th row center. I never had such a great seat for the opera nor the ballet before. WOW how intimate!

This was wonderful production with Natalie Dessay as Marie La fille du Regiment in a fantastic coloratura comedic role and of course the French just rolled off her tongue. Juan Domingo Florz was also fabulous as her a lover Tonio. Donald Maxwell handled the role of Hortensius flawlessly.

I had never seen or heard the opera before and I found it charming. The staging was right up there with some the new Met Opera productions with the sets made from huge maps in the first act and invisible walls with door, window and picture frames defining them in the second. The met does some clever staging of classic operas, such as Barber of Seville, Madame Butterfly, Zauberflote to name a few. Unlike classic ballet, opera seems to lend itself to new stagings.

The audience loved this opera and I am certain this will be a another big success for the Met. I heard Ms Dessay interviewed by Leonard Loapte on WNYC and she recounted how she came to opera via acting when she was told she had a good voice and should pursue opera. Good suggestion. We benefit! She can act and her comedic timely was delightful. Her voice is not powerful but she nailed it.

I don't think there are many comedic operas but this one ranks with Barber of Seville. They were of course doing an HD run through at the dress rehearsal and it should be wonderful on the large screen or even small screen HD TV. I was fortunate to be close enough not to need binocs and the only disappointment was that being that close I could see that Ms Dessay was not the young girl she was supposed to be as Marie, despite her blocking and acting. I loved the two of them JDF and Ms Dessay. JDF is very charming!

This one will be coming around again in the future if the audience response is any indication. What a delightful surprise and way to spend a Friday afternoon. And how lucky I was that my neighbor who needed a ride to the theater and company! Now if I could only win the lotto....

Seems as if the consensus is that Russian audiences are rather poorly behaved. Is that sort of thing common in Russia as well? Audience manners vary from house to house, country to country, don't they?

Catherine,

Your post describes precisely the conversation I had with the two Russians. I am not sure of their history in St Petersburg, but you pretty much nailed how they described the difference between then and now.

I was very impressed with the two performances I saw, but have little frame of reference and virtually all my ballet attendance has been to American companies in NYC. These two made it seem that there was much concern that the Kirov is slipping away from what it was and this was not a good thing.

Ballet and Opera are like antiques in a sense. They can be preserved history performed in the present. But they also can be and often are re interpreted for any number of reasons for todays theaters and audiences and come out only with a resemblance to what they were like when they were first performed.

Since I wasn't alive in the 19th century I don't know what they were like, I can be fooled with some productions and not with others. I would like to have the ability to see both - the real deal antiques and the newer interpretations, but with a clear presentation by the company of what they are doing.

Just for the record, Kondaurova is a natural redhead. She rinses the color lighter/darker but it's always some shade of red. When she premiered the Glass Heart here (March 6) and danced in numerous Swan Lakes, her hair was darker red (hairspray/wetter hair = darker look). No one in the company wears wigs for Forsythe.

SanderO, you asked what the Kirov used to be. While I don't know that the New York immigrants you met were necessarily uhm, cultivated enough to comment, they may be, if they were avid balletomanes and lived here in St. Petersburg, which was Leningrad, at any point before 1990, esp in the 70s or during the Vinogradov era. But the comments they made do ring true to a great extent, mostly for ballerinas like Somova and Vishneva who are intent on capitalizing on the showmanship aspect of the Kirov, but do not by any means epitomize or exemplify Vaganova technique. What do I mean by that. Vishneva dances in nearly every leading ballet theater in the world -- guest artist at ABT, at the Bolshoi, touring her own show, Beauty in Motion, and before that, Kings of the Dance, the list goes on. I recently posted on Criticaldance the results of yesterday's press conference with Gergiev in which he commented that, if Vishneva was only performing one time per year at the Mariinsky Theatre, she was not technically a prima of the Mariinsky. A prima perhaps, but not of THIS theatre if she doésnt perform here. I know many people who agree with the assertion as well that she is not really a Russian ballerina in terms of plastique or expression. Her on stage persona is very much American, if you will, very dramatic, very Broadway-esque. This attracts crowds, but it isn't the Russian "way". Somova, is another but much poorer (or much stronger, however you like it) example, for her uber high extensions and lack of artistry, lack of restraint. The ballerinas of the Kirov in the past were known for portraying more artistry, more discipline, more strength, more tasteful dramatism. It wasn't about high legs and flashy jumps. It wasn't about how many foreign tours you could go on with other companies, it wasn't about making more money. It was about the history, the tradition, the style. The corps de ballet of the Kirov remains the best in the world. (Gergiev agrees with me on that :-)). But the upper layers of the Kirov have few traditional ballerinas left. Lopatkina is considered, by locals, to be the great traditionalist in this theatre. Tereshkina, technically, is following in her footsteps although the two are dramatically very very different. Some other old school Kirov types who aren't yet off the roster: Tarasova, Zhelonkina (who just performed here Wednesday night in La Sylphide). Obratsova is also very traditionally Kirov-esque. They are easy to pick out but it is hard to pinpoint the quality. It is sort of a technical perfection plus a well researched dramatic approach that never goes overboard, and is never done for kicks, is never done to the extreme. It's the confidence the viewer has that there will be no mishaps or no missteps, that the 32 fouettes will be polished and even, not bouncing, that she will finish them, not wimp out. It's the feeling the spectators come away with at the end of "Giselle", perhaps a tear or two if done correctly. It is hard to put this into words if you didn't see the Kirov in the 70s or 80s --or if you have grown up on a steady diet of American ballet only -- but suffice it to say that "democracy" isn't always good for classical traditions. Anywhere. I guess that is one way of putting it.

The make up and wigs and so forth allows these dancers to look almost nothing like their head shots on the web site. I would never recognize Viktoria Tereshkina on the street after seeing her on stage. hahahaha Isn't that the point?

I ran into two Russians this afternoon, an architect who lives and works here and his female friend who was introduced as a former dancer and music producer of chamber concerts. Whatever. So asked if they had seen the Kirov here in NYC and both rolled their eyes and then said that the Kirov is now all about atheleticism and showmanship and it the company is nothing like its former self. They seemed very disappointed in the the "run" here at CC. That was sort of odd.

Having no reference I just shrugged my shoulders and said I hoped to see more of the company but perhaps on a larger stage with the full company.

What was the former Mariinsky like as opposed to what they are today?

I would recommend a 4 part series which was produced by the BBC about precisely what Bart is referring to and it's roots going back the the late 19th century and the early 29th century and the work or Edward Bernays, the father of public relations.

The presentation is called: The Century of the Self

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries..._the_self.shtml

This explores how the public has been "manipulated" to behave as consumers, of ideas, products, lifestyle and self image and so forth. It's a rather upsetting and frightening look at what "we" have become, or let happen to us (by capitalism) in our case.

I can't recommend this production enough. It is a real eye opener (mind opener).

I am a "political" person and tend to see the world through the prism of class struggle. However, our culture which is what is humans have created is how we are judged and what we are measured by.

When we gaze back into our past it is the arts which convey who were were as humans and how we structured out society. Things like buildings and articles like guns and chairs and clothing and carts and spoons are part of it as well.

We still have many creative artists today which will tell the story to our future. But what we have much more of are "things" which is what we have become in the industrialized nations: cars, stereos, cell phones, PCs, airplanes, boats, satellites, TV, radio, the internet. Many of these things have aesthetics values in them, sort of like nice packaging. But the pure arts are really a tiny portion of what we are about and this is largely now part of the capitalist game. Just look at the art world, now driven by "collectors", galleries and celebrity aspiring, champagne sipping Hampton hanging "artists". There's money to be made in "collectibles" so get with the program! They made be talented, but what a collection of whores the art world is from top to bottom and that includes the institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, the MOMA, Whitney, Getty and the whole lot of them.

With the Galas, the Met and the ABT, and NYCB are aspiring to the same capitalist model of serving the rich, and of course exploiting talent or the artists.

So what else is new?

There are two classes of ballet goers. Those who are already fans and do attend and those who could be fans and induced to attend. You can build attendance by getting the existing ballet fans to attend more performances or market ballet to new people.

The buzz in the media about "dance"... in all styles will / may have an horizontal influence as people excited by one genre look at the wider range of offerings and give it a shot. I suppose this is like baseball fans who decide to attend football or soccer or hockey. Many people are sports fans and like it all and some only a few sports and so on. The same may apply to dance as the whole dance things becomes more popular as a result of its being marketed in mass culture, pop culture or low brow culture... call it what you will.

I don't see much "cross over" from pop to classic and opera music from people into pop, but you do occasionally see orchestral scoring and so forth as part of pop music and music for film for example.

Ballet, like classic music, to be appreciated requires that the audience be a bit educated about the genre and the more they are the more robust their experience at a performance will be. Absent the education/experience ballet may look pretty or some of it athletic to new audiences and it may look like a relic from "old Europe" and this is often too a far reach for the cultural experience of the American public. I really don't see the hip hop culture finding ballet appealing, enough to attend performances with expensive tickets.

Getting children hooked is another approach and the "fairy tale" ballets like Nut and Beauty might be a way for parents who have an interest in high culture of getting their children exposed to something other than mass and low culture. Good luck. We are besieged with vulgar crap for the minute we wake up till we go to bed.

Ballet, opera and classic music companies need to decide how to insure their niche in the larger American mix (cesspool) of cultural offerings. The high arts seem to rely on the fat bank accounts of the well heeled, and well schooled who will cling to these "antiques" both for genuine appreciation and for less lofty reasons like tax breaks and snob appeal. You know there is enormous amount of sucking up to the wealthy by the ABT, MetOpera and so forth.

Could we find ourselves in a world where only the rich attend and support the arts, where ticket prices are so high that the little people cannot afford them, that these institutions are effectively owned and operated for and buy the wealthy and attendance becomes almost a moot consideration? In America it seems entirely possible.

The alternative is the dumbing down and the pollution of the high arts to attract the low brows at perhaps affordable price points to make the box office support the companies. It seems rather unlikely that American culture will embrace high arts, if recent trends in education is an indication. First to go, art and music programs.

NYCB and MetOpera are trying some 21st century marketing strategies to reach out to larger audiences. The R+J was such an effort and it involved a new look (costumes and sets) and choreography to appeal to the Freddie Flintstone generation. Perhaps ABT's Beauty was a bit of a copy cat approach without all the marketing hype of free ticket give aways. Both productions were panned by the traditional balletomanes for the most part for some aspect of these efforts.

My own observation is that a substantial percentage of the audiences at ABT, Met Opera, NYCB and recently the Mariinsky run are foreigners. NYC is a very cosmopolitan city for sure, but probably way more than half the time I have been at these performances in the last 5 years I was sitting next to foreign nationals. If this is the true make up of the NYC audiences, it does not bode well for taking these shows to flyover land.

We, as a nation need to set priorities as to what is culturally important to our people. If the high arts are, (and I think they should be) they need to be supported at every level and beginning with the education of the young. An interesting project is underway in Venezuela where young people are bring taught to play classical music and musical instruments. It is now vastly popular among the youth and classic music has infused the culture and provided multiple benefits to the children and the culture as a whole. Nice going Mr Chavez, or whomever began this program.

The Venezuelan model or similar is the way to go to inspire audiences to the ballet. We will have many companies and more skilled artists and lower ticket prices and high attendance and be weaned from the support of the well heeled elitists who us the Belmont Room for tots of champagne. And hopefully the standards will remain high and the classic arts niche will be preserved, rather than perverted by Bernays' approach to mass marketing. (ICK).

But of course, companies are businesses and in the hands of boards of business people who now only know of 20th century marketing schemes and put clever men such as Peter Gelb who "While at Sony Classical, Gelb pursued a controversial strategy of emphasizing crossover music over mainstream classical repertoire[2] Examples include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was encouraged to record americana; electronic composer Vangelis, who recorded choral symphony Mythodea; and Charlotte Church, a pop artist who started her career as a classical singer.[3]. Additionally, Mr. Gelb masterminded the recording and release of the soundtrack to the film "Titanic," the highest selling film soundtrack ever."

It's fairly hard to fight the capitalist approach, even if you come to a position as a former dancer such as Ms Brown at ABT.

The jury is still out on Mr Gelb's contribution to the world of Opera aside from getting revenue up at the met and getting new productions in front of the eyeballs (and ears) of more people. It's the free market meets the mezzo at work!

It was kind of refreshing to see Kirov with the "old style" in every way approach to ballet this season in NYC. So much more about the dance and less about the marketing.

Interesting stuff, isn't it?

I suppose dancers are human and have good and bad days. The best of them have mostly good days and so have that shiny reputation. I found the Kirov's company worked well at all levels and would love to see the full company on a big stage. Now I await the ABT season to see how they look after a few Kirov's.

My impression was that Viktoria Tereshkina was very much in control and quite elegant. I think she has a good future. I thought the Odalisques were the weakest part of the entire evening, and seemed to lose the tempo at one point. They seemed a bit tired at the end. The corps were great, beautifully in sync in Bayadere. Alina Somova is also wonderful. I want to see more or her and Viktoria.

What stuck me about the principals in this performance was their "flourishes" at the end of a piece and their curtain calls. I was trying to read their broad smiles. Were they thrilled that they were well received, or glowing that that had shown off their virtuosity? Was it ego or humility?

My impression was that the very talented Vishneva is very full of herself, knows she's good and is somewhat smug about her talent. I did not have the same impression from Somova or Tershikina who impressed me as more humble and honored to be on the stage.

This was the first performance of ballet which got me thinking about how these performers feel about themselves, their craft and the audience. How much is performing about the audience and how much is about the performer. Shouldn't it be about the role and not the audience or the ego?

The audience was noisy. I prefer to see a full length ballet where you can see some sort of character development. I return on sat afternoon for some more Russians. I liked the way Gergiev did the music too. He seems to like quicker tempi. What do I know?

As someone who has hearing loss I can say that I have never found the orchestras to be too loud of late. But I can report again in a year now that I have some hearing aids. But I'm new to them and the world sounds very different and very different from how I remembered it.

I will say this, that we live in a very noise filled environment and I absolutely love silence and quiet sounds like leaves rustling, waves lapping or solo instruments played unamplified of course. However I love the range that an orchestra can move through and then add a large choir it is an amazing experience. The ballet orchestras I've heard don't seem to exhibit this dynamic range, but perhaps it is the music we hear at ballet.

I really do despise the ever present music piped in wherever you are, especially since it is so tasteless in 99.9% of the cases and usually over modulated. I never did get why it has to be so loud. I suspect most pop musicians have occupational hearing loss.

Will we ever be free of the electric guitar? Who knew?

I've gone off pop music for this reason: it won't leave me alone and I am alienated from it because of the assault. Classic music on the other hand I have to "go to" and it seems more special.

Are the dancers who perform dance within the opera MET Opera company members today or do they subcontract this work out as needed?

I attended a Met Opera dress rehearsal last Fall and met a lovely woman who told me should was a ballet dancer who used to work with the Met Opera as a dancer. I assumed the Met had their own dancers, but I missed the opportunity to learn how this works from her.

Just out of curiosity concerning the age of dancers etc. I understand that this demanding physical work and age takes its toll. Obviously some can push away the inevitable retirement.

What would be considered the typical upper age limit for a principal dancer?

The age thing might also be considered in terms of the roles and or the characters being portrayed. When you think of Romeo and Juliet you are thinking about young teenagers! And I suppose most/many of the story ballets involve young romantic situations. The Nut is even about children!

Are we talking about the illusion of the age of the characters, or the ability of the dancers at their craft which presumably improves with age?

Stanley Fish's argument may apply to fish culture, but for humans one could argue that at the most fundamental level human activity has a Darwinian purpose in our survival. While one could argue that things humans do which have no value to their species will be selected out. And in a sense what is happening with the human arts is that they are evolving, but the arts "trait" is not going away.

I would argue that human civilization which is a meta level of human activity involves the creation of institutions and "memes" which represent a continuous kind of living "thing" of sorts. Without human activity supporting these memes and institutions, there is no civilization.

This means that these meta creations by humans are what defines our civilization.

Wiki says:

"The term civilization is often used as a synonym for culture in both popular and academic circles.[1] Every human being participates in a culture, defined as "the arts, customs, habits... beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people's way of life".[2] Civilizations can be distinguished from other cultures by their high level of social complexity and organization, and by their diverse economic and cultural activities."

There ya go Mr. Fish. Your ability to communicate in language is an example of what you claim has no purpose.

Look what Wiki writes about Mr Fish:

"In her essay "Sophistry about Conventions," Martha Nussbaum argues that Stanley Fish's theoretical views are based on "extreme relativism and even radical subjectivism." Discounting his work as nothing more than sophistry, Nussbaum claims that Fish "relies on the regulative principle of non-contradiction in order to adjudicate between competing principles," thereby relying on normative standards of argumentation even as he argues against them."

There are different flavors of "the arts".

One of them is the museum "stuff". Relics from the past which are there for our viewing. Even ballet which is a performance art can have a museum like quality to it.

And then there are the "living" arts, which are being produced in our own life time and of course the "performing arts" which up until recently lived in fleeting time. Now we can record them.

How about the art we live in? Buildings (where we place art and perform art). Or literary art which works on so many levels at the same time.

How about this approach to the question posed in this thread.

What would the world be like if there were no arts? Can you conceive of this?

I have always found the notion of beauty a compelling and completely elusive "thing". I often thought that whatever beauty was or is would have to be a quality that emerged from matter, from science from mathematics somehow. Science and math seem to find a way to describe almost everything in the physical world. And beauty does have at least one foot in the physical world.

But then I thought that our conception of beauty had to do with our own brain and the attributes of our sensory system. We sample the world through our senses so beauty might be directly linked to the human nervous system. Conceptually that made sense.

Then I began to think about music and how we distinguish music from noise and that seemed to both a combination of the structure of our nervous system and some higher mathematical organization not dependent on humans.

It's interesting that we can make up rules for what beauty is and then attempt to create something beautiful by adhering as precisely as possible to them.

The arts seem to almost always concern itself with beauty, though not exclusively and we all seem to respond to whatever beauty is with some very positive feelings from the experience.

We see beauty in nature, don't we? And we often copy her.

I can never have enough beauty, but I love the pauses and spaces between, because without them I would not know how incredible an experience beauty is.

This is such a vast topic, but an interesting one. The arts do many things.

For one, they record the human experience because they are products of human who examine the human experience.

One interesting thing for me about the "arts" is that usually have an aesthetic appeal. The arts seem to discover, define and convey beauty.

Most of what we know about our past was conveyed to us by the arts, by the artists. Interesting that.

Bart,

I suspect the otherworldliness that attracts so many ballet lovers is that it is really removed from this world. The creatures of ballet are extremely beautiful move or even when still show amazing grace and perfection. We just don't experience other humans moving and interacting as they do on a stage.

When a ballet is a story ballet we can recognize reality abstracted and see how meaning can be communicated in abstract movement.

Ballet is a trip out of this world! We don't need to be high to go there, and in fact the more intensely we observe the ballet the more we are taken away!

I wonder how the performers experience it from either side of the proscenium. It must be very different.

I attended one of the Gergiev performances at the NYCB. I am not familiar with their orchestra or any problems with it.

But what struck me is that Gergiev seemed to be able to get a heck of a lot from that orchestra. I don't why or how he did it, but I could hear it. I still don't know how he worked with the dance side in the tempi etc. but as I recall it was pretty fast, and I wonder if this is true, and whose decision this would have been? Does anyone know how the company's dancers reacted to his conducting those ballets?