What is the Proper Form for Pas de Bouree?

[Michael]

On pointe, I sometimes see pas de bouree done with the travelling motion produced almost completely from the ankle -- That is, the ankle fully releases with each step and the dancer glides thus. (Alexandra Ferri in the broadcast of The Dream last week, for a striking example, but I also remember noticing Veronica Part doing this in her variation as Mercedes in Don Q at ABT last year)

And I also frequently see it done (in general at ABT and NYCB) with the motion produced almost fully from the leg and not the ankle, with the ankle releasing only very very slightly, or apparently not at all, on each pas. Kyra Nichols is probably the most striking example of this technique I can think of.

Which is the correct classical style or are they both correct depending on training?

Aesthetically speaking, I'm not really sure which I personally prefer to see.

On the one hand, seeing the ankles working in a very supple manner can make the feet very expressive (vide Ferri) -- rendering to them some of the expressiveness and nuance of gesture more normally found in a dancer's hands. .

On the other hand, there is a different sort of visually weightless, effortless gliding motion which pas de bouree can produce when the ankles do not noticably release. On this score, I think of the Dewdrop variation in Balanchine's Nutcracker where the Ballerina floats upstage with porte de bras towards the conclusion of the Waltz of the Flowers, or of the similar effect produced by Titania's weightless glide upstage at the end of her dance with her attendants in a Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I, Scene II (vide Nichols in both).

[Mel Johnson]

Which is the correct classical style or are they both correct depending on training?

Yup, they're both correct, and it's not just training, it's the situation in the choreography which is being determined. Odile's bourrées are very different from Odette's, or at least they should be.

[Michael]

Mel -- Widening my question somewhat, all ways of doing it can't quite be equal, or can they? Have you ever seen a poorly executed pas de bourree in any performance? Or one you thought specially good? If so, why would you judge them so? Further, what would you teach as basic form, or teach first as basic form (since you've got to make some choice to begin with, if only something to work off of, I would guess) if you had a malleable and talented student to work with? Can you, in short, give some kind of technical critique as to what your eye looks for in bouree?

[Alexandra]

Smoothness? I remember reading that Ashton once said to Deanna Bergsma (Myrtha) that he wished he could ride on her back when she danced, so he could feel what it was like to move that smoothly. Another point on Myrthe, I think of hers as a jumping role, but in the film of the Danes' "Giselle," the camera concentrates on Mette-Ida Kirk's (Myrte's) feet on her entrance, which is all bourrees.

And a third note, just pulling bourree thoughts out of the sky in no particuar order, I remember a piece that Christopher Dean choreographed for Torvill and Dean at a competition here, in which he used bourrees -- very deliberately, I think -- to be choppy, the opposite of smooth. He was working with ballet dancers at the time, and I always thought that was a deliberate experiment -- see how something that, in ballet, was about smoothness, and how it was completely different on the ice.

In contemporary choreography, a bourrees may not be smooth, but deliberately steely, angry, an indication of power. Choo-San Goh liked the sound of pointe shoes, and often had the dancers bourree to make noise

[djb]

Interesting that you should mention Deanne Bergsma, Alexandra. Her bourrees were the smoothest I've ever seen. When I slightly unfocused my eyes, she actually appeared to be gliding across the stage. I don't know whether she was doing ankle or knee bourrees, but I noticed that each step was tiny.

(I wonder how smooth her bourrees would have been with Ashton riding on her back?)

[Alexandra]

(I wonder how smooth her bourrees would have been with Ashton riding on her back?)

giggle giggle. I thought the same thing. We can only suppose that so did he!!