"Behind the Curtain:The Body, Control, and Ballet"

[kfw]

I don't think these problems are specific to the ballet world or can be eradicated from the ballet world. Some people will always be cruel, others will suffer from low self-esteem compounded by failing to meet freely chosen goals, and others will, from a lack of charity or a lack of life experience, avoid people they don't immediately connect with.

As for Balanchine, his old world world mentality is intrinsic to his art and its high and humane view of the human person. Like most any artistic genius, he was devoted to his art and naturally wanted those he worked with to share that devotion. But the high percentage of his dancers who speak affectionately of him suggest that for those willing to pay his price, the rewards were great. They served him, a necessarily flawed human being, but in so doing they served his art.

[canbelto]

So please don't blame Mr. B -- and especially please don't blame people who love his ballets -- for the ills and injustices of the whole society.

I'm not blaming Balanchine the man. As I said, he was a man of a different time and place. And as biographies will note, his childhood was extremely lonely. It's not surprising that ballet became his life, and that he expected his ballerinas to be as fanatical in their devotion as he was. I don't think he's an inherently cruel man, just as I don't think Diaghilev or Ninette di Valois were monsters. They weren't. They were just old-school people who perhaps couldn't fathom the idea of a working mother, or a life beyond the stage and barre. Certainly Diaghilev could also be very kind to his dancers; when they needed him, he was there. Even for people like Nijinsky; he rescued Nijinsky from war-torn Eastern Europe during WWI, and he certainly put his dancers and his company above himself and his needs. And most dancers also remember Balanchine with affection -- he too could be very kind and nurturing. I remember an interview with Mikhail Baryshnikov who said when he told Balanchine he was leaving to be AD of the ABT, Balanchine said, "Ok, but if you can't do what you want, you can always come back here, because this is your home too." He kept Allegra Kent on the payroll despite her injuries and pregnancies. So these people weren't monsters, they were just from a different time and place and they had ideas that today seem rather unenlightened.

What I'm trying to say, is that this article (and others) often use Balanchine quotes (like "I want to see bone" or "The color of a ballerina's skin should be a peeled apple") to highlight the cruelty of the ballet world. And I'm saying that it's naive to say that the issues highlighted in this article didn't (and don't) exist. Eating disorders unfortunately are common among certain professions, and now more and more common among "regular" girls too. I have no doubts that cruel teachers exist -- ballet is a world based on discipline, and some undoubtedly take the discipline too far. I think dancers like most performers have a degree of insecurity that will sometimes cause personal problems (Gelsey Kirkland being an extreme and famous example). And the Australian Ballet still has an open "whites only" policy AFAIK. Hopefully this will change -- remember how only 20 years ago it was quite accepted that only white football players could be quarterbacks? Thank god there were people like Doug Williams and Warren Moon to prove the foolishness of such an idea. So: anorexia, low self-esteem, racism ... yes I believe they're in the ballet world.

But I also think that some ideas are thankfully in the past. Ballerinas being mothers is one example. Also, I see more and more dancers taking time off for injuries, which is great. Certainly the old mentality that "if you can stand, you can dance" caused a lot of chronic and painful injuries and body damage. And I do think that ballet teachers probably rely less and less on the Diaghilev model. Ninette di Valois saying that she was so scared of Diaghilev that she could hardly look at him; George Balanchine remembering that he walked around practices with a huge stick and banged it if he was displeased. I could be wrong but I don't think most ballet pedagogues are like that today.

Well this post has certainly rambled, but I'll just end with something I recenty saw. It's the dvd "Plisetskaya: Diva of Dance." It contains a long interview with the great Maya. Now Maya had a hard, hard life, despite all her accolades. She was tailed by the KGB constantly. She wasn't allowed to tour in 1956. And the interviews mention these things. But what struck me the most was Maya remembering her debut in Raymonda. Now 80, she starts to hum (slightly off-key) the Raymonda melody. Her eyes look dreamily happy, and her face takes on a heavenly radiance. In that moment, I remembered that exchange in "The Red Shoes." "Why do you want to dance?" "Why do you want to live?" I think this article (and most articles that try to damn the big, bad, cruel ballet world) forget people like Maya Plisetskaya, people who were born to dance and could not have done anything else.

Ok, done rambling.

[Farrell Fan]

It seems to me that Balanchine was not a man of his time, but, like his ballets, way ahead of it. What other man of his time could have had as many wives and muses while remaining on good terms with all of them?

[dirac]

Yes, there’s nothing like an orderly, well managed harem.

Flippancy aside, I agree there has to be balance. It should be noted that ballet discipline didn’t invent the eating disorder, but by the same token discussion of such problems shouldn’t be viewed as an attack on ballet, although some critics regrettably take that approach. I certainly wouldn’t want to take the view that such problems can’t be addressed and ameliorated.

[britomart]

There seems to be as much bashing here of Ms. Kelso as she did in her article on the ballet world!!

As both a former professional dancer (and no, you've never heard of me, I'm sure, but I did dance with several very well-known companies) and a current graduate student in English and film, I think that although Ms. Kelso's article was clearly biased, there were some issues raised that are worth raising, as canbelto mentioned. It seems a bit pointless to start denigrating the academic profession (which does indeed have it's own set of pervasive problems, although many of my colleagues are the funniest people I know, and teaching has provided me with some of the most ludic of experiences and exchanges that I've ever had). I think that since the basic critique of Ms. Kelso's work is one of moderation (that she used sources one-sidedly, even at times inaccurately) that the most productive response would be a balanced one rather than another one-sided attack - sometimes the best offense is really not the best defense.

There is a facet of truth in what drval 01 said about academic publishing - but it's not the publishing it's the training. One is expected to present an argument in an article, and while there are certainly better or worse ways to prove it, one cannot write a sort of overview of varied opinions on a subject with no personal or authorial stakes. You can disagree with those stakes or even the conclusion, but it's not a middle-of-the-road kind of genre.

One thing that I found interesting in this thread was the discussion of the sour grapes model of writing, and a few people implied that Ms. Kelso was no one in the dance world and now is no one in academia. This, besides being a personal attack, is also possibly not true. While it does sound as though she didn't have the best experience in dance, it's not the best evidentiary move to assume she has based an academic career on a previous disappointment. Second, it's very possible that Southern Ill is a top-ranked grad program in sociology; don't forget the number one school in English in the country is a state school (Berkeley) and I know for a fact that some of the big Midwestern state schools have the top-ranked programs in certain social sciences.

Finally, since I brought up the point of balance, I'd like to finish by saying that I don't agree with all of Ms. Kelso's points, nor the point made in the thread that graduate students have less creative agency than dancers. Both, of course, depend entirely on context. I've worked with directors and choreographers who made their dancer's creative input an integral part of the creative and rehearsal process and ones that treated their dancers like cogs in a wheel, whose only purpose was to serve their particular vision. Academia in some ways has encouraged my creativity in ways I'd never imagined, while at the same time it is true that this creativity has to be exercised within particular parameters. Neither is a system of absolutes.

It's interesting that I remember another post some time ago about individual interpretation where there was some serious backlash against the academy. I wonder why there is a tendency for these two arenas to almost immediately face off and assume ranks. It doesn't have to be this way. I attended the Balanchine symposium at Ann Arbor two years ago, which was quite illuminating and a rather wonderful amalgam of people working in the field and people studying and writing about it. I know this sounds a bit like "Why can't we all just get along?" but why can't we get along better?

[Leigh Witchel]

All good points Britomart (and hello again )

I didn't have room to discuss it fully (because it wasn't the point of the article) but when I wrote about the Ann Arbor symposium for Ballet Review, I wrote:

Ballet and academia have been wary of each other in recent decades. There are practical reasons for the greater interest at universities in contemporary forms; for most ballet dancers, higher education conflicts directly with the age of finishing training and becoming a professional. Other dance forms can handle the delay better. There’s also some resentment of an art which is so fiercely competitive, and where success can hinge as much on natural facility as it does on work. And ballet, formed in court society, is an insider’s art form, and academia has recently been more interested in Otherness.

Out of curiousity, do you think the particular discipline affects the relationship between academia and dance?

[carbro]

Out of curiousity, do you think the particular discipline affects the relationship between academia and dance?

It wouldn't be just dance.

In the late 1970s, a foundation I had ties to began funding programs in entrepreneurial studies at graduate schools of business. There was, at the time, no standards of any kind for such a discipline. One of the first projects was a series of symposia comprised of grad business schools faculty on the one hand and entrepreneurs on the other. Food fights inevitably ensued, each side convinced the other had no idea what they were talking about. The panels were discontinued after a pretty short time.

Thanks, britomart, for a very perceptive analysis of this thread.

[dirac]

Chiming in to say "welcome back," britomart. Good to hear from you. Points very well taken.

[Herman Stevens]

it's very possible that Southern Ill is a top-ranked grad program in sociology; don't forget the number one school in English in the country is a state school (Berkeley) and I know for a fact that some of the big Midwestern state schools have the top-ranked programs in certain social sciences.

In the realm of theory this is indeed possible. However in reality it doesn't seem to be the case, and I did check a couple ranking lists before responding. My criticism of Kelso's paper did not have anything to do with East Coast chauvinism as you seem to imply. I'm fully aware that Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan-Ann Arbor are at the top of the Social Sciences field (besides my US abode used to be right in that area).

More to the point, I have a hard time believing any top sociology program would accept a paper such as the one we've been discussing. The ideas are pretty jaded, and more importantly the work done with these ideas is far from rigorous. I would consider it acceptable at college level; not beyond.

I have no problem with academic work on ballet, on the contrary. Some of the most interesting and fundamental books on ballet are the result of academic research. Also the Balanchine conference in Ann Arbor (again) was a great example of how a good university can bring together brains, passion and... money.

[canbelto]

Another issue I see is that fans of a certain discipline are often disinclined to see the "dark side" that comes with any very competitive, demanding career, be it films, sports, dance, tv, etc. An example would be the "home run craze" during that season Mark McGwire passed the previous record of 61 home runs set by Roger Maris. At that time, there were already whisperings that McGwire was using steroids. But the fans didn't really care -- they loved seeing Big Mac hit out of the park. And understandably. If there is a sport that causes such sweat-inducing tension as baseball, I haven't seen it. I know during games that go into extra innings, every crack of the bat makes my heart leap. But now, McGwire has admitted to Congress that he did indeed pump himself up with dangerous steroids, as did a lot of other baseball players. Fans of college basketball often don't consider the cruel methods that many coaches use (i.e. Bobby Knight) or the awful system that recruits talents and then drops their scholarships as soon as a knee gives out or whatever, leaving the players with little to no education and no prospects for a professional career. (For a good film about that, watch Hoop Dreams.)

My point being, I love ballet, but I like to think that to deny the issues of anorexia, cruel teachers, racism, injuries, et al doesn't help anybody. The goal should be improvement. And I think there has been improvement in the ballet world, as I've noted in my previous posts. I see more ballerinas becoming mothers (which in itself is a sign that they are at a healthy weight, as dismenorrhea is one tell-tale sign of anorexia or being severely underweight). I see more dancers taking time off for injuries. I know friends whose children are enrolled in ballet schools and they all say the schools have courses on adequate nutrition and healthy strength-building exercises. I know a girl enrolled at the Boston Ballet school and she loves her teachers -- she says they're demanding but kind. Improvement, not denial, I say.

[Dale]

But now, McGwire has admitted to Congress that he did indeed pump himself up with dangerous steroids, as did a lot of other baseball players.

Off topic, but I can't let this stay on the board (it's a topic I've been involved in researching at my job), but McGwire has never admitted to using steroids. He only told Congress that he didn't want to talk about the past. Don't want to get sued here

Canbelto, your point is interesting, though.

[bart]

I would consider it acceptable at college level; not beyond.

Not at a top college -- in an academic disciplline. I refer to the methodology, not the message: research and presentation especially.

Poor work can (a) be motivated by good intentions and (b) arrive at some valid conclusions, if only by accident.

[Mel Johnson]

Perhaps I should report my bias on the matter, just for clarification. I'm a historian, and a colleague with whom I am frequently in agreement has posited, "In the practice of history, thou shalt not commit sociology!" So that's where I'm coming from. The data are old enough, in dance years, to be history, but the paper is sociology. In writing sociology, she commits history.