Blackface in the Bolshoi's La fille de pharaon

[cubanmiamiboy]

11 hours ago, canbelto said:

Also the good thing nowadays is that most TV appearances are preserved on YT. So I did a quick hit to see some of Misty's TV appearances and not in a single one does she appear to have either darkened her skin or overcurled her hair. So everyone is entitled to their own opinions about misty but you're not entitled to alternative facts.

 

 

That's a nice little search you did.  Thank you for the time and effort.  Now, as you just rightly said...we are entitled. Lacotte to produce and present if he's given the legal green light, audiences to feel offended or not and doubtless I for maintaining that I have definitely perceived such instances in which Misty purposely makes her race pop up for her well known aggressive self promotion campaign. 

And yes, MadameP...I indeed grew up with a similar type of show.  In Cuba they come from the XIX Century, and until today they are produced in live theater and cherished by the whole nation as a national treasure.  It is called "teatro bufo".  They portray comical situations from the society of the turn of the century, where three characteres representative from those times interact.  One is "el gallego"-(a Spaniard guy making fortune in the conquered territory), ..then there is "la mulata"-(the typical sultry woman product of the union of an emancipated slave and a Spaniard), and "el negrito"-(a first generation free black man, who is historically portrayed by a blackface).  El gallego and el negrito are always competing to win the heart of la mulata. 

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by cubanmiamiboy

[Helene]

People sometimes have a casual look that is different than their formal/workplace look, and sometimes when they do media, other people style their hair and do their makeup.  Alert the press!

[Drew]

36 minutes ago, Quinten said:

Reposting MadameP's link.

I'm old enough to have seen a lot of Amercan blackface growing up, and it was quite different from what we see here: the object was to emphasize "negroid" characteristics (big lips, whites of the eyes showing around the pupil, ridiculous kinky hair), to show these were poor people via raggedy costumes and bare feet, to make them look stupid through use of stylized dialect and facial expressions.  Here and in the other acts the Ramse character looks quite beautiful by any standard -- many beautiful costumes, nice hair, lovely ornaments. She dances sophisticated and charming choreography. As a character, she is a servant, but a resourceful and loyal one.  In this scene, her mistress shares the stage with her with obvious affection and regard -- they even mirror each other's steps at times.  (Some of Ramse's dancing is out of frame due to the videographer's primary focus on Stepanova 😊 -- see the Bolshoi's the length DOF (it's on YouTube) if you want a better view,)  Arguably this is not even a secondary role -- indeed, it is frequently danced by principal dancers, as in this case. The dark makeup, in my opinion, simply helps us remember her origin as an African brought probably against her will to the pharaoh's court who has succeeded in making herself invaluable. I don't see how this character conveys any of the damaging racial stereotypes we all decry.  

Do you feel the same way about the make-up worn by the children in blackface? Or their choreography? I think they both very clearly draw on racist stereotypes that I can’t just write off as no different from any other kind of character dancing. (It is true that I also don’t care for Ramze’s make-up in the videos I have seen and I can’t say that the loyal slave figure you describe from the story seems unproblematic to me either—though I have to allow the libretto goes back to Petipa and indeed reflects the kinds of heirarchizations one expects in a Petipa ballet, which are here clearly racialized.)

Anyway....You have explained why you judge the matter of Ramze’s make-up etc.differently than I do, but are you then comfortable with the children? (And without even starting on the history of little black boy pages etc. as signs of “conspicuous consumption” so to speak in the 18th/19th centuries...)

In a production that is a 21st-century reimagining of Pharaoh’s Daughter, Lacotte’s loyalty to all this imagery—and the Bolshoi’s— seems to me unfortunate. 

 

[Laurent]

Quote

Do you feel the same way about the make-up worn by the children in blackface? Or their choreography? I think they both very clearly draw on racist stereotypes that I can’t just write off as no different from any other kind of character dancing.

Seeing everywhere "race" and "racism" seems to be a particularly American, post 1960-ies, syndrom. I don't see any such issues in French ballets of pre-modern era. Classical mythology, fable and exoticisms (full of local, vivid, color, in order for the audience to be engaged) are a staple of the storylines.

 

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(It is true that I also don’t care for Ramze’s make-up in the videos I have seen and I can’t say that the loyal slave figure you describe from the story seems unproblematic to me either—though I have to allow the libretto goes back to Petipa and indeed reflects the kinds of heirarchizations one expects in a Petipa ballet, which are here clearly racialized.)

Let us have at least this right: the libretto is by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, a collaborator of Théophile Gautier in Giselle, and is based on Gautier's Le Roman de la momie. Gautier was a great poet of the Romantic era and is still celebrated as such today. Saint-Georges was a man of many talents, in particular he was an excellent playwright. Nubians were not some "racialized" Blacks, but the people at the southern end of Egypt who were constant partners of Egyptians, sometimes adversaries, sometimes allies or rulers (there were several Nubian pharaons in the history of Egypt). The appearance of the ballet coincides with the construction of the Suez canal.

 

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Anyway....You have explained why you judge the matter of Ramze’s make-up etc.differently than I do, but are you then comfortable with the children? (And without even starting on the history of little black boy pages etc. as signs of “conspicuous consumption” so to speak in the 18th/19th centuries...)

I don't understand what do you mean here, what "conspicuous consumption … in the 18th/19th centuries" ?!? Another modern, US made cliché applied to a different era, different culture? The 18th and the 19th Centuries were about anything but "consumption" (unless you understand by this a wide-spread menace of dying from consumption, i.e., tuberculosis).

 

Quote

In a production that is a 21st-century reimagining of Pharaoh’s Daughter, Lacotte’s loyalty to all this imagery—and the Bolshoi’s— seems to me unfortunate.

When the "21-th Century" man becomes, literally, a slave of rigid and limited perception, unable to make basic distinctions, then, indeed, much of the premodern culture, with its enormous riches, may be inaccessible to him, and lots of things in it feel "unfortunate".

[Mashinka]

56 minutes ago, Laurent said:

Seeing everywhere "race" and "racism" seems to be a particularly American, post 1960-ies, syndrom. I don't see any such issues in French ballets of pre-modern era.

I think it is too, in Britain people like Matt Lucas and Sacha Baron Cohen regularly portray non white characters in their comedy sketches.  Creating different personas is their stock in trade and although you hear the odd complaint, they seem far too popular across the board  for much offence to be taken.  Statues rather than black faces cause the most offence in the UK from the Rhodes scholar who wanted Cecil Rhode's statue removed from his university to calls to demolish Nelson's column. 

[nanushka]

4 hours ago, Laurent said:

I don't understand what do you mean here, what "conspicuous consumption … in the 18th/19th centuries" ?!? Another modern, US made cliché applied to a different era, different culture? The 18th and the 19th Centuries were about anything but "consumption" (unless you understand by this a wide-spread menace of dying from consumption, i.e., tuberculosis).

It's a term that was most prominently used (if not introduced — I'd have to go back and check) by Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, so not (at least originally) a modern cliché.

(It may have become a cliché since then, though I don't think I'd describe it in that way. It's more like the jargon of cultural criticism — using "jargon" in its neutral sense.)

In any case, Veblen was most certainly using it to refer to what he, at least, perceived in the world around him in the 19th century. (I'd say there could be 18th-century applications as well.)

Edited July 26, 2018 by nanushka

[Drew]

8 hours ago, Laurent said:

 

When the "21-th Century" man becomes, literally, a slave of rigid and limited perception, unable to make basic distinctions, then, indeed, much of the premodern culture, with its enormous riches, may be inaccessible to him, and lots of things in it feel "unfortunate".

By “back to Petipa” I just meant back to the ballet he choreographed, not that he wrote the libretto himself. The historical contexts you mention are certainly pertinant. Like  you I mentioned the building of the Suez canal as one of the contexts of the ballet’s creation—this was in an earlier post—but I did draw slightly different conclusions from that.

Rigid? There are different ways of being rigid. What you are calling premodern culture does have many riches and many resonances (as does nineteenth-century culture that I, at least, and the scholars I read would not call premodern). I find many of these profound and profoundly pleasurable, though not all. And they can obviously inspire a whole range of reactions and interpretations.

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by Drew

[Buddy]

On 7/24/2018 at 12:02 AM, Laurent said:

No, Pierre Lacotte's La fille de pharaon is not a fantasy "based on". It is a recreation aiming to preserve as much of the feel of the ballets of that period as possible, including lost and forgotten "small steps" (petits pas).

Back to parallel world for a moment. I don't normally pay a lot of attention to steps but the ones that I see in the brief video clip (Smirnova/Chudin) posted by MadameP are interesting, more complex than I'm used to and delightfully performed. Because of their demand, I read that Pierre Lacotte offered to simplify them for Svetlana Zakharova, but she said that it wouldn't be necessary. She went on to set the standard for this work. 

I do appreciate the importance of the 'racial issue' being discussed. On my part, I've really nothing to add beyond my initial comments except that it's something that I hope is treated throughout the world with as much understanding and sympathy as possible. There's also the possibility that it might be better served (or not) by being continued at another more specific topic, although granted that it might get more justified attention here.

Added: I guess I am grateful to videos in that I can focus on the steps in one viewing and upper body expression, etc. in another. This would be quite difficult for me to do at an actual performance.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Buddy
few words added for clarification

[Quiggin]

For me it's the style of dancing of the black-face children in the Nina Kaptsova clip Canbelto posted that's so archaic and offensive – like something out of an Al Jolson minstrel show routine. Certainly not an ethnographically respectful depiction of Nubian children, if that's the intent.

Here's Lewis Segal, the senior dance critic at the LA Times in a recent review of ABT's 1980 Makarova production of La Bayadere,  as recently posted in the Links section:

Quote

Originally choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1877, and then substantially revised by others in 1941, the ballet depicts ancient India as a realm of unprincipled fancy-dress barbarism, akin to Petipa’s treatment of Egyptians in “Pharaoh’s Daughter,” Turks in “Le Corsaire” and Arabs in “Raymonda.” And although he might be guilty of nothing more than buying into and exploiting the xenophobic mind-set of Imperial Russia, why exactly are we still subjected to his corrupt vision of nonwhite societies?

[...]

On Saturday, Ormsby Wilkins ably conducted John Lanchbery’s artful arrangement of a Ludwig Minkus score replete with trivialities and anachronisms. A waltz in ancient India? Silly, of course. But at least it doesn’t insult or belittle people of color and their heritage as Petipa’s “exotic” repertory so often does.

 

Nanushka is correct about Veblen bringing the term "conspicuous consumption" to the fore in the 19th century, and I believe it was revived here in the States in the 1960's with regard to what was then called the "go go years" when the stock market was booming.  But Walter Benjamin's Arcades project that Drew cited in another thread could also be a guide. From the essay "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century":

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Most of the Paris arcades came into being in the decade and a half after 1822. The first condition for their emergence is the boom in the textile trade. Magazins de nouveautés, the first establishments to keep large stocks of merchandise on the  premises, made their appearance ... This was the period of which Balzac writes, "The great poem of display chants its stanzas of color from the Church of the Madeleine to the Porte Saint-Denis." The arcades are  a center of commerce in luxury items ...

World exhibitions are places  of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish.  "Europe is off to view the merchandise," says Taine in 1855.

This might perhaps reflect the difference in settings between a ballet like Bournonville's "Le Sylphide" (1822/1836) and Petipa's "Pharoah's Daughter" (1862)?

[Drew]

26 minutes ago, Quinten said:

I think the black boys are slaves, actually, provided to Ramse as her own retinue, another indication of her high status. The children are holding their arms in the same position Ali (the Corsair slave) holds his.  The shuffling feet are somewhat reminiscent of American minstrel moves but it may also represent a stylized orientalist indication of slave status.  It's similar to how the Bayadere blackface children move.  Perhaps somebody more familiar than I am with the iconography of "oriental" slavery (as viewed by 19th c. Europeans) could bring some perspective.  

As a modern American I don't like slavery or mockery of ethnicities.  However, I also believe that retaining these old images in art forms is an important way of remembering the past so as not to repeat it.  First, we have to understand the images and to recognize the similarity and differences to our own depictions of enslaved people. Many of the images we see in these old works (and obviously also in reconstructions of old works) are multilayered and freighted with more implications than we may at first recognize.  Prior to this discussion I had not looked closely at the slave characters in Bayadere, Corsaire and Daughter.  Why were they there, just for pageantry or to convey something else.  Were the 19th c. librettists disapproving of slavery and showing it as evidence of "oriental" savagery, or using recognized stereotypes to unapologetically convey a hierarchical world view, or as stock images added without thought?  And finally -- is American blackface descended from these slave images or does it have different origins?

 

Thanks for responding .... To me it makes sense to ask just the kinds of questions you raise here about works of the past even —maybe especially—works we love. (I do know there is a lot of scholarship about the history of blackface in the U.S. and also elsewhere though it is not my specialty.)

[Laurent]

8 hours ago, nanushka said:

It's a term that was most prominently used (if not introduced — I'd have to go back and check) by Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, so not (at least originally) a modern cliché.

(It may have become a cliché since then, though I don't think I'd describe it in that way. It's more like the jargon of cultural criticism — using "jargon" in its neutral sense.)

In any case, Veblen was most certainly using it to refer to what he, at least, perceived in the world around him in the 19th century. (I'd say there could be 18th-century applications as well.)

I appreciate your comment and would like to point out that Veblen applies it specifically to what he terms "the Theory of the Leisure Class". Neither the 18th, and certainly not the 19th Century was about the "Leisure Class".

[nanushka]

34 minutes ago, Laurent said:

I appreciate your comment and would like to point out that Veblen applies it specifically to what he terms "the Theory of the Leisure Class". Neither the 18th, and certainly not the 19th Century was about the "Leisure Class".

I'm genuinely uncertain what you mean. Is it really possible to make such a categorical statement regarding what the entire culture and class structure of two centuries was "about"? If there was no prominent "leisure class" in the 18th and 19th centuries, when was there one? Was there no "conspicuous consumption" to speak of in those two centuries either, as Veblen uses the term? What era do you understand Veblen to have been writing about? Or do you think he was wrong to use those terms (either "leisure class" or "conspicuous consumption") in describing what he perceived in society? Did Veblen's ideas not apply to any significant segment of his contemporary society? I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on this.

Edited July 26, 2018 by nanushka

[Laurent]

Nanushka, being a cultural historian on top of being a ballet expert, I would gladly answer your questions, except that this is a thread on the 2017-2018 season at one of the major ballet companies, not on the social history of France (or Russia). A peripheral issue in Pierre Lacotte's re-creation of one of the 19-th Century ballets overshadowed every other aspect of that production. One of the active participants applied a certain term to the 18th and 19-th century in a way that I found misleading and incorrect, that's all, neither the 18th and 19-th century was about "conspicuous consumption". Perhaps the post war U.S.A. was, maybe the "21-st Century man" is (whatever some participants in the discussion of that peripheral issue put into this term).

[Helene]

No one is obligated to follow a direction, or answer a question, and any Member or Senior Member is able to start another thread, if a thread turns into a more specific discussion that they think would merit it.  Likewise, anyone is welcome to drop in and make a statement, and not pursue it.

That doesn't change the basic rule: don't discuss the discussion: and it's been happening repeatedly and has been tiresome for a long time.

Ballet Alert! isn't for everyone, and everyone is welcome to get a blog or start their own discussion board or group in which they can manage the discussions.

[nanushka]

16 hours ago, Drew said:

Anyway....You have explained why you judge the matter of Ramze’s make-up etc.differently than I do, but are you then comfortable with the children? (And without even starting on the history of little black boy pages etc. as signs of “conspicuous consumption” so to speak in the 18th/19th centuries...)

In a production that is a 21st-century reimagining of Pharaoh’s Daughter, Lacotte’s loyalty to all this imagery—and the Bolshoi’s— seems to me unfortunate. 

These two examples do seem somewhat different to me, though I'm personally not comfortable with either, and I agree they are unfortunate.

As for "conspicuous consumption" — when it comes to the 19th-century Imperial Russian ballet and (culturally, geographically, historically) related traditions of spectacle and display, it seems strongly evident to me that "conspicuous consumption" was at least part of what was at work there, on a number of different levels (e.g. within some of the narratives, in some aspects of the manner of production, among some of the spectators, etc.), with the little black boy pages as one good example of that.

I certainly don't think Veblen could have been talking only about post-war U.S.A. or the 21st century, given that he published in 1899. And I haven't encountered any persuasive arguments in the published responses to Veblen that his notion of "conspicuous consumption" was wholly irrelevant to what was going on in his time.

Edited July 26, 2018 by nanushka

[Laurent]

Quote

And I haven't encountered any persuasive arguments in the published responses to Veblen that his notion of "conspicuous consumption" was wholly irrelevant to what was going on in his time.

It doesn't have to be wholly irrelevant. It is enough that it is mostly irrelevant. Especially to the question of why actors playing exotic characters in the 18-th and 19-th century ballets had to be accordingly dressed and wear an appropriate make-up.

[canbelto]

The awesome thing about the internet is that you can research.

Here are the original Petipa-era costumes for Ramze and her pageboys.

Here is Lacotte's vision:

So you can see the exaggerated eye makeup as well as the exaggerated, offensive, stereotypical red lips are all Lacotte. 

Edited July 27, 2018 by canbelto

[Drew]

Off anyway it appears with the lingering idea that Lacotte mediates Petipa for today’s audiences transparently, or closely enough, that what he has done derives all of its authority from Petipa and nineteenth-century grand ballet practice. (Though one wants to know a little more about the photograph’s background before drawing too many conclusions —still  thank you Canbelto for posting it.) 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Drew
Grammar error

[Olga]

14 hours ago, canbelto said:

 

The awesome thing about the internet is that you can research.

Here are the original Petipa-era costumes for Ramze and her pageboys.

 

Thank you. 

[MadameP]

17 hours ago, canbelto said:

The awesome thing about the internet is that you can research.

Here are the original Petipa-era costumes for Ramze and her pageboys.

Here is Lacotte's vision:

So you can see the exaggerated eye makeup as well as the exaggerated, offensive, stereotypical red lips are all Lacotte. 

Your first photo is from the Gorsky revival.  According to Wikipedia, it is 

 

English: Photo of the ballerina Sofia Fedorova (1879-1963) costumed as the slave Hita with unidentified children in the choreographer Alexander Gorsky's (1871-1924) revival of the choreographer Marius Petipa (1818-1910) and the composer Cesare Pugni's (1902-1870) ballet The Pharaoh's Daughter.

Link to page:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pharaoh's_Daughter_-Hita_-Pas_des_Caryatids_-Sofia_Fedorova_%26_Unidentified_as_Slaves_-1909.jpg

 

 

[Olga]

45 minutes ago, MadameP said:

Your first photo is from the Gorsky revival.  According to Wikipedia, it is 

 

English: Photo of the ballerina Sofia Fedorova (1879-1963) costumed as the slave Hita with unidentified children in the choreographer Alexander Gorsky's (1871-1924) revival of the choreographer Marius Petipa (1818-1910) and the composer Cesare Pugni's (1902-1870) ballet The Pharaoh's Daughter.

Link to page:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pharaoh's_Daughter_-Hita_-Pas_des_Caryatids_-Sofia_Fedorova_%26_Unidentified_as_Slaves_-1909.jpg

 

 

Thank you. 

[Laurent]

Quote

The awesome thing about the internet is that you can research.

A great danger of internet is the illusion it gives of acquiring knowledge fast and with little effort.

No one can claim knowledge of the 19th Century ballet without spending hundreds of hours studying the archives and reading through thousands of pages of documents as no one can know much about, for example, the 18th Century France, without devoting to it thousands of hours, studying the sources.

[canbelto]

31 minutes ago, Laurent said:

A great danger of internet is the illusion it gives of acquiring knowledge fast and with little effort.

No one can claim knowledge of the 19th Century ballet without spending hundreds of hours studying the archives and reading through thousands of pages of documents as no one can know much about, for example, the 18th Century France, without devoting to it thousands of hours, studying the sources.

Doesn;t change the fact that these "historical" blackface  details more resemble an early 20th century minstrel show than any historical necessity. 

I'll add that if you cannot enjoy a ballet without these blackface getups (as in without the blackface then you don't want to watch the ballet), then maybe that ballet isn't worth reviving.

Edited July 28, 2018 by canbelto

[nanushka]

13 hours ago, Laurent said:

No one can claim knowledge of the 19th Century ballet without spending hundreds of hours studying the archives and reading through thousands of pages of documents as no one can know much about, for example, the 18th Century France, without devoting to it thousands of hours, studying the sources.

While I admire and greatly value the insights of those who have done such work, there are many sources of knowledge, and all knowledge is partial. In other words, I think even one who has not done such work might (depending on other factors) rightly claim some knowledge of 19th-century ballet, and even one who has done such work would be wrong to claim full knowledge of it. My experience of scholarship in a different field, as well as my professional experience as an educator, has been that dialogue between experts and non-experts can quite often be illuminating for both.

[Buddy]

1 hour ago, nanushka said:

While I admire and greatly value the insights of those who have done such work, there are many sources of knowledge, and all knowledge is partial. In other words, I think even one who has not done such work might (depending on other factors) rightly claim some knowledge of 19th-century ballet, and even one who has done such work would be wrong to claim full knowledge of it. My experience of scholarship in a different field, as well as my professional experience as an educator, has been that dialogue between experts and non-experts can quite often be illuminating for both.

This seems quite sensible and well stated, Nanushka.