What is "Musicality" in a Dancer?

[Katia Kapustin]

Anyone who has The Royal Ballet "Giselle" DVD (Osipova/Acosta - recorded in 2014) can see a beautiful Pas de six. During the Pas de six Yasmine Naghdi and Francesca Hayward (both are now Principals but they were still in de Corps de ballet at the time of recording) perform a pd2 together: when you see them you'll understand what musicality is all about. They are two of the most musical Principals at The Royal Ballet.

[Jack Reed]

On 9/29/2018 at 1:29 PM, Quiggin said:

...  I think Jack Reed has pointed out how the PBS City Ballet DVD reissues of City Ballet performances are less reliable in syncing sound to picture than the earlier video tape offerings.  ...

I'm looking forward to when I can explore this thread in detail, because what I enjoy seeing most is dancing where the dancer is still exploring how the moves fit the sounds, whether it's her third performance of the role or her thirtieth.  This has long been part of my concept of "musicality".  

But in the meantime, running across my name here in connection with the problem of synchronization of audio to video made me want to remind you of that thread Quiggin recalls (thank you, Quiggin!) where we had a discussion of that which included some steps you can take about the problem, in particular the posts where cantdance and I offer some specific steps for playing "desynchronized" DVDs (and, along the way, emilienne offers an elaborate procedure for permanently correcting the problem in a video saved in your computer!).

(I couldn't agree more with those here who point out the difficulty of appreciating a dancer's musicality if the relation in time between her moves and her music has become implausible through technological causes.)

Edited December 11, 2018 by Jack Reed

[cyclingmartin]

These are some really interesting replies to further questions that have arisen from my original question. Thank you all.

16 hours ago, Jack Reed said:

what I enjoy seeing most is dancing where the dancer is still exploring how the moves fit the sounds

I think that gets pretty close to what I've been sensing for a long time, without understanding the technical aspects involved -- and because I don't really understand the technical aspects it's hard to talk about it with any precision. After all, the only precise language we have for talking about music (my field) is technical; and even then we are always translating on the assumption that those sharing the technical language have a common understanding of what the language means in terms of sound, structure etc.

So, putting all this together, I'm wondering if those dancers whom many watchers declare to be  "musical" are those who can make their moves serve expression in a focussed way that communicates -- and expression often is defined by context. (Canbelto's point about "you don't even have to be much of a dancer to be a musical dancer" is relevant here.)

It seems to me that the following extract is a pretty good example of what I'm thinking of. It's the Pas de Trois from Swan Lake, done by ABT in 2005, with Erica Cornejo, Xiomara Reyes, and Herman Cornejo. So much could be said; but here are just three points, two pro my suggestion that this is a good example of musicality serving expression, and one slight reservation.

The full extract:  

1) The way these dancers fill the temporal space, from downbeat to downbeat, and even across the phrase, strikes me as so natural, without being at all fixed -- it feels so responsive to the sound in that it is almost always pretty much in time with the sound, though without being precise in a "beaty" way.

2) A slight reservation -- it bothers me, as a musician, that this performance and so many other slow down for the male solo in the final variation just after 7.35. Many performances do this, but not all, by any means.

3) And then -- this is brilliant. The orchestra quickens back towards the original tempo for the final female solo, and when Erika Cornejo (it is her, isn't it?) starts she presses the tempo even harder so that when she's finishing the solo with those jumps (sorry, but I don't know the technical terms) she's well ahead.

The whole point of that acceleration by the dancer seems beautifully to fit the expressive purpose. After all, they are trying to cheer up Siegfried -- "Come on!!", she seems to say. Watching this performance always cheers me up!

Another account, in which the male solo in the final variation is hardly slowed at all, is from the Royal Ballet. with Rosalyn Whitton, Sandra Conley and Michael Coleman. Here, Michael Coleman just goes for it; and while the result is less tidy than Herman Cornejo's dancing, his reckless abandon has a similar effect. Lovely jumps at the end.

 

 

In both these cases the musicality of the dancing seems to come not from precise patterning between the two mediums (music and dance), but from the tension between them. First one of them leads, then the other.

I'd be interested to know what those experienced in ballet think of these points.  Tell me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

[balletforme]

So, in my opinion,  it is NOT musical if the music changes tempo to the dancer.  To me, that is the opposite of music.  Musical is responding TO the music not it responding to YOU that would be about musician "danceacality."  Ha ha! 

[nanushka]

1 hour ago, balletforme said:

So, in my opinion,  it is NOT musical if the music changes tempo to the dancer.  To me, that is the opposite of music.  Musical is responding TO the music not it responding to YOU...

I wonder if the impression in such a case could be that the dancer has the music within her, and that the musicians' playing is the heard manifestation of that. That doesn't necessarily seem at odds with the idea of "musicality."

Edited December 14, 2018 by nanushka

[Quiggin]

On 12/12/2018 at 3:33 AM, cyclingmartin said:

2) A slight reservation -- it bothers me, as a musician, that this performance and so many other slow down for the male solo in the final variation just after 7.35. Many performances do this, but not all, by any means.

I don't know how Herman Cornejo would have been able to get in his brilliant leaps without the orchestra slowing down. (And of course this may not have been the original choreography the music was intended for, as we have seen from Ratmansky's reconstructions.)

But don't orchestra conductors always make changes in tempos for different dancers? Danilova talks about John Barbirolli asking her what tempos she wanted that evening (and she not knowing who he was, thinking he was flirting with her, snubbed him). And what are the right tempos? Shostakovich's musicians would always ask him to slow down some of his impossible tempos and he would often agree, saying he that when he wrote the piece was afraid of boring the audience or that he had an old metronome at home that sometimes was off tempo.

Furtwangler's sense of time was quite different from Toscanini's, so why not a dancer's? 

Edited December 14, 2018 by Quiggin

[cyclingmartin]

Thanks for your input, Quiggin.

1 hour ago, Quiggin said:

I don't know how Herman Cornejo would have been able to get in his brilliant leaps without the orchestra slowing down.

I'm sure you're right. So I accept that there is a justification for that slowing. But the issue I'm grappling with -- not in the sense that it's wrong, but in that it's outside my experience as a musician -- is getting used to something being done with the music that comes from outside the music. A good instance of what I'm talking about can be heard by comparing recordings of the music alone with recordings of that music done by the same orchestra and conductor in the context of a ballet performance.

For example, this recording made in 1992 by the Mariinsky Orchestra under the great Victor Fedotov has no slowing at all at that point: https://youtu.be/wG0fUnomgYw?t=721 (I presume it was a studio recording or done in the theatre with no dancing.) In this case Fedotov's decisions are shaped entirely by the music's internal structure. (Tchaikovsky marks this variation as Allegro Vivace, and no tempo changes are indicated, even though there are many other places in SL where he does mark in a change of tempo, or an accelerando, or a slowing.) 

However, in the following film of a ballet performance by the same orchestra and conductor just two years earlier, there is a marked slowing (more than in the ABT performance) for the male solo in the final variation. https://youtu.be/9rJoB7y6Ncs?t=1223 In this case it seems clear that Igor Zelensky's Apollonian dancing requires that. (What dancing!)

Of course, you're right that 

1 hour ago, Quiggin said:

Furtwangler's sense of time was quite different from Toscanini's

But their senses of time were shaped by purely musical factors. (In that respect it's interesting that Furtwängler studied and worked for many years with the theorist and analyst, Heinrich Schenker, whose whole life was devoted to demonstrating the internal workings of music.) So, as a comparative newbie to ballet, and especially to how it works in its relationship between orchestra/conductor and the dancers, I'm struggling a bit to get used to the idea of choreography impinging on the musical flow. I daresay this is something I need to learn to get used to.

One of the things I definitely appreciate about the ABT performance is that the accelerando towards the end is impeccably timed to compensate for the lost time of the male solo.

Moreover, I do accept that one cannot be doctrinaire about this. For example, some ballet performances of the Pas de Trois that have no slowing leave me dissatisfied because I find the choreography unconvincing. This performance at La Scala is one such instance: https://youtu.be/UHbM58HMXZ4?t=1492

 

I'd be interested to know what you think of the Royal Ballet performance I've linked above, in which there's hardly any slowing and the choreography is pretty much the same as in ABT. As I say above, Michael Coleman's "go for it" jumps are a lot less tidy than Herman Corejo's at that point; but it seems to me that this performance has a lot going for it nonetheless.

Thanks again.

That's a nice story about Danilova and Barbirolli.

Edited December 15, 2018 by cyclingmartin

[cyclingmartin]

5 hours ago, balletforme said:

So, in my opinion,  it is NOT musical if the music changes tempo to the dancer.  To me, that is the opposite of music.  Musical is responding TO the music not it responding to YOU that would be about musician "danceacality."  Ha ha! 

All my instinct as a musician says "Amen" to that.

However, bending tempo in this way is so widespread, even with such great ballet musicians as Victor Fedotov and many others, that I feel I should reconsider, taking into account issues such as those mentioned by Quiggin and Nanushka.

[Quiggin]

Cyclingmartin: The Royal Ballet's version is fun – I always think of RB style as having a bit of music hall insolence, plus that perfect grace and a little quirkiness of Margot Fonteyn to it. Like an English version of a Watteau fete (by way of Hogarth?) in tone. But I prefer the Cornejo-led pas de trois cohesiveness and balance and brilliance. The Kirov Zelensky SL is another thing altogether, there's so much presence and spaciousness and everything done with the right pauses and accents, albeit "low contrast" ones. But – disclosure – 19th century ballet is not my thing, so I'm always missing many of the subtleties of the art of it.

Regarding conducting/conducting for ballet/tempos, I came across this interview that George Balanchine did in Los Angeles in the 1940s comparing the two (Balanchine at one point wanted to be a conductor and took conducting classes in St Petersburg with Yevgeny Mravinsky):

Quote

I had never heard an orchestra from the inside before. At first I was startled by the quick response to my beat. It was quite unlike working with dancers, who are slow and must be taught to anticipate. But almost at once I was able to adjust to the new feeling. And I think I conducted the piece as Tchaikowsky would have liked it, in strict tempo so that it doesn’t sound like cafe music.

And in the spirit of the season, here are two recordings of Arabian from Nutcracker. The first is by Mravinsky recorded in the late forties. Mravinsky always plays the textures and inner details at a little expense of the forward drive. The second is by Sergiu Celibidache. In both you can hear the emphatic jcha-jcha-jcha of Russian version of maracas that you hardly hear in other recordings. Also note that Mravinky's time is 3:39 and Celibidache's is a full 5:25. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trgXIgK99wQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbkD1TpWxCA

And here at a mere 2:47 is Wendy Whelan in Arabian (Coffee when Arthur Mitchell did it) from Balanchine's Nutcracker – full of, if not musicality, wonderful cubo-futurist architecture.

Quote

 

And thanks for selecting and posting all those definitive Swan Lakes – would never have come across them otherwise. 

 

[balletforme]

Quinten,  

I agree. 

Maybe I am not thinking about artistic choices but tempo changes of convenience. It can be very odd for the tempo of a well-known piece to be going along and then change in a pronounced fashion. I'm not talking about a pause that holds longer or a breath between phrases.  I 'm talking about the music was at one metronome tempo for 8 bars and now, all of a sudden, you are doing a totally different one, that is not written in the music.  That seems a bit aggrandizing-- as in, "Let me make this music match me and show me off." To me, it privileges the dancer and not the art.  

[canbelto]

Here's another example of musicality.

Same choreography, different dancers.

I find Asylmuratova extremely musical at 1:00 because of the way she lets her back and arms do a dead drop in promenade at precisely the moment the music takes a "downturn." It's indicating Esmeralda's despair after her attempt to seem cheerful with the tambourine a second earlier. Her upper body is deliberately ugly, almost careless, like she can't put up a front anymore. She's responding to the mood of the music. When you watch her at that moment you can feel her heart letting out a great sigh.

 

Here is Uliana Lopatkina dancing the same pas de six. Uliana does the same move, the dead drop backbend at the same time, but her slightly stiffer, more aristocratic epaulement actually work against the music here. Her body language just doesn't look as crestfallen. It's gorgeously danced, but that split second timing and slight difference in body language make Uliana's Esmeralda make a difference.

 

[cubanmiamiboy]

One of the things that troubles me the most in relationship with music-ballet steps is how often dancers seem to luxuriate in some sort of syncopation, meaning that they deliberately make the steps in the weak part of the musical accent...usually behind. The effect is risky, because if the dancer has a wonderful musical training, then he/she is able to catch up just in time for important, pivotal rythmic moments of the choreography.

Two of the best examples of this are, for me, the Willis advancing sautes in arabesque and the initial section of Theme and Variations, during the initial tendus of both dancers. In both scenarios I usually note the placement of the foot in the weak part of the note-(or syncopation)- hence looking  a bit odd on my eyes. 

I think there is a part in the Valse Fantaisie Clifford/Paul coaching video where he mentions something on the subject.