Is the interest in restoring old ballets with their original choreography something to be applauded or deplored?

[FLOSS]

In the late nineteenth century the ballet reformers in St. Petersburg thought that the emphasis on technical developments for their own sake had gone too far.Even Petipa wrote that the Italian school was in danger of destroying ballet. The response of the ballet reformers in St Petersburg was to emphasise the purity of the French school.As a pupil of the Imperial School Pavlova was singled out, not for her technical skills but for the purity of her dance.Then Fokine created a revolutionary work without any choreographic pyrotechnics evoking the French romantic ballet, Chopiniana known to the West as Les Sylphides. Fokine's aesthetics dominated ballet for a time in Russia and for far longer in the West where choreographers continued to create ballets which emphasised balance, order and mood rather than creating works which were  "displays of dance".

 

Should the various attempts to reconstruct ballets ranging from LaCotte's La Sylphide and La Fille du Pharon to Ratmansky's Corsaire, Don Quixote, Paquita and Sleeping Beauty be seen as part of a single movement or are there several strands at work? Was LaCotte merely using the idea of reconstruction of long lost works as a cloak of respectability for the creation of  works that were essentially new ?Are some of those working in the field trying to recapture the imagined purity of past performance style and practice in a way reminiscent of the Early Music Movement of forty or fifty years ago ? Are some simply against extreme movement and others trying to reassert the supremacy of the choreographer over the performer?

 

Given the amount of time that restoring a ballet takes when there are still former dancers who remember dancing in it are Ratmansky's attempts to restore both choreographic text and performance style of a number of Petipa's major works a good use of his time and creativity ?Do we need to know what Petipa's choreography really looked like or is it enough to praise it however altered what we see may be? Are attempts to reassert the supremacy of late nineteenth classical choreography and dance style and performance practice a thinly disguised attempt to remove every aspect of Soviet balletic practices and style or are they directed at the practices of a few individuals? Is the authenticity movement a welcomed back to basics or a potential block to technical advance?

 

[MAB]

You fail to mention Sergei Vikharev who has been able to decipher the notations from original records and should any far sighted AD commission him, will be able to reconstruct masterpieces of the 19th century that have lain dormant all years.  Worth doing? Well I had reservations about the Sleeping Beauty but none about Bayaderka or The Awakening of Flora. 

 

Ratmansky's Corsair is superb, head and shoulders above any other version and I also admired the Bolshoi's original Coppelia.  I've yet to see Ratmansky's new SB, but what is so interesting about it is that I hear he has instilled some original style, banishing high extensions whereas Vikharev didn't in his productions.  Another reconstruction I very much admired, again using original notations, was the Royal Danish Ballet's Abdullah, recreated by Bruce Marks and Fleming Ryberg.

 

Much as I loved daughter of the Pharaoh, I am not certain it was a reconstruction at all.  One of the dancers who danced Tahor mentioned to me that Marina Semyonova, who had danced the lead in her youth and who could have helped with original steps, wasn't consulted at all, so I imagine it was a new work based on an old ballet,  I am not sure that Lacotte can be considered in the same category as Burlaka, Ratmansky and Vikharev, highly enjoyable as his works clearly are. 

 

As for the 20th century revivals, Flames of Paris contained a lot of the original choreography and concepts but clearly Ratmansky made changes to the basic plot and created some extra choreography along the way. 

 

Perhaps the audiences for these works only exist primarily in the countries they were created in so I'm not sure if Kevin O'Hare or Benjamin Millipied is likely to commission Vikharev to give them a reconstruction of Le Roi Candaule any time soon.

[stucha]

You fail to mention Sergei Vikharev who has been able to decipher the notations from original records and should any far sighted AD commission him, will be able to reconstruct masterpieces of the 19th century that have lain dormant all years.  Worth doing? Well I had reservations about the Sleeping Beauty but none about Bayaderka or The Awakening of Flora. 

 

He also did Raymonda for La Scala and that was a revelation.  It used to be on Youtube complete.

 

Ratmansky's Corsair is superb, head and shoulders above any other version and I also admired the Bolshoi's original Coppelia.  I've yet to see Ratmansky's new SB, but what is so interesting about it is that I hear he has instilled some original style, banishing high extensions whereas Vikharev didn't in his productions.  Another reconstruction I very much admired, again using original notations, was the Royal Danish Ballet's Abdullah, recreated by Bruce Marks and Fleming Ryberg.

 

Changes of style and banishing high extensions and introducing demi pointe would never happen in Russia.  Ratmansky's experiments in   this vein have all been in companies outside Russia

 

Much as I loved daughter of the Pharaoh, I am not certain it was a reconstruction at all.  One of the dancers who danced Tahor mentioned to me that Marina Semyonova, who had danced the lead in her youth and who could have helped with original steps, wasn't consulted at all, so I imagine it was a new work based on an old ballet,  I am not sure that Lacotte can be considered in the same category as Burlaka, Ratmansky and Vikharev, highly enjoyable as his works clearly are. 

 

Lacotte is not in the same category as the choreographers mentioned above.  He  choreographs "in the style of" this or that choreographer.   It is interesting to note that after he saw Ratmansky's "Paquita", a ballet he himself choreographed for POB, he was quoted as saying that the revived choreography could not possibly be by Petipa.  And he consulted the Harvard archive as well.

 

Edited October 11, 2015 by stucha

[Melody]

I don't think the attempts to restore original choreography should be deplored. I don't know how useful they are in the grand scheme of things, but honestly if they give people some idea of what ballet was like before it got taken over by knee-in-ear extensions and slow-motion balances, they might serve some useful purpose.

[Ian Macmillan]

From today's Links, Los Angeles critic Lewis Segal has things to say about Alexei Ratmansky's "unnecessary remakes":

 

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-cinderella-ballet-review-20151012-story.html

[MAB]

Actually the LA review is a damning critique of Ratmansky's Cinderella, it has nothing to say about his reconstructions at all.

[Ian Macmillan]

Oh well, we must be seeing the first paragraphs rather differently - but the world still goes around.

[FLOSS]

While I think that Siegal's review is a very well  written account of his response to Ratmansky's Cinderella and one that quite a few people who I know would agree with,the opening paragraph is one of those arresting and clever generalisations which are written for impact rather than accuracy and don't bear close investigation.It is not clear whether this paragraph is only directed at Ratmansky's Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella which are reworkings of ballets which exist in many versions or whether he includes The Bright Stream and The Flames of Paris in the category of unnecessary remakes or whether it extends to the reconstructions in which Ratmansky has been involved. I suspect that it is not intended to include the reconstructions.

 

Of course the great ballet scores are available to any choreographer who wishes to use them and it is good that choreographers are willing to create works that will inevitably be compared with what has been made by the great choreographers of the past.It is good for all of us that choreographers are not intimidated by existing masterpieces but anyone tackling those scores knows that he or she will have their works judged against existing works and many will be found wanting.There are some scores that are so bound up with a particular choreographic response that it is impossible to imagine anyone daring to choreograph a new work to them Balanchine's Serenade and Symphony in C are two such works Ashton's Symphonic Variations and Monotones also fall into this category for me. But although their text may be preserved intact their impact will alter radically if the speed at which they are danced is altered or they are danced off the beat when they should be danced on it or on it when they should be danced off it.

 

Some time ago there was a discussion on this site which was concerned with whether or not the "advances" in technique should form part of the modern audience's experience of the nineteenth century classics.The general view seemed to be that it was the inclusion of those "improvements" which kept the choreography alive for performers and audience alike regardless of their impact on the performance of the score.However it isn't necessary to reorder the score or to add passages of new choreography or to treat the Rose Adagio as a balancing competition to alter a work radically.The reality is that comparatively minor changes to performance style can radically alter the text for the audience. These changes tend to be gradual shifts rather than radical changes so they tend to pass unnoticed by audiences and it is only when you see recordings of earlier performances that the changes becomes obvious.

 

The problem is that while performing a cut and paste job on a play or ballet leaves some evidence that changes have been made if older versions of the texts are available, and the creation of a new work is obvious, the effect of changes caused by changes in taste have until very recently been far more difficult to identify.The recordings of Ashton's Fille provide evidence of changes in performance style over a period of just over fifty years.The first two recordings were made during Ashton's lifetime so any differences in choreographic text have to be seen as authorised changes.The first records the original cast on a set provided by the BBC the second records Collier and Coleman who were the company's first cast at the time it was made. I seem to recall the surprise expressed by some on this forum at Collier's speed and attack and it being suggested that perhaps the fact that the performance was being recorded had influenced the speed of the dancers' performance. In fact it merely records the way in which the ballet was performed at the time it was filmed.The third recording with Nunez and Acosta was the first to be made of a performance in which neither Ashton nor Somes had any involvement. Essentially it reflects Alexander Grant's ideas about the work.In the first two recordings the dancers perform the ballet, create their characters through the choreography and don't get bogged down in reproducing it. I find that the third is more concerned with reproducing the steps than performing the ballet. But perhaps that is just me or perhaps it reflects the increasing emphasis on technique as an end in itself  and the dancer's knowledge that their abilities will be judged on the basis of this recording by many who will never see them in the theatre. A fourth is due to be released shortly and it will be interesting to compare it with earlier versions.Perhaps we shall find that it is not that much altered after all, perhaps we shall find that it is closer to the second recording than the third as far as speed is concerned.Interestingly Fille is a ballet that has been preserved and yet it has recently been treated to a sort of reconstruction in Russia.

 

Should concerns about performance style and textual changes be confined to nineteenth century works? Perhaps the world of ballet should be just as concerned about the loss of significant twentieth century works by unfashionable choreographers as it is about modish improvements to well known nineteenth century works.Isn't there some suggestion that those who ignore their history don't deserve a future?

Edited October 12, 2015 by FLOSS

[stucha]

Clearly Segal dislikes whatever Ratmansky does. (Like Alastair Macauley of the NY Times, he thinks the art of choreography died with Ashton and Balanchine.)  And that's his prerogative.  But it is only one opinion.  I don't think that Ratmansky, in creating his new ballets or his reconstructions, sets out to tell the ballet world that this is how it is and everyone should fall in line and change accordingly.  But he is passionate about his work and  deserves to be taken seriously and not dismissed in some cynical way.  Not everyone will like what he does and that's ok.  It is not obligatory.  But the reconstructions as Melody says, open a window onto a lost world of performance style which I for one find fascinating. And it is still ballet.  Some of the reactions seem to demonstrate a fear that what people know and love in present day ballet is somehow threatened and about to be swept away.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

And I find it interesting that Ratmansky acknowledges Ashton as the true inheritor of the Petipa legacy.  If only his works could be performed today as originally intended. That they are not is something I find deplorable.

[SwissBalletFan]

At an artistic level, i feel that anyone taking efforts and creative steps to do anything to move ballet on is to be applauded. Should everyone like it? Definitely not. The fact that choreographers and artists take their own time, their abilities and put those into ballet is only a positive thing, and whatever the result the discussion is moved on. Whether the artistic output is my cup of tea or not...I for one am not a huge fan of Matthew Bourne's idea of taking popular movies and setting them to dance or putting them on stage. I can accept however that there is a gap in the market, people enjoy watching his shows, and he contributes a great deal to the narrative of modern dance.

 

This thread is proof that these projects are merited as they, at the bare minimum, create a discussion. It's interesting that a critic's opinion has been mentioned as some kind of judgement on the issue, as it is just one more voice. The reason I was interested in joining this forum was to find how other people felt about the issues in Ballet/dance and if i don't agree when I read them, maybe my mindset will be changed from learning something from a point of view I hadn't considered before.

[FLOSS]

The probability is that those involved in reviving Ashton's works are not fully aware of the changes that have taken place in the performance of those works during the time that they have been custodians of them, in much the same way that you don't notice how old your parents are getting if you see them virtually every day.The differences are very obvious if you see early recordings of works made during Ashton's lifetime and are able to compare them with current performances of the work. There is a recording of Les Rendezvous made during the sixties with Brian Shaw and Doreen Wells in the lead roles and Merle Park.Petrus Bosman and, I think, Graham Usher in the pas de trois.The recording makes the ballet look incredibly light and full of wit  which which is not how I would describe the performances that I saw last year given by BRB which gave the impression of being slower and too careful, perhaps because of the challenges that the choreography and style present to those to whom it does not come as second nature.

 

Something that Christopher Carr said at last night's LBC meeting set me thinking about current performance style.He was asked about teaching and said that teaching was much the same as it ever was, A bit later he said that the fifth position is done better now than it used to be.Has the change in what we see on the stage come from too many people accepting that the steps  as taught in class should be transferred onto the stage without any modification on the basis that what is taught in class is correct and that if a step was danced differently in the past that difference should be eliminated because it was an either a mistake or evidence of inadequate technique rather than a difference of style and performance practice? Taking a split second to ensure that you perform a step as taught in class rather than as set by the choreographer makes a considerable difference to how the audience experiences a ballet. A prime example of this comes in Alain's solo in the second act of Fille where the role's originator used to perform the little beaten steps as little more than rubbing his heels together,which meant that they looked as if they were being dashed off and they fitted the music, now you see clean,clear, perfectly articulated steps and the solo feels less breathless than it once did and fails to express Alain's excitement.

 

I wonder does  Ratmansky's recent recognition of Ashton as an heir of the old Russian school mean that he has elevated him to his personal pantheon of dance geniuses of the twentieth century or is he still  may be close to genius?

 

I entirely agree with those who have said that the recent  restorations of nineteenth century ballets have been a revelation. Corsaire is a different,and much improved ballet, when the music is played in the intended order and all the Soviet accretions are,as far as possible,removed.Munich's Paquita was fascinating and worth reviving.On the basis of the DVD I would say that if you have to have Don Q in your repertory, something that I am not entirely convinced about, that Ratmansky's version is infinitely preferable to Acosta's production for the Royal Ballet.

 

Many of the changes that were made to the nineteenth ballets in Russia during the twentieth century occurred because companies were performing to relatively unsophisticated audiences who needed to be entertained . While I understand that dancers want to display their technique I find that the definition of a ballerina as someone who can do everything but has the taste not to, sums up my view of how far technical improvements should be allowed to intrude into the choreography of these works.But then I don't find nineteenth century stage mechanism which allow the Sylph to take a bird's nest from a tree or allows the willises to appear in the trees and the use of traps out of place in the performance of a nineteenth century ballet. In the same way I think that it is a pity that the current Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden does not have a panorama and find the staging of the ship's departure and the storm in Ashton's Ondine a wonderful insight into how such scenes were staged in the nineteenth century.The shipwreck in the Ratmansky Corsaire is its one real weak point.

 

I want to see new things in new works. I am not interested in seeing them passed off as the works of the great choreographers of the past. 

Edited October 13, 2015 by FLOSS

[toursenlair]

I don't think that Ratmansky's Don Q should be considered an attempted reconstruction of the original in the way that his Paquita and Beauty are.

There is no Stepanov notation for Don Q.

This, from the booklet that comes with the Ratmansky Don Q DVD:

"no written record survived of either of the two Petipa versions... or those dating from 1900 and 1902 by Gorsky"...

"The productions of Don Q that are danced today are the result of 140 years of performance history... That is why , says Ratmansky, the version he has made for the Dutch National Ballet should not be seen as an original choreography or as  reconstruction of the original version. 'We simply don't know what was original'.  Despite several of his own additions, however, his production remains a traditional work. 'I've made use of all the information I've been able to find, all the versions  I know, and all the famous dances and steps traditionally associated with the ballet. And using that as the basis, I make my own decisions, with great respect for tradition.'"

[Fonty]

I certainly don't think the idea of going back to the original should be deplored, but I think it depends on the ballet, doesn't it?  For example, I have seen so many different productions of the Sleeping Beauty, I have no idea whether I am looking at it as the creator intended, or whether it has been tweaked and fiddled with.  Programme notes are not always very helpful.  Sometimes they say "addtional choregraphy by X, Y or Z", but I am never sure which bits are original and which are the additions.

 

For example, was the original Lilac Fairy a dancing or non dancing part?  When I saw the 1959 production by the Royal Ballet on the television recently, I adored the dancing Lilac Fairy.  IMO, it was a huge improvement on the rather staid, non dancing figure that features in many productions!

[MAB]

The original did not dance.

[alymer]

The Lilac Fairy did actually  have a variation in the Prologue.  There are two versions in the notation.  One, which is less technically demanding is marked "M. Petipa" ie. Marie M Petipa, the choreographer's daughter.  What tends to be misleading is the photograph of Marie Petipa which shows her in the costume she wore throughout the remainder of the ballet which includes heeled shoes and a heavy, helmet-like headdress.