Does Ballet Need To Get With The Times?

[Sunrise]

This very comment makes my heart sink. Art should absolutely tackle such matters! Music, painting, installation, dance and movement are all ways that 'complicated' matters can be explored. Perhaps reading such matters in the newspaper isn't enough to broaden awareness or create change and perhaps it is a 'non-verbal art form' that could do this. It's also a great way to reach out to a younger audience and to a generation that don't always read and who respond well to technology and visual mediums. 

 

Imagine if we all had the view that art shouldn't push boundaries and tackle some of the most difficult issues challenging our society - we would be without some of the most pivotal and important artists that have graced our Earth!

 

I was recently reading about Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra he co-founded, also of his opposition to the ban on playing Wagner in Israel. This comment made me think about how just the act of performing (or not performing) can produce interesting discussion.

[SwissBalletFan]

Also I'm not sure where all of the political correctness is coming from... I haven't mentioned it and I'm not sure anyone else has on this thread. I haven't said anywhere that I want to see PC ballet, in fact, please, save the PC dance for the PG audience. 

 

Islam, race, aids, rape...whatever it is, I'd watch it because I'd support a choreographer using dance as a medium to discuss these issues. 

 

Political correctness was my introduction in terms of any smart minded person choreographing any of those things it would be mana from heavens for critics and such like, wasn't a ballet highly criticised at RB this season due to a rape scene? 

 

Anyway, different strokes for different folks, and if that's what you feel represents modern life then I will leave you with it.

 

In terms of you commenting on my post about art should be used to display some aspects of modern life...dance is not a discussion with the audience, it is a demonstration of an art.

 

But now roll up...roll up....who wants to see my choreography?

Edited December 10, 2015 by SwissBalletFan

[Timmie]

Disclaimer: art and art appreciation is not really my thing, but…

 

Ballet must be visually beautiful, if it’s not then it’s not ballet. A good ballet will also affect the viewer emotionally (other than simple appreciation of the beauty). It does this best by showing insights to the human condition and human emotions.

 

For example, I have read Romeo and Juliet, seen assorted plays and movies, but it was only my first R&J ballet and Yasmine Naghdi’s Juliet that made me feel the burning urge to make a donation to the NSPCC because her betrayal by her parents was so heart-rending to watch. This was ballet at its greatest level. It wasn’t necessarily the story but the simple interaction between daughter and parents that was so affecting

 

To be ‘with the times’ a ballet would not need to be about global warming or terrorism but should look at the underlying human-oriented aspects and focus on those. Loss of your native land due to rising sea-levels could make for some beautiful choreography (that sounds a bit tasteless, but you know what I mean) and could have an emotional impact. Personally I would not watch some obvious worthy-narrative type ballet (An Inconvenient Truth, the ballet) but would watch something that is all about the dancing and with a simple message. It has to be beautiful to make us want to see it.

 

Personally I get challenged enough in the real world and want to go to the ballet, not to escape the real world, but to see humanity at its best.

[Don Q Fan]

Ballet is my escape from the real world which is why I prefer classical narrative ballet. I would not want to watch anything relating to "modern issues" there's enough on the news(doom and gloom) without paying to see more.

[daisydance]

Matthew Hart's ballet Dances with Death was about AIDS.

 

He has spoken of the his struggle as a young, inexperienced choreographer to get this work on stage and reviews were very (shall we say, 'mixed') but it certainly spoke loudly about a contemporary concern in the 1990s.

Off the track a bit, but what's Matthew Hart doing now?

[Geoff]

Or one about a same sex romantic relationship?

In between getting cross about Acosta's Carmen (and I don't mean to open up that discussion again) I fell to brooding on the very strange story that Carmen is. Just because the opera is so very familiar does not mean it really makes good psychological sense, which may be one reason one so rarely finds Carmen, the character, truly convincing.

 

I haven't read the original book but this is not the point (apart from anything, Carmen in the original is a married woman, which is a rather different story). A trip to the opera to see Carmen tends to give us a woman who delivers some generalised vamping, which leads a soldier to abandon his duty, and various forms of chaos follow. Ok in outline but pretty puzzling once one gets down to the detail of exactly how the story unfolds. Of course people can lose their heart to those who may be unworthy (eg Proust) but what is this woman really all about? Why do the men react as they do? And, by the end, what is she thinking?

 

My question is, has anyone done a same sex Carmen (not like the Matthew Bourne show)? Pulling the whole thing out of the pantomime past and setting it inside the contemporary gay scene (beautiful boys, older queens, drug-fuelled club events, maybe even bulls) might just provide some new insights into a work which after nearly 50 years of opera going often leaves me at a loss.

 

I am not normally a fan of updating for the sake of updating - but an all male and very gay Carmen might have held my interest more successfully than Acosta's endless cliches. Just a thought...it's probably already been done, apologies if so.

[Quintus]

Did we really need to see another re-working of Carmen? Are there any ballets out there that address themes that resonate with our world today? If not, why?

 

The EU Referendum would be an opportunity, but perhaps more for the Hokey Cokey - in/out, in/out etc

 

More seriously, I dimly recall a documentary some time ago called  'The Last Ballerina in Iraq' , about a handful of kids sneaking into a tiny dance school in Baghdad despite the increasing abuse and threats along the way.  I believe the lead girl has since been able to get out to the US or Canada.   Now that seems like a pretty topical and relevant story - cultural change, repression, persecution, dedication, escape - which would lend itself very well to staging

Edited December 11, 2015 by Quintus

[Sim]

Ballet is my escape from the real world which is why I prefer classical narrative ballet. I would not want to watch anything relating to "modern issues" there's enough on the news(doom and gloom) without paying to see more.

I agree, Don Q Fan, about the ballet providing wonderful escapism from the ills of this world. However, dare I say, maybe those of us who are older and more jaded (not that I am saying you are old; I am talking about myself!! Not quite old yet, but not a spring chicken either!)need the escapism. Maybe the young people want to see ballet and other art portray issues that surround them and with which they will have to deal as they go forward through life, and to which they can relate. Maybe they aren't quite at the escapism stage of life yet (of course, I am referring to young people who are having a good life; there are plenty of young people in the world who would welcome some escapism from their circumstances). Having said this, I have always loved the traditional ballets, from childhood. Even as a wild teenager I never lost my sense of wonder. At that stage, however, I just loved the music, sets, costumes and the beauty of dance. I still love all that, but have, with age, added in appreciation of the good side of human beings....and escapism.

[Mary]

I think many issues are best dealt with in words and an attempt to "deal with" them in dance risks being simplistic.

Dance is about how human beings relate to the world and one another in ways that are too deep for words, and always "relevant" and that may be either  joyful or harrowing, but I don't think dance can satisfactorily discuss whether we should be in the EU .

The great fairy tale ballets do show a battle between good and evil that is entirely meaningful to young and old in my view.

It is escapism, but, at its best, ballet can be  the kind of escapism that brings you face to face with profound essentials. For me, for example that would include Swan Lake, Song of the Earth, Requiem, Ashton's Dream , Onegin, Symphony in C,  to name but a few. Some recent works that have seemed the most sucessful in this sense don't necessairly use modern settings- for example The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare goes on being profoundly modern.

To me some less successful recent works try to present history or issues in a literal sort of way that doesn't work as well.

[Colman]

I don't think you have to be a choreographer to try to block out what a ballet might look like, given your constraints. You seem to want a straight forward narrative ballet, about complicated nuanced topics. So three acts on migration and terrorism. Exploring the idea might help elucidate the difficulties faced by choreographers, especially if you don't want fantasy or allegory. 

 

Oh, remember that you need to sell enough tickets to pay your expenses too. And not offend your patrons, burn too much of your karma. 

 

I mean, I can imagine a ballet about two sisters (need to be sisters - need to cast some pretty, well-known ballerinas here, might bring in at least a *few* punters) living their lovely life at beginning (idyllic domestic scenes), freedom fighters (terrorists depending on point of view)  arrive (intimidation and tension), billet themselves in house (maybe a few touches of the "bad guys" humanity here?), UK flagged bomb destroys home, kills everyone except two sisters (grief and horror and anger). Sisters go in different directions - one into refugee camp, one into arms of the bombs' targets. Lyrical, touching, but angry scene of the split. Try to tease out what emotions drive their different choices.

 

Act II

 

* Scene with refugee sister in transit. Need to do desperation, abuse, intimidation bits.

* Scene with revenge sister in training. Excitement, glamour of weapons, darkness of first kill, endurance of arranged marriage for the cause.

* Scene with refugee sister at a symbolic border. Hope and fear.

* Scene with revenge sister being given her mission. Go far away and kill those who killed your family. 

* Split scene, contrasting hope and joy and sadness of refugee entering safety with anger and determination and grief and thirst for revenge of other sister. 

 

Act III

 

* Scenes: Refugee girl in girl meets boy scene in brightness of promised land (no idea how we're going to do this inside set budget). Burgeoning true love. PDDs and all. (Hope the critics like this, might help sell some tickets) Mayeb we can work some rejection of the immigrant into this. Maybe boy saves girl from harassers? 

interspersed with Revenge girl in same place, experienced as darkness and evil - change music and lighting.

* Scene: at peak of refugee girl's excitement and depths of revenge girl's horror and revulsion revenge girl starts her mission. (Gun attack probably easier to choreograph than a bomb scene, but not sure we'll be allowed stage that. Maybe go with bomb.) Sisters reunited, recognise each other. Higher stakes version of dispute scene, again. How to finish? Do we make a judgement? Do we leave the dispute unresolved, the bomb unexploded as the curtains fall?

 

Does anyone see any reasons (other than the heavy-handedness, I'm sorry, I have  a cold) that something like this might face any difficulties getting onto a major stage? It should be possible to make the dances beautiful and moving, it should be possible to tease out some of the emotional content, if none of the rational content. 

[ToThePointe]

I think we've found a new MacMillan...

[Ian Macmillan]

Indeed - and that scenario has all the essence of the standard 3-Act show.  Act 1, Boy meets girl (OK it's two sisters here); Act 2, things happen; Act 3, all live happily, or all die.  Now, do we have a composer on here ...... a designer .......?

[Quintus]

depending where it's playing you might want to have an alternative ending to hand, and a stage large enough to accommodate 72 houris all doing 72 fouettes.  Now if that doesn't bring the house down..

[Colman]

Now, pretend you're a team commissioning ballets. You get that brief. What do you think? What do you do?

[alison]

Ballet must be visually beautiful, if it’s not then it’s not ballet. A good ballet will also affect the viewer emotionally (other than simple appreciation of the beauty). It does this best by showing insights to the human condition and human emotions.

 

Now, your first sentence, Timmie, reflects an attitude I've always struggled to comprehend.  Why, of all the arts, should only ballet be forced to be beautiful?  Imagine if someone had dictated that we should only have beautiful art.  Or the equivalent in music, plays, novels, opera ...  Just think what the world would have lost: Guernica, Shostakovich's 7th (I think that's the right one) Symphony, Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Il Trovatore ... to name but a few.  Ballet - and dance in general - is capable of dealing with far more than just beauty (as your last sentence indicates), and shouldn't be kept straitjacketed by glittering tutus and pink satin pointe shoes.  Is The Green Table any less capable of providing insight than something "beautiful"?

[alison]

The great fairy tale ballets do show a battle between good and evil that is entirely meaningful to young and old in my view.

It is escapism, but, at its best, ballet can be  the kind of escapism that brings you face to face with profound essentials. For me, for example that would include Swan Lake, Song of the Earth, Requiem, Ashton's Dream , Onegin, Symphony in C,  to name but a few. [...]

To me some less successful recent works try to present history or issues in a literal sort of way that doesn't work as well.

 

I'd add Giselle to your list, Mary but yes, I agree with you - and especially about attempts to confront "issues" straight on not always working.  Sometimes one needs to be oblique ...

[Sim]

But sometimes oblique doesn't work either. Sometimes people have to be shocked into awareness, or into making them think. That is the achievement of good, thought-provoking art.

 

Also, the ballets mentioned by Mary do indeed deal with the eternal themes of love, loss, redemption, good and evil, etc. That is great, but....I think TtP is referring to current issues, not the great themes of humanity.

[Timmie]

Now, your first sentence, Timmie, reflects an attitude I've always struggled to comprehend.  Why, of all the arts, should only ballet be forced to be beautiful?  Imagine if someone had dictated that we should only have beautiful art.  Or the equivalent in music, plays, novels, opera ...  Just think what the world would have lost: Guernica, Shostakovich's 7th (I think that's the right one) Symphony, Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Il Trovatore ... to name but a few.  Ballet - and dance in general - is capable of dealing with far more than just beauty (as your last sentence indicates), and shouldn't be kept straitjacketed by glittering tutus and pink satin pointe shoes.  Is The Green Table any less capable of providing insight than something "beautiful"?

 

Somebody more knowledgeable on the history of ballet might want to help me on this one, but, my understanding is that a key tenet in the development of classical ballet was how to move and position the human form in the most perfect and aesthetic way possible. This is what I mean by beauty, not the beauty of an individual (though that helps) but to get the visual best from anyone. The achievement of this in something like Symphonic Variations is the main reason I like ballet.

[Pas de Quatre]

Did anyone see Protein Dance's contemporary piece Border Tales last year? It addressed migration and racial prejudice.

[Fonty]

I mean, I can imagine a ballet about two sisters (need to be sisters - need to cast some pretty, well-known ballerinas here, might bring in at least a *few* punters) living their lovely life at beginning (idyllic domestic scenes), freedom fighters (terrorists depending on point of view)  arrive (intimidation and tension), billet themselves in house (maybe a few touches of the "bad guys" humanity here?), UK flagged bomb destroys home, kills everyone except two sisters (grief and horror and anger). Sisters go in different directions - one into refugee camp, one into arms of the bombs' targets. Lyrical, touching, but angry scene of the split. Try to tease out what emotions drive their different choices.

Does anyone see any reasons (other than the heavy-handedness, I'm sorry, I have  a cold) that something like this might face any difficulties getting onto a major stage? It should be possible to make the dances beautiful and moving, it should be possible to tease out some of the emotional content, if none of the rational content. 

 

 

Does the bomb have to have any country's flag on it, and if so, why the UK one?  It's bad enough when I go to the cinema, and see Hollywood has yet another sneering villain with a clipped English accent.  

 

Seriously, though, I can't be the only person who would be uneasy at the thought of dancers twirling machine guns in ensemble pieces.  The sword fighting in R & J is one thing; nobody fights that way any more.  But guns are all too real, and I certainly don't want to see them incorporated into classical ballet. 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Fonty

[John Mallinson]

The sword fighting in R & J is one thing; nobody fights that way any more.  But guns are all too real, and I certainly don't want to see them incorporated into classical ballet. 

 

…but the Chinese were at it half a century ago!

 

Photo ©Stephanie Berger for The New York Times

[toursenlair]

getting back to same-sex relationships, doesn't Bintley's Edward II count?

 

Also, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet commissioned this ballet just last year ("First Nations" is the term we use in Canada for the people you probably think of as "Indians" in the UK

 

Commissioned by Artistic Director André Lewis, this production explores the world of Annie, a young, urban First Nations woman adrift in a contemporary life of youthful excess. But when she meets Gordon, a longhaired trickster disguised as a homeless man, she’s propelled into a world she’s always sensed but never seen. Not only do they travel the streets of this place but also the roads of their ancestors, learning to accept the other’s burdens as the two walk through the past and toward the future. Together, both Annie and Gordon learn that without truth, there is no reconciliation. Based on a story by award winning Canadian author, Joseph Boyden.

“Ballet cuts right to the heart of what’s most beautiful, physically in humanity and what’s most beautiful in story. We are taking a very European form and introducing it to a First Nations experience. We’ll find a way to meld this meeting of these two very different places in a fascinating way on the stage.”
– Joseph Boyden

[Colman]

Does the bomb have to have any country's flag on it, and if so, why the UK one?  It's bad enough when I go to the cinema, and see Hollywood has yet another sneering villain with a clipped English accent.  

 

Seriously, though, I can't be the only person who would be uneasy at the thought of dancers twirling machine guns in ensemble pieces.  The sword fighting in R & J is one thing; nobody fights that way any more.  But guns are all too real, and I certainly don't want to see them incorporated into classical ballet. 

Well, we need to keep the flag from bomb to border post to town: maybe we could use a French or American one? Russian? Still too  risqué? I suppose we could use a made up one - though the brief did specify no allegory or myth.

 

As for the guns, I'm not sure how to literally deal with modern terrorism without them, though I understand your concern …

[Fonty]

"…but the Chinese were at it half a century ago!"

 

Was it true that at one point the only ballet the Chinese were allowed to perform dealt with the revolution?  Or did it just feel like that?  Anyway, I remember watching some interminable production on tv where one dancer after another came on in camouflage trousers and pranced about with weapons.

 

And very boring it was, too.  IMO obviously. 

 

Edited to add if you want to have a ballet that deals with racism, why not have a performance of R & J where Romeo and his friends are black, and Juliet and her relatives are all white (or the other way round, depending on the dancers being cast.)  Would add another aspect to the hatred between the families. 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Fonty

[MAB]

 

 

Edited to add if you want to have a ballet that deals with racism, why not have a performance of R & J where Romeo and his friends are black, and Juliet and her relatives are all white (or the other way round, depending on the dancers being cast.)  Would add another aspect to the hatred between the families. 

Certainly seen that concept in the theatre Fonty, though a long time ago.  Probably remember it more for being chatted up by one of the actors in the wine bar opposite than for any artistic reasons though.

[Ellie]

Edited to add if you want to have a ballet that deals with racism, why not have a performance of R & J where Romeo and his friends are black, and Juliet and her relatives are all white (or the other way round, depending on the dancers being cast.)  Would add another aspect to the hatred between the families. 

 

 

Jerome Robbins did that with West Side Story Suite for NYCB. (Hispanic and American though...)

[John Mallinson]

"…but the Chinese were at it half a century ago!"

 

Was it true that at one point the only ballet the Chinese were allowed to perform dealt with the revolution?  Or did it just feel like that?  Anyway, I remember watching some interminable production on tv where one dancer after another came on in camouflage trousers and pranced about with weapons.

…

 

Good piece by Joan Acocella about Madame Mao and The Red Detachment of Women.

[Terpsichore]

Edited to add if you want to have a ballet that deals with racism, why not have a performance of R & J where Romeo and his friends are black, and Juliet and her relatives are all white (or the other way round, depending on the dancers being cast.)  Would add another aspect to the hatred between the families. 

 

 

........................................

 

Krzysztof Pastor's Romeo and Juliet came pretty close to that though it struck me as more of a struggle between Communists and Fascists.

[alison]

Edited to add if you want to have a ballet that deals with racism, why not have a performance of R & J where Romeo and his friends are black, and Juliet and her relatives are all white (or the other way round, depending on the dancers being cast.)  Would add another aspect to the hatred between the families. 

 

Or even - as I've probably suggested before - you could copy the 1960s Star Trek episode where the denizens of one planet were black down one side and white down the other.   The Enterprise crew were going "Yes, so you're all half-white, half-black - so?" but to the people concerned it mattered hugely which side was which colour, because one group was societally inferior to the other.

 

It'd be hell on the makeup department, though.

[Fonty]

   Worth a try, just for the novelty value.

 

It would certainly bring ballet up to date when they attempt to perform a Star Trek episode.  I could just see the opera house stage filled with dancing Klingons.

[FLOSS]

The only ballet that I can think of that successfully depicts the horrors of war is Tudor's Echo of Trumpets. Interestingly it was made in the 1970's nearly twenty five years after the event that prompted its creation. It is universal rather than specific. It is the sort of piece. like Janacek's From the House of the Dead, that you can't say that you have enjoyed but you feel better for having seen.

 

I think that the fact that there are so few ballets on "serious" subjects let alone topical issues and far fewer good ones,has far more to do with the limitations of the art form which have already been mentioned by other people than anything else.All theatrical art forms have their own conventions and limitations, There are things that they can convey with consummate ease  and things they struggle with. In  opera for example a character can sing words that suggest one emotional state but the music can tell you that he is lying. A librettist  can put several characters on the stage and although you can't necessarily hear every word they are singing the composer can convey their conflicting emotions simultaneously or almost simultaneously in a way that the straight theatre can not because in the theatre you would have to hear, in turn, what each of the characters had to say.As for dance it can convey basic emotions and basic situations. So it is capable of taking a play Fuente Ovahune about exploitation by the nobility and turn it into a ballet Laurencia or a historical period such as the French Revolution as portrayed in the original version of the Flames of Paris. But it does so by appealing to the emotions not the intellect.

 

Few choreographers have the ability to convey complex emotional states in dance.A choreographer can reveal an individual's nature by how he looks round the stage.Basic emotions love, anger and hatred can be conveyed to the audience through a mixture of acting,mime and the choreographer's choice of dance style and steps. The choice of steps and dance style may not always be quite the universal language that we suppose it to be.I suspect that one of the reasons that Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet was considered by some to be terribly old fashioned last time it was shown here was that the dance vocabulary employed was almost entirely composed of classical steps without any of the expressionist movement that we have come to associate with such works. .

 

I don't find it surprising that so many narrative ballets are based on literary sources or have theatrical or cinematic precursors  .Such sources do half the choreographer's work for him. He can work secure in the knowledge that his first audience will recognise the character's names and bring their knowledge, however sketchy, of the plot with them when they watch the ballet. He will not have to go into a great deal of exposition and explanation of the characters and their situation.Things that ballet is bad at doing and are normally  covered by copious programme notes. He is free to create choreography which reflect the universal elements of the story which tend to be a limited range of basic emotions with a few specific elements from the original source material.

 

I can not say that the various attempts to make up for ballet's limitations that I have seen over the years have really worked. MacMillan tried using double casting when he created Isadora so the audience had to deal with a speaking Isadora and a dancing one.This device merely drew attention to the work's weaknesses and the inherent limitations of ballet as an art form . The audience was presented throughout the duration of the ballet with evidence, in the form of the speaking Isadora,with what dance can not convey. Lengthy programme notes are not a solution to the problem either.

 

As far  as serious contemporary subjects are concerned you can't engage in debate in dance and so there is a real danger that  you will end up with a piece that is little more than agitprop. Asking someone to write a modern fairy tale will not produce an effective piece unless the choreographer has the necessary skill to create a narrative work.I don't think that ballet is essentially a frivolous artform it is as serious as any of the others but you don't prove that an artform is serious by producing earnest works with dull and repetitive choreography and dressing your dancers in dungarees.Perhaps we are just going to have to wait until someone writes a compelling story that has elements which are suitable for balletic treatment.

Edited December 13, 2015 by FLOSS

[Jan McNulty]

The only ballet that I can think of that successfully depicts the horrors of war is Tudor's Echo of Trumpets. Interestingly it was made in the 1970's nearly twenty five years after the event that prompted its creation. It is universal rather than specific. It is the sort of piece. like Janacek's From the House of the Dead, that you can't say that you have enjoyed but you feel better for having seen.

 

 

According to the Antony Tudor Ballet Trust website, the ballet was created in 1963 in Stockholm presumably for the Royal Swedish Ballet.

 

http://www.antonytudor.org/ballets/echoing-of-trumpets.html

 

 

IIRC it was London Festival Ballet I saw performing the work, which I remember finding very moving.  Because I had seen the film Operation Daybreak and had then done a little reading up I was aware of the assassination of Heydrich and the massacre at Lidice.  When my friend and I visited Prague in 1987 we went to seek out the church where the assassins had hidden.  We were not able to go into the church but there were fresh flowers placed on one of the window embrasures; the memory of the massacre at Lidice still lived on then and presumably still does.

 

Ballet can most definitely tackle difficult subjects effectively and appropriately.

[FLOSS]

Antony Tudor in Dark Elegies also produced a profound work on the death of children. His works are effective and powerful where other choreographers are dull,dutiful,earnest or insipid.The history of ballet seems to suggest that at any one time there are comparatively few choreographers of real talent at work. We seem to be  living in an age of minor choreographers. Whether Ratmansky will prove to be the next truly great choreographer is still to be determined.Whether Wheeldon will ever completely shake off the influence of Balanchine and become his own man or Scarlett manage to escape from the overpowering influence of MacMillan remains to be seen.

 

I do not think that we should rank ballets according to their seriousness or demand that choreographers should make works on subjects that do not interest them. A choreographer who does not think that contemporary social problems provide good subject matter for ballets or one who spends an entire career making works that are based on  reworking the elements of Petipa's classicism is not inferior to one who deals with topical concerns. It is the quality of the work which interests me A work should be judged by how effective it is as a ballet not on whether it deals with "serious" contemporary issues.An ineptly constructed ballet is an ineptly constructed ballet regardless of its subject or lack of one. A ballet created by an incompetent choreographer is just that. It is not redeemed in some way by being about a "serious" subject.

 

.In the eighteenth century painters were ranked according to the subject matter of their paintings with history painting occupying the highest position because it was clearly serious.Portrait painting, landscape paintings and still lives were not so highly regarded.Is it being proposed that ballets should be ranked according to their subject matter rather than according to their qualities and effectiveness as ballets?   

 

Perhaps one of the reasons that ballet does not attract audiences in the way it once did is that too much of the new work being produced is not entertaining enough.There seems to be little place for comedy or frivolity except in the occasional performance of a heritage work, It would seem that choreographers working today only feel able to entertain their audience if they are making a child friendly work such as Alice. Perhaps ballet has become too po-faced and earnest for its own good. I am not convinced that many people after a day at work dealing with real contemporary problems, such as domestic violence or serious illness really want an evening of earnest ballets dealing with "serious " contemporary issues created by people whose working lives are far removed from such things. .

.

Edited December 13, 2015 by FLOSS