Why have so few effective narrative works been produced in recent years?

[FLOSS]

Is there an improvement? I think that it depends on what you are comparing the current crop of dancers against. There are plenty of comments on Youtube that tell you that the reason that Merle Park's arabesques in Sleeping Beauty (1978) were low is because she was forty and could not mange a real arabesque because of her age. Overlooking the fact that de Valois demanded classical, period appropriate, style for her production or that to achieve the foot in the ear ideal you have to distort the score.But then what does musicality matter when you can achieve such feats? . 

 

 What period  are we comparing the current crop of dancers against? It makes a real difference. Look at the Bayadere recording from the 1990's and you see a company in trouble, look at the company in 1969 in Cinderella with Sibley and Dowell in the leads and everyone is dancing. If you are comparing the present dancers with the company in the 1980's or the 1990's then you are comparing them with two decades during which the school and the company experienced real difficulties. It was one of the reasons that Gailene Stock was head hunted to run the school. We are only really beginning to see the long term results of her directorship now.

 

Perhaps the gap in technical standards between dancers in the corps de ballet and the dancers classified as First Soloists and Principals is not as great as it once was but I am not sure that there has really been an overall improvement in technique. Most of the current lauded "improvements" in technique seem to be connected with the ability of today's dancers to put their feet in their ears and contort themselves in ways that would not have been regarded as appropriate in classical dance in the past. Then there is the "wow" factor the ability and the desire to jump higher, even if that means showing the effort required, or to perform twice as many turns as another dancer regardless of the quality of the movement or how the music has to be stretched and generally abused  to make the movement fit it.These trends don't seem much of an improvement to me.

 

Some dancers over emphasise  technical correctness in performance at the expense of any element of artistry,by which I mean that they reproduce steps in their unmodulated classroom form in performance whether or not they were modified by the choreographer. Others indulge in what have been described as "photo opportunities "rather than dancing the choreography in a form the choreographer might recognise, as a flow of movement, they freeze frame at regular intervals I believe that Fonteyn described the precise unmodulated reproduction of the steps of a ballet  as "doing the steps but forgetting to dance the ballet".Ballet is a theatrical art form performing a role without nuance, shading or the sort of musicality which respects the music and with a few bravura stunts thrown in is not a demonstration of technical mastery but of artistic incompetence. We shall see in the coming months whether or not technique and artistry have improved throughout the ranks of the company or whether it is only to be found in pockets within it.

Edited November 27, 2016 by FLOSS

[Fonty]

Floss, in response to your post, I have a couple of questions.

 

First of all, wasn't it Gailene Stock who introduced the "Russian style" of training to the RB?  I've put it in quotation marks because I am not quite sure what the Russian style is, nor am I clear about what style the RB used to teach before.  However, wasn't it as a result of this that the RB dancers started to do the very high extensions?

 

Secondly, try as I might, I can't find any clips of Merle Park dancing the Sleeping Beaty on Youtube.  Do you have a link? 

 

However, doing my search, I did throw up a very interesting clip of Merle Park dancing the Voices of Spring, dated 1983, with Wayne Eagling.  I have never heard of this before, but apparently they were the original cast for this piece by Ashton.  I also saw, on the same Youtube page, a  link for Cojocaru and Kobborg dancing the same piece, which makes for a fascinating comparison.  I did a little experiment, ran the two clips together, and as far as I can tell, the Cojocaru/Kobborg version is a full 30 seconds slower.  As the piece is less than 5 minutes long, I find that quite amazing.  Also, although I am a huge, huge fan of Cojocaru, I definitely prefer the original.  

Edited November 27, 2016 by Fonty

[Fonty]

Sorry, I am struggling with the links.  I can't seem to be able to put an imbedded link without the picture. This is the best I can do, if someone else wants to do them please go ahead!

 

 

Edited November 27, 2016 by Fonty

[Two Pigeons]

This is a piece I have seen several times over the years with a number of different casts. For my money no couple has even matched, let alone exceeded, the original. Park and Eagling really were something special.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Two Pigeons

[Jan McNulty]

Well I've only seen this Youtube clip as well as various other dancers over the years.  Even on film, Park and Eagling have knocked everyone else into a cocked hat.

[MAB]

Today is Wayne Eagling's birthday.  I'd like to wish him many happy returns. 

[Two Pigeons]

Me too! Have several very happy memories of him. When we saw him in Troy Game my mother said he was just like Alexander the Great. Apt though this was it was doubly flattering at the time as she loved all things Greek and he was her hero.

[Don Q Fan]

Jumping in here with having only skim read the foregoing posts.

I saw Dutch National Ballet's new Mara Hari earlier this year and that was a really great production (Ted Brandsen) of a new narrative ballet. The lead ballerina is on stage 95% of the time and it's non stop. I'd recommend it to anyone.

[FLOSS]

FONTY,

 

There is no official history of the RBS and I suspect that it will be some time before there is one as all the participants in its decline will need to be safely dead. In fact there may never be one as the whole thing may be too embarrassing for the institution

 

Here is what I understand to have happened. I don't think that de Valois ever got round to putting her syllabus into writing. This might not have mattered while she was actively involved with the school and the company but  during Ashton's directorship she found it necessary to go into the school to sort out problems there..

 

The company itself gradually declined during MacMillan's directorship but the decline was not that obvious because dancers like Dowell, Wall,Coleman,Sleep,Eagling,Jeffries,MacLeary,Sibley,Jenner,Collier,Seymour, Park, Mason and Penney were still dancing.But as they left, or retired the dancers coming up through the ranks were not really of the same over all quality as the dancers they replaced.Ellis and Deane for example, were not satisfactory substitute for Sibley and Dowell.

 

If you think that I am exaggerating this I would recommend that you take a look at the first recording made of Sir Peter's Nutcracker where you see Collier as the SPF and Anthony Dowell, a bit past his prime, as her cavalier. They whizz around the stage while the corps dance as if they are wading through treacle.This recording was made in 1985.

 

 I think that Merle Park became the director of the RBS in 1984 before she had officially retired from dancing. As far as changes at the school are concerned it was she who abandoned the old syllabus which according to Sibley had included a weekly Cecchetti class. Park brought Russian teachers into the school who taught the Vaganova system.  I don't think that the transition was entirely smooth as Dowell has said that he found that he had dancers who could dance Spartacus but were not that suited to the company's repertory. I don't know whether Stock further altered the syllabus but I know that she said that she had been asked to take over the running of the school.

 

As far as the recording of Park in Sleeping Beauty is concerned I am afraid that I don't have a link.The 1978 recording  is posted and taken down at regular intervals presumably at the rights holder's request, and then posted by someone else.It is suppressed with such regularity that I almost suspect that it is seen as something of an embarrassment by the company.Watch out for it because it is the earliest surviving full account of the RB in their signature ballet and the speed at which it is danced will surprise anyone who only began their ballet going recently. An earlier production was televised with Sibley and Dowell as Aurora and her Prince but the BBC who seem to have preserved every broadcast of the Old Grey Whistle Test say that have wiped some, if not all, of this historically important ballet recording.

 

I think that you will find that some dancers had high extensions in the past but it was thought to be at variance with a dance form based on an ideal of elegant, harmonious movement and harmonious lines to introduce them into performance and choreography. If you look at recordings of Balanchine ballets danced by his  own company during his lifetime you will see legs going higher in movement than is or, should I say was, considered appropriate in performing nineteenth century classical choreography but you don't see " foot in the ear syndrome"at any point and there are no one hundred and eighty degree arabesques.As to who made foot in the ear syndrome fashionable I think that you will find that Sylvie Guillem played a large part in that. I have no problem with hiking your foot up to your ear if that is what the choreographer wanted, when presumably, it will fit the music. I have great objection to it when dancers insert it into choreography which was intended to be danced in a totally different style and the music has to be slowed down to accommodate it because you are not seeing the ballet as the choreographer intended you should.

 

As to the slow speed at which Cojacaru and Kobborg danced the Voices of Spring that comes as no surprise to me. When they were learning Symphonic Variations they spoke to Sibley about the speed at which they were being asked to rehearse it because they did not have time to point their toes. I believe that they were told that they were being rehearsed at the speed that they would be dancing it and at that point in the ballet you could not feel your feet. If you want to try some more comparisons try comparing the Nerina, Blair Fille with the Collier, Coleman one which were both recorded during Ashton's lifetime with casts of whom he approved and then compare them with the more recent recordings with Acosta, Nunez and Osipova, McRae. That too will be a revelation. 

Edited November 27, 2016 by FLOSS

[assoluta]

This probably does not advance the discussion very much but it is the best that I can manage at present. Except to say that with the exception of Balanchine none of the other major twentieth century choreographers Ashton,Tudor or Robbins appear to have had anything remotely resembling traditional dance training from childhood and I can't help wondering whether this was of benefit to them as choreographers rather than a hinderence..

 

Not being familiar with the details of their 'dance education' I cannot compare the experience of Ashton, Tudor, or Robbins, with the experience of some of the stars of modern ballet stage like Preljocaj to whom what you did say applies to full extent. Preljocaj even when he was working with the dancers of the Opéra in Paris, himself was unable to complete a regular daily class. Unlike numerous stars of modern choreography, however, I have no doubt, that Ashton, Tudor, and Robbins (after his infatuation with Balanchine's work), held the idiom of classical dance in very high regard.

 

"Benefit rather than a hindrance". For me it sounds like asking whether "knowing less" is a benefit compared to "knowing more". My cautious answer would be: sometimes, perhaps, but almost always as an exception, not as a rule.

 

The greatest problem that I see with the current state of choreography, and I mean here those who stage works for major ballet companies, is precisely their lack of the total command of the "vocabulary and phrasebook" of classical dance. This problem is acutely visible in the work of choreographers who get far more praise than what their works deserve. I don't think it is reasonable to expect great literature from people who have limited command of the language in which they write and speak. Why then to expect great choreography from those who have similarly limited command of the choreographic language, and they substitute for the language they are not fluent in, some idiolect that some may praise for its originality, others for its weirdness, but almost never for its beautiful and rich phrases?

Edited November 27, 2016 by assoluta

[bridiem]

Sorry, I am struggling with the links.  I can't seem to be able to put an imbedded link without the picture. This is the best I can do, if someone else wants to do them please go ahead!

 

 

 

Thanks very much Fonty - that was fascinating. Park and Eagling have an entirely different quality - quick, light, effortless, joyful. I love Cojocaru and Kobborg but here by comparison they seem almost stodgy, and much less musical. P&E are clearly just as strong, but look more beautiful and less 'physical' than C&K.

[Fonty]

 I love Cojocaru and Kobborg but here by comparison they seem almost stodgy, and much less musical.

 

I think that sums up exacly how I feel about a lot of the dancing I have seen in recent years. 

[alison]

It's very fortunate that there are these "historical" video extracts around: not so that dancers of today can copy them slavishly, but so that they can get a feel for *how* they were danced, and how more modern-day interpretations differ from that.

 

(I hate using the term "historical" , but it has to be acknowledged that many of today's dancers weren't even born when that performance took place, or if they were, were too young to be paying much attention.)

[Rachelm]

I haven't had time to read all the above comments so please forgive any ideas already posted, but I've thought about this before and I think it is a lack of really inspirational music. The majority of the really successful, full-evening, narrative ballets have great music. We don't have a modern-day Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Liszt, Massenet etc. I think music is the key. 

[Two Pigeons]

It's very fortunate that there are these "historical" video extracts around: not so that dancers of today can copy them slavishly, but so that they can get a feel for *how* they were danced, and how more modern-day interpretations differ from that.

 

(I hate using the term "historical" , but it has to be acknowledged that many of today's dancers weren't even born when that performance took place, or if they were, were too young to be paying much attention.)

For all that this is totally correct I am sorry that the prevailing fashion for long tall dancers over smaller, faster ones is so often regarded as preferable by both directors and so many viewers. It seems to me that there are still smaller dancers being accepted and promoted but their speed of dancing is being dictated by that preferred by taller ones.

 

The story about Cojacaru and Kobborg in Symphonic is very interesting. They should have been well capable of performing the work at the original speed but their trained instincts dictated otherwise. I miss the days of greater speed but despair that they seem to be so denigrated at the moment.

[Fonty]

It's very fortunate that there are these "historical" video extracts around: not so that dancers of today can copy them slavishly, but so that they can get a feel for *how* they were danced, and how more modern-day interpretations differ from that.

 

And such a shame that the dancers of today don't seem to take much notice of them, if a good many of the modern day interpretations are anything to go by.

 

 

For all that this is totally correct I am sorry that the prevailing fashion for long tall dancers over smaller, faster ones is so often regarded as preferable by both directors and so many viewers. It seems to me that there are still smaller dancers being accepted and promoted but their speed of dancing is being dictated by that preferred by taller ones.

 

 

Do the taller dancers dictate the speed?  If so, this is surely entirely wrong. I thought that the RB has always had a mix of heights, as far as the female dancers are concerned, and surely we are back to the frequently repeated comment that the right person should be given the role, rather than adjusting a role to suit the chosen person's capabilities.  If the role requires speed and nimble footwork, it seems very odd that there is nobody in the ranks capable of producing that.  And if there isn't, then there should be. 

 

 

The story about Cojacaru and Kobborg in Symphonic is very interesting. They should have been well capable of performing the work at the original speed but their trained instincts dictated otherwise. I miss the days of greater speed but despair that they seem to be so denigrated at the moment.

 It is a very interesting story, and I can't believe that a tiny dancer like Cojocaru could not dance it at the same speed as the dancers who created the roles. I hope whoever they said it to briskly told them to get on with it, and stop being such wimps!

 

It seems to me, from the clip of her in Voices of Spring above, that she was revelling in the slower speed, because it enabled her to adopt the stretch-to-extreme-and-hold style that all the dancers seem to enjoy doing now.  I would go so far as to say that it looked self-indulgent.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Fonty

[Pas de Quatre]

When I said "standards have gone up" I meant at entry level, we were discussing prior training.  The standard of young dancers given contracts for corps de ballet positions today are much closer to the standard of soloists in those early years. Agreed not all changes have been improvements!

 

Originally Voices of Spring was taken at a fast pace with broad grins because Ashton devised it as a pastiche of the bravura Bolshoi style pas de deux seen in gala performances.  There are choreographic references to Spring Waters and the main Spartacus pas de deux amongst others.  These days it seems to be taken too seriously, but in essence it was more like a Troc performance, loving the source material, but sending it up!  

[FLOSS]

In the Diaghilev documentary which I have recommended Nabokov emphasises the amount of control which Diaghilev exercised over the dance works which he had commissioned. He was involved in the selection of the music, the designer and the choreographer and he kept an eye on the progress which they were all making. In other words he controlled the work and its progress much as the Director of the Imperial Theatres did. It was not the arm's length process which, I suspec,t it is in many companies. Could it be lack of artistic supervision  combined with the limited  cultural experience that many dancers seem to have which is the real reason for so many weak ballets making it onto the stage?

 

If you have spent most of your training tyring to achieve technical perfection; if you only know the ballets in your own company's repertory; if you know little of other forms of theatre; if you think that you have to produce something not that dissimilar from the material that the latest "great" innovative/challenging choreographer is making because you need to be fashionable perhaps it should not come as a surprise that so much of what we are shown by young choreographers is dull and derivative.

 

By the way when I said that Ashton, Tudor and Robbins had not received a conventional ballet school training. I meant just that.I was not suggesting that they had no, or only a limited, knowledge of the danse d'ecole its traditions, its history or its vocabulary. I meant that they had not spent their childhood in a ballet school and that they had formative experiences very different from someone who progresses from the enclosed world of a major dance academy to the equally enclosed self referential world of a major  ballet company.

Edited November 28, 2016 by FLOSS

[JohnS]

Thank you Fonty and all for the fascinating comments on Voices of Spring speeds.

 

I do wonder if context is also a factor - Merle Park/Wayne Eagling providing the party piece for Die Fledermaus with Placido Domingo conducting, and no doubt having a very strong view of tempo, and the pdd being presented as part of a gala? I think there's lots to admire in both but would love to see other versions as neither quite convinces me - some timing issues and need for greater precision?

 

Apologies if this is taking the thread further away from the 'dearth' of modern narrative works - I'm a keen advocate of both Christopher Wheeldon and Liam Scarlett and am wondering whether to add my penny worth in defence of their narrative abilities.

[LinMM]

I think to me it is the pure joyful ness of the Dance that Park and Eagling seem to revel in ...in the videos shown. And that is something beyond technique. They are much more together somehow.

 

And Happy Birthday to Wayne Eagling....we are just two days apart...and I still have the signed photo he did for me on my birthday all those years ago in the late seventies!!

[Two Pigeons]

When I first saw the piece it was performed on a completely bare stage and it followed a performance of Helpmann's Hamlet starring Sibley and Dowell. Domingo was not in the pit.

 

I think the idea of the context being significant could have merit were it not for the fact that in the 1980s the Ashton rep was taken at a much faster lick. Park and Eagling were experienced Ashton dancers, both dancing much of his repertoire over a number of years.

 

I think there is a lot of evidence, both filmed and in living memory, to support the notion that the speed at which works are now performed has slowed down markedly.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Two Pigeons

[Two Pigeons]

Sorry, that came over a bit sharper than I intended.

 

Apologies.

[MAB]

Seeing as the Fledermaus pas de deux was created on these two dancers, I think we can be pretty certain what we see is what Ashton intended, both dancers had worked with Ashton throughout their years with the Royal Ballet and the required style was natural to them.  Have watched that clip several times now but the second one I couldn't watch to the end, it just seemed wrong.

[loveclassics]

I have to say I agree with many of the posts above.  With the VOS pdd, the sheer exuberance and joie de vivre of Park and Eagling's performance is intoxicating.  I remember watching the original exciting broadcast with its bevy of superstars (including the stunning Joan Sutherland) so I suppose that all added to the atmosphere at the time, but by contrast, K&C in their more recent performance seem downright dull.  There are too many pauses/long-held poses (for photo opportunities?) and the general effect is rather effortful and 'look at me, aren't I wonderful', sadly typical of so many gala pieces and divertissements danced today.  I'd like to think the dancers were aware of Ashton's intention to parody just such performances but I fear today's dancers occupy an irony-free zone.

 

Licensing issues apart, there is so much to be learnt from these old performance clips.  I would like to think they are used in ballet schools as teaching aids but I doubt they are.  Can anyone enlighten me or are we doomed to see all modern performances given with no awareness of ballet and performance history?

 

The saying is that those who know nothing of history are doomed to repeat it but in this case: if only that were true!

 

Linda

Edited November 29, 2016 by loveclassics

[Scheherezade]

With the VOS pdd, the sheer exuberance and joie de vivre of Park and Eagling's performance is intoxicating.

 

Exactly! Exuberance, joie de vivre, sheer enjoyment in performance.

[assoluta]

The saying is that those who know nothing of history are doomed to repeat it but in this case: if only that were true!

 

Absolutely! Your pronouncement deserves to be quoted again and again.

[LinMM]

Alessandra Ferri and Wayne Eagling in Romeo and Juliet are also wonderful ....am so looking forward tothe talk with her at the Clore this Thursday I didn't go to the ballet for quite a while after she left.....years in fact!

 

It's like a lovely and perfect birthday gift as all the years was a friend of ROH never got to the Clore ...so will be my first time there ....just lucky the other day to be on the website and a ticket was available

 

Sorry of topic but seeing video of Eagling brought back so,many happy memories!

[LinMM]

Whoops sorry this is in the wrong thread should be in the choreographic thread if mods can move that would be great as no videos of Wayne and Park here!!

[alison]

Done

[FLOSS]

 I think that what lies at the root of the RB's failure to secure stylistically appropriate performances particularly with respect to Ashton's choreography is a mixture of the training system which most, if not all, of the dancers have experienced and the coach's fear of "setting the ballets in aspic" which I think is how Mason referred to the company's approach to staging revivals of Beauty,and presumably, every other "heritage" work.

 

Now performing in the current style is not a problem in any theatrical art form in which the entire repertory, or nearly all of it, is a modern work. It is a problem for a company which has historically significant works in its repertory. The same problem beset music over a hundred years ago where there was complete indifference to historically informed performance style. At that time Baroque composers like Handel and Bach were given the benefit of an updating makeover on the basis that instruments had improved and were much better developed than they had been in the Baroque composer's day and that they would have used the improved modern instruments, the modern symphony orchestra and the cast of thousands choir if only they had had access to them. Does this idea, that the latest development and current fashion in performance style in an art form is inherently better than what has gone before ,sound at all familiar? The result  was the ponderous, elephantine style Handel and Bach performances which it has taken years to banish from the concert hall.It gave the opera lover big, heavy,inflexible voices in every part of the repertory on the basis I suppose, that if it was not Verismo or Wagner it jolly well should have been.

 

Ballet has only recently ceased being a disposable art form in which only the latest works are of any real interest and older works only fit to be consigned to the trash can of history, although this may still not be entirely true in France which still seems more interested in the new than the classic. Ballet discovered that it had a history.In the West de Valois was probably the first to run a company which actively acquired and performed significant ballets from the past rather than treating them as old fashioned,irrelevant curiosities. They were the company's foundation as they provided a gold standard against which the company's technical health and its artistry could be  assessed. The first two directors searched out the best of the Diaghilev repertory and added it to their company's core repertory and they ensured that their dancers knew, understood and were able to dance the ballets which they had acquired in the manner which their creators had intended. The acquisition of the greatest of the nineteenth century and Diaghilev repertory and performing them in the appropriate style did not compromise the company's own creativity.. In fact the company's first fifty years  were its greatest creative period..

 

It is difficult for a company with an extensive historical repertory. It has to decide whether to update and rework them at regular intervals  while proclaiming that they are entirely the work of the original choreographer, the route taken by Russian companies, or, it can try to hand the tradition on. This was the route generally taken by the Royal Ballet in its first fifty years or so.  It is difficult to pinpoint precisely when it all started to unravel. Perhaps it was Dowell's need to accommodate Guillem's wish to do everything her way based on her view that she was far more important than a mere choreographer which was when the rot set in. Perhaps it dates from  the point at which the company dispensed with the services of Michael Somes as stager and coach of Ashton's ballets. That seems to have been the point at which "good enough" became the norm in casting and staging the Ashton works.Perhaps it was the effect of the Vaganova system of training which teaches pupils to believe that the way in which steps are taught in the classroom is the correct form in performance as well and that a choreographer's deviance from the classroom form of a step is a mistake born of ignorance that should be corrected. Geraldine Morris has gone so far as to describe the system as "absolutist" and has expressed the opinion that it is this training system which is largely responsible for the dancer's indifference to stylistic differences across the repertory. I think that it goes a long way to explain the company's inability to perform Ashton's ballets idiomatically as it once did. If you add to the factors already outlined the acknowledgement by most of the retired dancers involved in coaching, that the physical standards required of those entering training today would probably have prevented them from undertaking training,and their apparently awed comments about the technical standards of the dancers they are coaching it becomes easier to understand why there is not the insistence on stylistic correctness and musicality which are as essential to the performance of the works of the past as they are to the latest work in the company's repertory. . Clement Crisp commented on the company's failure to dance ballets in the style appropriate to the ballet or the choreographer in an interview he gave to Ismene Brown on the occasion of his seventy fifth birthday.

 

Not wanting to set ballets in aspic and awe for the performer's technical abilities has, it seems to me, led to a failure to assert and insist on the dancer's endeavouring to achieve a higher level in their artistic and musical approach to their performances.What we have seen since at least the mid nineties is coaches showing an increasing willingness to allow the dancers who they are coaching to dance ballets their  way. This approach has  resulted in the distortion of the structure of some ballets and a loss of stylistic detail and speed and the adoption,by many dancers,of a staccato approach to movement,rather than the legato , flow which the majority of twentieth century choreographers expected in the performance.of their works.

 

Both coaches and audiences, it seems, are prepared to accept all sorts maltreatment of the composer's and choreographer's intentions to enable the dancers to display their technique and their indifference to  the stylistic requirements of the work they are performing. What does musicality matter as long as you can put your foot in your ear or are permitted to dance the great Act 2 pas de deux in Swan Lake so slowly that it becomes little more than a series of static poses linked by slow motion transitions.But that seems to be what a significant proportion of the ballet going public want and admire.I wonder whether, and how, the company will respond to Ratmansky's initiative of performing Petipa's ballets in a form and style that he might recognise and at something very close to the tempi the composer expected ? 

Edited November 30, 2016 by FLOSS

[Bruce Wall]

You know, FLOSS, up until recently I was much disturbed by the phenomena that you describe at length above - much as you have done on a goodly number of other occasions on other BcoF boards.  I hugely admire how you are able to wrap the same point in so many different guises.  I'm not so skilled I fear.  That said I have - relatively recently I should say - and within my own scheme of things - changed my tune - and this, in large part, has to do with the experience involved in my own work.

 

Let me try to explain.  (Let me also try to be brief.  Never my - or perhaps your own - strong suit.)  

 

The passion i developed early in my life was for the theatre.  That theatre - or at least such as it was for THAT child - was a mainstay of humanity.  I haunted the Old Vic watching Olivier and others who had, themselves, been raised by the last generation of actors who had known theatre when it was still mass media; when the dynamic of their voices was still key.  It was this same theatre that same child entered into professionally.  (Blame my father.  I asked him for a summer job when I was nine and he told me that I was 'unemployable' but that 'I might find a job in the theatre'.  That boy in his school uniform was determined and waddled about - by himself - in and about the daily IRA bombings - until he was gainfully employed.  Today those same parents would be arrested.)  I was even lucky enough to work with/learn from some who had, themselves, been part of that earlier - oh, so lucky generation - when theatrical stars shone in a less crowded global firmament.  People such as Sybil Thorndike, Cathleen Nesbit, Fay Compton, Barry Morse etc.  I keep saying to myself now that I am so grateful to have been born when I was.  Why?  Well, because I sincerely doubt that if I had been born in the last 30 years I would have ever known that same joy - that same passion - one that I cherish and that - in one form or another - has driven my life ever since.  Hopefully i would have found a different passion .... if, that is, I somehow managed to pull my nose - and mind - away from my iphone's screen.  Or perhaps, who knows, maybe THAT would be IT ... or at least the root of IT.  That TOO would be fine.  As the wonderful Hume Cronyn once said to me:  'A child with a passion - a creative passion FOR ANYTHING - should not be denied'.    

 

But to my point, FLOSS.  I now feel - or have come to feel - that this - or perhaps better 'that' - same theatre - or at least its natural dynamic - has died.  It is the only way I can deal with it - at least with my own feelings about IT.  It's not a matter of good or bad; of better or worse, FLOSS.  It's simply a matter of 'IS'.  That I am powerless to change.  It IS different.  I learned - at some point - we all have to move on or just end up bitter.  Once I learnt to embrace that fact I have found that many more doors have been opened to my eyes and allowed me to travel down oh, so many different avenues.  For this reason I take huge joy when giving drama school masterclasses or working with students in a wide realm of different institutions.  Those students afford me the gift - though them - [and it is a wonderful gift] - to see for myself a window unto their future.  It is I know a privilege and I cherish it as such.  

 

All this is by way of saying that I, too, appreciate ballet's past.  I, like your good self, was fascinated to go to Paris on two different occasions in September and see a variety of performances of the Ratmansky reconstruction of Sleeping Beauty and am going - as I'm sure you are - if you have not already been - (you probably have) - to see his same treatment of Swan Lake in Zurich next March - much as I was in 2015 to see his work on Paquita in Munich.  Too, I, like your good self, have been privileged to see the work/creations of those Western masters of 20th Century ballet - Ashton, Balanchine, Tudor, Robbins and MacMillan, etc. - whist the masters themselves were still about to tell their tales; certainly before the internet and ever mounting technological blasts of awareness increased the velocity of change in virtually everything.  Even our meaning of 'virtual' has altered.  We cannot go back, FLOSS - we can only go forward - and nor (I believe) should we hide from the glory of that phenomena.  There's part of me that did for too long I think.  I now thrill to watch the development of ballet through the contemporary dance prism; through the McGregors and wonderful Khans of this world; of our world, FLOSS, certainly of our London.  They ARE - whether we like it or not - what we are lucky enough NOW to have on view.  They are creating a new language.  Will it last?  I'm sure something of it will.  What I wonder will they call it?  I equally prize the fact that Peter Martins (of whom I have not always been the greatest fan) has stuck at NYCB to the ballet idiom and through THAT world engendered a Justin Peck.  I know none here who've not had the luxury of  travel will have been able to see any of his ballets but they too bring out a range of different influences; ones from the world he grew up in.  It's very different from that you and I grew up in, FLOSS, but no less exciting.  

 

I can only speak for myself, but I now choose to embrace and cherish the present, FLOSS - or at least as much of it as I can.  I KNOW I'm not going to like everything but I have found the adoption of this attitude helps me to move forward in my interests and blessedly - to some degree - stops me from simply replaying a previously broken record, a recording from the past, which I now know can never again 'BE'.  

 

I thrill to watch the films - so many here that are listed as 'lost' - in the stunning archives that Robbins' legacy has fostered for me and our world.  I cherish the fact that it is still so free and open.  Now, however, I equally long and lust to walk out of those NYPL revolving doors and into the theatres that surround it - be they in NYC or Paris or London or anywhere else - and watch the development of dance - of dance life - as it is NOW.  

 

Just think, FLOSS, how lucky - in so many respects - WE ARE.  

Edited November 30, 2016 by Bruce Wall

[Lindsay]

Floss, interesting that you cite the historically informed performance (HIP) movement in classical music. I think it is an interesting comparison but the analogy for ballet is not perhaps so straightforward as you imply.

 

Two factors about the HIP movement - firstly, performance of, for example, baroque music in the 'authentic/correct' style has become a specialist endeavour, by period ensembles like the OAE, Anima Eterna or Eroica Quartet. Although there are musicians who participate in those ensembles and in modern orchestras and who play both modern and period versions of their instrument, few people would go to hear the LSO expecting to hear 'real' baroque - you go to the specialists. Might /should ballet attempt similar ghettoisation? I suspect there is neither the funding nor the audience to sustain the two strands.

 

Secondly, many would argue that there has been productive cross-fertilisation of ideas between HIP scholars and modern ensembles, working out ways in which interesting performances of older works can be produced on modern instruments using modern performance styles and performance preparation methods. Of course the product is not Bach as Bach would have heard it but neither is it played as if it were Wagner (which as you say correctly might well have been the case 50 or 60 years ago). The work of people like John Eliot Gardner with his Orchestre Revolutionnaire and Romantique has informed his work with mainstream orchestras and produced some interesting results. So what I wonder is whether there is some merits in using modern dancers' technique in the 19th century ballets in a way which doesn't jar with but also doesn't attempt to simply replicate the original performance style - interesting notion (at least to me).

[alison]

Not wanting to set ballets in aspic and awe for the performer's technical abilities has, it seems to me, led to a failure to assert and insist on the dancer's endeavouring to achieve a higher level in their artistic and musical approach to their performances.What we have seen since at least the mid nineties is coaches showing an increasing willingness to allow the dancers who they are coaching to dance ballets their  way. This approach has  resulted in the distortion of the structure of some ballets and a loss of stylistic detail and speed and the adoption,by many dancers,of a staccato approach to movement,rather than the legato , flow which the majority of twentieth century choreographers expected in the performance.of their works.

It seems to me that there is sometimes a fine line between allowing a dancer to work out their own interpretation of a role (which they must be allowed to do) and "doing their own thing" with the choreography/music. OTOH, asserting and insisting that dancers do something a specific way has been known to lead to clashes in the past, and sometimes I guess it's easier just to acquiesce in order to have a quiet life.