Dancing With Danger

[Kitschqueen_1]

Unreported World Channel 4 (7.30 pm) this evening is reporting on the only school in Iraq dedicated to ballet and music that is increasingly being threatened by religious extremism and sectarian tension. It also follows the progress of a 17 year old ballet student whose parents won't tell their neighbours what their dd is studying as ballet is seen as immoral!

 

Looks a very interesting programme.

[John Mallinson]

Here's a link.

[Terpsichore]

Ballet is in retreat not just in Iraq but in many other Islamic countries.

 

There was a fine ballet company in Iran until 1979. All that remains is a flickery TV transmission on YouTube and a Facebook page.

 

There is still a ballet company in Cairo and I saw them perform Act I of The Nutcracker in their magnificent new opera house in 2001.

 

Visiting companies from Russia have danced in Qatar and there are classes for (mainly) expatriate children in other GCC states.

 

It is not only some Muslims who find ballet offensive. My father who was a highly educated and otherwise enlightened man considered the classical tutu and some male costumes somewhat immodest and of course he objected to the cynical use of the Kirov and Bolshoi as instruments of Soviet soft power. For that reason I had to wait until I went to university to see my first ballet and take my first lesson. Even today I keep quite about my interest in ballet when in the company of Quakers,

[GTL]

And some well-educated people of my acquaintance despise it, and especially "ballet music", out of intellectual snobbery.

[alison]

Funny, the only Quakers I know are both interested in ballet, and I'm not aware that they keep quiet about it.  Unless, of course, they're just more open about it with me because I'm not a Quaker.

[Terpsichore]

Funny, the only Quakers I know are both interested in ballet, and I'm not aware that they keep quiet about it.  Unless, of course, they're just more open about it with me because I'm not a Quaker.

 

When you next speak to them you might enquire how they reconcile the lavishness of a production and the not inconsiderable cost of a ticket in most parts of Covent Garden with the testimony of simplicity as I for one would genuinely like to know.

[alison]

Who said they go to Covent Garden?

[Melody]

I remember an interview with the Olympic gold-medal figure skater John Curry at the time he was winning all his awards. His free-skate was done to music for the ballet Don Quixote, and he was asked why he'd used ballet music (apparently not something male skaters had done before). He said that he'd wanted to be a ballet dancer when he was growing up but his father refused to let him, so he took up skating instead and then tried hard to make his skating as balletic as possible. His implication, during the interview, was that his father thought that ballet was for homosexuals and effeminate men, and that was why he wouldn't let his son take it up. This always struck me as backward thinking, as though he thought that if he didn't let his son become a ballet dancer (or possibly a fashion designer or hairdresser, maybe), it would mean he wasn't gay, as though your chosen profession is the thing that determines your sexual orientation.

 

I know this sort of prejudice isn't nearly as dangerous as the sort of religious extremism that results in children being killed for wanting to dance or wanting to be educated, but in its way it's just as narrow minded and just causes people to be unhappy. And of course, forbidding a boy from becoming a ballet dancer isn't going to stop him being gay, if that's his orientation. It might make him grow up concealing his orientation, and maybe that would have been enough for Curry Sr. I was always happy that John Curry won his gold medal, because that must have been some sort of compensation for having his dance ambitions thwarted.

[RK Martin]

Dear Terpsicore,
You weren't to know when we chatted briefly at the London Ballet Circle meeting on Monday that I am a Quaker! My ballet loving husband is also a Quaker and my daughters were brought up in the "Quaker way"( by which I simply mean that they attended Quaker Meeting and I hope, were influenced by values important to their parents )  . One of them is now an aspiring trumpeter with considerable knowledge of ballet and the other trained at White Lodge for five years, before deciding that academic life was her vocation. When casting came round for the party children in the RB Nutcracker , she used to joke that she would wear a sticky label saying," Pick me, I'm a Quaker". This was in reference to the fact that Peter Wright attended a Quaker school. 

I have loads of faults, but I don't think my Quaker family and friends would list my love of ballet among them! I have never met a Quaker who disapproved of ballet , so I am really puzzled by your comment. I wonder where it came from and why you suddenly mentioned it in the context you did? Was your father a Quaker perhaps ? The view doesn't represent that of Quakers in 2014 that I know!
The Quaker testimony of simplicity does not contradict a love of ballet - as far as I can see .  I may worship in a simple Quaker Meeting House but I can still appreciate the beauty of a cathedral. Quakers do try to live simply ( though I know I often fail ) and not to be persuaded into buying what they do not need or cannot afford ( don't we all !!) With regard to the cost of a ticket for Covent Garden , we all of us buy tickets that are within out own financial means and there are also numerous way to enjoy opera house performances relatively cheaply . I make it my business to tell this to people who presume the Opera House is expensive or extravagant . And there are also plenty of other ways and places to enjoy ballet besides Covent Garden- cinema viewings and DVD among them.
Quaker Advices and Queries encourage us to, " Consider which of the ways of happiness offered by society are truly fulfilling and which are potentially corrupting and destructive ". I know which bracket I think ballet falls into! It brings me huge pleasure and a richness to my life - and constantly food for thought. Each time I see Sleeping Beauty I am bowled over anew by what it says about human goodness and love and good versus evil - the way that the lilac fairy bows respectfully feet parallel  to Carabosse and ..well..I could rave on. And I am constantly full of admiration for the hard work and devotion of dancers (& their families !) and what this can teach us in a world in which individuals elsewhere seems to seek to get famous & rich quick.
This post is in danger of  coming across as supercilious , which is far from my attention, but just to express that your experience of Quakers seems a rather dated one - or at least different from my own experience of Quakers over the last 30 years!
Look forward to seeing you at a ballet event again soon!

Edited April 18, 2014 by RK Martin

[Melody]

Unreported World Channel 4 (7.30 pm) this evening is reporting on the only school in Iraq dedicated to ballet and music that is increasingly being threatened by religious extremism and sectarian tension. It also follows the progress of a 17 year old ballet student whose parents won't tell their neighbours what their dd is studying as ballet is seen as immoral!

 

Looks a very interesting programme.

 

The sad thing is that the school was opened under Saddam Hussein as part of his drive to open the country to western influence, and now it's in trouble because of western interference. "Mission accomplished"...(we never did get that "banghead" smilie, did we? guess this'll have to do  )

Edited April 18, 2014 by Melody

[LinMM]

I also have a past connection with Quakers and it's never been a problem when I was growing up and doing ballet.

 

I attended the Guildford Friends quite regularly at one point too.

[Anjuli_Bai]

There seems to be two threads on this topic - here's what I posted in the other one:

 

 

This, of course, started some time ago.  I remember a lovely dancer from Iran in our class in the late 1970's when Iran was taken over by the hard line religious leaders.  Her family had fled the chaos which ensued.  

 

There was also a lovely dancer in our class in the 1980's - an American who married a Muslim man from Iran.  She was a Christian and had always worn a small cross on a delicate gold chain.  That very quickly disappeared.  Then she began wearing a small head scarf - the kind that one might wear on a windy day.  That got larger and larger until her entire head was covered.

 

She also began to wear baggy pants over her tights and a baggy top over her leotard.  One day when the pianist was sick and a male pianist substituted, she left the class.  She told me that her husband had forbidden her to dance in front of a male pianist.   Then, she was forbidden to dance if there was a male teacher and finally she was forbidden to dance in class if any of the male dancers showed up.  Since this was a professional level class there were always men in class.  So, everyday she would come and then have to leave if there were any men (pianist, teacher, dancer) around.  Then, that got to  include any male who might happen to walk by and look in the window or a father who might come to pick up his child from the younger classes.

 

Last I heard her husband wanted to take a "vacation" to Iran to visit his family - we never saw her again.

[Ellie]

The sad thing is that the school was opened under Saddam Hussein as part of his drive to open the country to western influence, and now it's in trouble because of western interference. "Mission accomplished"...(we never did get that "banghead" smilie, did we? guess this'll have to do  )

 

Melody, did you hear the part where the ballet teacher (after apparently showing a video of a school or company performance from years ago) and commenting on the state of affairs regarding the artistic school, said something along the lines of, 'Before, it was never like this...'

 Before what ? Do you know ?

[Terpsichore]

Funny how throwaway lines take a life of their own. My post was mainly on the now disbanded Iranian National Ballet and ballet elsewhere in the Middle East with an observation that the objections of some Muslims to ballet are shared by some adherents of other faiths (eg some members of my monthly meeting) and indeed others of no faith at all such as my late father.

 

I don't really want to debate theology here but I will say this. The Society of Friends are in my experience a very tolerant and diverse bunch of people. There are very few if any express prohibitions in Advices and Queries but there is a corpus of guidance that has been semi-codified into a series of testimonies or doctrines. How an individual interprets and applies those testimonies is left largely to his own conscience and there are some who manage to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable such as those who have served in the armed forces despite the peace testimony.

 

I have difficulty in reconciling spending a vast amount of money (even though I can earn it) on a ticket for a performance at Covent Garden as I did last Saturday (especially when I emerge from the theatre asking myself "Is that it then?) with the simplicity testimony when I could have used the money in more constructive ways. As I have observed before there is something dark and superstitious in the notion of wilis that troubles me when watching Giselle. I won't pretend these concerns trouble every (or indeed any other) Friend but they do trouble me. But then so do a lot of other things about my life such as my slightly right of centre political views and indeed my occupation that are also difficult to reconcile with consensus thinking in my faith.  I also keep quiet about my politics and my job when talking to other Friends just as I keep quiet about my passion for an art form that evolved from the etiquette of the renaissance and baroque courts and requires participants often to appear in public in revealing clothing.

[Melody]

Melody, did you hear the part where the ballet teacher (after apparently showing a video of a school or company performance from years ago) and commenting on the state of affairs regarding the artistic school, said something along the lines of, 'Before, it was never like this...'

 Before what ? Do you know ?

 

I assume it was before the 2003 invasion; I watched the short YouTube clip and it mentioned how many professionals had left the country since 2003, so it looks as though they're taking that as the time of the before/after divide.

[Ellie]

Thank you Melody.( I'm probably naive... but surprised)