Preserving the Product - or not?

[FLOSS]

Yesterday I went to In Step with Fred a screening of films of Frederick Ashton's ballets that were made when he was still actively involved in choreographing.

 

We were shown the1960 BBC recording of Les Rendezvous with Doreen Wells and Brian Shaw in the principal roles and Merle Park in the pas de trois, the 1978 recording of A Month in the Country with Lynn Seymour, Anthony Dowell,Derek Rencher,Denise Nunn and Marguerite Porter in the roles that they created , a film of Doreen Wells and Donald MacLeary in the pas de deux from Sylvia and a short interview that Ashton gave during the 1978 broadcast.

 

The films were fascinating and gave ample evidence of the loss of detail and musicality in those pieces as performed today but it was the earliest film that was the most revelatory. It showed a much lighter, bouyant, effortless  style of dancing than is seen today with upper body. arms, hands, neck, head and face all used by the dancers as intended by the choreographer. The music was played at speed and all the dancers were completely in the music and of it. Pirouettes were fast, really fast with multiple turns,without any emphasis on showing the preparation that we see today.It was like seeing an old master painting after all the discoloured  varnish has been removed.   

 

I know that many people who have made a contribution to this discussion have expressed the view that change is inevitable and that advances in technique should be embraced and incorporated in older works to keep them fresh and relevant to the current audience.This is the sort of thing that happened in music until about sixty years ago. Anyone who performed the works of Handel or Mozart as if they had be written by Puccini would be greeted with ridicule today.I wonder whether there will ever be the balletic equivalent of the early music movement which has had an enormous impact on orchestral performance by traditional orchestras?

 

Some years ago I went to a meeting at which Donald Macleary spoke about his work as a coach for the Royal Ballet during which he spoke about his experience with some of the younger dancers who wanted squeeze in extra steps or hold poses far longer than the music allowed.He seemed concerned by the lack of musicality shown by this approach to the choreography.

 

I wonder whether it was this that Rojo had in mind when she told the Telegraph that during her time with the Royal Ballet she had not been able to express herself as an artist and dance roles as she had wished because of the restrictions imposed by the company and its coaches. 

[Jan McNulty]

You make some very interesting points there Floss.  

 

Quite a few years ago I saw a double bill in Vienna of Daphnis & Chloe and Firebird by (IIRC) John Neumeier.  My friend and I were totally blown away by both pieces.  A few months later this double bill was performed at a festival in Pompeii and there was a 2 page review in one of the magazines.  Basically the review was 2 pages of "well it wasn't Ashton", "well it wasn't Fokine".  As I had not, at that stage, seen either of these productions that didn't matter to me and I was just able to enjoy what I saw.

 

If people haven't seen productions in times gone by and there have been subtle stylistic changes, they are never going to know that and enjoy (or otherwise) what they see.  What bothers me though is where the subtleties that make works as delicious as Fille are lost.  If technique has moved on so much surely dancers must be able to master, for example, the lightness and buoyancy that you mention.  Yes, change is inevitable, but not change for the worse!

[Melody]

One of the things I keep hearing is older dancers and teachers saying that the younger dancers are so much better technically than in the past but that so much is also being lost - the subtlety, the epaulement, the lightness, the speed and precision and so on. And I don't see where these have to be mutually exclusive. If you just carry on merrily down the road of greater and greater technical ability while jettisoning the artistry and musicality, you might as well just train as an acrobat or gymnast and have done. I'd love to hear what Ninette de Valois would have said about this trend, because she spent quite a bit of time warning about the perils of ballet taking on too many of the characteristics of contemporary dance, and I get the impression that some of those barbs were directed toward MacMillan in the later part of his career. She also developed a characteristic teaching method that rested on the Italian and French schools as well as the Russian school; if we've decided to ditch that in favour of just turning out Vaganova clones, then I suppose it's no surprise that the older British choreography, which rested on the older teaching method, isn't being well served.

 

It stands to reason that a ballerina who's 5'8'' and needs to show off her fantastic extensions every time she raises her leg will need the music to be much slower than for the original choreography with somewhat shorter dancers and less exaggerated movements. I gather Makarova was one of the pioneers of ignoring the choreography and the music in order to do her own thing, and that she upset Ashton pretty badly when she tried it in his works. A few generations of that attitude from the dancers, and the original intent of the choreographer will be lost entirely. But I don't see why every arabesque has to be a six-o'clock penchee just because the dancer can do it, or why every developpe has to end up with the dancer's knee in her ear if the choreography doesn't call for it. There are plenty of acrobatic ballets out there for these sorts of movements; they don't have to show up everywhere.

 

I think we're getting to the point of no return with Ashton's choreography, as the dancers who actually knew him are getting older and retiring (from their teaching jobs, not just from dancing). The Royal Ballet needs to decide if it wants to keep its founder choreographer's work in the company in any meaningful way or just decide (a la Ross Stretton) that the past is the past and that they'll occasionally wheel out a couple of old warhorses in any old state of disrepair while concentrating on the shiny new stuff by McGregor and Wheeldon etc. It shouldn't be impossible to keep Ashton's work alive if there's enough motivation to do it. We haven't ditched Shakespeare just because John Osborne struck a chord in the mid-20th century, and I don't really see why our outstanding choreographer should be treated with such disrespect compared to our outstanding playwright.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Melody

[FLOSS]

If Ashton had merely been the company's founder choreographer the company's cavalier attitude to his works might be understandable. But he was not just a jobbing choreographer whose works tided the company over until a real choreographer appeared he was one of the two most significant choreographer's of the twentieth century. Watching a 1960 recording of Les Rendezvousz this week really brought out what is missing in so much of the Ashton that makes it to the stage now for the main part it's too careful and small scale and lacks any sense of vivacity and wit.

 

In an interview that David Wall gave he said that in his time with company they had worked hard to maintain the Ashton style. In an interview that Elizabeth Mcgorian gave she spoke of the difference between the performances of La Valse given by the company and one  given by a cast from the 1960's saying that the recent cast had been very careful whereas the earlier cast had gone whoosh.It would be interesting to hear what others think about when the rot set in and whether they think that it is simply a question of fashion or whether it has a lot to do with the strength of advocacy for each of the choreographers. 

[alison]

Melody, I like your post so much that I'd give it five "Likes" if I could!

[Ian Macmillan]

The matter of choreographers' 'Legacy' has come up in a number of threads from time to time, perhaps nowhere more so than on this one from the mid-past.  Laura Cappelle has been talking to Mats Ek about his decision to let his performance licences given to companies to expire, and looks at the issue more widely here:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/27898f0c-b46d-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51.html

 

Hans Van Manen was clearly taken aback at this news and posed the question "Imagine if Mozart had done that?"  To which we might add "Or Michaelangelo?  Or Shakespeare? Or any of hundreds of others whose work has enriched lives in the years since their deaths?"  What does it say about an artist who feels a need to control his or her work to the extent that, if he/she is not there, it cannot be used or performed?  Are there substantive differences in this regard between performance and the plastic arts?  Is it OK to say with Ek that it's "part of the game in dance that you write on water, and things vanish"?

 

Discuss ..........

[Sim]

Merce Cunningham did the same thing. I don't feel the loss, but am very glad that other choreographers didn't insist that their work died with them. Imagine how bereft the dance world would be!

[alison]

Is it (sorry, didn't want to use my FT allowance on this) because, even with notation, the entire extent of choreography is such a difficult thing to record properly?  (See the current "Rhapsody" thread, where we're discussing whether it should be treated as a bravura piece, or interpreted differently, for example).  After all, we do ask from time to time "what were the choreographer's intentions?".  But nobody asks that about Shakespeare, of course, and his plays are subject to all sorts of interpretations.

[Ian Macmillan]

Sim:  I don't think you're quite correct about Cunningham.  Somewhat as with Balanchine, there's a Trust that "licenses Cunningham works to leading dance companies and educational institutions worldwide, and partners with cultural institutions to mount special projects, performances, and exhibitions that celebrate Cunningham’s artistic achievements." 

 

http://www.mercecunningham.org/licensing-projects/

 

I must say that where a choreographer has concerns over how his/her work may be performed after his/her death, that seems a better way to handle things than simply to let that work die.  It will, of course, be for posterity to pick and choose the pieces that are worthy of revival.

[Sim]

I guess I confused it with the fact that he wanted his company disbanded when he died. Which begs the question, why was he happy for other companies to perform his pieces, but not his own? I think of Martha Graham, whose company is still preserving her work and ensuring her legacy.

[alison]

We seem to have gone off at a tangent here, with a number of posts which seem more suited to the "Rhapsody/Two Pigeons" thread.  I'm going to move those over, and then copy FLOSS' relevant postings back into this thread.

[alison]

FLOSS' posts:

 

It is true that the lead male role in Rhapsody was created on Baryshnikov who at the time the ballet was made was probably, as far as technique was concerned, the finest male dancer in the world. I seem to recall that after the first performance some people wondered whether the piece was not too full of tours de force and nearly everyone wondered who was going to dance it when Baryshnikov was no longer around to do so.

 

It was not the first time that an Ashton ballet had raised the "who's going to dance  it ?" question. The same question lingered on the lips of those who were at the premiere of Fille and we know that the question was soon answered. Quite a few dancers proved able to dance Fille. They danced the choreography as set but they did not all have the same attack as Blair and Nerina  and Ashton must have been pleased with their accounts of his ballet as he had considerable control over who danced in his works, 

 

One of the things that everyone needs to appreciate is that while Baryshnikov was a great technician he did not dance with any great apparent forcefulness. He just performed the steps. His manner of dancing was far less emphatic than seems fashionable among technicians today. Hay may need a little more panache but he does not need to be as emphatic as McRae. When Polunin and McRae danced Rhapsody a couple of years ago I thought that Polunin gave by far the better account because his dancing was less emphatic and more polished .The " it was nothing" shrug at the end made sense with Polunin but no sense with McRae because you could see how hard he had been working. Ashton must always look easy however difficult the choreography is. The choreography must not be reduced to a box of tricks and the dancer to a leg machine.   

Sometimes McRae manages to make you too aware of his technique and how clever he is. Baryshnikov never did that. it is said that he was disappointed that Ashton concentrated so much on his technical skills and that he was hoping for something different from working with Ashton.

 

 

I am glad that someone else mentioned Dowell's performance in Rhapsody which made it look like an Ashton ballet in a way which it did not quite with Baryshnikov. Remember the choreography was made on Baryshnikov so it played to his strengths and his strengths were not obviously Dowell's strengths, and it is possible that Ashton may have made adjustments for him as he did for Wall when he danced Oberon, but with Dowell the ballet changed from Ashton with a foreign accent to idiomatic Ashton.

 

However accurately you record steps in notation if you can not persuade the dancers to adopt the choreographer's style then you will produce something which resembles the original work in name only. Style is a portmanteau word which includes the choreographer's modification of classroom steps, whether he uses the dancer's entire body or only part of it, speed and musicality 

 

In Ashton's works musicality generally means following the melody and crossing bar lines, in Balanchine it means observing bar lines; a flow of movement rather than the current Russian fashion of moving from one freeze frame pose to the next, and dancing at the tempo at which both he and the composer expected the music to be performed. There should be no slowing the music down so the dancers have time to point their feet. The dancers need to adopt and apply Ashton's modifications of classroom steps rather than imposing the classroom on his choreography. Markova said of Ashton's choreographic style it was essentially all Cecchetti below the waist and Duncan above it. It also helps if the dancers trust Ashton to have done the hard work for them by creating their characters in his choreography in his narrative works. Unlike MacMillan's works there is no need for the dancer to build a character with a backstory. Acting as if  you are in a MacMillan work can go a long way to undermine a performance rather than enhancing it.

 

Knowledge, understanding and the ability to reproduce different choreographic styles is central to the successful preservation and revival of older works, I am not convinced that a change in fashion as far as technique is concerned requires that every ballet in the repertory has to be danced in a one size fits all homogenised international style. Dancing a piece of choreography too slowly can destroy its effect and meaning, reducing it to incoherence and so can dancing which shows the effort you are putting into achieving an effect. Obvious effort for bravura effect reduces choreography to little more than acrobatics and for me that is not ballet it is circus. One of the most unfortunate effects of current fashion is that a large part of the audience only seem to recognise male dancing if it involves jumps and turning steps. They seem almost completely oblivious to terre a terre dancing and there is a lot of that in Ashton's works.

 

There  are two other factors which are relevant to keeping works in trim  and persuading an audience that a long neglected work deserves its time on the stage. One is casting decisions.The other  is design or rather redesign. It is tempting to think that a balet long out of the repertory could do with sprucing up to make it more acceptable to modern tastes. So far the redesigns of Ashton ballets Daphnis and Chloe, Les Rendezvous and Cranko's The Lady and the Fool  have been little short of disastrous. It must induce a wry smile that Rhapsody has now returned to the stage in designs that bear some resemblance to the original having gone through a bold, brash period followed by a mimsy pastel one, neither of which worked. 

 

Ballet design is difficult because most designers get little practice and most seem oblivious to the fact that it is what their designs look like in motion which really counts, so that colour, cut and materials are of as much importance as the static image which they have produced, The man who redesigned Daphnis and Chloe killed it in its tracks because he produced costumes which reduced and constricted the dancers' movements rather than amplifying them in the way the original designs had done while the man who redesigned Les Rendezvous made a nonsense of Ashton's floor plan and completely undermined the mood of the ballet by his costume designs. As for casting while  giving a dancer a shot at a role will not do too much damage if the ballet in question is one that is revived regularly it may be the kiss of death if it is a rarely performed one that has not been seen for twenty or so years. In the case of a rarely performed work it is better to cast according to suitability rather than seniority or status. If the" star" is unsuited to the role in question his or her followers will ascribe the failure to the choreographer not their favourite.

 

Bill is quite right it is better to see a couple of casts in a new work, or the revival of a piece which you don't know that has been out of the repertory for any length of time. That way you stand a chance of seeing a cast or part of a cast which convince you that the work in question has some merit. The trouble is that A.Ds usually take the easy option of casting stars.On Saturday, as those who were there will know, there was not a star in sight just some stars in the making. On the Dansomanie Forum there was a comment from someone who was there expressing surprise at how moved he was by the performance of Two Pigeons  which did not have a single principal in it. In this case O'Hare's decision to run in the "new work" before Christmas has paid off. On Saturday it certainly looked as if the company owned the ballet in a way it did not before Christmas.