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Reevaluating Old Habits
and Practices in Ballet
– An excerpt from the forum dedicated to the seminal
Ballet into the 21st Century retreat
by Thea Barnes
January 2003 – Even a company
of 5 years has its own history but ballet companies shoulder a tradition
some 300 years old. They can measure up to this tradition, surpass it
or get squashed by a legacy that everyone has an opinion about. This tradition
is either the foundation for artistic decisions or an over cooked goose
that is picked over, dismembered or discarded entirely. It is worrying
though when a reviewer calls "The Nutcracker" a "cash cow" (1) or worse
is geared to a junior audience to generate half the annual revenue but
without any guarantee this same audience will come back when grown up
(2). Just who is the ballet company to satisfy: tradition, budgets or
inspiration?
Enter the 3 work program where an insightful artistic director along with
nail biting board members and stressed out marketing managers can splice
tradition with more contemporary, innovative approaches and present a
smorgasbord repertory to appease diverse expectations. What do these choices
do to ballet's art practise and the hierarchy of company structures?
Innovative approaches require revised ways of thinking about the way dance
is made and viewed. Tradition is always present, stretching from the past
and tailoring the present giving innovation scant chance especially when
critics recognise "an exquisite piece of ballet classicism (3)" but ridicule
choreography as "contrived, downright ugly manoeuvres; a mass of jumbled
activity; macho posturings; lifts like heaving a sack of coal. (4)" Not
all companies produce repertories that include works by Kenneth Macmillan
or are fortunate enough to have Mark Morris mixing "academic ballet with
unexpected twists to produce an unbuttoned, fresh classicism (5) that
is engagingly unpretentious". (6) Ballet tradition is a tricky thing and
not easily disregarded, nor should it be. Tradition though may lead current
practitioners and viewers into believing there is only one history when
in fact there are hundreds. The divisions are in aesthetic choices, which
steeped in their own communal trappings give ballet its multiple identities.
Can the integrity of ballet tradition be maintained despite present ballet
dance makers' renovations?
Ballet's identity is diversifying. Meisner (7) reviewing Dance Theatre
of Harlem noted the varied personalities of the dancers but also noticed
how the dancers snapped to attention when Arthur Mitchell took his bow.
Meisner did not discuss their "blackness" before reviewing their artistry,
which is great, but Meisner may have unknowingly picked up on the "discipline"
required to get a company to achieve the vision of one man on a quest
to reshape the aesthetic preferences of ballet's tradition. What was gained
and what was sacrificed in this quest? Maybe what was gained were new
ideas about what ballet's aesthetic encompasses and new approaches to
teaching, learning, choreographing, and selling ballet globally. All these
elements influence revisions in the practice of a tradition and bring
about new perspectives and new histories.
Meisner may also have perceived the hierarchical, autocratic, male-dominated,
gender, and racialised politics that permeate the infrastructure of ballet
companies and ballet practice. What pressures face the dancers to deliver
the goods when the context is to prove a point? Everything is on the line
when dancers have "changed" everything to suit one man's dream. "First
they break your ego down, then they build it backup in their own image
(8)" is a student's lament and may be a reflection of what is going on
back stage and in ballet "institutions" all over the world. In the case
of DTH, the dancers have definitely measured up and surpassed expectations
but critics still refer to them as the "black classical dance company
(9)". Just what are we asking our dancers to achieve when faced with such
blatant aesthetic discrimination?
These varied outside in and inside out perceptions affect a company. The
question arises are practitioners aware of how the practice of ballet
differs or mirrors tradition? Are practitioners and critics aware of the
differing histories that reconfigure or continue to enforce the tradition
of ballet and how? I believe that most practitioners of ballet will agree
that dance making is global. There is a lot of sharing of strategies for
making dance as well as how to work with dancers. I wonder though are
we really respecting and acknowledging the source and configuration of
this borrowing?
Donald Hutera refers to Rhoden's "Twist" as "sub-Forsythe abstraction”
(10) and this statement deserves some attention. William Forsythe acknowledges
his debt to dancers who through a process of structured improvisation
give their embodied knowledge to create the types of works Forsythe is
known for. Forsythe's way of dismembering the ballet goose is intervention
by using improvisation to reconfigure classical ballet movement. Dancers
working with Forsythe are required to know his methods for building movement
material for choreography as well as being proficient in classical ballet.
Improvisation has its restrictions and freedoms but just how has this
affected the hierarchy of Ballet Frankfurt and will this hierarchy remain
unchanged when Forsythe leaves Ballet Frankfurt?
Rhoden has a different history. Desmond Richardson, Rhoden's partner spent
2 years with Ballet Frankfurt. Both these dancers toured with the Alvin
Ailey Dance Company in the late 80's until the formation of their company,
Complexions, in 1994. These artists' built on their classical ballet,
contemporary and jazz dance experience and embraced the energy of American
dance clubs and street dance with its techno, hip hop infested music.
Each in his own way has synthesised an aesthetic and cultivated compositional
devices to dismember the ballet goose and define their own individual
choreographic and performance approaches. Dancers working with them are
required to be proficient in ballet, jazz and contemporary forms and possess
the highest, most extreme technical prowess obtainable. Unlike Forsythe,
Rhoden requires his dancers to follow his directions to the letter; there
is no use of improvisation to vary the movement given. This way of working
is more in line with the hierarchical pyramid most associated with the
tradition of ballet. This is one of a variety of African American ways
of knowing movement not Forsythe-ian. Rhoden's kind of dance making owes
more to the community that gave raise to Balanchine than the accomplishments
of Forsythe in Germany. Another question that arises from this is authorship
and really, who choreographs a dance and then in view of the Protas vs
Martha Graham Centre case (11), who owns it?
Context is what situates and clarifies a ballet company's aesthetic and
its place in the tradition of ballet. Context also influences the making
of dance, the shaping of a company's infrastructure and its particular
hierarchical structure. There is no escaping ballet's tradition and the
aesthetic this engenders. There is also no escaping the mix of contributing
factors that support or work against a single company's dance makers,
its choreographers, dancers, artistic directors, board members, administrative
staff, and critic/reviewers.
Please join the discussion
in our forum.
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