Reviewing The State of Things.

Disclaimer: Over the past few weeks I have become increasingly frustrated with my inability to produce clear thoughts due to my illness. My brain is in this constant state of cloudiness and clarity seems utterly unattainable. Forgive any confusion that this rant produces because things just aren't adding up upstairs recently!

Amidst the emails in my inbox this morning were three things all pertaining to the same article. If fifty percent of my inbox was dedicated to the same thing, I knew it must be viewed immediately so in my half-conscious state, I rubbed my eyes and opened them to find links to a review in the NY Times.

New York City Ballet started its spring season a few nights ago and therefore we are bound to see various reviews sprouting up over the next few weeks. If all of the reviews are written with the care of this, I will be more than happy to read them. More than any reviews I have read recently, this is not purely a description of the events that occurred on stage. Alastair Macaulay delves into some of the more interesting questions surrounding the state of the arts in the world we live in without ever losing the fluidity of his review.

"When people who have come to Balanchine choreography in the last 20 years ask me what makes me miss New York City Ballet in his lifetime (though I caught only the tail end of that golden age), I find myself saying that the company’s dancing in those days blazed with a kind of energy that was positively disturbing: it shook you by the shoulders as if to say, “This matters.” “The Four Temperaments” is one of many Balanchine ballets so extraordinary in their architecture and its conception that many new dance-goers must surely feel that they still matter now; I can only say it mattered more."

I can't help but read this and wonder if this isn't just the unfortunate change that has occurred in all of classical ballet over the past few decades. The steps people have taken in choreography and performance more often than not accentuate pyrotechnics over artistry, not that I am in any way suggesting this was what City Ballet did. I, myself, have never been able to jump exceedingly high or turn with the force of a tornado so it is easy for me to dismiss this progression, which I often see as a regression. Maybe if I could do 10 pirouettes, I would feel differently but I like to believe that I would still have faith in the simplicity of movement and nuances rather than flashiness. Sometimes I think the audience comes to expect something like this and the importance and power of movement can be lost if it isn't "wowing" them by sheer force.

When Macaulay describes "The Four Temperaments," which was performed at the evening he reviewed, he says "Nothing here is more crucial than the basic transfer of weight. Starting with the weight on both legs, the dancer extends one leg into the air, then starts to transfer the body weight with the advancing foot well before it has reached the ground. (Here Balanchine caught something both jazzy and American, while offending the European sense of propriety.) The sense is of stepping out over a brink." It is no secret that Balanchine was a genius of stylistic movement and I really love the way in which Macaulay explains it here. There was so much thought behind it where as these days choreographers often have superfluous movement meant to dazzle in its ambition and speed just as a dancer who winds up for fifteen turns but can't connect to the next step.

My recent trips to the theater have further reiterated the idea that people don't believe that this "matters" anymore. More than just the way that the dancing on stage is handled, there is a responsibility for the audience to support new ventures with the idea that ballet does "matter" again. Broadway theaters have started allowing popcorn and other refreshments as if you are sitting on the bleachers at a ball game. How has this happened? Let's just keep our fingers crossed that you won't start hearing people smacking on Milk Duds at "Manon."

Comments

[tonya]

I posted this on the winger today in a comment on kristin's post and no one said ANYTHING!!!! No response AT ALL! I found the article really good too. Macaulay is one of the first reviewers I've read lately who is actually trying to explain the relevance of ballet -- or at least the relevance of balanchine -- to a dying audience. You say "audiences need to start supporting..." but you can't say that, you really can't. I know you know that and I know you didn't mean it that way, but a dance-maker can't point his finger out at an audience and say, "hey you, YOU NEED TO SUPPORT ME!" Of course you can't do that or people will laugh at you. Audiences don't have to support anything they don't want to support; they don't have to spend their hard-earned money to attend anything they don't feel the need or compulsion or desire to attend, obviously. It's the responsibility of the dance makers', the companies, the dance writers, the big bloggers like the Winger-- everyone involved in dance community to show the audience that they have that need, that compulsion, that desire. And that means showing how ballet is still relevant to today's society. That means showing why balanchine was once revolutionary and why it's still important to see his work -- how that informs today's revolutionary choreographers. i believe dance fans need to care more too -- i realize everyone is busy with their lives and their jobs, and i realize kristin is overhelmed with this huge and absolutely fantastic project, but not one single winger reader responded to my comment containing the article link. not one. on the winger -- the most popular dance blog on the internet. if fans don't care, why should anyone?

[M]

I wasn't trying to point fingers at anyone tonya....merely thinking aloud. Obviously you can't force people to come to anything, you have to give them a reason. This just seems to be the problem with all fine arts organizations over the past years, getting a new audience to come and support.

[tonya]

no no no, i didn't mean to go off on you and i'm sorry if it sounded that way -- i know you weren't pointing fingers. and i'm really glad you saw this article too and thought it was important, and i'm glad you blogged about it because obviously no one read comments on the winger. i'm just mad that no one reading the winger had anything to say about it. if you're enough of a fan to read the blog, then you're enough of a fan to care about the state of ballet! unless everyone is just reading to see pictures of cute guys and pretty girls... i'm sorry, i just found this article really intriguing and i'm glad you did too -- i guess we're the only ones... (along with your friends who sent it to you that is :) )

[M]

I agree, depressing that we can't get more of a discussion about this going. Surprised that no one on the winger responded to it, although I think that post just got swept up in the surge of posts today unfortunately.

Too often people don't have an interest in the state of things, I just wish I could figure out how we can step forward a little bit. Isn't that the question everyone wishes they could answer.

[Rob]

I think a key issue is Why. Why should people care about ballet? Obviously, dancers and people close to the productions have more intimate reasons than others would have. Personally, one of the biggest things ballet has going against it is the caricature of itself that has developed in the public eye. Ask people what comes to mind when you think ballet, and most likely you'll get the sterotypical responses "Prima ballerinas","guys in tights", etc.
Stuff like that should be addressed, and I believe once those perceptions are gone/done with, the audience will replenish itself with educated, comprehending people. When I got interviewed for a podcast a few weeks back, the director went out of his way to make sure there was no "guys in ballet are tough like the WWF guys" stuff, but rather "this is what we do". Ballet needs to be it's own thing, and needs to get out of the shadows of all the parodies that it's allowed itself to get trapped in public perception.

[M]

Great point rob. Part of what I was talking about as far as the pyrotechnics go plays into this idea little bit, that ballet has been emerging more as a quantifiable sport than anything. Part of this probably has to do with people trying make it more "accessible" by turning it into something that it wasn't at first. It's easier to count something than it is to discuss a ballet like 4 T's. It all goes back to arts education I think which is sadly lacking in so many schools across America.

When it comes to breaking those preconceptions, that's a major uphill battle but I still think it would help to have a solid arts education in classrooms across the country. It's more just a matter of taking the time. I have gone and talked to a few classes in Montana and at first there are the unmistakable snickers when you talk about being a ballet dancer but as soon as you start to educate people suddenly the boys normally throwing the footballs are the most interested.

Maybe that isn't exactly what you were getting at...like I said, my brain isn't working too well recently. It's depressing. Sorry :-)

[Rob]

No, that's pretty in line with what was thinking, and good point about the arts education. I was lucky, I got that, and had arts education since 1st grade on, at a public school. Which allowed me to be in a school choir in 3rd grade, which is what I did all the way through 12th before "discovering" ballet in college. Sadly, in my district, they seemed to kill the arts program in middle school the year after I left, leaving band as the only thing you could do, and I'm not even sure how long that lasted, nevermind funded. I remember as a senior in high school preforming at my old middle school and the kids were all amazed by what we did, and wanted to do it too. Sadly, that lasted the rest of the afternoon since there was no follow up, as the govt seems to think the arts as the expendable item on the way to making sure no child is left behind.

As for pyrotechnics, I see that with gymnastics and figure skating at every olympics. I think it's just a by-product of people pushing to see how much more they can do than the person before them, and that gets in the way of the artistry.

And don't worry about the brain thing. I had the flu a few months ago and all my brain processed was "sleep, meds, bathroom" Everything else was put by the wayside. I have to say, you're blogs dont show any signs of a short-circuited brain, and I think I started reading around the time you got sick.

[Larry]

The preconceptions are certainly a big part of it. I’m instinctually more cautious about telling certain co-workers “I‘m leaving promptly at 5 tonight, I’ve got the ballet” than I would be about saying “I’m off to a play, or a concert, or even the opera.” But there are other factors too – one being that dance is the most ephemeral of the arts, and thus the one people are least likely to know much about. Art museums are extremely popular today because people can walk around and enjoy the paintings at their own pace; novels and poetry are far less popular but still relatively accessible because we can all pick up a book and read it in our own language; classical music is often despised but still anyone can experience it through CDs. Yet consider: I can purchase 10 different CD versions of Stravinsky’s Agon, but I cannot acquire a single DVD of that superb ballet that lets me get acquainted with Balanchine’s choreography in the comfort of my own home. Another factor is that dance still by and large deals with idealized physical types, stressing the grace and beauty of the human body rather than its flaws. That is its glory, and also part of its remoteness: only rarely can go the ballet to see narratives about “regular people” as one can when going to the movies or reading fiction; instead, the subjects of ballet are still largely confined to fables like Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and the like. (Matthew Bourne’s excursion into American suburbia in Edward Scissorhands was a welcome exception, yet that ballet was so unsatisfactory otherwise as to have not been an encouraging example.) But the way the body is emphasized in dance probably also makes many ordinary people uncomfortable; the stereotype of males in tights and females in tutus reflects an embarrassment some may feel towards the human form. Nonetheless, whereas a Lucian Freud can produce a nude painting of a grotesquely fat man like Leigh Bowery, or an Alban Berg can produce an opera about a demented soldier like Wozzeck, I have yet to hear of a choreographer who has taken ordinary people of less than desirable physical proportions and created a ballet around them; the very idea seems antithetical to everything ballet is about.

[Larry]

Directly I wrote the above, the example of The Green Table came to mind. Yet how many other ballets can one name that attempt a serious political theme? Compared to art or literature, ballet inevitably cannot escape seem a little empty-headed.

[Larry]

"seeming"