“I’ve asked myself why Cacti is so successful, and I think it’s partly that we had a long time making it, so I think it’s very well-crafted. But there’s also that subject — it’s important that we can laugh and discuss and debate about how we have invented this ‘critic’ thing.”
Alexander Ekman, succesfull Swedish choreographer, is restaging Cacti in Sidney, Australia. He is well known for the way he integrates humour into the very serious art od Dance… – interview in 22.02.2016, to Ben Neutze – Daily Review, full text here
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Concert Dance takes itself too seriously, and Ballet is worse, it is really DEADLY serious… It was not always like that, and lack of humour seems to me just a symptom of a crippling (degenerative?) disease – Ekman goes straight to what, in my opinion, is the source:
“I created [Cacti] at a time in my life when I was really struggling. I cared a lot about what critics wrote and who was there. Now, I don’t give a shit, honestly,” he says.
“I’ve asked myself why Cacti is so successful, and I think it’s partly that we had a long time making it, so I think it’s very well-crafted. But there’s also that subject — it’s important that we can laugh and discuss and debate about how we have invented this ‘critic’ thing.” <—-HERE
At the centre of all of Ekman’s work is a desire to entertain, but he wants to make it clear what he means by “entertainment”.
According to Ekman, “entertainment” can be considered a form of meditation — if a piece of art can hold your attention and focus your mind on a single idea or stream of thought, it’s essentially meditative.
“I get annoyed that so few pieces do that,” he says.
“The dance world needs to change and I’m surprised very often that it still keeps going, because it doesn’t reach out to people.” <—- AND HERE
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Nowadays, Concert Dance is focused on pleasing peers and critics, not in reaching a wider audience. As a Performance Art, Dance needs public’s reaction to live. It is dying of audience insufficiency!
Of course, it is not easy to laugh about things when you are a terminal patient…
BTW: Do you know the rate of population growth? no, of course not, but you have at least some notion… And a notion of the rate of growth of Concert Dance audience?
Isn’t the luscious, graceful Odetta a pleasure to watch in this video? I loved the dancer, I kept skipping to her scenes, and wish I had been there to see this performance. Unfortunately, I don’t know who she is.
In the whole video you can’t see her doing any fouettés or great jumps, so there are probably none.
Of course, you will say, this is not (bold-lettered) ballet!
Fine example of reverently bold-lettered ballet
This is were I snort and count to ten, because I don’t even know where to begin answering you – there are so many interconnected issues here… I try to write about them one at a time, but never achieve less then 1.500 words!!
It’s about what concert DANCE really is – Ballet being just one kind of it, one corner of the whole picture. It’s about what-is-ballet rules and their uncountable (negative) consequences – to us as audience, and to Ballet dancers.
Of course, I know there are several kinds of “us” in the public of Ballet, but I don’t see any reason why the rule-loving kind should be taken more seriously that mine.
MY kind knows that Dance (Ballet INCLUDED) is, in its very groundstones, about gracefulnessand creating magic – more than anything else.We also know, through boring experiences, that rules don’t guarantee either one. Both groundstones are very singular, each dancer has its own way, depending on who he is: physical build, psyche, soul. These two qualities, gracefulness, and being able to create magic, is what turns performers into dancers, and movement into Art.
120 fouettés in 24 seconds, 2 meter high jumps, technical precision, a certain weight, a certain height, colour, age, looks, not one of them, and not all of them bundled together with a golden bow on top, guarantee we will see… Dance!
Sorry to say (at this point you are squinting at my pointed finger), if Ballet does not have these two qualities, it is not Dance! Call it Fancy Gymnastics, or something like that, but NOT Dance. (Fist on the table!)
I’m making fun, but the truth is, this couldn’t be more serious. It seems, looking the Dance millieu from the outside, that the hard work needed ends up making people forget the forest and see only the next tree.
The consequences of forgetting about what Dance really is, are far reaching and sad. It means female dancers having bodies as spindly as an insect’s leg. It means male dancers with busted spines. It means dancers with busted joints, bones and tendons. It means the average age of retirement is 35. It means 30% of retirements are due to injuries. It means dancers believing they are done at 40. It means dancers believing they are not dancers if they don’t overextend. It means dancers seeing themselves more as performers of dangerous or exotic feats (those pics of contortionism are so popular now… aargh!) than artists.
It also means a certain kind of public, as well as many companies, agents, choreographers and ballet schools believing these absurdities are normal, unavoidable and correct. It seems a kind of mass delusion! Beware!!!
REALLY! I’m deeply disappointed every time I see a bland, perfect display of technical precision performed by correctly looking and emploi-ed dancers, so keen in achieving outstanding feats they forget why, after all, they are on stage… They may win an ISO 9000 Ballet Quality Control Certificate… but if they don’t give me what I came for, what’s the point?
A little scared by my frown, you say that good technique, the right looks, age, etc, are not opposed to artistry… on the contrary, they enhance it…
Wonderful Tamara Rojo as Manon
Yes! you are right! Sometimes those gifted with my necessary qualities come with a plus… and I’m very grateful when it happens!
Only… overvalued rules end up establishing a trend: the exclusion of non-complying dancers, gifted or not, from school on, no matter what… and the poor remaining creatures are beaten out of their individuality as much as possible! And the rules keep coming, ever more strict and more demanding! If dancers are born with what it takes, they must be REALLY, fiercely driven by their talent, not to forget what they knew instinctively. Because, you see, gracefulness, and acting skills, seem nowadays invisible (I wonder if some times even negative?) to decision makers – the Guardians of Rules in the Sacred Temples – the big companies.
Still on your remark: I don’t need a complete package! give me gracefulness and magic, and I will be happy – it is what really counts. Anything else is unexpected profit – it enhances their worth, but is by far not so valuable as the capital…
If dancers are graceful, and create magic, they may be old or young, white, black, yellow or green, have too big boobs or feet, or a belly, be bald, tall or small… I will love them.
Odetta is an example. Dancers over 40 that refuse to stop, like Alessandra Ferri – who created Cheri with, by the way, not-built-by-the-rule Hernan Cornejo, is another. I would not want to miss this:
or this
But, you say, these are exceptional dancers…
Yes, they are, in that they did not accept labels!
“Now we’re seeing labral tears (tear in hip joint) and issues in their back in 11 and 12-year-olds, which is very disconcerting because while they’re doing these moves to make themselves better dancers, they are often actually ruling themselves out of a professional career because they are getting injuries so young.”
Lisa Howell, Dance Physioterapist, among others, of Australian Ballet
Lisa Howell is Dance Physiotherapist in Australia, where dance is becoming more popular than any sport except swimming.
Worse thing is, I don´t even like that gymnastics-look trend in Dance. I see at all these popular pictures, and great dancers like Natalia Osipova and Sarah Lamb being bent and twisted until almost being turned inside out, and see no beauty and no magic. Choreographers like Wayne MacGregor and Alastair Marriott seem keen on that kind of “dancing”, that feels to me, specially when it comes in plotless works – where it doesn’t have even the excuse of imparting a meaning – just like a kind of perversion of Dance should be.
Weird pics like that make me sad.
Alina Blakova and Oleg Gabishev in Rodin by Boris Eifman
You see these strange things done more often by female dancers. Why? Are they more flexible as a rule? I hope so, because I would not like to think this is a new way to fetichize woman’s bodies.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – first composition at the age of 5, died when 35 years old.
There are nowadays so many kids with incredible skills, considering their age! In my FB Timeline, a pretty quiet one, I see several a year. They all, surely, have an unexpected skill… but will they all become great artists?
Every time I see one of them, usually with hundreds of thousands views, I feel pity: brought under spotlights by their proud parents, they are now under the scrutiny of the world.
They will become very aware of themselves, freedom and innocence about their work fading away before they are ready to deal with flatter and the limitations of every human being. They stand out amazingly against the average in the beginning, we cannot help by cheering them… there is unanimity, because their youth makes us forgive them for not being “perfect” (whatever our particular definition of perfection) – oh, they have time, one day they will be all we wish!
Barbara Newhall Follet – published her first acclaimed novel at the age of 12. At 25, deeply depressed, she walked away from home and was never seen again.
The bubble.
With great expectations coming from far and near, the child’s own expectations will grow.
They are at an impressionable age, and their identity develops tied to their skill and the decurring success … and may be badly shaken when they grow up, when their age is no more out of sync with skill level – the high winds of success turning into a sedated breeze… or vanishing for good.
Young prodigies are very often overexposed – now with Internet, an extreme exposure – and live in a bubble of success doomed to burst when entering adulthood, or, better said, THIS component of their success is doomed.
I wonder if they, their parents and their eventual agents realize it is a bubble… I have seen, far more often, a naïve belief that the child’s success is a small sample of all the acclaim that will surely keep increasing as age increases too.
Artists and success…
Now forget early talents. Any great artist may have success, but will seldom be unanimity – one feature that distinguishes a mere artisan from the artist, is that the latter is unique, individuality is always fierce – dividing people’s opinion.
Vincent Van Gogh
Some will love, some will find impossible to like. Praise may increase during his lifetime, as his work matures – but if he is of the rule-breaking kind, critics will come along praise, and they may be as sharp as praise is warm.
Great success may come or not, and may or not depend on actual talent – more often than not, nowadays, it depends on luck, on shifting fashion, on the degree of exposure. Great success never was, is, or will be an adequate measure of real artistry.
Now add the two… … and we have bad news!!
Oh, not necessarily, but in most cases! Well known artists, especially in Performance Arts, and especially when young, come to rely on their audience’s response…
Joshua Bell, despite his 3 million dollars Stradivarius, didn’t live up to MY expectations… for all its worth – not when I compare his interpretative power with my beloved Heifetz!
Only, there is a massive withdrawal of praise when a gifted kid grows up – just because the out-of-sync component is gone – now he/she is an artist as any other artist, that will not be forgiven anything more because of age – now he is expected to come up to “my” expectations (whatever they are). If he does not, “I” will be VERY disappointed, I may turn from an admirer into a critic – if I had never been interested and idealizing, it would be different!
The young talented adult sees himself no more in the top of the mountain – even if it was not easy to keep balance there, he had felt it as his own already. He slides down to some place he is not used to, where he is definitely not comfortable – the change in one or two years is so great, it may take away his drive, and balance, and self-esteem, make him doubt himself.
Shirley Temple – last movie at the age of 21
He may try to come up to all the multiple expectations and idealizations, and loose himself and his creativity while seeking to regain former levels of acclaim – not realizing it may never be reached again, and should not even be further sought. He may receive unexpected attacks, scorn, and dismissal, and be utterly unprepared to deal with them. He may feel as the victim of an unfair world. He may enter in denial. He may simply give up.
The change is too great for some, they never recover, and their Art is lost in drugs, unbalanced behavior, in aggressive attitudes that turn away fellow professionals and public, in neurotic disorders. I have seen too many young prodigies that were unable to unfold as adult talents – such a loss for all of us!
On the other hand…
The first years of adulthood may be hard, and suffering inevitable, but some, fortunately,
Jasha Heifetz – “God’s Fiddler”
survive to be greater than ever – those that don’t feel sorry for themselves, that learn to respect their inner voice more than any external opinion, that learn to deal both with bad critics and unreasonable idealizations – if they are graced with any level of empathy, comprehension of what happened to us and to themselves will just enrich their work.
Anyway, it is now that their real artistic life can begin, because paradoxically, now they will have more freedom and will be able to reach new depths… now, having got ridden of the youth label and all that came in its wake. Now they are just, and at last, what they are… and this is MORE, not less!
All in all…
Sometimes it is inevitable, some talents are so great they stand out at a tender age already, no matter what. But all in all, I wish parents were wiser, and more aware of the consequences of bringing their talented children under the spotlights – or, if it can’t be helped, that they would be wise enough to prepare them for the bubble bursting process.
In Ballet!
Everything in Ballet must happen so fast! Dancers have nowadays a terribly short active life, in average, less than 20 years of actual dancing! So all are in a hurry. Dance competitions bring us a few precocious talents every year. A few of THESE rise meteorically, and are just 19, 20 years old when they arrive “at the top”: a principal in a big company – by that time, they are already world famous! And then what? They have suffered/will suffer incredible, ever increasing demands from their public, and are even more prone to early injuries than the average dancer. AND also grow up, no matter what.
Sergei Polunin – soloist at Royal Ballet at the age of 19, principal at the age of 20.
Right now, we have several young prodigies at some stage of their transition period: choreographer Justin Peck, dancers like Misty Copeland, Ivan Vasiliev, Sergei Polunin are well known examples,. I hope they all grace us with long active, fruitful lives – in the History of Ballet, you find pretty few like them before.
Ivan Vasiliev- Bolshoi soloist at 17, principal at 21.
To be a ballet professional was never as hard as it is nowadays, and even so, I have big hopes in some of them – in some… more than in others! Future will show if I got them right!
“No dancer should be unconfident enough to need to read their reviews. What would they do? Try to adjust their performance? As Tamara Rojo once pointed out to me, which critic should she try to please?
Tamara Rojo
(…) The memorable interpreters and creators are those who burn us with the heat of the flame that propels them, they’re not asking us to help bring their hesitant little glow to life with our paper cuttings. They know when they felt they’d done well, got it right – and very likely there were no critics there at the time.”
As to the point as Ms.Brown article, is the first comment made by a reader: “I agree with the sentiment of the comment and it does not in the least bother me if I do not agree with what critics have written but … too many critics can make personal and unnecessary comments about the people they are reviewing and that is reprehensible doing a disservice to the artists, audience and readers.” JanMcN
I agree again!!
Ms. Brown writes: “As they [reviewers] write, they have no feelings about the performer at all, only a selfish interest in whether the interpreter delivered them, as spectators, what they sought, what they wanted to feel as a result of experiencing this work of art.” We are often “graced”, however, with the reviewer’s opinion on the performer behind the role, on his character and private motivations… the work of art just a misty background! A missed opportunity to inform, educate and share appreciation of Art.
“No one, clearly, is advocating that performances of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake should be cast with 50-year-olds. But McGregor has demonstrated how much of a waste it can be for mature artists simply to be put out to pasture as non-dancing kings, queens, eccentrics and crones. They can be capable of a far wider choreographic and expressive range; and, if they’re given the right material, can bring much-needed texture, contrast, wit and realism to the ballet stage.” (highlight is mine)
If you think about, it becomes so obvious. It’s how things are in other Performance Arts. Dance as Art would profit, GREATLY! but what a change it would require in current ballet organizations!
It happens I greatly admire a dancer that some (great experts, I suppose) “accuse” of having poor turn-out. I did not care, because it does not impair the beauty of his dancing at all. But then, I read some western reviewers that saw a causal connection between “faulty” turn-out and height of jumps. When I was a dancer myself, a long time ago, I did not hear a single word about this, and it triggered my curiosity now.
I have not found (yet?) objective information on this connection. Those reviewers used it to explain why Russian dancers jump higher: they would also have “poor” turn-out more often than western dancers, and there would reside their ability to reach greater heights. The connection may be just one of those myths that grow, who knows how, in every community, but… may Russian dancers jump higher or not, may their turn-out be perfect or not… I must say: it makes sense!
But I also found out some disturbing objective, REAL facts about turn-out: it is responsible for shortening the active career of many dancers, because it wears out all articulations, ligaments and tendons from hips down to toes! Of course! It is logical, isn’t it? It’s an unnatural position, constantly exerting strain on them!
My teachers used to say turn-out was needed for balance. I recently asked some gymnastics physical trainers (not ballet teachers this time) how exactly it helped me stay still on point. They laughed… and I felt cheated! It’s just how, or where, you place the weight of your hip bones and head above your feet, one said, and to a lesser degree, on the strength of your calf and back bones to keep them there. You may be in the craziest position, the other one said, just find your center of gravity and place it in a vertical line above your foot and you are in balance. Hm.
Please, don’t think I would wish to wipe turn-out out of ballet! There is no way an arabesque will look beautiful with a heel protruding skyward! And an attitude would cease to be an attitude, to become just… a foot pointing up behind your back. An entrechat would be impossible (just think! what a mess!)… and it certainly helps you place your hips correctly and not look like a duck in pliés (it helps, but is not indispensable).
But on the other hand… running through the stage with your feet turned-out is NOT beautiful, it looks, BE TRUTHFUL NOW!… ridiculous!!! We dancers and ballet lovers, including myself, just became used to this strange aesthetic, and do not question it anymore. When I allowed myself to see its oddness, I remembered that Juliet running down the stairs with turned-out knees and feet always made me cringe, and vaguely wish something was different… BE TRUTHFUL AGAIN: it looks NOT graceful!
If it depended on me. I would ask female dancers to walk and run keeping 12h in their mind, instead of 14:45h, and male dancers to walk/run using their feet in the most comfortable way…
I analyzed a lot of steps and positions, and came to the conclusion that several of them would be more graceful if legs and feet were in a more natural position… and that turn-out is not needed for several others – the taking-off and landing in big jumps being just one of the examples. How things came to be the way they are? How did ballet become so unnatural? Why?
Would it not be wiser to use full turn-out only where it is really needed, and keep dancers dancing for a longer time?
Oh, my goodness, this sounds as anarchism in my own ears, but maybe it IS being questioned nowadays, and I just don’t know – after all, my technical knowledge is not extensive or up to date. I hope so: why not question standards that are unhealthy and/or ungraceful?
I doubt, anyway, Petipa was half as keen on full, perfect turn-out as ballet experts are nowadays…
One of my recent posts was about the wildly different expectations that different kinds of audience have when attending a ballet evening – that explain why so many leave necessarily disappointed. Now, I’m addressing a certain kind of audience, MY kind, most of all – the premises being: good acting is important, body-language is important, meaning is necessary – technique must be subordinated to them.
Different from theatre and movies, where natural, life-like acting is used almost 100% of the time, in dance there are many choices.
“Suspension of disbelief”: Vanessa Redgrave – Heath Ledger – Johny Depp – Adrian Ross Magenty, Emma Thompson, Helene Bonham-Carter
No acting at all is the first of them – and the strangest one for me: that a performance art should give up meaning, that dance should give up body-language, and become just pure form!
Then there is formalistic acting, more than one kind. The traditional one is grounded on century-old mime, and looks very strange to me, but has fierce fans. More modern kinds are used mostly in contemporary dance, usually a choice made by the choreographer himself, and I can see their value, even if it is not the kind I like most.
Giselle’s mother warns her of her weak heart, and the risk of death.
And finally believable acting, of course, the kind that “suspends your disbelief” – the only kind I consider GOOD acting, and the most difficult one.
So there are choices to be made by the choreographer, or even the artistic director, and then by the dancers themselves. I always hope they choose the kind I prefer – that theatre and movie actors prefer -, but there are so many obstacles to see my wish fulfilled!
The training
In the great Ballet Schools acting is part of the program, but not a central one, it remains far, far, very far behind all-important physical technique – with special care to traditional formalistic mime. A dancer with natural acting skill is always in danger of having to un-learn intellectually what he already knew instinctively…
The training in Contemporary Dance Schools and in Performance Arts courses in universities is a lot better, but aimed mostly… at Contemporary Dance, of course! And for all I have seen, emphasis is on expressive choreography (a good, very good thing, by the way!). So what about the classical trained dancers?
Needs x requirements
There are so many dramatic ballets, by so many important choreographers: Tudor, Ashton, Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, MacMillan, Neumeier, Liam Scarlett, Grigorovitch, Ratmansky, and on it goes… These ballets deserve good acting! These ballets NEED good acting!
Marcia Haydée – Lady of Camelies (Neumeier)
But acting skill, and I mean GOOD acting, is NOT a real requirement when selecting, promoting or hiring a dancer – again, physical technique is far more valued!
When it comes the moment to perform, however, all expect (at least the audience does!) the dancer will know his acting! What do dancers do, then? Try to be the best they can, learning maybe from his fellow-dancers or by themselves… not an easy task, either way – his fellows are at a loss just as he/she is, and learning alone has limited efficacy and is time-consuming.
The traditional Standards
Many dancers complain of the tight acting standards they must obey in the big companies, that go from a prescribed way of acting to an open disapproval of any display of individuality.
Type-casting
This is a tough one, that wastes the rare natural acting talents in roles that do not require acting, and also the contrary, using in dramatic roles dancers that do not have (“my” kind of!) acting skill. A real shame!
Alina Somova – Romeo and Juliet
The audience…s
There are several kinds of audiences, with different expectations on acting. Choreographers, coachers, dancers, artistic directors, when they make a choice, are also choosing the kind of audience they will be addressing – it is impossible – read that again, I beg you: it is IMPOSSIBLE – to please all of them at the same time! It means that, if we ALL keep attending ALL kinds of performance, THEY must know they will certainly displease many of us… an uncomfortable trap!
Acting Itself
When a dancer is cast in a dramatic role, and willing to make a good job, he/she has challenges to win that are intrinsic to acting.
To make a character believable, it must be coherent throughout the play, and, at the same time, full of nuances – no matter what kind of character. This requires a deep understanding of the human being, and great empathy, to perform even someone the dancer is not, or does not feel like.
Alina Cojocaru – Giselle Mad Scene
He must also grasp what the choreographer, and the artistic director, intended from his character, and incorporate these intentions to his own interpretation.
The role he creates cannot exist alone, it must interact believably with the other roles in the play – may the other dancers be good actors, too, or not!
The dancer is not acting in front of a camera that can show the slightest tremor of the lid – he must reach down to the last rows – and THIS requires great skill!
He/she must be able to create on-the-run empathy, to feel how we-seated-there-in-the-dark are reacting, and make us follow, feel with he wants.
And last but not least, he/she cannot be self-conscious! On stage, an actor cannot be Mr. X making a careful performance of Macbeth… he must be Macbeth himself – as a dancer cannot be Mr. Z performing Armand, he must BE Armand. When acting is good, you forget about X and Z, and see only the role. Not an easy feat… careful, self-conscious performers as most dancers are!
While dancing!
Alessandra Ferri and Hernan Cornejo – Cheri
All this challenges, of course, must be faced while making a great display of balletic technique, caring for the partner, finding his cues and place on stage, following the music…
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Is it not incredible that the acting of some dancers, despite all that, is able to blow me off my feet? More than that, is it not incredible that some of them blow me off my feet, not at the expense, but while displaying great dancing?
Awesome creatures!
Some of them are as good in dramatic as in comic roles, like amazing Alessandra Ferri, or great Manuel Legris… Some of them are as good seen from afar as in a close-up, in fact good enough for an Oscar (now I’m thinking of Alina Cojocaru)…
Ketevan Papava and Manuel Legris – Die Fledermaus – Click on image to link to video, it is delicious!
They are ALMOST inexistent in the triangle USA/Russia/England (I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true!), most dancers who are also good actors come from France, Germany, Spain, Latin America… a handful of them nowadays, no more – with so much obstacles, if the dancer hasn’t natural skill, and a persistent drive to use it, he is doomed.
In the newest generation they are even rarer, especially in classical ballet. It is not surprising – nowadays Form and perfect physical technique are valued much higher – overrated, I would say – and not only in Dance, it is a wide-spread characteristic of modern society! Content? meaning? well, so long it does not overshadow technique, it may receive some attention…
The greatest exception between the younger ones in Triangle of Bermudas of acting is Ivan Vasiliev, the only one of his generation to cope with the whole array of acting challenges from the start, with flying colours. He is able to bring life and meaning to any role, tragical or comical, from Czar Ivan, The Terrible to Colas in La Fille Mal Gardée – besides having a wealth of other qualities.
He must make deliberate choices about each of his perfomances, because the outcome is always unique and specific, deeply coherent in both the dramatic and technical dimensions of the role.
Ivan Vasiliev, of course, is not unanimity in the audience, as no other dancer is – one could not expect THAT with so different kinds of public. Maybe he is aware that the choices he makes will please many of us, but not all – those like me, luckily, seem to be priority number one in his book!
Le Jeune Homme et La Mort
I wish more of the classical trained younger dancers were like him…
After all, concert dance is a Performance Art! Or is it possible to disagree even on that?
Dance was the first great passion in my life, but even when I was part of our Dance community, little information about what was going on “there, where it matters” reached us – if at all, with great delay. We were just too far away, and Communication Age had not yet begun. I was lucky, I had teachers that were ex-dancers that had gone abroad and eventually came back with solid knowledge and great technical skill, but this happened so seldom, less than once in a decade! All I knew by then was pure classical (the most contained, severe English style!) and Martha Graham. When I gave up dancing, I kept the greatest possible distance between me and all that concerned Ballet, by my own choice – a kind of Dance “coma”…
I awakened to a “new” world, a world I had not been aware existed.
I was searching YouTube for classical Music works that had never graced the shelves of my city’s stores, when I linked to a piece that was just score to a ballet. BALLET! I realized, for the first time, that I could now see ballets, performances, dancers I had only heard about before – and was suddenly overcome by an urgent longing for Dance. I started with Martha Graham, and went on on suggested links, Paul Taylor, Pina Bausch, Twyla Tharp… Awesome! I remember clearly my amazement, as I realized all that had happened during the time I had been “away”.
Eventually I clicked on Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello” staged by San Francisco Ballet, Desmond Richardson and Yuan Yuan Tan as principals. I was mesmerized! So beautiful this blend of classical and contemporary, so different from all I had known, the richer choreography, the amazing male roles – these men were REALLY dancing! And choreography and dancers were all so deeply expressive! I watched it three times in a row before I could go on.
I went on to Othello’s PDD danced by Marcelo Gomes and Alessandra Ferri. WOW…! Until that moment, all I knew about him was that he is a Brazilian ballet dancer who succeded abroad. I searched more.
Wow!… WOW!…
Two more days with my eyes glued to the screen, and I knew ALL about him and Alessandra I could get on the web: clips, interviews, pictures, reviews. Marcelo Gomes led me next to the Kings of the Dance.
I clicked on Labyrinth of Solitude.
Ivan Vasiliev in Labyrinth of Solirude – chr. Patrick De Bana – Photographer: Nikolay Krusser
I had never seen anything so beautiful and heartbreaking before. It was so overwhelming I stopped all I was doing , and went for a walk to think about what I had seen. My life had suffered a division: there is a before and an after Labyrinth.
THIS much meaning, feeling, power could be conveyed through Dance!! I knew, back from my days, that for those who dance, it can be a deep sensorial and emotional experience, but I had been also sadly aware that this experience was not extended to our audience! A Ballet evening was just a sophisticated event that people with cultured tastes felt obliged to attend, but the moment the curtains closed, they started talking about where to have dinner, the stock market… – had that evening existed or not, nothing was changed.
But THIS! this was something else. Labyrinth had blowed me off my feet! Not as a dancer, but as audience. And not in a theatre, seated in the dark, magic flowing from a lighted stage, but at home, my pets fooling around me, phone ringing, – on a 14″ notebook with awful sound quality…
It became my favourite work, and a sort of standard. I like everything about Labyrinth. The theme; the music (Vitali, strange composer, who created this one sweeping, emotional score 150 years ahead of his time…); the way it is danced by Vasiliev, believable and intense; the absence of settings and costume; De Bana’s expressive choreography, and how he blended all of it into something that was more than the sum of parts.
After gathering my wits back, I searched further (my ethernal gratitude to YouTube’s inventor!), and started to identify which choreographers and dancers had been – and are now – responsible for this new (for me) richness. I knew several by name or a rare photo, but had never SEEN the real dancing, believe it or not! My personal “hall of fame” became a mix of active and retired professionals, even some long passed away – problem is, they jumped into my life all at once, it took me some time to correctly locate them in space and time – they were all very “here and now” in my mind – they still are, and I like it that way.
I fell deeply in love with Dance again, more than before. I saw, at last, Dance becoming an Art like her sisters. THIS was what Dance should be, anyone could appreciate, could love it now, men and women, young and old, expert or not. Anyone should be given the opportunity to experience its power, everyone should be exposed to its magic: I had a Quest!
My other projects (I always have too many, anyway) became less important, as my knowledge and awareness grew steadily. I’m fortunate that I can now, as never before in a too busy life, open my door and let Dance and Music come in and make themselves really comfortable in me. (only problem is, I suffer from fits of goose-bumps at an alarming rate nowadays).
The Quest means no hard work at all: I use it as an excuse to write about beauty and art gifted people create for us – giving Dance some thought while I write – not as an expert, but as the grateful receiving end, and then throw it in the wind/web, hoping it makes a difference, even the tiniest one, in bringing Dance closer to a wider audience. The other task is to win people around me over… making them some pleasure, too, when I succeed. Is that nice or what?
Full of Dance 