“As an artist, I’m always naked. When you are on stage or before a camera, you must have the courage to be completely naked. This makes an artist really vulnerable, but also used to extreme situations, and, in a paradoxical way, gives us great strength. ”
In an interview when she was still principal of Royal Ballet, in August 2012:
“I try to go on stage and be honest with myself. I can only rely on my feelings. My main aim is to share what I feel with my audience. When I go on stage I forgive myself if my show’s not perfect, but I don’t forgive myself if I did not become who I should be on stage. (…)
What I love about working in Hamburg is the creative environment. Even working on ballets that have been created so many years ago, you can bring something to it, and feel like you’re still part of it, bringing ideas to the ballet. That’s nowhere to be found in London of course. You have the people in charge of the ballet trying to protect the choreography… protecting it to keep it looking like it used to be. I do respect the choreographers [but] it’s a constant battle there to bring something to every ballet I perform, to bring something new into the old.”
…but then Neumeier created Liliom for her in Hamburg, she won the Benois Prize on it, and moved on to Tamara Rojo’s now revolutionary ENB. Our luck! When she is on stage, her deeds speak for themselves – she IS what she says! Admirable dancer… AND person!
—————————————————-
A battle to bring something new, of her own, to a ballet? Indeed!
What are they so afraid of, there in Royal Ballet? Protecting choreography is more important than “ME”, in the audience? Odd way of thinking – choreographies are already very well recorded, that should be enough!
How nice there is ENB now, where I’m taken into account… I don’t have any doubts where I will chose to be in my ballet evenings – there where Tamara Rojo and Alina Cojocaru will be giving us new choreographers, new ballets, new, individual, ways of performing the worn out old roles!
“Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressive – that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims.”
——————————-
One of Tennessee Williams’ most powerful plays, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), became a movie (directed by Elia Kazan) that earned various Oscars at the time – a raw, heart-wrenching and desillusioned affair… and an absolute must-see!
Two choreographers did a great job translating it to dance: Neumeier for Marcia Haydée and Stuttgart Ballet, in 1983, and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, working together with movie director Nancy Meckler, for Scottish Ballet (2012).
Neumeier play is in Stuttgart’s regular repertoire (scheduled next in May, 2015), and an item in my wish-list!
There was some dismissive nose-wrinkling, once more, on these kind of story-telling ballets, “a lesser kind of dance art”… If Tennessee Williams’ were to write a play equivalent to a ballet without narrative, it would be made of meaningless sequences of beautiful words… and THIS should be some kind of “higher art”? Oh, spare me!
I’m just as big a fan of Natalia Osipova as of Ivan Vasiliev. And there are others, I just had not time, yet, to write about them all (when I started this blog I had a latent demand of issues I HAD to write about, but now I’m good, I think…).
Natalia is an absolute pleasure to watch. I had no doubt, at any time, that hers would be a brilliant path, she will become a legend.
I remember only too well that when she became a Royal Ballet principal, a lot was said about her lack of clean technique, of excessive energy, of too russian style – the same kind of remark made all the time about Ivan Vasiliev. What will these critics say now? That she didn’t deserve the awards? That we may love her performances, but should not, because they know better?
Ok…
It is nice to see things be shaken a bit there, she brought new spark and life into Royal Ballet’s roles. She’s not a dare-devil as Ivan Vasiliev, has not all his revolutionary potential, or better said, she HAS, but chose not to use it. She chose, instead, a structured, safe environment, probably it suited better her workaholic, perfectionist temperament. She was right, obviously – there are the results!
I was disappointed when she joined Royal Ballet, and when she almost disowned her contemporary experience in Solo For Two. I do not mourn Vasipova as some do (I believe a great dancer brings the best out of any partner, and in that sense, they being apart does a lot of good to other dancers). But she chose the safest path of all… (sigh). A loss for the changing process that is happening in Dance, but if she is happy (I hope she is…), and if she feels it enables her to get the most out of her talent, so be it! We surely cannot complain!!!
I wonder if there will come a time when, coaching a soloist in a new role, it will be “no, no, look, that’s how Osipova did it!” instead of “that’s how Dame Fonteyn did it”. I loved Dame Fonteyn in my (her) time, as we all did, and I still love her
. But I must be candid: now I love Natalia Osipova more, she is a more complete artist. Margot Fonteyn WAS the best, really was, but… Dance is changing, and for the better. Criteria that applied 50 years ago, and were absolutely right at the time, are not valid anymore.
In a party I’m telling a friend I just bought tickets to see a certain performance.A stranger in a group nearby turns around and says “Oh, I was there yesterday! It was… (whatever)..!”. What can I do with his opinion? I don’t know “from where he is speaking”: has he a dancing background? in a specific kind of dancing? of Dancing? Vaganova, Ohad Naharin, he is older – perhaps Merce Cunningham? What is “Dance” to him? Or what should Dance ideally be? What were his expectations BEFORE taking a seat? What is beautiful in his eyes? Why did he go? What place has Art in his life? What other performances did he see before this one? …
I will not ask all these questions, of course (not fancying be elected the party’s Bore#1), but if I don’t know their answers, how can I judge his judgement? Dance became so multifaceted, there are so many movements (cultural, not physical), styles, techniques, that sprang out of such from-ground-up-different premises, that pursue such different goals! How can a Vaganova dancer have a helpful opinion on a Crystal Pite performance? The other way round?
How can anyone have a really helpful opinion on any kind of Dance that is not part of “his own” background, and based on his own values and tastes? But there is more: everything is changing fast in Dance. Premises become outdated, styles and techniques disappear with their creators, whole companies shift their goals with a new AD…
I believe these are important reasons to explain why opinions on a performance are becoming a Tower of Babel. Opinions are sometimes so diverse, they seem to be about different performances. We ALL became incompetent to judge the the whole range of styles and techniques, to grasp adequately premises and goals of every performance, we all… just judge from where we stand!
When we hear an opinion, we must switch our “careful mode” ON, because we don’t know “where it comes from”. Also, when we have an opinion, it’s good practice, even an ethical one, to tell openly where OURS comes from.
So this about common viewers, but then we have the professional Dance reviewers! Are they any different?
Why would they be?
I have been trying for some time now to write about the “discourse about dance” made by reviewers: it is also a very confusing discourse, but sadly (even dangerously?) it is authoritive one, the “legitimate” one, not because it is less “localized”, or really that much knowledgeable, or more objective – it has authority because of the press power, and because very little is publicly said and discussed about Dance, dance professionals seldom “think Dance” (more action-proned, I believe…).
What follows are excerpts of professional reviews I collected about ENB’s Swan Lake, production of Derek Deane, cast was Alina Cojocaru and Ivan Vasiliev. I could have chosen excerpts about corps, great Alina Cojocaru, James Streeter, staging, settings, orchestra – all received contradictory comments, but when it comes to Ivan Vasiliev, opinions are famously divided, and here became so contradictory, you feel the need to sort out the author’s biases, to know who you can trust. I have a dramatic friend who would say: yeah, comical, if it were not tragical (for Ivan, he menas). It seems IV himself does not take them too seriously, or he would already have turned to football, or gone crazy.
Each paragraph cites a different reviewer, ALL that I had free access to on the web (if you know of someone else, please inform me!). No names, because I’m not analyzing this or that reviewer, but them all as a group, a group with authority to discourse about Dance.
…Vasiliev is not a naturally dramatic actor...
…Vasiliev very nearly turns this most female of ballets into a male narrative. He almost kidnaps the drama – not with his eye-popping leaps, although these are impressive, but with urgent acting that uses his entire body. A lean of the torso to indicate longing, a bow of the head to suggest reflection, and outstretched hands that tenderly hold his precious Swan Queen…
.. he’s a delightfully sincere, satisfying hero, partnering his leading lady with tender steadiness and emoting his heart out. Purists prefer slenderer, leggier chaps, but Vasiliev’s awestruck gentleness in the Act II Pas de deux and his heartrending contrition in Act IV were everything I want in a Siegfried.
… he offers too few of the qualities — emotional, physical — that must define a traditional balletic Prince … Brooding, heavy in presence, his Siegfried was a stranger to this presentation.
… His acting, more than anything, is impressive: the sharp contrasts of ecstatic happiness and distress bring a colourful and exciting light to the production.
…he brings a remarkable degree of softness to this most heartfelt of soliloquies … his was one of the most openly expressive character performances as Siegfried that I have seen … . From many meaningful examples, one…
… This production retains the full mime sequences between Siegfried and Odette which one suspects isn’t a element he would have encountered in his training in Russia, but he dealt with these very naturally and his bow to Odette when she tells him she is a princess is as courtly as you could wish. There is a prince there after all.
… (Vasiliev) has trimmed himself down in the wake of some fairly rough performances … his feverish, silent-movie heroics, which give us an idea of what it must have been like to watch the dramatic Soviet dancers of the 1930s … Emotionally, the pair are forever at cross-purposes, a confusion that reaches its apogee in Act 4 when, without warning or apparent motive, he races across the stage and hurls himself to his death.
…during these last 20 minutes (Act 4) that the ballet found its truest poetry. From the moment Ivan Vasiliev’s Siegfried sank to his knees, begging forgiveness from his doomed ballerina Alina Cojocaru, you felt the shiver of impending tragedy. Vasiliev looked like a man harrowed and hollowed by misery; his big, exuberant body sagging under the burden of guilt. … given its power, it’s hard to pin down exactly why the stellar combination of Cojocaru and guest star Vasiliev didn’t deliver in the preceding acts.
… Mais surtout, c’est dans la construction de ses interactions avec sa partenaire qu’il a gagné notre suffrage....
…They were terrific on their own but excitingly, Cojocaru and Vasiliev also gelled magnificently in the big pas de deuxs. Their lakeside duet of introduction was exquisite – he was a wonderfully supportive and restrained partner which allowed her to trace her footwork through the air with the finesse of a master calligrapher. A superbly tender rapport had been established, and the famous black swan pas de deux revealed fierce passion…
Dramatically, Vasiliev veers to emotional extremes, although he’s clearly trying for complexity (but perhaps we shouldn’t be able to see that he’s trying)…
…one its finest current interpreters … From the moment he came on stage he was the Prince all eyes focused on, even when not given anything to do. The sadness of his Act I solo was palpable … he was very appealing in the way he constantly reached out to her unwilling to let her out of his grasp … admirably stayed in character throughout … In the last act, reunited with Vasiliev’s Siegfried, she (Alina) came into her own and together the emotion of their ultimate sacrifice was all-too-believably human.
————————————————–
Try mixing them up in another ways, take other excerpts… You would just highlight other contradictions – still The Tower of Babel!
What follows now are excerpts from audience’s reactions, found on blogs and again, ALL I could access:
…Second viewing of the Cojocaru/Vasiliev cast, and yes, it was as good as I thought it first time around. There is something about Vasiliev’s (let’s call it burly masculinity) physique that really works for the Prince – the swan is initially wary of him, and it makes perfect sense when the prince looks somewhat dangerous and overwhelming compared to the swan, but then he shows a personality tempered with care and tenderness that overcomes the initially threatening appearance…
…Ivan displaying a new (and unexpected) talent for the princely roles. He reigned in his usual exuberant display especially in Act 3, (though he was still brilliant in the Solos and Pas de Deux) channelling his energy into his passion for Odette, and stayed within character throughout. …
… Vasiliev didn’t quite work for me, I admit this may be because I was too far away to catch nuances of his interpretation…
… What a lovely production and it was a great evening…I have never seen Alina dance before, although I have seen Ivan, but not in such a classical role. The white Acts (1 and 2)were sublime and the black Ac t(Act 3) terrific. The tragic ending (Act 4) was so fitting. Very pleased that I managed to get a ticket.
… She (my wife) was significantly less impressed by Ivan Vasiliev’s Prince, and she was most decidedly unimpressed by the tempi adopted for parts of Act 2…
… ENBs SL is a lovely version. Vasiliev was good and a very genteel Prince. He treated Odette so tenderly , …
… Vasiliev might not be a born Siegfried, but the man looks good on stage whatever he does and the partnership worked pretty well. Very nice PDDs. Though I couldn’t quite suppress a slight giggle when he delivered the most dramatic eye roll I have yet seen, on stage or off.
… He was, and I am unsure how to put this, a little vacant. …His expression very much ‘dude where’s my swan’ through most of the drama. There was no ardour in kissing Odette’s hand, scant astonishment (as I have seen from some dancers) when he meets her…. Only in Act 3 did he seem to come alive, I did in fact exclaim a ‘wow‘ under my breath. There was the Vasiliev I had heard about. It was just a shame that at times his acting didn’t match the dancing… Here, (Odette’s) heartfelt glances and looks – played to Vasiliev’s slightly more monotonal expression…
…On the other hand, I couldn’t take my eyes off Vasiliev. … the slightest tilt of his body suggested his pain and boredom at court, his anguish in the later stages.
—————————————————-
If you read this far: are you any wiser? Were reviewers, as a group, more objective or helpful than audience as a group? Could you spot how diverse bias, values, pre-conceptions, pre-judices?
Maybe you noticed, as I did: there are more positive remarks. That’s nice, it is a relief when a performance is so remarkable it overrides pre-conceptions, and the Tower of Babel languages become more similar.
What I value most, however, are comments written a short time after the performance, when the author is still under its spell… BECAUSE of it’s spell – I trust them more than a purely intellectual text that it took days to create.
And I don’t take into account those that like ballet restricted to pure visual aesthetic (and usually see flaws more than anything else). Why? because I have my one pre-conceptions. For me Dance is Art when it is Form+Content. Form+Content make possible what I, not having found a better word, call “magic”. My (certainly biased) opinion is: what ENB, maybe Tamara Rojo made possible, WAS Art, and what Ivan Vasiliev and Alina Cojocaru created, WAS Art!…
“They don’t want to deal with people. They want to deal with things. They want to deal with extensions and plies and beats and words that don’t have to mean anything. They’re not interested in people. They’re not interested in you. They don’t plumb your depths. In other words, they’re not humanists.They’re playing with things. They make dance a thing. A thing.”
(interview when he was 85 years old, talking about post-modernism in Dance, exemplified by Merce Cunningham’s style).
Danile Nagrin was an actor and a dancer, choreographer and teacher. He wrote, among other books “The Six Questions: Acting Technique For Dance Performance”. He was deeply influenced by Stanislavski’s Method, and a fierce humanist.
I’m a fan!!! And we have something in common… in the Introduction of The Six Questions he says: “I may believe fiercely, but I’m sure of nothing.” (italics are his) If you read my ABOUT, you know that’s exactly how I feel.
Link to the interview is: <http://jashm.press.illinois.edu/12.3/12-3Interview_Roses-Therma114-119.pdf>
I had radical positions about pure-classical-Ballet, but they just suffered a good shake! As almost pure-form Dance, I dismissed the great classicals as unimportant in current days (and lost some readers by doing that…). Vasiliev’s successful performance in Swan Lake, the way he interpreted his Siegfried, making people forget about ’emploi’ and Basilio/Philip and turning him into one of the best Siegfrieds ever, proved this blog’s point about the importance of Content in Dance. But he would not have danced Siegfried if Tamara Rojo had not invited him, and let him free him to act. In fact, I’m sure she invited him BECAUSE of that. Probably all Principals are allowed to act, there is even a real kiss (!!!) in last act, and Tamara Rojo herself was accused of a “too passionate” one on her (Matthew Golding) Siegfried. She calmly answered:”“Well, I thought, after three hours on stage, I deserved it. Look at him. Who wouldn’t?” .(kkkkkk) Isn’t she great?
But she is a revolutionary AND wise: ENB retained all the classical form, with beautiful staging and competent dancing, but allowed acting TOO, and as a result the show is a huge succes!! ENB showed ME that that the classicals CAN have content, if just someone is bold enough to make necessary changes (I thought no one was…)!
But I’m not satisfied… ENB is an exception, not the rule. I suppose people are so used to the white ballets, and their lightly coloured companions, as they are, and they ARE so beatifull (I agree!), they cannot understand my prejudice, it sounds as if I am not REALLY a ballet-lover… I was thinking: how could I show someone what bothers me? So I came up with this idea of comparing them with Theater somehow, and it ended up being a most amusing task. Please, if you love Swan Lake, don’t be mad at me, it’s just a joke!
—————————————–
(In a former post about Dance x Theater I reached the conclusion that between Dance and Theater there are just two major differences: the media – voice x body, words x movements -, and the range of ideas and emotions they can express, that is not fully coincident.)
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Swan Lake Ballet transformed into Theater ————
There are no complex emotions, no complex characters, no complex plot in SL, it is well within the coincident range of ideas and emotion both Theater and Dance can express, so this should not be an issue.
All we must do is change the media of Swan Lake from body to voice.
Ballet does not use voice/words, so, the other way round, we will not use body and movements in our Theater play.
The mime transposed to words: very old-fashioned words, arranged in simple, few phrases, ponderously spoken, with lots of intonation, but almost telegraphic in their shortness. The words would have to be chosen with great care, so each phrase carries the same amount of information of the corresponding mime.
The dancing sequences transposed to voice: a lot of sounds emitted in sequence, sounding gorgeous together, but without any meaning.
Acting during pure classical dancing is not required, or even disapproved, so the corresponding sounds should not express anything. They could even become a song, but the song must be made in such a way as not to stir any feeling in the audience, except pure aesthetic admiration (if this is a feeling. Is it?).
If there is mime during dancing, corresponding words /phrases, of course, would be said in the right places during the sequences of meaningless sounds.
To make a fair transposition, actors would not be allowed to move at all, including facial expression, except they could smile to show how easy it is to make all difficult vocalizations (this kind of smile has nothing to do with the story, so it can stay).
As a whole, our play would be made out of short sequences of words/phrases, that would tell the story or inform what is going on, and long sequences of gorgeous meaningless sounds.
Light and settings could be the same, but we should add some seating arragements – it will be hard on our actors to stand still during the whole play, they better be seated. And then we would also want to change tutus to something more comfortable, now that they are sitting. We design instead sparkling white garments with great, high, wing- like scarfs that can flow constantly over the male actor´s face seated next by, to blind and/or hide him during his vocalizations, like tutus do in PDDs.
Done! Now we take seats in the audience and watch the play.
….
We bring Tchaikowsky’s music back, it is not usual on Theater, but we have to do something…
….
Although we can see some very elegant, sophisticated people making positive comments about our break-through staging, most of the audience is yawning or shaking their heads, and they look definitely dismayed. WE are dismayed. It didn’t work.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT 2 – A Swan Lake Theater Play, and back to Ballet——
We surrender. We need more to stage Swan Lake as good Theater, the more so if we want it to be, not just good, but awesome (it should be easy, SL has great possibilities, it is all made of symbols and myths that permeate our culture).
So we forget, for the time being, all about Ballet, and give us freedom to use whatever resources there are in Theater to create a magical, impactful SL. Not being experts, we come up with just 1,859 (approximate number) ways to turn our play into really good Theater and an unforgettable experience. We design new, timeless settings and costumes (myths are timeless) – they become impressive, half gothic, half dream-like; we write powerful dialogues; we embed layers of meaning both in settings and written text and choose carefully our actors, capable of imparting deep, vital emotion – of course, we bring body-language back, so they can use all their acting skills.
AHA, great success!!! Full houses, months on stage! We are very pleased with ourselves.
Now we realize we could make a transposition the other way round, back to Ballet! We have learned what works, it could probably enhance any Ballet performance too. We think about…
….
….
No, a total transposition would decharacterize SL in such a way, it would not be Ballet anymore. We don’t want to make Ballet lovers unhappy, so maybe we use just some of the resources, in a way that will not shock them?
Let’s take the powerful text first. Text is choreography, we must change choreography. We try to create new movements, but are severely limited by Ballet canons; we sequence movements in new ways that are more meaningful, but there are just that much movements available, and structures we cannot change, like the Grand PDD. We try hard, but are unable to bring deep content to the 32 fouettés, for example. The outcome of our effort is almost none.
Well, we can choose more expressive dancers, can we not? A new problem: after we select ballet dancers with the right body-types, among them those with the required technical level, and among them those with great acting skill, we are left with… none! So we change our selection criteria, and choose dancers that are great actors, and that’s it.
Next, we try our hand with body-language. In Theater play it was a decisive resource in imparting all that profound emotion, life and meaning – and this should be easy, as media in Ballet is the body. So we proceed to embed body-language into dancing.
…ooooohh… we had forgotten! Using body-language in Ballet is met with great resistence: it is considered unrefined, incompatible with Ballet’s purity, to some it is even disturbing. And it would mar the perfection of the choreographed lines – without perfect lines, Ballet is not Ballet! We must give up. And fire our expressive dancers, they are all very popular, that means expensive, and we cannot use their skills anyway…
As a last resource, we change settings and costumes to the new impressive ones – and are showered with complaints: ‘Ballet deserves a costly, sparkling, luxurious frame! How drab and cheap yours look! Where are all the pearls, stones, laces, plumes, bows, embroideries, flowers, frills, pleats, drapes, gold, silver, brocade, velvet, silk that belong here? Where are all the plumed tutus, the capes, veils, hats, crowns, tiaras, wigs, fans, scarfs, gloves, brooches, pins, lockets, necklaces, sashes, boots and high-heels that make out of SL such a great show?’
Ok, Ok, Ok! Out with them, then…
(looking at each other)… (sighing)… (realizing a lot of disapproving looks all around us)… (looking at each other again)…
You know what? That’s it! Our notes into the waste-basket, and we go see Billy Elliott!
——————————————–
Jokes apart: I was wrong, I DID throw the baby away with the bath water.
There is much beauty in the classicals, and there are many ways to bring Content into them, so I should not dismiss them so easily.
I really believe that, if certain changes were made in the classical ballets, their worth would soar up, and they would enchant a wider audience that deserves to be there, that wants to be there. Me, for example.
I’m sure a compromise between tradition and meaningful content is possible, without loosing the essential beauty of the classicals. It is sad to let such emblematic works be a mere display of technique, beautiful lines and expensive golden glow. And remember, to the audience of non-experts, there is not even technique to be seen, except as quantities: height of a jump, number of turns, angle of an extension, they are unable to perceive all the fine details a professional can enjoy.
Some re-stagings introduced major changes, like Romeo and Juliet by Nacho Duato in Mikhailovsky. As far as I know, it’s being done in smaller companies, never in the Sacred Temples. As I have not seen more than fragments of these efforts, I’m not able to judge what came out of them: how far they got; if compromise was wisely made; if they were able to win new audience.
As I already wrote elsewhere, Shakespeare’s plays are still there, but no one believes they must be performed now in the same way they were back in XV century (except as a curiosity, or an occasional tribute). Or should we demand that Juliet is performed by a young man wearing a wig? That would be absurd, even more absurd than dancing wearing tutus…
What are the differences, and similarities, between Theater and Dance? I began to think about because I always wonder why acting, in Dance, is so peculiar. I’m by far not an expert, but I can figure at least some common-sense answers for myself:
They are not so different, are they? Their media is different, the range of ideas and emotion they can express are not coincident, and Theater has more freedom, in that it not so limited to and by its principal media. And there are a lot of similarities…
BUT. This was theory, in practice differences are greater.
Acting, HOW you express whatever there is to be expressed, is very different. In what ways, exactly?
To begin with, in classical Ballet and in some contemporary Dance too, some believe Dance should be pure Form, no acting at all. I quote Mr. Alastair Macauley:
“Ms. Ferri, a captivating nymphet from the first, soon became a star in the sexy, histrionic dance-dramas for which MacMillan was best known. During her years with the Royal Ballet (1980-85) she was in danger of becoming its onstage Lolita, with less technical precision and strength than a complete ballerina needs. (…) Remembering the astoundingly liquid beauty of her graduation “Concerto” performance, I can’t help sighing for the pure-dance side of Ms. Ferri that her audience has never seen again”.
(…)
“Some ballerinas are freaks, bizarre extremes who make you see only the oddness of the art, but Ms. Bussell shows you its rightness, its proportion, its glory, all on an immense scale. No, she’s not an actress.”
Art as pure Form involves complicated discussions even among experts, totally beyond my undestanding, it seems its defenders believe that “aesthetic experience” (this is how the particular kind of response to just Form is called) is capable of changing things, or someone.
In my common-sense, probably gross and oversimplified way to see things, “Art” as pure Form is created mostly by “artists” that are no real Artists, during, but mostly at the end of an art movement (I mean Gothic, Barocque, Symbolism…), using just the typical formal elements of that movement (and insisting on using them even when this movement has run its course and is emptying itself because of social and culture changes), without being able to add the necessary Content that creates magic.
AND “pure, spiritual aesthetic experience”, from a psychoanalytical point of view, sounds like sublimation: if you are sublimating person, you will want to avoid real Art, the kind that needs Form+Content to create magic – because you will want to avoid the kind of response it ellicits in you. But that’s another discussion.
Anyway, there ARE a lot of Dance works that use acting in some way. So, let’s see.
In Theater, if you want to make people THINK, that is, an intellectual reaction, you use “defamiliarization” or “estrangement”, a formalistic approach. It’s used mainly in plays with denouncement goal, on social and political issues. Almost always estrangement is already embedded in the text, and/or the staging, like in Brecht’s plays. Even in formalistic Theater plays, however, the actor is almost always asked to perform in the non-formalistic way.
You use the non-formalistic way when you want to have an emotional response. You will, in this case, try to believable, to be true to life, to be just like people in the audience are, or could be, so they can identify themselves with what is going on on stage. Both text and acting must try to acchieve that the audience “suspends disbelief”. This is so important, a lot of methods and techniques were developed in the last 130 years to help actors to be believable, like Stanislawski’s or Lee Strasberg’s.
This is Theater, but what is acting in Dance?
Well, I know what it should be: exactly like in Theater!!!… Why? Because IT WORKS, obviously…
Instead, in Ballet, the most popular kind of acting is what I call “larger-than-life” (neither of the above – and it may have a proper fancy name). It resembles closely the silent movies made around 1910-20: extra-grand, abrupt gestures, exaggerated facial expression, staring eyes, and so on. This kind of mime is considered good acting in Ballet, but in Cinema and Theater it was already in total disuse in the fourties (that’s at least 70 years ago!!!) – so Ballet is this small island of anachronism in XXI century – that has still it’s fans: its own, private, small, anachronic audience.
AND Ballet has no magic outside this audience.
Thought Experiment——————————
I’m a school principal, and want to turn my older students into Dance fans. They are regular teenagers, living in a a regular city zone, tattoed, chewing-gum youths who love videogames, rap or rock, and their smartphones.
So I show them Yacobson’s Spartacus (lonk below)…
…
Can you imagine their reaction?
I can think of many works I could show them instead, Petite Mort by Kílian, Facada and Mercy performed by Vasipova, Friedeman Vogel’s Mopey, Moonstruck (link in this blog), Hasta Donde by Schorman, Chekaoui’s Puz/zle, Bolero performed by Sylvie Guillem, any ballet by Eifman, Serenity by Arsen Mehrabian… What is their reaction now?
… see my point?
To hook them , at first my selection has to address issues that are central in their lives (it must have Content): relationship problems, sex, violence, with lively, beautiful and original choreography and staging (its Form has to be in tune with our times). And I have to make them realize that male dance evolved and is now striking and manly, or the whole football team and their fans will simply dismiss the whole thing.
Now that the chewing-gum crowd realized Dance is cool!, I may proceed to a nice passionate version of MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet (Ferri & Corelo’s, for example), or Notre-Dame, or Bourne’s Swan Lake, Le Jeune Homme, Mayerling. By this time, Grigorovitch’s Spartacus (Ivan Vasiliev performing!) would please not only the girls, the football team would find it awesome! They would become used to Ballet’s visual and learn about dancing skills and difficulties, and eventually I could bring them even an entertaining classical one like Don Quixote (although the middle-part, like in Flames, would still bore them).
But see, I believe Yacobson’s Spartacus would Always be out of limits, no way they would think it cool, unless as something-so-absurd-it- is-funny-to-watch!
Out of limits too, would be Sherezade and Le Corsaire, they are excessively kitsch, plot included, and that is an unforgivable sin in their “Weltanschauung”… But there are classical ballets that, with a less traditional (meaning kitsch) production, less mime and better acting, could please teenagers, and a far wider audience too: The Prodigal Son, Raymonda. In their present state, however, most would be out of limits too – they may have an appealing Content to teenagers, but their Form is so dated they cannot grasp or enjoy it.
An old choreography, production or performance is really timeles (Art…) if it is able to eventually interest someone young that is NOT a dancer – this is my criteria to judge them, sorry if you don’t like it! There are many ballets that have great value inside the Dance millieu (mentioned audience included), but cannot please, or have no interest, to a wider audience.
Pure-form Balanchine and pure-form contemporary would probably bore them to death…
You may say: my students are of NO interest as audience , at all, how could Art please such unsophisticated, unprepared… creatures?
OOOoohhhh! But that’s precisely my point! When Art is REALLY (love this word, specially in uppercases!) Art, it does not need a special audience, it has “magic” to anyone! My creatures would be perfectly able to enjoy a good, powerful performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth , for example, I bet they would even turn their smartphones off… If they cannot enjoy Dance, it’s because there is something wrong with Dance, not with them!
UPS!!
Now I make a fast exit to the left, before someone damages his notebook trying to throw things at me…
————-
Here is a link to a few seconds of Yacobson’s Spartacus, performed in 8th-grade Vaganova’s acting exam, followed by some professional performances. Watch, and imagine!
Full of Dance 