Dance

IVAN VASILIEV ACTED SOCKS OFF…

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I surrender! I thought I had already seen one Swan Lake too much, but PLEASE I WANT TO SEE THIS ONE!
I was hopeful on the Alina+Vasiliev partnership, but they exceeded by far my expectations. “Poetry in Motion”, indeed! “Like vodka and caviar”!

Of all that was written about this Swan Lake, I liked Sarah Crompton’s informal tweet the most: “Impressive Swan Lake @ENBallet last night. @DancingAlina on heart-breaking form and Ivan Vasiliev acted socks off as well as flying thro air”…

The first review I read must have been written shortly after the performance – it appeared only a few hours after. It made me so happy I suffered from a recurring beaming smile all day long – a day with lot of appointements, I had to wait impatiently until the evening to learn more about audience and review reactions – and then I was even happier. Yes, I am a fan of both of them, specially Vasiliev, but what was more important was they had proved, even to myself, to what degree what this blog defends is justified and right.

I knew that Alina Cojocaru is wonderful, excelling both in technical as in acting skills -I’m her fan.  “Her Act IV, though, is terribly affecting, all frail hopelessness in the knowledge of her inescapable approaching death.” The swan role may fit her like a glove, but she went well beyond dancing it beautifully.
Vasiliev’s case is different. Audience and reviewers had identified him with his bravura roles to such level, that they did not know, anymore, where the role (even choreography) ended and Vasiliev began… they could not stop seeing this “chimera” everywhere, and it was getting worse during last year. Some are still mixing things up, but as a whole, the stunned reaction to Swan Lake is a relief: it seems he was able to lift at least some of the confusion resting upon their minds.
Swimming against the current (a pretty strong one), I always saw his stage behaviour as just acting, not a new personality – probably because I always valued Vasiliev’s expressive power as much or even more than our usual tricks – because of the way I see Dance. His performances in widely different kinds of roles are always in my mind, I try not to be fooled by the stage-filling showman of bravura roles. Since the beginning I placed heavy bets on his acting talent – again and again he has proved me right, stepping well outside any stereotyped image and making a great job of bringing content to dance. Every time this happens, I forget my place as the grateful fan of a great dancer, and become SO proud of him, this unwittingly champion of this blog’s position! With his Siegfried, he once more showed that long-standing rules of Ballet (like emploi) should be viewed suspiciously, and that a lot of assumptions and prejudices that had been piling up about and against him were just  *********, I mean, silly.

But I was wrong too, in my prejudice against what I call hard-classical ballets – I believed they were hopelessly pure form – dismissable except for being beautiful – and he rekindled my interest in them…

“…one its finest current interpreters…”, ” …I hope ENB might think of persuading him to return in Giselle as he would excel in this too…”, said one reviewer.

So much for emploi…

His triumph. And winning one more challenge,  he also gives Dance one more push forward. Great!!!

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Important reviewers must be intellectual, knowledgeable and sophisticated in their opinions, or they would not be reviewers. I suppose they struggle hard against being carried away, so they can give us an objective, expert-wise opinion. It’s their loss (see Sir Ashton’s quote in this blog). I’m relieved I’m not under that obligation, and free to enjoy without second thoughts.

Most reviewers, specially the important ones, dwelled, once more, in… “their usual tricks”, as I will call them from now on: lenghty paragraphs on Vasiliev’s body shape and technical flaws. (Sigh). His height and thigs, AGAIN? do they not tire? It has become a boring issue by now – all audience knows how he looks by now, since all have eyes, too! And are able, and entitled to form their own opinions on the visual aesthetic of dancing, ’emploi’ or not. And technical flaws: boring TOO! all non-experts  are unable to see them – provided they are there, of course – so what should they do: start looking for them and spoil the pleasure on the play as a whole?….

Dance reviewers should consider – seriously! – stop writing from a Dance millieu’s perspective, and start writing to a larger audience. This kind of remark neither informs me of something more I should know, nor is helpful to a growing understanding of Dance. What the audience would like to know is: what was so special about this performance, that made me like it so much – or what was wrong with this performance, that I couldn’t like it?  THIS is educational… If a dancer makes such technical blunders that it spoiles the whole thing, this is the moment to point them out, and explain them – the audience will understand, and then avoid similar experiences. If they loved a performance, and a reviewer sees flaws only an expert can see, what should they do? Repent of their liking and start disliking?

Dance x Theater, why so different?

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424699_358283020919677_1691741353_n
Two kinds of acting: traditional in the corps and Giselle’s mother, and believable body-language in Albrecht.

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:

  • Both use live human beings as their media
  • Both use stage
  • Both have thinkers (writer/choreographer) , doers (actors/dancers), and enhancers (designers)
  • Theater specifically uses voice to communicate through words
  • Dance specifically uses the body to communicate through movements
  • Through the voice you can easily express any kind of idea, even complex ones, like Marx ideas about added-value, or how to solve Pithagoras Theorem
  • Through the voice you can express emotion, but the voice alone rarely is enough, almost always body-language will have to be added
  • Through the body you can NOT express complex ideas,
  • Through the body you can easily express concepts and emotion
  • Theater sometimes uses technology to override its media limits (microphones)
  • Dance uses no technology except pointe-shoes (interesting idea: if Theater uses microphones, could Dance use spring-boards, or roller-skates? ok, ok, no need to shake yourselves in horror, I was just wondering…)
  • Both produce a structured result: there is a text/choreography to be delivered, there is a chronological and spatial organization of things.
  • Both must “touch” the audience with their product, must express something that makes people care, be stirred, be enchanted, be shocked: both must ellict an emotional or intellectual response in the audience, or are pointless. I will call this “magic”, because its simpler and sounds so good.

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…

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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!

http://youtu.be/35ks4CQfjl4

Critics and bad words, or About Bad Manners

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appalledI was just reading a discussion in Ballet Alert!  about  what  a critic is entitled to write, and how. It was VERY enlightening.

I discovered, among other important things, that I use the word  REALLY too much, kkkk… Luckily, being a writer is NOT on my future plans!

Jokes apart, I discovered that in USA a lot of people agree that a critic has the right to write down, and publish, exactly what he thinks, using whatever words come to his mind. He may even offend someone personally, if he is angry with that someone  – the critic may be angry, they said, because he is watching a bad performance, and this would justify any words he uses.

WHAAT ?!?

It baffled me!

Freedom of speech is something tricky, and I heard too many times that merely thinking to impose censure on words is a malevolous symptom of marxist ideals… I must conclude, then, that my parents, known for their definite right-wing positions, were marxists deep down, because they taught me abusive words were bad manners, no matter what.

I, in my turn, taught my daughter that, if you don’t agree with someone’s behaviour, you can state it clearly (never abusively), BUT you cannot state anything about the person herself, because you don’t know what caused the behaviour – that is something you may ASK, preferably  even before criticizing.

That someone has the right  to call Ratmansky an “idiot”, affirm that Ivan Vasiliev’s dancing is “driven by ego”, that Vishneva “was a Giselle who was living up to her own press notices rather than to the role’s drama”, or that a ballet dancer “should have been strangled at birth”, is beyond my understanding.

To be fair, though, I must say not all Americans agreed this was good reviewing, one remembered reviewing is supposed to be educational – not just about the critics enhanced personal feelings -;  one agreed there are media where you can get “coloquial”, and other media where you have to keep to standards – that were not met; one wondered if you should cricize just the performance or decision, not the artist personally. So, it seems, ethical values did  not all go down the drain-pipe. Still being fair, critics in other countries also go over the board – I read russian (Google Translator…) and english reviews that were scathing and personal too.

It seems it is a trend typical of our times (thank God, it has not arrived here, such wording is unthinkable in my country’s journalism, yet): more and more people agree that you have the RIGHT to state your opinion no matter what – no need to think about possible bad consequences, nor about taking facts into account, nor about respecting the Other like you would like to be respected, nor about fairness, nor about personal freedom (yours ceases where mine begins). If you have the right to attack  my dignity as a person or professional, if you have the right to act aggressively toward me based on assumptions and opinions, this sounds definitely like infringement of individual rights to me.

Because it comes down to that, or not? A lot of totalitarian regimens, and power relations (like white-black, colonialism, christian-other, islamic-other, master-slave), have exactly this kind of infringement of individual rights as ground-stones.

Are you thinking, man, now SHE’s is gone completely over the board?

Sadly, you know, I’m not:  you must know were the way you choose will take you – I’m  just taking the argument to it´s logical conclusion, nothing else.

What next: will critics have the right to beat up performers they do not like? Or maybe even the audience will have this “right”?

Oh, no, you will say, that’s completely different!

NO, it’s not, or don’t you know that words can cause just as much havoc as a beating, or more?  In what way is such a critic different from, for example,  a bullying kid, or a bullying cop, or an abusive parent? Critics ARE in a power position, and words can be weapons, those who know how to use them should use them REALLY carefully!

But such things make you stronger, you will say  (waving your 30 years old whisky before my nose), the world belongs to the fittest!

Well I hope that ballet dancer that should be strangled at birth belonged to the fittest!  (I’m  spilling my beer all over the place, I’m SO angry!!!)

Some artists have huge and healthy Egos (freudian sense now), and won’t be harmed by any opinion about them. But others are messed-up and over-sensitive, what then? If  someone wrote, in a large newspaper, I should have been strangled at birth, it would take me years to recover, if at all… A lot of artists, and a lot of people that love art  like me, do not belong to the fittest. It is not uncommon that a great artist’s talent is deeply entwined in an unbalanced and overwraught personality. Should we throw the baby away with the bathwater?

In short: I believe good-manners are philosophically and ethically grounded on individual rights, not just an empty social nicety.

But that does not make sense in liberal thought, so, in an american-way-of-life-wording: does cost/benefit justify such behaviour in critics?

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If  this bad-manners-are-ok-trend persists, it will be only one more aspect where I will become “border-line” – not completely out of the system, but surely, and  proudly!, a misfitted component.

THANK YOU, IVAN VASILIEV!

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In this post, I will not defend any idea – I will be only a fan.

First of all:

This link is a Christmas gift to Ivan Vasiliev’s  fans, and maybe to him too.

Snapshot - 152

It is also an “I am sorry” gift to him, because of the stir  my first post about his injury unwittingly caused – besides the fact that I’m always writing about him.

But most of all, it is a Thank You, Ivan Vasiliev!

————————————————————————–

Now,  why am I grateful? Because there is so much to like in his dancing. What do I see?

… the same all do:

– his super-hiper-ultra jumps: the ballon, extra-difficulties, clean landings;

– his turns, and their nice controlled ending;

…. but also:

– the sure feet: where he steps, where he lands, there they are, planted on the ground like roots, no fidgeting, no need of correction;

– that he is able to perform in such different styles of dancing (much to his choreographers joy), and fearless to try new ones – how could a dancer with classical training possibly master Labyrinth of Solitude so quickly? Or have the swing to dance Jazzy Five? or deal with all that was new in Solo For Two? … was he BORNE knowing all this?

– his expressive power in any kind of role, and how he uses dancing as a way to expression, instead of just glueing some pre-choreographed poor mimic on the surface of dance;

– how he dares to let go of a classical line if it doesn’t  help expression: outstretched hands, contracted shoulders and chest, relaxed arms, and so on, and it is still SO beautiful dancing, sometimes more than ever before;

– the beauty of his movements:  he is asked to point a finger, he points, and there it is, ridiculously  beautiful, deserving a picture to be taken.  Never knew a dancer  so graceful, moving, standing, whatever, he is always nice to look at – I suppose it’s still the borne dancer thing;

– his reliable partnering. In Vasiliev’s  PDDs, my natural reaction is to sit back, relax and enjoy, because I  have no doubt, at all,  it will work seamlessly and be beautiful to watch;

– the commitment  to his partners, making us pay attention to them because he, the great star, pays so much attention to them;

– the disarming joy in dancing, and disarming pride on his feats;

– that he is the most masculine dancer ever, not just in his looks – all his dancing is masculine;

– that he is handsome, and I don’t give a fig that he does not fit “classical” standards – in fact, he could be the new standard, because I like it better;

– that he gives his best every single time!;

– his self-esteem and individuality – he is always stepping outside of invisible limits others try to set on him. He is fearless, like Ratmansky said, and is always accepting new challenges . Irrepressible, I called him, and I hope he will not change, ever!!

– his charisma. It permeates all other items, and enhances them, and the outcome now becomes really impressive! In order NOT to see and feel it, well, you will have to close your eyes and walk away very quickly… If you stay, you are hooked – wellcome, one more fan! And this quality, more than any one other, enabled him to the next:

– his communication skills: he knows how to create rapport with his audience, how to win them to his role AND even to Ivan Vasiliev himself  –  awesome feat for a dancer! How many dancers can boast of such a skill?  to such an extent? in classical Ballet?

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Has Vasiliev really all these qualities?  Oh, they may not be there all the time, or may not be there all at the same time, but, yes, they are all, already, HIS.

He also may not have reached perfection in all these features, and other dancers may be favourably compared on this or that feature, but if you sum these up, you’re compelled to realize he is unique, no superlatives needed.  Not a single dancer, until now, had them all together.

Dance becomes DANCE,  when he steps on stage, and I’m grateful, deeply grateful every time I see DANCE. So, yes, Thank You, Ivan Vasiliev, I wish more classical dancers were like you!

I hope your example give other dancers “ideas”, boldness. I Hope! I don’t like to see all that weight on just your <classical> shoulders, muscled as they are,  because it is cumbersome, you should not know about all this, you should just DANCE!  Please!

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About Kings, Battles and Muses

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Kings in battle

The second King is down: Guillaume Cote is also injured! ACL, the excrucianting cruciating ligament tear that needs 6 to 12 months rehabilitation, that is maybe also Vasiliev’s problem. Or has the Russian newspaper cruciated, I mean, crossed over Kings x Injuries?

It is lucky that Medicine can nowadays stitch dancers whole again, everytime they tear themselves apart! Or at least most of the times…

Accidents happen. If your mind is your tool, almost none. If your tool is emotion, sometimes. If your tool is your body, frequently. I can accept that, it comes with the trade.
What I cannot accept is when you, with open eyes, bring the tool of your trade (that sounded a little weird) to the verge of collapse. There are always signs, made by Nature to help avoid the worst, PAAIIINNN!!!! being it’s favourite.

That so much choose to ignore pain, to suffer before and even more after collapsing – I cannot grasp: it simply does not find a way into my rationality. It sounds to me too much as a kind of offering, of sacrifice, of flesh-mortification, seen somehow as worthy and positive and needed to earn a dubious reward.

“The body is a sacred garment”, said Martha Graham. She certainly did not mean it in the martyrdom sense above. To me her words evoke the flowing garments of ancient Greece, and their reverence for the beauty of human body, especially when moving. Music and dancing were present in any celebration, then, and were joyous celebrations themselves – they even devised goddesses to symbolize them.

Terpsichore means The Joy of Dancing. How can pain, deliberate pain, be part of joy, except in a self-mortifying or sacrificial sense?

We all know perfectly well that physical conditioning requires certain amounts of pain. Small amounts it should be, if things are made the right way, and not continuously. I believe that’s ok, if it happens while you’re having joy IN your activity ITSELF, but becomes perverse if the pain is great, or accepted not because of the pleasure you get out straight out of work. The pain you accept, the suffering you impose on your body because of OTHER kinds of reward is something I cannot understand.

Terpsichore abandoned

If you are climbing a steep mountain, and push against your limits so you can reach the next safe rock niche, where you then sit down to recover and enjoy the breathtaking view, is anything more perfect? But if you keep pushing and pushing, just to excel yourself, or test your ultimate body limits, or be the first to reach the peak – and end up hanging down a cliff, breathless and trembling all over, your life in danger, too much bruised and full of cramps to go on, does that make any sense? Not to me! You are not enjoying your body, you are abusing it.

Other physical activities, ranging from Sports to Arts may offer less dramatic examples, but that senselessness applies to all. You see, when Vasiliev was injured, I associated it with another event, in the Olympic Games of 1984 – when marathonist Gabriele Andersen ended her race as a crumpled, cramped, semi-parallyzed, vacillating little heap of pain, she was collapsing, and came very close to death that day.

I believe I was (am?) the only person in the world that didn’t WOW her feat: for me it was even more unacceptable than IV’s injury. In my troubled eyes the whole thing was just twisted, so perverse that I was done with Sports, and never again watched a single Sports competition again. The link between the two facts was precisely my indignation!
Why I do feel that way? Maybe because one of the first books I ever read in my life was about Ancient Greece, and it hooked me for life to their values and aesthethic, or maybe because I belong to the make-love-not-war generation, that was all for colours, nature, music, dancing, and a fierce defense of body’s freedom.

Anyway, I love the human body as much as I love trees or rivers or birds. Lack of respect to any of them, specially if it is done because of competition, profit, fame, or any initiative that uses but does not reward THEM, makes me mad – to me all are sacred, in the pagan Greek sense, and in Martha Graham’s sense too, I bet.

I cannot because…

Guillaume Cotê had a stress fracture and an Acchiles tendon problem while rehearsing Nijinsky, but just kept working. Marcelo Gomes already made two major surgeries – in an interview after the first one he mentions 23 performances in a single month, and 12 different roles in a single season (all the rehearsals!).
I know, I KNOW, there are all kinds of motivation to push your body beyond reason: you must think of your career, you love to dance, you must provide for your family, you love to dance, you cannot let down so many people and things that depend on you, you love to dance…

Ok…

Now Cote is out during months…

Finding “rational” reasons to explain a dangerous behaviour does not lessen the risk involved, nor does it prevent a bad outcome.
“Currently active dancers expect to continue their performing careers well into their forties. However, dancers whose active careers are now over remember that, although they thought they could continue until their late thirties, on average they actually stopped dancing professionally in their early to mid-thirties.”
This quote is in a report called “Making Changes, Facilitating the Transition of Dancers to Post-Performance Careers“, the result of a research on dancers, both active and retired, in 11 countries. Dancers retire earlier, and earlier, nowadays, and a lot because of injuries. Do you know how many?  “Twenty-nine percent of surveyed former dancers in Australia, 33 percent of former dancers in Switzerland, 35 percent of former dancers in the U.S. report that the health effects of injuries caused them to stop dancing.”

A THIRD OF THEM!

My point is, if you deal with your body (as all Nature) in a respectful way, you will run fewer risks, you will lengthen its useful life, you will have more joy when dancig, and you may still excel in your trade. Maybe you will never reach more than 182,546 degrees in your split, or that last half inch in your jump, but when you leap you will fly beautiful, happy and safe as a bird, and will keep flying for a long time…

The disquieting Muse

Terpsichore is loosing ground, her gracefulness and joy of dancing are almost out of sight, giving way to Chirico’s Disquieting Muse – oh, THIS one fits our times: hard, empty of joy, lifeless, but so impressive!!

The joy IN dancing is a continuous, fresh spring of emotional and physical energy. The mere promise of a reward that is OUTSIDE dance in any way (to the dancer himself, to the audience, to an Ideal, to his future) turns dance into a heavy chore, a hard duty where all the energy has to come OUT of your muscles and brain, it is depleting.

These are hard, cold, demanding times: the lack of real vitality is disguised with lots of sparkles in all spheres of life, on the stage even more so. It may seem that you must shine the more brighter to conquer excellence, work opportunities, success, pleasure, retirement. An audience with eyes already wearied by way too much glitter ‘outside’, seems also to demand even more on the stage.

In fact, what we all crave for, not just the audience, is a way to reattach to real life, to the “big questions”, to deep emotion – only we are, most the time, unaware this is our real yearning. Art can do that, through its magic, deep, all-encompassing, carry-you-away magic, but it certainly is not to be found where there are only sparkles.

And what next?

Imagine a Ballet evening in the future, where all dancers are very young, but with serious eyes already. Imagine all of them dancing because of a lot of different reasons, except the one, the single one that makes sense. Imagine all of them performing impossible feats: 270 degrees extensions, jumps like olympic athletes, turns that defy the laws of physics, bends and twist that make them look as disjointed dolls of a cruel child, lifts so complicated you wonder they don’t end up in knot.

This IS the future, not even a distant one, given the rate at which the relative value of physical excellence is increasing – and because it is just the logical development of overrating Form in Ballet (it fits our times like a glove). Imagine physical excellence is so common now, we in the audience are no more easily impressed, the dancers have to excel themselves – and one another – all the time, pushing hard against their bodies’ limits. They are all so terribly young, because all dancers finish their professional lives early, after a series of successful surgeries, until the one that isn’t.

Deeply worried about the physical  accomplishments, they have no time and energy to act, or even to learn to act properly, or to create rapport with the audience – their artistry has not matured yet – all they can do is flash a big, fake smile once in a while. Chirico’s muse would be rubbing her hands (had she any).

There is a clear danger here: that young great dancers – current and future Kings and Queens, on whom the spotlights shine the brighter – are lured down this road, and become engaged in unnecessary, senseless battles . I hope they recognize the crossroads when they come to them and choose Terpsichore’s ways instead.

Dancers & Athletes

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Dancers know all about it, but we, audience, see only the beauty of Dance and easily forget some facts about the physical challenges dancers have to face.
They are several athletes in one: high jump, long jump, hurdles race (without hurdles). But athletes have several advantages over dancers:
special foot-wear that helps the take-off and softens the landings,
they can turn and twist and tighten-up and loosen-up and throw their legs and arms in any way that will increase efficiency and spare their muscles and joints,
they land on soft floor, like sand and mattresses,
they specialize in only one modality,
where they have highly-specialized coaching.
In dancing, it’s their feet meeting directly the hard floor, nothing in between, nothing to enhance efficiency or spare them, all the jumping done with full poise and elegance.
Dancers are also rythmic gymnasts, in that they need the same flexibility, extension, balance and ballon. Gymnasts are always small, lightweight creatures, with almost child-like bodies – most are just teenagers, and retire well before the age of 25.
But the male dancers! Male dancers MUST be heavy-muscled, because they are weightlifters TOO!, and still you expect them to be as agile and flexible as those wispy adolescent gymnasts!
And what to say about point-shoes? What kind of athlete or gymnast must use such a make-it-still-a-lot-harder thing?
Dancers make use of all those different physical abilities one swiftly after another, and another and another, or worse, at the same time – while they feel and exactly follow the music, while acting, while taking care of their partners, while finding their place on stage, while caring about pretty lines, while smiling and making it look easy, while striving… to create magic!
Awesome creatures!
How can they possibly cope with all these different physical, mental and emotional demands, all the time taking high risks on their safety? And they can, driven as they are by the joy of dancing, and by the wish to please US.
Next time, let us remember and cheer them all the more!

I will write a lot about Ivan Vasiliev

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Ivan Vasiliev will be a recurring subject in my texts. Why all this attention? Am I just an old woman secretly dreaming about a handsome young boy? Maybe I’m that too, kkkkkkk…
I always  acknowledge that I am a fan – a certain amount of my writing is firmly rooted on admiration: as I see it, he is a really gifted dancer, not because he is perfect, or my superhero, but because he has a combination of assets that makes him unique (nice subject to another post).
But I will insist on him as a subject because he is also emblematic.  If I were to list my worries and hopes about Dance today, and then I had to exemplify them, I could always pick something about him, or out of his professional life.  Often, when I write,  the larger picture is in my mind, but I pick Ivan Vasiliev because spotlights are always on him, and even if they were not, HE unwittingly draws our attention (one of his assets being an overload of charisma). So it is so easy to single him out  (poor lad, I’m sure it would be very annoying, would he ever be aware of it): he is so “visible”, anything I write about him can be understood, seen, conferred, by anyone who loves Dance, bringing the broader view in it’s wake.
What I mean? For example, he is emblematic TO other dancers, in that he is a Despite-Success.
He is successful despite his “inadequate” physique, despite “technical flaws”, despite a one-sided development of virtuosism (the bravura thing), despite  being “unrefined”, “brash”, “vulgar”, despite “inflated ego”and  “bad manners”, despite “show-offing”  (and so on, it is a huge list, since Solo For Two, even more so),  despite flirting with the audience, despite sending  joking messages to supercilious critics…
Ooohhh… (wondering…)
So it is possible to be so out-of-limits, and still be a success? So maybe all the rules he bended or broke are not really that wise?  Perhaps they should not even exist? hhmm…
He is also emblematic  OF other dancers, who share this or that trait with him, traits that make their lives difficult: those trapped into only one kind of role because of their bodies, like it or not; those who expose themselves more and more to injuries as they continuously try to excel  in inhuman technical feats;  those who suffer severe control on their… 5th positions (as if Dance would cease to exist without perfect ones);  those who are not allowed to participate in the creative process; those who are not allowed individuality; those who cannot take a stand to a choreographer or wardrobe designer without being accused of inflated ego; those who had to damp down  communication skills; those who had to damp down acting skills (no, no, you must dance Aurora exactly like Fonteyn did… and of course, be unfavourably compared…).
So when I think about Vasiliev, I’m  looking well beyond him too, but he stands in the front and middle of the picture. Like Sylvie Guillem in her time, Vasiliev IS a potential revolution by himself.
If he can, others can, too. If he finds a better way, others will follow, or realize they can find their own.  He has been opening closed doors since he stepped on the Bolshoi stage for the first time, 7 or 8 years ago. I would totally believe him if he said it was never his intention, that he did nothing like that, that he only wanted to dance.  He may even not be aware that he, inadvertently, IS revolution. No problem, there is no need he DOES anything, actively.

But there are a lot of innovative companies and choreographers and dancers nowadays, you can say, pointing accusingly at me with your almost empty glass of wine.

Yes, there are (waving my almost full glass at you – I talked so much I had no time to drink). But they are smaller and have less impact than the maybe 10 big companies. It is inside these Sacred Temples that a conservative audience dictates what is Dance, and their priests sanction liturgy rules accordingly (costly big productions, always the same hard-classical ballets each season – how many Swan Lakes and Sleeping Beauties were already staged, year after year? In how many ways can you stage them with a really new twist? – Matthew Bourne, I love you!!!! – I grudgingly admit, however, that Giselle is an exception: dancers, and nobody else, can bring some freshness to it). My, what a confusing sentence! But I bet you got it.

As long as change does not definitely and surely  enter the holy recincts, innovation will have limits.     AND it is right inside, in the midst of this holy ground that Ivan Vasiliev IS revolution!

And he is also, in a most personal view, emblematic of my hopes. If he would choose a REAL  growing path (bravura roles are a dead-end), any one nicely to his liking, and take a stand about it!  No more would be needed: the more he fulfills his potential, the more revolutionary he will be.  Because, you see, he already winned a fair parcel of the audience to his side. So he already has enough power: his audience is great, the greatest an individual dancer had in a long time, AND  he is able to bring more in,  AND  has enough charisma to convince at least HIS audience to follow him in new experiences, and ensure they still have fun.

What a grand all-win situation: IV happy, audience pleased, a great example to other dancers. Even the sacrossanct Temples Of Dance would win: more, and new, audience… more $$$$…

So I watch his steps so closely. So I worry: he must step out of this bravura roles BEFORE a serious injury  – there is still so much to explore!

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A “posthumous” Note: this was written just a few days BEFORE his injury, can you believe me?

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If Ivan Vasiliev keeps going and kicking, more stones in the foundation of the Sacred Temples will be shaken…
The derisive remarks in reviews about him, however, may be a problem to my hopes.

Or not.

Who knows? He already surprised me with this new, unheard-of behaviour in curtain-calls…  I really couldn’t have imagined anything like that, ever, not when such a lot of negative remarks about “bad-manners” were already showering on him. But deliberatedly or intuitively, he found a way to break rules AND finish the Mikh Tour in NY as a winner, and as a winner to be received in San Francisco.

Oh! I love to be surprised!