Choreography, along with dance criticism, strike me as two
of the most difficult art forms to master. Choreography, because it demands
that one imagine the possibilities of body-time-motion-sound relationships
within a particular vocabulary of movement in order to express usually quite
abstract ideas; also, most choreographers have to be able to imagine what
bodies other from their own might be able to do. Dance criticism, because it
requires of the critic the ability to both immerse herself in the role of
dance-spectator and to later recall the stream of fleeing perceptions
occasioned by the work and to retrospectively critique them in some kind of
coherent, streamlined way. This is why Joan Acocella is one of my heroines. She
does this panache and precision
| Joan Acocella |
.
So, being neither a choreographer nor a dance critic, I am
still going to attempt to talk semi-intelligently about Innovations
the showcase of new choreography performed by Ballet West that I saw last
night at the Rose Wagner Theater in Salt Lake City. I should start by saying
that I thoroughly enjoyed myself; I went with my mom, who is visiting town, and
a group of women from my ballet class, including the instructor. We had a nice
dinner out, then walked through the relatively balmy evening to the theater,
which is a lovely, small and very modern space, mostly used for drama and for
screening Sundance films. The intimacy of the theater certainly contributed to
the feeling that the audience was somehow in cahoots with the performers – an impression
heightened by the enthusiastic hoots of approval from a group of audience
members who were obviously friends and familiars of the company members.
| Christopher Rudd and his lovely wife, Christiana Bennett |
The program opened with Trapped,
a “revival” of a piece by one of the company’s senior principal dancers, Christopher
Ruud; it wasn’t clear to me from the program notes when this had originally
been performed, but so be it. Ruud is the artistic director of the development
company, and is one of those danseurs of the Apollonian rather than the
Dionysian type – that is to say, he’s not particularly tall, but very muscular,
with a broad chest and trim hips, a somewhat Byronic head of dark hair, and the
kind of handsome face that ages well. I give these details not to dwell on his
manly beauty, but rather to suggest that there is some connection between his
physical type as a dancer and his choreography. Thus: he is broody, explosive,
more athletic than graceful, intense, and bundled with muscle. His choreography
for this piece is, likewise, emotionally charged, rhythmically staccato, almost
gymnastic at moments, and tinged with intimations of violence.
| Would you like some angst with that? |
The piece begins with the curtain down, and the sound of
someone striding heavily and quickly on stage. As the curtain rises, a crowd of
dancers is revealed – they’re all standing facing in various directions,
arrayed across the stage somewhat at random. Around them walks a woman
(Katherine Lawrence), dressed, like the rest of them, in a white tank-style top
and bicycle shorts; she is the only one moving, and her movement is simple and
vernacular – an angry, heavy-footed, stride with the head thrust forward on the
neck. When the music begins, she summons movement (or so it seems) from one
dancer or another; these are brief, highly individualized, complicated little
tangles of steps from which the dancer returns to stillness. In a neat turn,
the first dancer to move is joined by a second in the second “pass” by the
angry woman, and then in the third pass, dancer #2 is joined by a third, while
dancer #1 remains still, and so on, until everyone has done their thing.
Meanwhile, the angry woman, in her clockwise perambulations, inserts into her
walk these agonized passages of writhing gesture and stuttering pointe work –
the control it takes to look as if
one is at the mercy of some kind of possession or seizure while still
maintaining the center-strength necessary for a high-speed forward bourrée is not to be sneezed at, and
Lawrence pulled it off. The whole first movement involves this large group of
dancers moving in increasingly complicated patterns either as a group or in
male/female pairs while the angry woman grows more and more despairing and
frantic. The stage, lit as if from high, sun-filled windows, has strong bands
of light and shadow and a disconcertingly asymmetrical enclosure of black cloth, increasing the
sense of confinement and angst.
| I just play one on TV. |
Ruud embedded three pas-de-deux in the first movement. I
would characterize the partners’ relationships in each as successively icy,
abusive, and mutually aggressive; given that the angry woman is always there as
a sort of narrator-like presence, these pairs seem to embody perhaps her
history, perhaps her perception of her interactions with men, while the
relentlessly marching corps that forms and reforms as each new couple takes
shape are ominously indifferent to her distress. Of the three pas-de-deux, the
most striking was the central piece, performed by the always-fascinating Allison
DeBona; Ms. DeBona plays herself on the silly but nevertheless irresistible
TV reality show, Breaking Pointe as a
career-focused, somewhat cold-hearted, insecure and ambitious vixen.
As an
actress, she is quite convincing in that role, but the fact that it is acting was highlighted by the degree
to which in this role she performs a completely different persona. Here, she is
the reluctant partner to the pushy, show-offy male, letting herself be picked
up, thrown, twirled about, but then falling into a kind of regretful stillness
that verges on despair. The choreography here was really a little
uncomfortable; the force exerted on DeBona’s body as she is pushed backwards
along the floor on the tops of her feet, hanging in her partner’s arms face
down, her upper torso collapsed but her lower body stiff, hints strongly of
male violence against women.
 |
| Scene from Ghosts of Violence, a ballet that is actually about violence against women. |
| Q.E.D. |
| Madness and death! |
| This is what happens when you Google "Star Trek Ballet" |
Two pieces by young company members (both male) reflected
Ruud’s influence in terms of incorporating incredibly tricky footwork,
athleticism, and show-stopping lifts and jumps. The first, Mechanism, by Easton Smith, had a Studio 54 like setting that felt
a little at odds with the Bach Violin Concerto No. 5 in F Minor (BWV1056); as a
continuous stream of dancers traversed two “catwalks” of light and performed a
series of individualized movements during their time in the light, I was
impressed by their agility and athleticism, and again by the complexity of the
sequences, but at the same time it felt a little like a défilé de mode with particularly acrobatic models. Perhaps if the
costumes had not reminded me so strongly of Star Trek (black jazz pants, silver
hip belts, sheer or partly sheer black tops) I would have been able to get past
the disco feeling of it all; certainly, when the dancers moved into a series of
pas-de-deux and –trois, there was plenty to be impressed by; the throws and
lifts showed the men’s incredible strength and timing, and showcased the trust
that these dancers must have between one another. More than once I was unable
to stifle a gasp as a ballerina was tossed, spinning, through the air, like an
ice-skater, but without the whole business of landing on slippery ice. Had she
not been caught, and caught well, it would have been a disaster. I can only imagine
the nervous laughter at rehearsal when these moves were first set.
The problem, in the end, is that
when ballet becomes too much about the gasp, it stops really being ballet and
becomes, well, disco, or So You Think You Can Dance, or Vegas-style
showmanship. The whole conceptual angle that makes dance interesting goes up in
smoke, and I start to get a little bored. Thus, the thirty-two fouettés in
Odile’s solo in Swan Lake only really
work if the rest of the ballet has been staged to make them seem like an
expression of her character (brilliant, aggressive, a show off); if Odile is
just Odette in a black tutu, then it’s b-o-r-i-n-g (one of the things that Darren Aronofsky got right, surprisingly, in Black Swan, was that Odile has to be a real psycho). Essentially, the throws and the
disco lights and the fashion-show setting, which could have been staged as a
wry comment (ala Twyla Tharp’s In the
Upper Room which seems to me like a critique of her own impulse to be more
Broadway than Broadway) on popular uses of dance, of the body, of performance,
turned into the sort of thing it was imitating, Entertainment. The whole thing
had a gimmicky feel to it, which was too bad, because the dancers were really fantastic
and it was also clear that they were having a great time (who wouldn’t, at a
disco?) executing the incredibly challenging choreography
.
| Not this. |
Another piece with a strong dose of spectacle, Spun, by Adrian Fry, transcended its own
gimcrackery beautifully. Inspired by Ray and Charles Eames’ wonderful short
film, Tops, to music
by Ólafur Arnalds (an
Icelandic composer), it explored the theme of spinning, without getting to
trite about it (there were chainé turns aplenty, but not too many – other circumambulations,
loops, revolutions, and rotations were expanded upon in interesting ways). Anchored
by Elizabeth McGrath, who has an unusually earthy presence for a classical
ballerina, Spun gave the dancers the
chance to show their individual strengths through some lovely ensemble work. It
really captured the whimsy-flavored but ultimately serious character of the
Eames’ film, which has always been one of my favorite shorts – it’s a kind of
koan based on the idea of a very simple toy that is endlessly entrancing to
adults and children alike, a kind of eraser of social distinction. The use of
short lengths of silvery ribbon to connect partners by the wrist in the
pas-de-deux sections could have been hopelessly gimmicky, but it worked, not
entirely without a hitch (there were certain passages where the sketchiness of
the device showed through), but well enough not to distract from the dance.
| The lovely Ms. B. |
Equally respectful of its sources was Christopher Anderson’s
short ballet, Behind Closed Doors,
set to selections from Bach’s solo violin Partita no. 1 in B Minor (BWV 1002)
and Sonata no. 2 in A Minor (BWV 1003). More classical in its vocabulary than
the other three pieces by corps members, and perhaps therefore more influenced
by the company’s turn toward Balanchine repertoire in recent years, this work
was also the most musically sensitive of the evening. The violinist stood
downstage left, in front of the dancers, who first appeared silhouetted against
the softly luminous back screen,
standing in pairs (well, three pairs and one solo). I had the fleeting sense
memory of watching Indonesian shadow puppets as their limbs made complicated,
anatomically impossible patterns together; each grouping’s choreography was
unique – thus one pair of two women partnered each other in very different ways
from the two male/female pairs, while the solo woman’s gestures seemed almost a
punctuation mark to the complex grammar of the others’ poses. This was also the
only time we got to see the flame-like Christiana Bennett on stage, but even
that brief appearance was worth the ticket price; she just flows like water.
| Henderson Smith: Has legs, will travel. |
The final piece on the program was by a much more seasoned
choreographer, Jodie Gates, who is the head of the dance program at USC and has
an impressive list of accomplishments in her long career as a ballerina,
teacher, choreographer and dramaturge. Unsurprisingly, her Mercurial Landscapes was more abstract, high-concept, and developed
than the other works on the program. It also had the feeling of having been
more rigorously edited; though there were definite motifs in the highly
neoclassical choreography, the reliance on repetition was less visible. Set to
an annoying score – selections from a “recomposition” of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
by Max Richter – the dance sometimes transcended the banality of Richter’s
somewhat lazy renditions of the Baroque chestnut. Like Mark Morris (do I
mention him at least once in every post?), Gates seems to have a nice feel for
the movement of the old music (a fact somewhat obscured by the reworkings),
though with her reliance on the tropes of pas-de-deux, corps, solo, the
structure of the work is far more akin to Christopher Wheeldon – a fluid interlude featuring Haley Henderson Smith and Beau Pearson reminded me, in tone
more than vocabulary, of the second movement of After the Rain. Though it was lyrical and well constructed, the
costuming for this world premier was almost the best thing about it (beside
Henderson Smith’s beautiful, perfect feet and long, bare legs); chilly,
shimmering metallic fabrics in shades from ice blue to cool copper clung to the
dancer’s bodies and gave them a, well, mercurial appearance. The use of stage
lighting to expand and contract the space of the dance also worked well, and
gave play to the notion of “landscapes” on what was otherwise a bare, black
stage.
 |
| PNB's Next Step is a program dedicated to new choreos. |
The best thing about the evening (aside from the company with
which I was fortunate to share it), was that Adam Sklute, the artistic director
of Ballet West, has made this commitment to allowing his dancers to develop as
artists working with and as choreographers who are pushing the envelope of “classical
ballet.” This is a trend among directors of major companies, and I think it is
to be applauded, and loudly. When Jennifer Homans lamented the decline and
announced the inevitable and impending death of ballet a few years ago in her
(otherwise perceptive and intriguing) Apollo’s
Angels I think she missed out on this new receptiveness on the part of
senior choreographer/directors and audiences alike to seeing works by
journeyman (or, one hopes, journeywoman) choreographers brought to the stage.
Not everything will be of equally enduring stuff – I would not particularly
hope to see Mechanism ever again. But
I know I could watch Spun multiple
times, and I think Mercurial Landscapes could
grow on me; I would guess that there’s an audience (young, angst-ridden
themselves) who might really warm to Trapped
even if it’s not so much my thing.
I remember distinctly that as a young ballet student I would
sometimes come up with ideas for ballets I wanted to set; I wrote them down in
my journals, complete with notes on the music, a sort of ad hoc dance notation,
and ideas for the costumes, sets, and lighting. At the time, I had no idea how
one would make such a thing come to life.
I wish that I had been exposed then to this kind of encouragement of
young choreographers and this interest in experimentation. As it was, the one
time I actually got to realize my imaginative schemes was in fifth grade, when
as part of a social-studies unit on Native Northwest cultures, I put together a
ballet based on a Coast Salish story. I cast my friend Johanna, who was already
in the top class at PNB, as the heroine. My non-ballet-trained friends got
parts that involved moving like animals or wind… very modern. I don’t have very
clear memories of how it turned out, but the process was so great. My dad, who
was not a dancer and knew next to nothing about ballet or theater, was so into
the whole thing; he got me a Salish-English dictionary, so that we could give
the work an “authentic” name (we called it Chembesh Kabahai, though I cannot
for the life of me recall what this was supposed to mean – you have to understand
that Salish is notated using Americanist phonetic notation, which is a means of
representing the very non-European phonemes of north American native languages
(e.g., xʷləmiʔčósən is the name of the
Lummi language). So much for my career as a future Nijinskaya. |
| Women make ballet too: Emery LeCrone |
Anyhow, kudos to
Sklute and his crew for an evening of challenging, surprising, and sometimes
sublime moments. I look forward to future editions of Innovations, especially when they will feature some of the women
from the company in the driver’s seat.
Just to beat that old gender horse a bit, I recently read an article focusing on works by several women choreographers that drew my attention to the fact that fewer than 10% of works performed by professional ballet companies in this country in 2011 were by women choreographers. Ouch! Modern dance has always been so much more open to our fair sex in this regard. In 2010, only four women were artistic directors of big-budget companies. It's not as if ballet is alone of the classical art forms to suffer (and it does suffer) from the dearth of women in the upper echelons of management; classical symphony orchestras with women artistic directors, for example, are hardly a dime a dozen. Maybe it's the very classicism of these art forms that acts as something of a drag... just to quote something that's been in the meme-o-sphere of late, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
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