Ballerina

This documentary has a somewhat corny narration, but the images are stunning, and the focus on five different dancers at the Kirov is intriguing. The ballerinas are Uliana Lopatkina, Evguenya Obraztsova, Alina Somova, Diana Vishneva (yum), and Svetlana Zakharova. But even just the first five minutes, which looks at the school is interesting -- shades of "Children of Theatre Street"

Ballerina

Ballet Documentaries Part II

Earlier I wrote about two recent ballet documentaries that focused on young dancers striving in the current system of international ballet competitions. For me, First Position and Only When I Dance were really eye-opening, because that is a system that has developed fairly recently and with which I was not at all familiar. Watching those films rekindled old memories, and sent me back to my mental archive where I dug up another pair of documentaries that gave me insight into the “real” world of ballet when I was a young ballet student. Both The Children of Theater Street (a film and a book) and A Very Young Dancer (a photo essay book) contributed to my appreciation for ballet as an art and to my understanding of what it takes to make a dancer. I won’t say they “inspired” me exactly – what I saw in them was the distance between even my own fairly rigorous RAD training and the all-consuming commitment of the future professional. However, now that I’m a grownup and enjoying dance recreationally rather than with any ambition to make a career of it, I think that I can fairly say that for me, both of these old documentaries are part of why I dance, and why I love dance.

Sometime in the mid-seventies, I remember going to see The Children of Theater Street (directors Robert Dornhem and Earle Mack, thank you IMDB) and being blown away by the images of those little Soviet children stripping down to their underwear before a panel of pinch-bunned women and craggy men who proceeded to manipulate their bodies in all kinds of somewhat painful-looking ways in order to determine whether they were worthy. The bare-bones living conditions, the intensity of the training regimen, and the smouldering, tamped down, but white hot desire of those Angelinas and Galinas and Konstantins made me realize what it really meant to be a dancer (and that I probably wasn’t going to ever be a star with the Bolshoi or the Kirov). The immense gulf between my late-1970s American childhood life and the stark, spare lives of those artists (hard to call them kids) deepened and humanized my perception of the very different Cold War worlds of my country and theirs. My mother gave me the book based on the film that year for my birthday, and sometimes still I get it out and gaze at those mournful, beautiful black-and-white film stills; it’s romantic nonsense to claim that Russians, more than others, are soulful folk, but in the case of the protagonists of that film I think it is fair to say that the hardships of their lives made them particularly stoic and melancholy in a way that middle-class American children just are not.

The other influential ballet narrative of my early years was the lovely, haunting photojournalistic book A Very Young Dancer, by Jill Krementz, from the previous year (1976), also given to me as a birthday gift. It follows a year in the life of a girl at the School of American Ballet, culminating in her performance as Clara in the Nutcracker. A recent article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/arts/dance/a-very-young-dancer-and-the-life-that-followed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) in the New York times tracked down the young protagonist of the book and revealed the rather sad story of her life after ballet (she left dance not long after the year featured in the book); by contrast, the young Soviets who featured in Children of Theater Street were all mentored through the grueling process and most of them became dance professionals (I tracked them down on Google using the list of names from IMDB – that’s the extent of my research). 

In all likelihood the very different outcomes for the Soviets versus the American have more to do with individual circumstances, character, ability, and motivation but the systems themselves also play an important role. As alien and severe as the Soviet system may have looked, the documentary made clear that the teachers really cared for and loved their pupils, and gave their lives to developing them as artists, though their methods were often very harsh in appearance. Likewise, I am sure that the teachers at SAB devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the children and their development, and often used similarly tough strategies to push them towards success. However, there are profound differences; because of the value placed on individualism, the capitalist framework for ballet education, the lesser degree of nationalistic/patriotic investment in dance as an expression of our cultural identity, the association of ballet with elites and effetes, and the less rigid and regimented direction of society by centralized, governmental authority, the young American dancer faced a series of choices and challenges quite apart from those encountered by her Soviet peers; for them, the choice wasn’t really between a “normal” childhood and the rigors of being a ballet dancer, but between an economically straitened and limited life and a life of constrained but definite opportunity.

Inspired by my search for the Children of The Children of Theater Street, I decided to see if I could track down any of my peers from Cornish in the mid-eighties and see if any of them had professional careers as dancers. Using an old program from our December, 1983 performance of The Snow Maiden, I discovered some interesting facts. At least one of our cohort became a principal dancer with a regional contemporary ballet company and now teaches in the LA area (I wish I had known – I would have taken a class from him). One became a showgirl, dancing in New York (Rockettes!), Paris (Folies Bergeres), and Las Vegas. Another is on the board of a major urban ballet company, suggesting that she probably retained links to ballet even if she didn't actually dance professionally (though she was among the best of us), and several more are listed as ballet teachers or owners of ballet studios. What, if anything does this prove? I don’t know. Just that it gets under your skin and once it’s there it’s hard to escape, whether you’re a skinny kid in her underpants in Leningrad in 1975 or an American kid cast as Marousha (in a babushka) in 1983.

Henry Leutwyler

Check out the unbelievably beautiful photographs of the unbelievably beautiful dancers from NYCB on photographer Henry Leutwyler's website. I've been admiring his work in the company's promotional literature (and on the walls of the Koch Theater last year) for some time.

Good ballet photography, it seems to me, is equal parts restraint and adoration. He got the mix right!

Dance Documentaries (Part I)

Only When I Dance and First Position

Ballet stories – especially the stories of young dancers – make compelling documentary material. Though all such stories are somewhat similar, they contain the fundamental elements of human drama – the optimism of youth, the passionate dedication of the hero or heroine to an ideal, the trials and obstacles that the world throws in the way of this dedication, the very real risk of failure…

I was reminded of this when I recently watched two such documentaries, Only When I Dance and First Position, both concerning young artists competing in the Youth America Grand Prix, one of the premier pre-professional concourses for aspiring professionals. This kind of thing – the international ballet competition – was not really a standard part of the serious ballet student’s experience when I was training in the seventies and eighties. The Prix de Lausanne began in 1973, but did not start functioning as a proving ground for students seeking contracts and scholarships from professional schools and companies until the 1980s, and YAGP wasn’t founded until 1999. 

As a system for showcasing the talent of the most technically and artistically accomplished aspiring professionals, it has its strengths and weaknesses. Whereas it used to be that if you did not get into a summer workshop with one of the big company schools, or couldn’t afford to attend one, your chances of ever getting a career going were slim, these competitions allow students from smaller schools a chance to be seen and to be picked up by the companies. On the other hand, because they primarily showcase individual dance skills, they don’t necessarily prepare students for the reality of ballet employment, which has as much to do with being part of a corps and teamwork as it has to do with individual ambition. Some people feel that the competitions also emphasize spectacular technical feats over sensitivity to the music, artistic interpretation, and meaning (that is, those elements that make ballet an art form, not just a sport). Having watched a fair amount of footage of these competitions I would tend to agree that they do feature a lot of stunt dancing, but at the same time the young dancers are often quite individualistic and intelligent in their performances.

But that’s sort of beside the point, which is that as a plot mechanism the idea of big contest toward which the protagonists are striving is very handy (see my earlier post on season two of Dance Academy).

First Position focuses on a diverse group of young dancers, mostly American, or US-trained, but including an 11-year old Israeli girl, a young Columbian man, and a 14-year-old Sierra Leone born war orphan adopted and raised by a Philadelphia couple who deserve an Academy Award for Most Sympathetic Parents Ever Captured on Film. In addition, an American boy, aged 11, whose father’s naval career means that he trains in Rome, a twelve year old from Palo Alto whose Australian father and Japanese mother seem not to have noticed that her 10-year-old brother really doesn’t love ballet as much as they think he does, or think he should, and a mom-and-apple-pie normal blonde high school senior from suburban Maryland round out the crew. 

What all of these kids, war orphans and pampered suburbanites alike share is an astonishing degree of stoicism and drive; none of them are divas or self-dramatizers, at least not as the director, Bess Kargman, depicts them. They all have loving, supportive families, though in some cases, as with the Columbian kid (Joan Sebastian Zamorra) they are living far from home and struggling with the loneliness and dislocation of their situation. Kargman makes the wise decision not to over-dramatize any of their stories, setting a quiet tone that invites the viewer to identify with the young dancers and their families even when their situations or their values are quite unusual or even, when you think about it, frankly twisted.

Miko Fogarty, the 12-year-old prodigy from Palo Alto is a case in point. Her mother seems at first like a stereotypical “Tiger Mom,” overly invested in her children’s success, pushing them to work even harder than their entrepreneurial father. Early on, she says, “I could watch them dance for hours and never get bored,” a statement I found both seductive and disturbing. Yay, she adores her kids! But wait… Does she not have any interests outside watching them practice ballet? Is it even ballet she loves or the idea of her kids being stars? Her somewhat combative relationship with the children’s dour dance coach suggests that she is not a hands-off dance mom. 

Later, when her son, Jules, quits dancing, she breaks down and cries, but instead of this making her seem like an even crazier, over-invested helicopter parent, it shows her humanity. She really DID love watching him dance that much that now she misses it and is pain because she will never see him in his little Siegfried costume again. Also, in the end, how much different is she, with her ambitions for her children’s success, than the Columbian mother who admits that she had dreamed of having a girl who could pursue her own unrealized love of ballet, but since she had a son, and he turned out to be talented, she is ready to sacrifice a great deal to ensure that he succeeds?

The heroism of the ballet parents and the ballet teachers is quietly present in First Position – the story of Michaela DePrince, the war-orphan, cannot fail to make you want to hunt down her adoptive parents to hug and kiss them. One of the best scenes in the whole film has Mrs. DePrince at home, working on Michaela’s dance costumes. She is dyeing “nudie” leotards and shoulder straps to match her daughter’s dark brown skin, coloring in the “flesh” colored inserts on her tutus with a marker, and talking about how other dance parents have made casually racist remarks to her, wondering whether they are trying to be hurtful or whether they are “really that crass about race.” I don’t want to spoil the film, but I will say that Michaela’s story sheds some interesting light on the persistence of racial prejudice in American ballet.

Parents and racism are themes even more assertively explored in Beadie Finzi’s 2010 documentary Only When I Dance. Following two young dancers from the Centro de Danza in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on their difficult journeys from the favelas to the 2008 YAGP, the film focuses on the extreme ingenuity and dedication required not only of the youngsters but of their families and their mentors in order to give them the opportunities they need to rise out of poverty. Irlan Santos da Silva is a heartbreakingly handsome boy of eighteen from one of the most violent neighborhoods in Rio, the only child of a dapper father and a drily humorous, hearty mother. The camera spends almost as much time acquainting us with their lives – they love to go out dancing, Papa collects tattoos, Mami opens a café/bakery to fill her time once her son has left the home – as it does lingering on Irlan, who is so beautiful in motion that it makes your heart hurt. 

His classmate at the Centro de Danza is the exquisite Isabela Coracy, described by her teacher, Mariza Estrella, as “the only black ballerina,” at the school (though I could swear I saw other children an American would describe as black in some of the group scenes). Her blackness is a serious obstacle for her, according to Mariza, who says her chances of getting a place in a professional company in Brazil are “nil.” Meanwhile, her parents’ poverty is an equally formidable barrier – despite scholarships and school support, it’s clear they simply cannot afford for her to be competing and traveling as she must do to gain international attention.

The sacrifices made by Isabela’s family, including her retired grandmother, are heart wrenching. The racial politics are also tragic and reflect Brazil’s complicated history. In the US, of course, Irlan, with his more African-looking mother and more indigenous looking father, would be considered a “person of color.” In the film, his race is never mentioned. He is a few shades lighter skinned than Isabela, whose father is a very dark-skinned, very African looking man, and whose mother is very light skinned. 

The arbitrary and yet devastating character of racial distinction is really highlighted by their different stories. And who is to say that Isabela’s frustrations at the YAGP do not also arise from the widespread perception, discussed by Michaela in First Position, that black women are not meant for classical ballet because their bodies are too muscular, their feet “not good,” and so forth. As Isabela’s father observes – black dancers are considered very good entertainers in Brazil when they perform Capoeira, but not deigned proper for ballet, which is “bourgeois and European.” He wants, with stirring desperation, for his daughter to be able to succeed as a black ballerina. The constant harping of her coach on her weight is also part of this – Isabela is slim and delicate, but slightly more curvaceous than some of the other girls, a situation that probably has less to do with body fat than genetics, and which as Misty Copeland demonstrates is no impediment to being a top ballerina.

What all of the young dancers in First Position and Only When I Dance share is that urgency special to an art form in which success and recognition must be attained early, perhaps before a person is really emotionally or psychologically ready. The competition framework in which they operate places immense pressure on them, ranging from physical stress (injuries play a recurring role in both films), to financial struggles, not to mention what must be an incredible amount of emotional turmoil. Contrary to widely-circulating myths, these kids are not, for the most part, being driven in their desire and their ambition by their parents (even Miko and Jules mother cannot and does not try to force her son to continue when he decides he does not want to). The flame is within each of them, sometimes, one senses, consuming them from inside. Whether coming from privilege or poverty, all of these dancers seem to need to dance, to suffer, and to dance some more; it’s just in them. 

And that’s how ballet is, right? It gets under your skin, possesses your limbs, your organs, your senses, elevates you above your mundane self. Even if you are a forty-something amateur, it whispers in your ear, wordlessly, urging you on.