What is also upsetting me is how critics and others are insisting on viewingand judging everything on abstract (I guess ballet) terms. With a lot of these non-ballet dance performances, I feel like there’s a key there, there’s something going on, there is some kind of representation, but the critics (not all but many) are looking only at the movement, how beautiful and awkward it is, judging it on those terms, and completely dismissing it if it doesn’t live up to their standard of beauty. It’s like people are afraid of representation because that’s “political.”

In particular, it’s really really upsetting me how people are dismissing Kyle Abraham’s work, which I wrote about in the post (kind of interesting combo of hip hop and ballet). Here is this African American man doing something that is so clearly meant to evoke racial injustice and the constricting nature of gender stereotypes and all everyone can say is that he only uses his upper body (chief NYTimes dance critic Alastair Macaulay), or, although he combined hip hop with other movement the structure wasn’t sound (Justin Peck on the Winger). So, basically everyone is critiquing in terms of the movement vocabulary and not anything more. I want to post more on this when I have more time to gather my thoughts, but I just wish critics and others would look more at meaning and representation and what the movement is trying to convey or evoke. If they still want to criticize the limited movement vocabulary then fine, but at least try to unlock what is actually going on in the piece.

But of course a lot of the current ballet out there is intentionally abstract and there isn’t supposed to be real ‘meaning,’ so that’s likely what’s compelling them to look at everything that way.

I was thinking, what are the big overriding themes in new visual arts right now. Like in 50 years, how will art critics describe the major art movements of the turn of the 21st century? I’ve been to a handul of exhibitions of up-and-coming artsts, etc over the past year, and there are definitely some major themes: Most of the art I saw was representational – there was very little abstract art at all, and what was abstract in concept was created out of familliar and recognizable items or images. Portraits and art depicting people is lately very realistic and unidealized (Oddly, a lot of stuf reminded me of the classic Flemish paintings of maids and traidsmen) A lot of artists are working with taking handcrafts and folk arts and incorporating them into high art. Also, both in the US and UK, I saw a number of large works incorporating photo and video from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

In that context, it doesn’t really seem like abstraction is really a major theme in the art world right now. Abstract dances portraying idealized characters seem to run completely counter to where other art is going. The other dances you described seemed closer to the current multi-cultural, DIY, realities-of-daily-life aesthetic.

Selly

We should also keep in mind that ballet companies have by and large done a lousy job of marketing themselves to the public. One significant piece of evidence for the importance of marketing is what happened with New York City Ballet’s very effective marketing of Romeo and Juliet last season. As you yourself noted, that ballet was sold out or virtually sold out for every performance. Why? Because the company marketed the ballet in a way that Broadway producers market their plays and musicals. And guess what? Whatever the critics might have said, the great majority of people who attended R & J really enjoyed it – and just might come back for more. I make that observation from personal experience because I saw R & J three times – twice at the State Theater and once at Saratoga Springs and I was amazed at how enthusiastically people (many of whom had never attended a ballet before) responded to it.

Finally, let us not forget an important point you have already made – for ballet to thrive, it is still critical that new choreographers emerge who, while preserving the essential forms and vocabulary of classical ballet, still succeed in rethinking and reinventing it for a new generation. Petipa accomplished that for a 19th century audience and Balanchine did the same for a 20th century audience. Hopefully, Wheeldon (or some future choreographer inspired by Wheeldon) will do the same for our 21st century.

http://danceoutlook.blogspot.com/2007/10/christopher-wheeldons-morphoses.html

I don’t know what that’s from, but it looks like I’ll be finding out soon! Yeah, they’re the talk of the town here; I just saw a preview at Fall For Dance but I’m pretty excited to see their season which is coming up in two weeks. I’m very very happy to find another fan of both SYTYCD / ballroom AND ballet!!! There aren’t many of us!

Stay on your toes,

Selly

P.S. When I first saw the name of this post on Technorati, I’m thinking “How the heck did Pasha of all people save ballet???”. Then I actually read the post.

I understand what you mean about people needing to develop the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate classical (and I think even contemporary) ballet, but I still don’t understand why the opera and visual arts are not having the same kind of problem attracting the young. Whenever I go to the opera I see tons of young people (up in the nosebleed section with me!) but they’re still there, trying it. And whenever I walk around Chelsea browzing art galleries, same thing, I see a bunch of people in their 20s and 30s walking around clutching their Time Out NY gallery listings, looking for the galleries they circled as having an exhibit they were interested in. And these aren’t really arty types, just regular people. We’ve been having this discussion about why young people will try an opera before a ballet at the Foot in Mouth blog and critic Paul Parish believes it’s mainly because ballet doesn’t translate as well to film (so that they’re not able to go out and try a video first, or become interested in ballet through inexpensively watching it at home), whereas opera does record well on CD, so they’re able to go buy a CD recording at the store and become hooked on that listening to it over and over again, which leads them to the opera house to see it live. I wonder if there’s also possibly a disconnect between the more popular forms of dance — either on TV or dance like BAtty Moves that has clear relevance to their lives — and abstract ballet. I don’t know… I don’t really think ballet lacks relevance so much; I think it’s more that it’s hard to discern meaning in some things and people don’t understand a lot of it. And there just isn’t a lot of really good arts writing to help them out.

As for Jerome Robbins, while he did create some of his best ballets in the 40s and 50s, don’t forget some of the terrific ones he did in subsequent decades: Dances At A Gathering, Glass Pieces, In the Night, Four Seasons, The Goldberg VAriations, I’m Old Fashioned, and In G Major – just to name a few.