Shame me once, shame me twice…I deserve it

Yesterday morning I went to see Mao’s Last Dancer with Karena.  Now I have to preface by saying with great humility that I have not read the book.  Normally, I’m one of those people that look at younglings, resist the urge to poke them with a stick and say “read the book, sonny boy!” (or for that matter, read A book…ANY book).  Back in Ohio I had gotten it from the library and added it to my fortress of borrowed items, but as any bookworm will tell you, we often bite off more than we can chew when it comes to library materials.  In the end, I never got around to it and had to return it before even getting the chance to open it.  Like any addiction it’s a rather vicious cycle but I honestly blame my parents—they were always reluctant to buy toys for me growing up but books were educational and thus limitless.  In essence, I’m not sure I know how to live a life that isn’t surrounded by books that I assume I’ll read someday…they offer a certain sense of security for the future that nothing else can.  But I digress.  The point is, no I haven’t read it and yes I consider that to be an embarrassing fact.

While it is true that I wear the scarlet letter of failing to read a book before its release as a film, I think it can be said that generally, biographical films tend to fail just a little bit because inevitably they will always lack nuances and important details.  There’s simply too much content in one person’s life to cram into a couple of hours, especially when the producers of the film are trying to include the whole spectrum of formative years as a child through to adulthood.  Many a twitterer have made this observation and I trust that they are right…a lot of the movie felt rushed and quite frankly didn’t really paint a complete picture of Li Cunxin.  I liked the movie but it did seem awfully rosy for the first hour or so, basically until his defection from China.  The problem with glazing over much of his developmental years is that it’s difficult to ascertain a sense of why he is the way he is as a grown man (besides the fact that he was jumping up staircases with a surplus of weights tied to his body, which really just made me cringe.  I’m not entirely convinced such a thing would work either, but I’m a big proponent of learning to manipulate the body you have when it comes to developing technique).

I think that’s why Billy Elliot probably remains (in my humble opinion) the most successful ballet movie within the past decade.  In Billy Elliot the story focuses only on his beginnings in ballet, extracting just the short time period in which he discovers ballet to his acceptance into the Royal Ballet School.  The other genius (and annoying) thing about Billy Elliot is the omission of any professional dance scenes—it forces the audience to focus only on the story and the amateur dancing Billy does throughout develops a stronger sense of his character.  Dance scenes would have ruined Billy Elliot but as a dance junkie I was glad there were snippets in Mao’s Last Dancer, especially because I think current generations are losing touch with classical arts and the film was a more appropriate forum to show them rather than certain television shows I dislike so very much.  Occasionally the editing weirded me out only because I knew too much (like how they chopped up the Don Quixote grand pas de deux) and while the slow motion leaps had Karena and I in giggles, she made the observation that it kind of takes away from the spectacularity of a bravura jump.  It almost makes you think it’s a trick of the camera when he really is jumping that high and really is achieving a certain position in the air.  I forget where I saw it, but I do remember seeing videos of a dancer leaping, as captured by a high speed camera, kind of like how during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel they use high speed cameras to film great white sharks jumping out of the water to eat seals…from a scientific perspective, getting the opportunity to be clued in to the process is incredibly fascinating.  Speaking of high speed cameras and nature, in a study that filmed frogs jumping in super slow-motion, the champion jumper was the Cuban tree frog, which leads me to believe that there is indeed something in the water that must make the Cubans the jumpers that they are—be they frogs or ballet dancers.

Speaking of other dance scenes though, I had to laugh when there were the obligatory fouettés in DonQ, because apparently a ballet movie can’t impress audiences without them (hell, even that long ass movie Benjamin Button had a fouetté moment).  That’s all I really have to say about that…it’s just funny how the move is so iconic of ballet and yet they’re hardly a part of daily training.  Then again, maybe that’s because I take adult classes and we’re too old for that crap (though I don’t doubt many people go into an adult class hoping to learn them!).

Meanwhile, I enjoyed the movie and was perhaps aided by not having read the book and yes, my sappy ass cried at the end when Li was finally reunited with his parents after that awesome performance of Rite of Spring (anyone know if that is indeed Graeme Murphy’s choreography?).  Also, lovely to see Amanda Schull again and I was impressed with the casting in general.  In other news, a woman asked us after the movie who the actor playing Stevenson was and what else he appeared in and I found myself in the awkward position of having to keep quiet in saying that I knew Bruce Greenwood was the president in the National Treasure sequel (“it’s a cipher!”) as well as a jerk CEO in Dinner for Schmucks.  Even worse than admitting I haven’t read Mao’s Last Dancer is having to admit that I know a Nicholas Cage movie so well.

What goes around comes around

So I’ve been in a bit of a shlump and was having an uninspired couple of weeks.  The best remedy for this is really to go back to the basics and go with what you know.  What do I know?  Manon.  I mean, I don’t know EVERYTHING about the ballet, but I know that it is by far my favorite full length ballet (keep that in mind kitties, there will be a pop quiz someday…) and I’m familiar with it to a point where I don’t need program notes or anything of the sort.  Instead of the usual goddess Rojo however, this time I got the chance to watch the Royal Ballet production with Jennifer Penney and Sir Anthony Dowell, the latter of which originated the role of Des Grieux.  I’ve actually had this on loan for a while but was saving it for a rainy day (in Seattle?  The very idea…although it did actually rain today and it has been a fairly sunny summer).  In fact, most of the cast in this production (filmed in 1982) were the dancers who originated their respective roles…hot!

I have to say one of the most fascinating things about this recording is that even though it was filmed a good twenty-five years before the Rojo/Acosta version, the performance isn’t dated at all.  Despite changes in approaches to technique and desired body types in ballet, imagining both productions as different casts two nights in a row is completely realistic.  I felt differences in technique and physiques were evident in between the 1984 and 2008 La fille mal gardée recordings, but not so for the Manon performances.  This speaks volumes about Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography—it’s timeless, it’s most definitely a classic and it defies technique.  Obviously it takes a great deal of technique to be able to perform it but when all is said and done the physical act of having bodies dance the choreography reveals so much about characters and story that there’s this rich depth that I’m not sure any other choreographer has ever achieved in story ballets.

Accordingly, the Penney/Dowell interpretation of Manon was vastly different from Rojo/Acosta.  I felt that Penney portrayed a Manon who was very much aware of her ability to manipulate men, as opposed to Rojo who grew to be aware of it but concerned herself more with the internal struggle of wealth versus love.  I never felt that Penney’s Manon was in love with Des Grieux…I found their relationship to be very hunter and prey, like a cat and bird (to see an actualization of this eternal conflict, see Simon’s Cat: Snow Business).  Dowell’s Des Grieux is catlike in so many ways—for his use of plié and he has this charm about him that completely belies his predatory nature.  Acosta’s Des Grieux, like Rojo’s Manon is more about an internal struggle, with his being between the path of virtue and temptation.  This is where things get really nifty, because conflict in the Penney/Dowell performance manifested in their actual relationship as a power struggle between the two characters and not as internal turmoil.  What? I suggest watching these first:

Notice how it’s almost violent in the way Dowell pulled Penney toward him, ten seconds into the first pas de deux, like a cat clawing at a bird?  And how in his luxurious solo he’s like a predator—mesmerizing his prey by trying to lure her and toy with her.  To continue with the house cat metaphor, you see Dowell’s coy, innocent face, his beautifully soft movements and you know his character wants to be a righteous man but without hesitating he gives in to his desire for Manon which is exactly like how the cat that rubs up against your legs and purrs with affection is the same cat that will shred your couch even if s/he knows it’s wrong.  Manon is obviously the bird…a free spirit that is captured (but not loved) by Des Grieux.  However, in the second act there is a shift of momentum and it’s Manon who takes on the role of the hunter and becomes the cat.  It’s in the second act where we see her seductive solo that mirrors the purpose of Des Grieux’s solo in Act I.  She’s bewitching her prey, whether it’s the various men at Madame’s party or Monsieur G.M.  The reason why I felt Penney’s Manon never truly loved Des Grieux is because in her performance of that solo, she blatantly ignores him, symbolizing her ability to captivate whoever she wants.  The jewelry she receives from Monsieur G.M. then become not a symbol of wealth but of her powers of ensnarement.

In Act III, Des Grieux reassumes the role of the hunter, but this time manipulates his prey as if willing it to live again so he can hunt it anew.  By this time, Manon is disgusted by jewelry, as it recalls memories of when she was the hunter and how she suffered from the consequences of those times.  I know I’ve been saying that I never believed Penney/Dowell’s portrayals of the characters to be that of two people in love but that’s the heart-rending aspect of the performance—you want to believe it’s this romantic tryst but you know better and you can see how their relationship is quite dysfunctional.  However, when they get to the concluding swamp pas de deux…it’s like taking an anvil to the soul.  Manon realizes that her only salvation in breaking the cycle of manipulation and lust that she’s trapped in is the very hunter that destroys her while Des Grieux no longer wants to be predator or prey and wants to try to love this girl.  It occurred to me that there are some similarities with La Sylphide here; trying to own a fairy is what will inevitably kill her and Des Grieux’s pursuit of Manon is almost exactly the same, just told in a more corporeal, sans-supernatural-bells-and-whistles (aka, enchanted forests) story.  As we all know, she dies and let me tell you I have never cried for a ballet before and I was in tears this time around.  It’s such an emotional roller coaster to watch Manon and Des Grieux go through the motions of loving each other only to realize they truly do when it’s too late.

This DVD is a MUST buy.  It is such a treat it was to see Dame Monica Mason dance as Lescaut’s mistress.  She was rather brassy and I loved her bewilderment during the drunken pas de deux with Lescaut.  Just amazing work…and what can you say about Anthony Dowell?  When I watched his performance as Oberon in The Dream, I thought to myself “if I could be reborn as a professional dancer, that’s the role I’d want to do” but having watched him in Manon makes me want to BE reborn as Anthony Dowell.  Better start stocking up on good karma.

So long, summer session

Pacific Northwest Ballet’s summer session of classes has drawn to a close and I am beat.  It was immense amounts of fun and I really look forward to taking classes there on a regular basis, but not as much as I have been for you see, I made the mistake of purchasing a twenty-class card without fully recognizing that it would expire in a mere five weeks, thus I had to go to class four times a week to ensure that I got my money’s worth.  Going from not having danced in a year to four (and even five classes a week because I dropped in for a couple of classes at Cornish College of the Arts) was really stupid and I suffered appropriately.

I joke when I say I’m old, but the truth is I’m no spring chicken…those were swarming the sacrosanct chambers of the PNB school, participating in the academy’s prestigious summer intensive program.  Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and full of hope, I couldn’t help but admire their enthusiasm…the kind where you still think you’re invincible and actually need people to tell you how important it is to warm up.  Fact: When you realize you NEED to warm up and when you no longer crave fruit-flavored candy (i.e. Nerds, Airheads, Laffy Taffy, SweetTarts, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers and the like)…YOU ARE OLD.  This is not to say we olden folk don’t enjoy candy…in fact, when you become old, chocolate officially becomes a food group.  However, you notice disturbing things like how when you buy saltwater taffy, none of the flavors are fruity (I went to a shop down by Seattle’s waterfront and the flavors I got were cinnamon roll, pumpkin pie, caramel corn and chocolate chip cookie.  The aversion is scary, isn’t it?).  At any rate, spring chickens…they’re adorable.  Although their enthusiasm was slightly less appreciated when the adult class was over and I was in the process of peeling myself off the floor and they were stampeding in ready to go.  Throw this mid-twenty-something, decrepit tree branch a bone, kitty cats!

I have enjoyed the process of learning School of American Ballet…technique (don’t argue with me, please…I’m not THAT knowledgeable so it’d be like shooting an ocean sunfish in a barrel).  I know I’ve discussed some new ideas that I encountered like the class I took with Peter Boal, but other faculty members are also of course heavy on the SAB training.  They certainly like their jetés at barre (even though they’ll always be degagés to me) and it was difficult getting used to new ways of doing petit allegro.  Oftentimes the teachers would include a stop, like a sous-sus to relevé or just a plain hold after a certain step and that drove me insane.  One of my early coping strategies for petit allegro was to just keep bouncing no matter what (ESPECIALLY Bournonville!) so every time there was a pause of some kind, I kept going even though I knew there was no step to be done.  Isn’t that the story of ballet class though?  How often does the mind know better and yet the body does not obey…

Meanwhile, there is one teacher in particular (who shall remain nameless for no reason) whose class I enjoyed immensely.  It seemed less SAB-y (whatever that means) than others and I really liked the structure of the class.  But have you ever had a teacher who sings while demonstrating every combination?  Oddly enough, it actually helped with remembering the sequence of steps and knowing where to place the accents but it was always the same song.  Slow rond de jambes at barre?  Same song.  Grand allegro?  A variation on the same song.  So now I’ll be walking down the street to the library and surprise, guess what little diddy is stuck in my head—or worse, it’s the kind of thing that like my flute teacher always said of the “augmented scale,” will keep you lying awake at night.  And that it does (this problem is exacerbated by the fact that my iPod is broken).  Who would have thought a ballet teacher could give you insomnia…it almost makes me wish there was a court of some kind just for funsies that would try farcical lawsuits to see what the outcome could have been in a real court.  I’d play.

PNB teachers really know how to dish it though…never have I had so many teachers inflict punishment by virtue of my mortal enemy, the temps de cuisse (which for non-dancer types, is basically a sideways jump from two feet with this little “hiccup” where one foot goes from back to front and then jump.  Sound easy?  SHUT IT.).  Sure, I had a teacher at OSU give it every now and then but at PNB it’s almost every other class and it’s brutal.  I don’t know what it is about this step, but I can never seem to take off of two feet equally so it looks and feels awkward, or during the “hiccup” I’m thinking so much about shaping the foot the jump is already over.  I got some good advice from a tweeter to really stay in plié before going after it and finally, today I actually managed a run through where I had it down…but that was eclipsed by two failures.  I shouldn’t complain though because progress is progress.

Oy, I have to tell you though the class this morning was rough.  Maybe it was because it was the last class of the summer but it was freakin’ hard.  A really intense barre, oodles of center work, multiple allegros (with the aforementioned step of Satan, the temps de cuisse) and guess what the teacher ended class with…(and say this in your most ominous, master-of-the-universe voice possible) the ENTRECHAT SIX (courtesy of ABT’s online dictionary).  Maybe this is pathetic, but I can actually remember exactly three instances of encountering this beastly little jump in class: One, the teacher said we could do it and nobody did because we thought she was joking; Two, the teacher asked for it and WAS joking; Three, the teacher had us try ONE at the end of a jump sequence.  Today, we were asked for eight in a row (fortunately, with a life saving sous-sus in between…though a trampoline would have been better) and I almost died.  Maybe I even died and came back to life, but I’m pretty sure I was not all that successful—there may have been some cheating with a royale or entrechat quatre thrown in.  As much as I suffered, in retrospect I’m glad the teacher had us do it.  I recognize the danger of complacency and I’m not always one to test my limits on my own.

One of my limits is the SAB way of pirouetting though.  When doing a pirouette en dehors, they like a straight back leg in fourth position and to pull the arms into a compact position.  I was always taught to plié on both legs and bring the arms to first.  Neither way is wrong, but what I like about the way I was taught is that when you spring up from two legs, you’re moving the whole torso in one piece, whereas I’ve found with the straight back leg, there’s a tiny little contraction that has to happen in order to bring the pelvis completely underneath you.  That little shift has a tendency to wreak havoc on me and there’s always the chance that I can adjust and eventually adapt but what I’ve also noticed in people who use that preparation is that they often have a harder time finishing a pirouette on relevé or finishing in a clean fifth position…I think it’s the snappiness of the preparation that makes it difficult.  For me, there have been days where I have had some really satisfying single pirouettes, leading to clean doubles and I don’t want to fix what isn’t broken.  I guess this is the big dirty secret as an adult student of ballet and probably the worst thing I could divulge but you don’t always have to do everything a teacher asks you to do.  Sometimes, you’re allowed to do what works for your body (and more importantly, your mind).

Looking back I think this post may come off as a roasting of PNB but that’s not my intention.  Even if it is I would do so with great love because I LOVE taking classes at PNB.  It’s kind of like getting to peek in on the company class every now and then…sure it’s a little creepy, but I watch in awe with complete admiration.

Hera help us…

So I read Ismene Brown’s article at The Arts Desk that discusses what is to be done with dances after a dancemaker dies, a topic that is relevant now more than ever with the passing of Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch last year.  It’s also a topic that for no logical reason has been the cause of me losing sleep for the past week and Brown’s article has clarified some things in my mind so the timing’s right to write.  Now or never, go big or go home.

I have to start by saying I have no idea what either company should do.  I liken it to ancient civilizations like Greece and Egypt…all great things must come to an end.  However, even though modern studies of such civilizations are a conglomeration of facts and theories, the important thing is how they continue to fascinate people.  Authenticity isn’t necessarily important; in fact, the mystery adds a certain allure that continually fuels the study of them.  I want to believe Cunningham understood this, which is why he was at peace with having his company come to an end.  He knew the art is grounded in the ephemeral and that his dances are lived.  It’s like treating each dance itself as a living being; a spirit that is born when an audience sees dancers moving on a stage.  In this sense, I find dance quite religious—it is entirely dependant on living people.  Just as people live and die, so does dance and while it saddens me to think that dances are always being lost I almost take comfort in the fact that it is.  I remember reading about some nutty choreographer that wants all documentation of his dances burned and destroyed after he dies (which I find silly and a little stupid) and while that is much too extreme there’s something to be said for being able to easily separate ourselves from dance and inevitably this world.

I should actually hit the ball out of the park and just say dance IS religious.  Choreographers, performers and the “living dance spirit thingies” become our gods and goddesses, with each of us having our own wonderfully unique pantheon (a prize for anyone who can name five of mine.  To the victor go the spoils!).  In addition to worship of our idols there is disciplined practice of the art in the studios.  These are reasons why filmed performances are so critical; while we can never truly capture the magic of a live performance, dances on DVD and yes, even on something as mundane as YouTube allow for audiences to form a relationship with a particular piece by repeatedly seeing them.  Most of the time, you can’t truly fall in love with someone just by meeting them once and it’s the same with dances.  Even if there is an initial lust, ideally a dance is revisited to understand it more each time.  It really is just like filming people—like watching a video of a birthday party when you were five or something embarrassingly horrifying from high school.  You watch not to recreate the moment but to remind yourself of it and feel that connection with the people in the video or in the case of dance, a particular deity.  Video makes dance ever so slightly more tangible but not concrete.

It’s easier for ballet, which to me is like an ancient civilization with artifacts, monuments, etc. and to be more precise, an ancient civilization with written word, which makes the interpretation of its relics and educated conjecture possible.  It has a structure and systematic order for teaching newer generations.  Meanwhile, I liken modern dance to smaller, native tribes with oral traditions.  Oral tradition makes the passing of stories through generations a bit more precarious but it allows for change and more importantly, imagination.  I think Bausch and Cunningham’s dances have made their mark in history and have good documentation with many performances readily available on film and while that may not be enough to easily restage a certain piece, I’m less troubled by either choreographer’s dances being “lost” because audiences of these dances have to rely on memories of what the dance was like, filling in the blanks with their imaginations and thus nurturing creativity.  I myself went to see the Cunningham Company’s Legacy tour (link for my review), and while I can’t remember exact movements to exact music like I can in ballet, I can vividly remember the style, the colors and effects and imagine for myself what the choreography looked like.  Thus, while it doesn’t have to be specific to a certain genre of dance, I often see classical ballets as immortalized and modern dances as reincarnated.

In terms of preserving modern works I hate to oversimplify and say that modern dance companies should just “try and see how it goes” but that’s often the foundation of the work that goes on in studios so I don’t necessarily see a problem with that approach.  I tend to believe that things that will have a profound influence on history will find its own way to achieve that so while I’m saddened by the idea of certain modern repertory “passing on,” I don’t believe Cunningham or Bausch’s influence will just vanish off the face of the Earth.  I just hate how the whole idea of dance conservation and guardianship is muddled by copyright laws and crap.  It’s counterproductive because the sense of freedom that should come with being an artist is so heavily monitored…but I digress.  It’s hard for me to complain rationally about something I really don’t understand.

At any rate, I have to disagree with Brown who concludes that nobody will want to support an art that “abstains from saving itself.”  For some of those dances, preservation would end up being like those people who obsessively get cosmetic surgery in order to “maintain” their “youth” (end result? Not pretty).  I often find modern choreographers to be quite grassroots in that they build in small communities and eventually those with voices big enough will be heard.  Maybe I’m sickeningly optimistic, but I think it’s just a matter of time.  After all, gods and goddesses aren’t so easily replaced.