Taking a closer look at Literature
For this task, I made a start by broadly looking at some literature surrounding the area I was interested in. Many thanks go to Ann (Module 3) for helping me here. I was looking at ballets that had both hidden and obvious political agendas. I found that this has been the case as early as 1640 in French culture (Bloechl, 2010) and again in early 20th century France when the country was looking to reinvent itself and show off its cultural power (Karthas, 2012; Christmas, 2017).
Moving on a few decades, I already knew that ballet played a larger role in the Cold War than one might expect. It was an important form of cultural propaganda especially to the Soviet Union (Järvinen, 2014;
Caute, 2003; Christina Ezrahi, 2012).
As interesting as I was finding all this, I couldn't see how useful it was to me and my practice right now. To solve this, I started to look at ballet's current place in the world.
In many ways, to the general public, ballet is a bit backwards. Traditionally, women dance on pointe and men lift the women - those lines are clearly drawn. The narrative is often based on romance between men and women. The depictions of the sexes can be very stereotypical... I'm fairly certain that if Princess Aurora was asked out on date by Prince Désiré, there would be no bill splitting - she would expect him to pay. As someone who has recently been asked why I do ballet "because isn't it a dying art form?" I have been thinking about what will keep ballet relevant in the 21st century (and don't worry, I did not dignify him with a response, hopefully my death stare said enough). It is very important to me that what I do is meaningful and relevant so I began looking at what reflects the themes and issues of modern life.
Akram Kahn's 2016 retelling of Giselle popped straight into my head because it successfully brings a real world scenario to a classic, focusing on the refugee crisis as a basis for the plot (https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/27/akram-khan-giselle-migrant-english-national-ballet-tamara-rojo-interview).
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Matthew Bourne also sprang to mind because many of his works bring modern themes to familiar stories. Swan Lake (1995) being an obvious example where he explores sexuality in a different way to the traditional versions. Although over two decades old, it's still a very relevant topic and to prove that will be touring later this year.
Thinking about these reworkings, I couldn't help but realise how controversial a topic this was. On the one hand, surely a classical ballet that has survived centuries and is still performed to packed auditoriums today deserves to be preserved and respected in it's original form? On the other, if people consider ballet to be niche and "a dying art form" (idiot) then maybe the answer lies with choreographers such as Bourne?
So after a few U-turns and a lot of questioning... this is the direction I am currently taking my inquiry.
Bloechl, O. (2010)
‘War, peace and the ballet in le Soir’, Early Music, 38(1), pp. 91–100.
doi: 10.1093/em/caq002.
Christmas, A. (2017) ‘When Ballet Became French: Modern
Ballet and the Cultural Politics of France, 1909–1939. By Ilyana Karthas’, Journal
of Social History, 50(3), pp. 581–583. doi: 10.1093/jsh/shw009.
Järvinen, H. (2014) ‘Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power
in Soviet Russia by Christina Ezrahi (review)’, Dance Research Journal,
46(Special Issue 03), pp. 123–127. doi: 10.1017/S0149767714000448.
Karthas, I. (2012) ‘The politics of gender and the revival of
ballet in early twentieth century France’, Journal of Social History,
45(4), pp. 960–989. doi: 10.1093/jsh/shr102.
Mackrell, J. (2016) Akram Khan’s refugee Giselle: ‘A real
woman in a catastrophic situation’ | Stage | The Guardian, 27/09.
Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/27/akram-khan-giselle-migrant-english-national-ballet-tamara-rojo-interview
(Accessed: 26 March 2018).
Midgelow, V. L. (2007) Reworking the ballet:
Counter-narratives and alternative bodies, Reworking the Ballet:
Counter-Narratives and Alternative Bodies. doi: 10.4324/9780203937235.
Caute, David (2003) The Dancer Defects, Oxford University Press, Oxford
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/theatre/854790/Akram-Khan-Giselle-ballet-review-ENB-Sadlers-Wells-Liverpool-tickets-dates accessed 9/04/2018
Izzy this sounds like a really interesting line of inquiry and I look forward to following you as you find out more about it. I think it will be an opportunity for you to gather thoughts from a wide demographic of people that could include dancers, audience members, ballet teachers, and even those who have never been to see a ballet - all could offer interesting views and thoughts on whether they think ballet is relevant.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insight, Laura. I think you have a good point and I'll definitely have to factor in people's background when doing this inquiry. I think non-dancers and dancers would have pretty different views especially as a lot of reworkings have been made to purposefully appeal to a wider audience whereas, when original classical ballet were choreographed, the audiences would have been very selective.
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