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Comment from Robert
Date: May 28, 2008, 4:36 pm

It sounds more like this is an issue of preference. Just because you don’t like the aesthetic depiction of the sorcerer doesn’t mean it’s a gesture for children.

If the ballet were handing out bobbleheads or throwing candy to the audience, that would be worthy of such a stink.

A culturist (defined on your site as cultivator or advocate of cultire) should try cultivating the positive instead of being crotchety and whiny over trivial matters. You are doing culture a disservice (and wasting everyone’s time) by lowering the conversation to silly and trivial matters.

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: May 29, 2008, 10:28 am

Robert! Thank you for writing in and for having the distinction of being my first disgruntled responder! Yes. I feel that I have, in some sense, finally arrived as a blogger.

Frankly, I would much rather have candy or bobbleheads. A bobblehead Diana Vishneva doll would be THE BEST. Or maybe a Marcelo Gomes bobblehead doll - I think he would approve, too.

And yes, certainly, many, if not most, disagreements in the arts concern matters of taste, or preference. But. Despite my Swamp Thing references, I do not think that this is a trivial matter at all - I think that the appalling costume and decor choices made by many folks in charge in the ballet world are symptomatic of a grave collective failure of imagination and nerve, in much the same way as are the plethora of “Dracula” and such productions being put up around the country. The lack of sophistication and risk is astounding, and it does a huge disservice to this difficult, elegant art form.

I am not alone in these views - many (especially younger) ballet choreographers and dancers are as frustrated. And I’ve done some revealing interviews with visual artists and fashion designers who’ve said that the sparkle-heavy costumes alone keep them from taking ballet seriously. Try taking a painter to “Sleeping Beauty” some day.

But, you know, I don’t think we need to always be talking about Weighty And Serious Issues in the arts, here or elsewhere … the trivial and the silly count, too.

Comment from Counter Critic
Date: May 29, 2008, 10:49 am

It’s odd how people don’t think “preference” counts, or matters, or that since we all have preferences, we can’t argue our reasons for having such preferences.

Taste is part of the whole culture game. It’s how people arrive at their tastes that is revealing.

And a Valery Gergiev bobble-head doll would be totally hot.

Comment from Counter Critic
Date: May 29, 2008, 10:58 am

Also, advocating for culture does not only require praising what’s good. A good cultural advocate is something like a gardener. You have to prune, plant seeds, water, uproot what isn’t growing, and on occasion, smother everything with manure. As long as your intention is the betterment of the arts and culture, then sending someone’s work down the crapper is the appropriate, even, responsible thing to do.

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: May 29, 2008, 11:01 am

So true.

Methinks we might need an entire “Which Artist Would You Most Like To See Turned Into a Bobblehead Doll?” post …

Comment from Taylor G.
Date: May 30, 2008, 12:55 am

Hi Claudia!

This post cracks me up. I totally agree with you about the Disney-type costumes in some ballets.

But I think the idea of ballet for kids goes with the nature of storytelling through movement. It doesn’t have to be that way but it has become tradition, and for whatever reason ballet is stuck in tradition (both a good and bad thing)…

And the bobble-head talk, hahaha…

Happy to start following your blog

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: May 30, 2008, 9:52 am

Thank you! As both a participant in and a critic of the form, Taylor, why do you think ballet is stuck?

And of course, it isn’t totally, that’s unfair of me to say. I was thinking after I wrote this post about Chris Wheeldon’s gorgeously upsetting ballet, “The Nightingale and the Rose,” which you’ve perhaps seen? It’s a sophisticated story ballet completely for adults, based on Wilde’s cruel fable of rapture and sacrifice. The characters, especially the Nightingale (made for Wendy Whelan - I can’t imagine anyone else doing it justice), are more fully creaturely than in other ballets; at the same time, they are entirely dependent on metaphor and symbolism.

The Bobble-Head post cometh …

Comment from brian rogers
Date: May 30, 2008, 12:45 pm

We can say the same thing about theater or music or movies or whatever. Any discpline (or subset of a discipline) which manages to develop a sustainable form is liable to become stuck within the tradition of that form. Especially when it’s placed within large theaters serving thousands upon thousands of people. I think nostalgia is also a big part of it. Of course, there’s a difference between working deeply inside a particular tradition as a kind of frame of reference, and sort of regurgitating the freeze-dried trappings of that tradition. Folks are still doing exciting things inside dance forms far far older than ballet. There is also something about young dance artists (having been around the MR festival, this is particularly present in my mind this afternoon) trying to reject established forms (ballet among them) but in fact creating a sort of anti-form that is actually, in a funny kind of way, a tradition in and of itself.

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: May 30, 2008, 1:52 pm

That’s true, Brian - it’s fascinating to hear some older contemporary choreographers talk about how the early, experimental nature of “downtown dance” has hardened into a set of increasingly narrow stylistic cliches. Certainly there is nostalgia at work in that view, but there is also some truth to it.

I do think, though, that disciplines go through cycles of regeneration, and that ballet is at a pretty low point in this cycle.

And, speaking of Movement Research, how did your performance go on Wednesday? Brian was part of a festival event that gave four groups of four randomly selected artists 24 hours to make a performance piece.

Comment from brian rogers
Date: May 30, 2008, 2:56 pm

The performance was interesting and fun. A great mix of talented people. Everybody in my group was completely game. I actually performed - something I really never do - which was a fun, if nervewracking, change of pace for me. I had not planned to do that. I must say it is a thoroughly exhausting way to make something - not sure if it’s a sustainable methodology (which of course was not the curators’ intention, as best I understand it) - but certainly was a good lesson in making fast decisions and embracing accidents. Our piece - maybe 10 minutes in duration, max - really didn’t come together until a few hours before it was performed. It was decided that I would chug six beers from the fridge in the judson meeting hall. Which I did. And then we sang a song.

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: May 30, 2008, 3:45 pm

Six!

When’s the reconstruction?

Comment from Neal
Date: May 30, 2008, 4:06 pm

Hi Claudia and folks!

Oh, swamp thing, why’re you always around?

I’ve seen little ballet in my life, but from Broadway tropes like the staircase of death (someone forebodingly ascends only, sure enough, to descend in a later act in white in a visitation from beyond the grave), to downtown plays that invariably begin with long minutes of silence and glowering stares (not to mention poorly culled text from ironical sources), there sure are a lot of swamp things in the various art forms.

I have some affection for them, though. Not that I won’t be the first to walk out of a theater denouncing the demonstrated hackiness of such and such a person for falling back on either some tired old formula (when i feel like shouting out my spanking ‘new’ manifesto, about as new as something by the futurists) or the tired old angry response to the tired old formula (when i feel like arguing that everything since world war I has been a failed and rash experiment).

But I have a special little thrill of enjoyment it when someone gets away or really sells me with the swamp thing. (not this particular swamp thing of course, but you know what I mean) I would even go so far as to say I enjoy it more than when someone throws something totally new at me.

I feel a kind of mute awe at someone who shows me something I’ve never considered or imagined. A kind of holy, sacred kind of wonder at them and their achievement.

I love that feeling, of course. But I also love seeing someone, often just with chutzpah, pull off some tired old (or new) cliche.

Failing to really work a cliche is a special sin, but succeeding at one makes me all wiggly inside.

NM

Comment from Counter Critic
Date: May 30, 2008, 4:50 pm

Heys, y’alls.

I think we’re getting a little off track. I don’t think the swamp thing costume is a trope. It’s a specific costume made for a specific production that was made in a very particular era. The problem is that it seems now to be so comically dated that it’s difficult to take seriously. Why? I’m sure there’s a long list of reasons. (Anyone care to take a stab?)

What resonates with me is the frustration with both ballet and opera to resist staging things that look aesthetically contemporary. And yes, we are talking about looks here, which are important to viewing art. In fact, you could argue that looking is the primary method art and performance is communicated to people. Even with music concerts, we have the same desire to actually see the people making the music.

This is why I’m stoked about Mortier taking over the City Opera. He’s bound to bring in newer, fresher looking productions, of which opera is in dire need.

Perhaps, with both ballet and opera, sets tend to be so ridiculously expensive to make, that it’s more cost effective to store the old sets than to commission new set designs each and every time a particular piece is staged. My answer is one that is certainly geared to contemporary global philosophies: DOWNSIZE. Spend less on sets and costumes, in fact, RELY LESS ON SETS AND COSTUMES, and let the rare and bountiful interaction between humans performing and humans watching be the primary source of sustenance.

Comment from jolene
Date: May 30, 2008, 7:27 pm

While it’s great to bring a more contemporary take on ballet and opera, you know that there’s also going to be people who are upset that someone is daring to tamper with the classics. It’s just how things are done, and how things have always been done. CC’s statement that “both ballet and opera… resist staging things that look aesthetically contemporary” really resonates with me, and yet part of me still would never want to remake Giselle to make it more feminist/less-misogynistic.

Perhaps it’s because opera and ballet’s audiences (especially the donors and financial backers) tend to be older, more traditional types? And their voices trump out the younger, poorer voices such as mine?

The thing is, no one complained when Bartlett Sher updated “Barber of Seville” to its fresher contemporary version a few years ago at the Met (not that I know of, at least). Or Laurent Pelly’s modern production of “La Fille du Regiment” that was (is?) playing at the Met recently which even had English and modern references such as Veuve Clicquot thrown in. In general, audiences may just be looking for high quality theater, and would prefer to stick to stuffy dated stereotypes that have stood the test of time rather than contemporary junk that disappoints.

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: June 2, 2008, 11:55 am

True, it’s not a trope, but they’re related, no? Neal’s “staircase of death” and my Swamp Thing both stem from failures of imagination, or sight, on the part of the director.

Sadly, with ballet, it’s not even a question of dated - if you look back at some of the older costumes (Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes being the evergreen example - some of those designs failed terribly, but you can’t fault them in terms of imagination) they were so much more sophisticated, so much more alive.

This “Swan Lake” is from 2000, with costumes and sets by Zack Brown. And don’t get me started on last year’s “Sleeping Beauty,” which looked like someone went berserk with a BeDazzler (it’s back this year, for those of you who missed it).

I agree with CC about downsizing. I think there is the idea in these immense theaters that, since people are paying through the nose, they deserve to see opulent production values (Brian alluded to this in his comment earlier). But even by this standard, most of these productions fail - sparkly and opulent are not the same thing.

I would be all for a campy Swamp Thing. Neal, perhaps after you tackle Prince this summer (www.ps122.org/performances/neal_medlyns_unpronounceable_symbol.html)
you could take on le ballet?

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: June 3, 2008, 3:10 pm

Hey Jolene - sorry for the delay in your comment being posted, you were sent to spam purgatory for some reason … I think it’s certainly not a coincidence that the more moneyed arts tend to be the more conservative ones - it’s not the whole story, but it’s a large part. It’s easier to take risks when your livelihood doesn’t depend on the box office, and many of the people who can afford those tickets tend to be (gross generalization alert) older, richer and more conservative than people who might be interested in more experimental work. But the culture itself is conservative, in a way that, for example, the visual arts don’t tend to be (I know there are people who would argue with me on that one. Have at).

It’s true, I think I would take stuffy and dated over pretentious experimental faux-intellectual junk (how sad that so often that is the choice - it’s like politics in America, pick which one you detest the least …). And updating has its perils. A feminist Giselle! I shudder to think of how badly that might come off. The real issue in ballet is that no one is telling NEW stories. The excellent choreographer Brian Reeder, one of the few in ballet who is now interested in narrative, once said that he would like to see “Carrie” done as a ballet. Me too!

Comment from Robert
Date: June 7, 2008, 9:30 pm

Your response makes perfect sense, and it’s also polite and gracious. I suppose my first post was more of a knee-jerk reaction to general snarkiness and negativity in the general cultural discussion. Which has little to do with your blog.

Looking at it now, I see that my post was pretty rude (rudeness probably does more to damage culture than taste), so I apologize.

Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: June 8, 2008, 2:14 pm

Hey Robert … what a sweet note! You made my afternoon. But there isn’t anything to apologize for, especially as your original comment got me started on the brilliant idea of bobble-head artist dolls … Seriously, though, I appreciated your negative reaction to my tone, and I think it helped me to clarify, in my response to you, what I was trying to get at in the original post.

That is a very interesting statement, that “rudeness probably does more to damage culture than taste” there are so many great ideas in that little parenthetical… I wonder, though, if rudeness is always bad? I think politeness can also do a lot to damage culture - faux-politeness especially, and that a little outrage can be a great thing (I’m thinking of an irate audience member at the intermission for Mark Morris’ “King Arthur,” who let loose with a resounding “boooh!” only to have someone, maybe Mr. Morris himself?? yell in response “Go home!” - I thought it was great, and remember thinking at the time that I wish there were more of that at the ballet).

But I suppose rudeness and outrage are really not the same thing.

The general snarkiness and negativity that you mention - where do you see this the most? In criticism, or from artists, or audiences, or on blogs? I would love to hear more, if you have the time and inclination … hope you are staying cool, and thank you again for your comments.