“Ballet Fundamentals”<BR>NYCB lecture/demonstration<BR>Sunday 1/13/02 before the matinee<P>NYCB management appear to an out-of-towner like me to have a divided mind in the audience education area. The performance program notes in “Stagebill” are pretty thin despite having nice essays about Andrea Quinn, their new music director, and Melissa Barak, their new choreographic wunderkind (how many works does a new choreographer have to make to merit this title). However, information about the works being performed are really thin—little more than the bare essentials of the production team and premiere date/cast though there is a little more from the volunteer desk in the form of a handout with a discography and bibliography.<P>On the other hand, NYCB provides a variety of seminars, talks, and lecture-demonstrations. This is in addition to their local outreach.<P>C-D moderators, if this isn’t the best spot for a post on a lecture/demonstration, please move it to where it would be most appropriate. Also, if anybody detects any mistakes in the info, especially names, please don’t hesitate to pipe in.<P>At only $10 for over 2 hours of lecture/demonstration, this was great deal for somebody like me with knows nothing about ballet as a craft or occupation. It was held in one of the studios in the Rose Building right by Lincoln Center and was overseen and MC’ed by their Education Director, Ellen Sorrin.<P>After Ellen showed a short video of the company showing their many styles and faces, she gave a short history of the company and a little bit about their style and philosophy. Taking turns making presentations were Deanna, the company’s costume hand-painter and dyer; Penny and Jim, assistant lighting designer and intern; another education/outreach person whose name I didn’t catch who introduced two students from SAB; and another woman’s whose name I missed who talked about ballet’s early history. Here are a few things I learned:<P>Costumes and shoes: <BR>For show-n-tell there were tutus from “Firebird,” “Divertimento No. 15,” etc including a very elegant floor length black gown from “In the Night.” <BR>• All the very beautiful “Four Seasons” costumes I saw the other night had been recently re-made as the originals were all but worn out. This meant a lot of hand painting and dyeing.<BR>• Differences are regional between various companies’ tutus. The NYCB classical tutu has bottom with small feathers whereas the Russian tutu has an arm-wide tutu skirt with a metal hoop. The Covent Garden style has a fuller feather bottom like “a swan’s butt.”<BR>• Over time, costumes have gotten softer and simpler.<BR>• The most expensive costume is Carabosse’s estimated as between $10K and 15K (!).<BR>• A short clip from the movie “Center Stage” showed dancers breaking in new pointe shoes—hammering, cutting, slamming, smashing, etc. There were glimpses not only of Amanda Schull, who is in SFB’s corps, but Deanna McBrearty, who is in NYCB’s corps (and on at least 2 or 3 ads in the dance magazines every issue).<BR>• The company’s annual shoe budget is about $1 million.<BR>Some old pointe shoes were also passed around. Their rather beat up and less than squeaky clean condition made me wonder what were those 19th century Parisian balletomanes thinking when they used to (as legend has it) drink champagne out of their favorite ballerinas toe shoes. Get a life, pal!<P>Lighting:<BR>• The New York State Theater has about 450 lights, about 1/3 to ½ above the stage the rest on ladders to the side of the stage and out in front over the audience.<BR>• The lights that cause the most problem for dancers are the ones in the ladders at the sides of the stage—they help give definition to the dancer’s raised legs, and arms—but shining up from the dark, they make it impossible for the dancers to see the floor while doing turns. Penny gives the dancers credit for being good troopers about it.<BR>• Clouds are generated by projecting through metal cutouts and varying the light focusing.<BR>• Penny and Jim demonstrated the use of stage light focusing, the metal cutouts, shutters, and gels.<P>Creative production team:<BR>From all the presenter’s comments, I gathered that for a new ballet, the production team gets together a few times to start working through their ideas. The costume and lighting designer start with a general idea about the ballet and the music. The costume designer tries to get a feel from early rehearsals what sort of costuming will be feasible for the kind of movements in the work. Both the lighting and costume designer try to get an idea about the general “look” by studying the music. They understand that the movements they might see in early rehearsals may not even be used in the finished work, and if the music is a commissioned score, they don’t even have the music to study. I can see how Merce Cunningham’s ideas about the separation of music/dance/design has some practical aspects.<P>Ballet lecture/demonstration.<BR>To expert narration, two students from SAB, Laura Gilbert and Adrian Weir (I hope I got the names close to right) demonstrated a very abbreviated class—barre, center, jumps, and partnering. They finished with the third theme from “Four Temperaments.” This, not “Phlegmatic” as I said in an earlier post, is the pas de deux taken up by Ann Daly in her feminist critique of the Balanchine Woman. Watching these two students dance, it seemed less a specimen text of feminist discourse on ballet than an moral exemplum about what young earnestness and intelligence can accomplish—a very creditable performance. Perhaps I’m politically naïve, but I didn’t feel that the company or the school would be teaching too misogynistic a message (I sensed that this is the same lecture/demonstration that NYCB has been using for its school outreach).<P>The presentation ended with a short slide show about early ballet history, which included a video recreation of Louis XIV vintage dance (think 18” powdered wig, tonnolets, and Jean Baptiste Lully), another of Marie Camargo doing entrechats (in the days when entrechats quatre could bring down the house), and a brief story about early stage machinery, wires, and the introduction of pointe-work.<P>I really enjoyed learning that ballet is not just aesthetics, glamour, or 400 years of the Dans d’Ecole (though it is all these). All the speakers should be given credit not only for their expertise but also their enthusiasm. This varied from a sort of calm passion for the company and ballet (Ellen and the woman who gave the history part) to a sort of “isn’t it great to have such a neat job” voice (like Deanna). Most fun was contrasting Penny’s disarming demeanor that seemed to say “I hate public speaking but if it’s about stagecraft I’ll do it” and the SAB students’ “we came we performed we kicked butt and someday we’ll even be paid to dance” confidence. I highly recommend this program to any audiences who would like a little primer about stagecraft. Though it is possible to read about stage craft, like the experience of dance itself, there really is no substitute to seeing some examples of the real thing, even if only in the abbreviated form of a lecture/demonstration.<BR><p>[This message has been edited by Jeff (edited January 25, 2002).]
|