# Is This Ballet?



## Open Book

The name of this forum is mystifying. Why not "Dance" instead of "Ballet"?

I have attended a dance festival for the last few summers which has quite a variety of dance companies. But we gravitate toward a certain kind and it's not strict ballet. Among our favorite companies are Mark Morris, Pilobolus, Paul Taylor.

Are these considered ballet, modern dance, something else?


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

How about this ? try and dance me this


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## jegreenwood

Lenox by any chance?

I would associate all three more with modern dance than ballet, but the line of demarcation is getting more porous. What do you call Morris' "Waltz of the Snowflakes"?






I have read that Morris' "The Hard Nut" is the only well-known version of "The Nutcracker" to use all of Tchaikovsky's score in the order originally contemplated.


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## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> Lenox by any chance?
> 
> I would associate all three more with modern dance than ballet, but the line of demarcation is getting more porous. What do you call Morris' "Waltz of the Snowflakes"?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have read that Morris' "The Hard Nut" is the only well-known version of "The Nutcracker" to use all of Tchaikovsky's score in the order originally contemplated.


This is closer to real ballet than I expected from Morris. Some of the snowflakes are male and the women are not the very thin balletic types, and they are not doing perfect ballet moves. But they obviously have ballet experience. Perhaps that is how most dancers start, with ballet lessons, regardless of where they end up.

I was curious about "The Hard Nut". Morris is a witty choreographer. Thanks for posting this.

I wonder if this forum is titled "Ballet" instead of "Dance" because it was felt that only ballet makes use of the heart of the classical repertory of ballet music that someone wanted to specifically include in the discussions. That may be true, but modern dance employs a wide variety of music, even mixing many genres on one program. You might hear electronic music or jazz or a melange of industrial noise. But you might just as likely hear a Bach solo violin piece, part of a Handel oratorio, Vivaldi concerto, Moonlight sonata, etc. sometimes played live. In fact this music is what keeps me going to these dance recitals.

An entire program choreographed Schubert's "Die Schoene Muellerin" ("The Wanderer", Jessica Lang Dance Company) . The music was performed live by young up-and-comer baritone and pianist as the tragic story was acted out by the dancers. Even the brook was personified by a dancer.

If all anyone knows is classic ballet, they're missing something. Modern dance is often based on ballet but is less stiff and much more creative at its best.


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## Open Book

Yes, jegreenwood, we've been attending Jacob's Pillow Festival, which is actually in Becket, Massachusetts. Lenox is close by.

Actually, Mark Morris's group was in residence at Tanglewood in Lenox for the past few years, so he didn't appear at Pillow those years. His time at Tanglewood seems to have ended.


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## pianowillbebach

A dance forum could be a fantastic idea - ballet has classical music very often, but not all ballets use classical music. And other forms of dance use classical as well


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## Marsilius

Open Book said:


> ...modern dance employs a wide variety of music, even mixing many genres on one program. You might hear electronic music or jazz or a melange of industrial noise...


Very true. Let's, however, recall that the name of this website is Talk _Classical_.


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## jegreenwood

Marsilius said:


> Very true. Let's, however, recall that the name of this website is Talk _Classical_.


Seems to me you're taking that statement out of context.



Open Book said:


> . . .
> 
> That may be true, but modern dance employs a wide variety of music, even mixing many genres on one program. You might hear electronic music or jazz or a melange of industrial noise. *But you might just as likely hear a Bach solo violin piece, part of a Handel oratorio, Vivaldi concerto, Moonlight sonata, etc. sometimes played live. In fact this music is what keeps me going to these dance recitals.*
> 
> . . .


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## Open Book

pianowillbebach said:


> A dance forum could be a fantastic idea - ballet has classical music very often, but not all ballets use classical music. And other forms of dance use classical as well


I don't receive email when someone replies to me or to a thread I participated in (I used to, but it stopped for unknown reasons), so I didn't know this thread had continued.

Is conservative ballet choreography ever applied to modern music, music that is not from the time when ballet originated? I always thought traditional ballet stuck with the classical music that was in vogue at the time it was in vogue, that they developed together.

Modern dance may be based on ballet but it is freer and has developed new moves, let's call them. It evolves continually. It employs all kinds of music. It can be set to classical music of all eras, Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, modern, usually in interesting and unexpected ways, often pieced together. What it almost never set to is a work of traditional ballet. Ballet music is used only for traditional ballet choreography, for which it was written.

My original point was, why limit talk to ballet when there is all kinds of interesting dance?


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## jegreenwood

Ballet choreographers use all kinds of music. They often commission music for new works. Or they'll use modern music - classical or otherwise. Balanchine commissioned Hindemith and Stravinsky (including the twelve tone "Agon"). He also created a ballet using music by Webern. And one to Gershwin's songs. Christopher Wheeldon created one with music by Ligeti and another with music by Part. Robbins had a big hit with Glass Pieces. Current favorite, Justin Peck, has used music by Sufjan Stevens several times including one commission. These are the ones that pop into my head based upon a subscription to New York City Ballet. But there are many others.


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## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> Ballet choreographers use all kinds of music. They often commission music for new works. Or they'll use modern music - classical or otherwise. Balanchine commissioned Hindemith and Stravinsky (including the twelve tone "Agon"). He also created a ballet using music by Webern. And one to Gershwin's songs. Christopher Wheeldon created one with music by Ligeti and another with music by Part. Robbins had a big hit with Glass Pieces. Current favorite, Justin Peck, has used music by Sufjan Stevens several times including one commission. These are the ones that pop into my head based upon a subscription to New York City Ballet. But there are many others.


Would you say ballet choreography has advanced after the 19th century? It looks like it has a little bit. But not a lot.

The dance companies I like best incorporate some ballet but are not bound to it. These performances you have posted, even though they are set to newer music and show some modern humor in the choreography, don't stray too far from traditional ballet. In my humble opinion as a non-expert.

I don't mean to demean ballet, it's marvelous. The dancers are impressive. I love a good "Nutcracker". But I'm not usually surprised by any novelty in a ballet performance as I am in some of the companies I attend. I have also been plenty disappointed in some of the things I attend. Have walked out of a couple. It's a gamble.


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## Rogerx

Watching this last night = art in the highest form .


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## Zhdanov

Open Book said:


> ballet choreography has advanced after the 19th century? It looks like it has a little bit. But not a lot.


a lot, in fact, quite a lot.

Spartacus, The Stone Flower, Ivan The Terrible - choreographic masterpieces all (chor. Grigorovich).

and lest we forget Diaghilev ballets and there seasons in Paris too.

a huge advance, specifically Grigorovich's that took ballet to completely another level:

he employed the Stanislavsky System in those stagings, which made them lots more spectacular.


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## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> Would you say ballet choreography has advanced after the 19th century? It looks like it has a little bit. But not a lot.
> 
> The dance companies I like best incorporate some ballet but are not bound to it. These performances you have posted, even though they are set to newer music and show some modern humor in the choreography, don't stray too far from traditional ballet. In my humble opinion as a non-expert.
> 
> I don't mean to demean ballet, it's marvelous. The dancers are impressive. I love a good "Nutcracker". But I'm not usually surprised by any novelty in a ballet performance as I am in some of the companies I attend. I have also been plenty disappointed in some of the things I attend. Have walked out of a couple. It's a gamble.


One example. This is among the most popular works at New York City Ballet. Unfortunately, NYCB has very little high quality video available (in any format). This performance is by the Paris Ballet.






Edit: Here's part of Concerto DSCH choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky for NYCB.


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## millionrainbows

"Is this ballet?" Ohh, I love it!


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## millionrainbows

Marsilius said:


> Very true. Let's, however, recall that the name of this website is Talk _Classical_.


You must mean Talk _Bor-ing!
_


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## Marsilius

Like any art form, classical ballet has its own universally-accepted language, rules and standards to which all its executants aspire. Once you appreciate those, it is anything but boring.

Modern choreography has largely abandoned that established language in favour of the idiosyncracies of individual choreographers. Because there are no longer many widely-accepted and objectively-judged common standards, artistic judgements are now almost entirely subjective.

It may seem _boring_ to have to do a bit of work over time in order to learn to appreciate the classical ballet art form, but as many here will testify, it ultimately pays off.


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## millionrainbows

Marsilius said:


> Like any art form, classical ballet has its own universally-accepted language, rules and standards to which all its executants aspire. Once you appreciate those, it is anything but boring.
> 
> Modern choreography has largely abandoned that established language in favour of the idiosyncracies of individual choreographers. Because there are no longer many widely-accepted and objectively-judged common standards, artistic judgements are now almost entirely subjective.
> 
> It may seem _boring_ to have to do a bit of work over time in order to learn to appreciate the classical ballet art form, but as many here will testify, it ultimately pays off.


I've got better things to do than pay homage to history. I also disagree with your conflation of tradition with "objectivity." This is art, not science.

"Objective standards?" That's very pretentious


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## jegreenwood

A lot of my knowledge about ballet comes from Jennifer Homans' "Apollos's Angels: A History of Ballet." This from the Wall Street Journal review:

-----------------------------------------------

How to explain this art form to them? Ms. Homans, a former dancer turned academic, has focused on answering the question: "How had the art come to embody ideas, or a people, or a time?" For while the story she tells begins very specifically in France, in the 16th century, it crosses continents and plays politics. "Ballet," she writes, "was shaped by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by revolutions and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, modernism and the Cold War." "Apollo's Angels," then, is the intellectual history of a deeply physical form. Ms. Homans lays the stress on ideas-and, by extension, idealism.

-----------------------------------------------

As I was growing up, I believe I saw each of the Tchaikovsky ballets once. I had no interest in seeing them - or any other ballets - again. It was about 15 years ago when I asked a friend of mine (whose brother had been a principal dancer at NYCB) where to start with ballet. She invited me to a performance that included Balanchine's "Serenade" (to Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings) and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" I was gobsmacked. This was beauty. Neither work has a traditional story (although something's going on in Serenade). What entranced me was the way the choreographer and dancers responded to the music. The dancer and the dance became one.

And as the music varied so did the choreography. "Glass Pieces" is obviously heavily influenced by modern dance. But when Robbins' turns to Chopin, his style is very different. This from his masterpiece, "Dances at a Gathering," again performed by the Paris Ballet:






This is a more subtle blending of classical movement with some hints of modern.

Over time I have grown to appreciate story ballet, but my heart is still with non-story.


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## Larkenfield

_Is it ballet?_ If it moves poetically like a duck, leaps gracefully in the air like a duck, and pirouettes in a ballet tutu like a duck, it's probably a duck. Tchaikovsky wrote a lot of music for the ballet. So did Stravinsky but all the ducks went up in flames in The Rite of Spring.  Ballet is marvelous to watch.


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## millionrainbows

Larkenfield said:


> _Is it ballet?_ If it moves poetically like a duck, leaps gracefully in the air like a duck, and pirouettes in a ballet tutu like a duck, it's probably a duck.


...As long as it adheres to a universally-accepted language, and rules and standards to which all its executants aspire.


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## Marsilius

millionrainbows said:


> ...As long as it adheres to a universally-accepted language, and rules and standards to which all its executants aspire.


You hit the nail on the head exactly.


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## Larkenfield

jegreenwood said:


> This is a more subtle blending of classical movement with some hints of modern.
> 
> Over time I have grown to appreciate story ballet, but my heart is still with non-story.


Wow! Loved every moment... especially when the ballerinas were tossed through the air and the spontaneous applause. I detect a hint of the modern too with the noticeable independence of each dancer, and then, of course, their unity. Wonderful! The choreography seemed to fit perfectly with one of Chopin's charming waltzes. When played in a more straightforward and steady tempo (no exaggerated rubato), he can be quite danceable and would occasionally play for dancing at social gatherings. This side of him is not mentioned enough. When not desperate about his health, he could be quite agreeable, joyous, and willing to please. Wonderful choreography!


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## Open Book

Zhdanov said:


> a lot, in fact, quite a lot.
> 
> Spartacus, The Stone Flower, Ivan The Terrible - choreographic masterpieces all (chor. Grigorovich).
> 
> and lest we forget Diaghilev ballets and there seasons in Paris too.
> 
> a huge advance, specifically Grigorovich's that took ballet to completely another level:
> 
> he employed the Stanislavsky System in those stagings, which made them lots more spectacular.


I looked at some of works by Grigorovich mentioned above. This kind of dance is plainly meant to narrate a story. It's just like opera except action is being substituted for sung dialogue to tell that story and that action follows the rules of ballet. What's going on is quite literal, for instance we know by the costumes what kind of characters we are watching. The dance feels secondary to conveying the story.

The modern dance I like best is much more abstract (from the choreography to the costumes to the staging to the weaving together of music and other sounds). There often isn't an obvious narrative or a well-known story, yet somehow it is intensely moving when it works, it hits you at a gut level. The level of original artistry can be through the roof, it challenges and intrigues you. There is always something new in the best of it.

I worry about the dancers when I watch this modern choreography. The contortions they subject their bodies to seem to guarantee a future of orthopedic surgeries. It's like trying to enjoy American football now that we know some of the players will suffer from serious effects in middle age from the concussions they received in the sport.


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## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> One example. This is among the most popular works at New York City Ballet. Unfortunately, NYCB has very little high quality video available (in any format). This performance is by the Paris Ballet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Edit: Here's part of Concerto DSCH choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky for NYCB.


What the line of the dancers in the back is doing reminds me of a modern dance I saw, can't remember which company it was. But since this was not ballet those dancers were not all of the same build, a couple were shaped like bowling pins. Their motions were more organic, morphed over time, they looked like a giant amoeba.

Ballet however it may have changed, still seems hung up on symmetry and following rules, compared to modern dance.


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## Open Book

millionrainbows said:


> "Is this ballet?" Ohh, I love it!


Is it ballet or not?


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## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> Is it ballet or not?


Well, it ("Glass Pieces" in response to the exchange, although "Dances at a Gathering" as well) is performed by ballet companies around the world.


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## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> What the line of the dancers in the back is doing reminds me of a modern dance I saw, can't remember which company it was. But since this was not ballet those dancers were not all of the same build, a couple were shaped like bowling pins. Their motions were more organic, morphed over time, they looked like a giant amoeba.
> 
> Ballet however it may have changed, still seems hung up on symmetry and following rules, compared to modern dance.


"Glass Pieces" is about symmetry and breaking away from it. "Dancers at a Gathering" is about the communal life style that was developing in the late 60's (when the ballet was created). Yes, it is linked to the formal requisites of ballet, but is could not have been created in 1869.

So when you ask, has ballet evolved, my answer is yes. And great choreographers from the recent past, such as Balanchine and Robbins, as well as choreographers today, such as Wheeldon, Peck and (most notably) Ratmansky continue to excite.


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## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> "Glass Pieces" is about symmetry and breaking away from it. "Dancers at a Gathering" is about the communal life style that was developing in the late 60's (when the ballet was created). Yes, it is linked to the formal requisites of ballet, but is could not have been created in 1869.
> 
> So when you ask, has ballet evolved, my answer is yes. And great choreographers from the recent past, such as Balanchine and Robbins, as well as choreographers today, such as Wheeldon, Peck and (most notably) Ratmansky continue to excite.


And ballet is very conscious of physical beauty and proportion. Modern dance can be odd or ugly occasionally. It goes out on a limb.

It's comparable to visual art. Ballet is like naturalistic art and modern dance is like abstract art. I started out preferring figurative art and I still admire the technique required to do it well. But now I generally prefer abstract art, it's more interesting. It's pure imagination and aesthetic content when it's done well, not bound by the constraints of realism. Very creative.

Different people, different preferences.

I will check out those choreographers.


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## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> And ballet is very conscious of physical beauty and proportion. Modern dance can be odd or ugly occasionally. It goes out on a limb.
> 
> It's comparable to visual art. Ballet is like naturalistic art and modern dance is like abstract art. I started out preferring figurative art and I still admire the technique required to do it well. But now I generally prefer abstract art, it's more interesting. It's pure imagination and aesthetic content when it's done well, not bound by the constraints of realism. Very creative.
> 
> Different people, different preferences.
> 
> I will check out those choreographers.


I've mentioned in this forum that of the current choreographers whose work I've seen, my favorite is Ratmansky. His range is prodigious: from heavily recreations of Petipa's Tchaikovsky ballets to a version of Anna Karenina for Mariinsky (not his best, though) to "Whipped Cream," an almost forgotten ballet by Richard Strauss, to a number plotless ballets created for New York City Ballet and other companies. I'm looking forward to a new ballet NYCB will be presenting this winter.

Here's "Russian Seasons," created for NYCB. As usual they have no video of of it, but the Bolshoi does.


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## gregorx

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> How about this ? try and dance me this


Now that's a ballet!


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## jegreenwood

jegreenwood said:


> I've mentioned in this forum that of the current choreographers whose work I've seen, my favorite is Ratmansky. His range is prodigious: from heavily recreations of Petipa's Tchaikovsky ballets to a version of Anna Karenina for Mariinsky (not his best, though) to "Whipped Cream," an almost forgotten ballet by Richard Strauss, to a number plotless ballets created for New York City Ballet and other companies. I'm looking forward to a new ballet NYCB will be presenting this winter.


And that new ballet is coming up. It's to Peter Ablinger's Voices and Piano. Should be interesting.

The same program will include a wonderful ballet to short piano works by Ligeti.

(By the way - in my self-quote - that should have been "heavily researched.")


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