Things Change

As we are getting ready for the event on Sunday, we are spacing things out and adjusting the way we present the dances. At the Thursday Club, we will have the viewers arranged around the dancers in a horseshoe pattern. These dances were all originally staged to be presented in a proscenium style. So we have to change some facings and angles so that we don't just keep our backs to half of the audience the whole time. What has been funny about this process is that I actually like the facing changes in the 3 adjusted pieces from Carnival of the Animals, so much that I'll probably keep them even when we go back to presenting it on a proscenium stage.
 

A Week Out

So Creative Conversations is a week out and everything is falling into place. Which is not to say that everything is going according to plan. But it is all settling in to what it is going to be. 

Have had to replace a dancer (my unfortunate Rhino). He just won't be at 100%. So better to let him heal and not take a chance. It wasn't a difficult choice as we all knew what was best. Still, he was doing a very nice job with it, so it's a bit sad not to see him do it. And we also have a dancer who left the company in the middle of the week. Luckily, she wasn't doing that much in this performance and she had barely been placed in the piece she was performing. 

Dancing with a ballet company is a job. Sometimes jobs fit sometimes they don't. When they don't it is the best thing if everyone just accepts it and moves on. More than once I have had a discussion with a dancer where I have to say, "You are a nice dancer, but I don't know if we are the right company for you. I am not sure if you will be happy here in the future." It isn't a failure on anyones part, just reality. I always equate it to fast food. McDonald's. Jack in the Box. Burger King. Wendy's. Carl's Jr.  They all sell you basically the same thing. A hamburger and fries.  But they all taste differently and people have their favorites. Likewise, if you work for those places, they are all different experiences, while you are basically doing the same thing. 

In the case of a ballet company, if the shoe isn't fitting, don't try too hard to squish your foot into it. Go find another shoe.

Getting A Headstart

We are actually a bit ahead of ourselves with the dances for Creative Conversations, so I decided to get a bit of a jump on our upcoming production of Giselle. 

Although Giselle is a ballet that deals with supernatural vengeance, tragic love, and all that melodrama  (in a good sense), it is actually a fun ballet to set and rehearse. Why? Because the whole first act is pretty much a happy contrast to what is going to occur in the 2nd part of the ballet. So it is filled with a bunch of open, uncomplicated peasant dances. Lots of swaying. Chasse-ing. Skirt swishing. And general flying across the stage. All the skipping around always makes me think of children's ballet classes. 

Given that we had a few HR issues that we had to make decisions on (ad HR decisions are often not the funnest to make), a visit from a journalist for an upcoming article, and a few logistic issues to deal with today, it was lovely being able to spend some time with the "pleasant peasants." 
 

Beautiful Dynamite

Today is Cyd Charisse's B-day. She who was once called "Beautiful dynamite" by Fred Astaire. There is another reason for posting her pic today. 

Some of the pieces we will be sharing at Creative Conversations on the 24th will be excerpts from Carnival of the Animals set to a new score. One of the pieces is a pas de deux for a rhino and a flamingo. The pas had a few inspirations. One was French Apache dance. The other was this famous dance from Singing in the Rain. 

Last week, while we were rehearsing a lift that was a homage to the lift above, my rhino (Jonas) took the apache idea to heart and gave Stephanie (my flamingo) a very energetic take off. Her hip bone connected to his rib bone and... Well the good news is that he doesn't have a broken rib, but he did come close. He will be out for a week.  Hopefully, he will be able to perform in 10 days. 

Just a reminder that dance is physical. And with any extreme physical effort comes the possibility of injury, no matter how much you guard against it. 

Beautiful dynamite indeed.

A Public Service

Yes this is a ballet directors blog, but...

I also live in San Diego and San Diego is the Land of a Million Taco Shops. And not all tacos are created equal.  When one stumbles across a good one, it is a civic duty to let everyone know.

Now, all Mexicans know that although there are right ways and wrong ways to make tacos, that (unlike pizza aficionados who turn their nose up at pineapple), that pretty much anything fair game for taco filling. No part of a cow, pig, chicken, or denizen of the sea is safe from being wrapped up in a CORN tortilla and slathered with sauce. There are even fideo tacos made from pasta. 

City Tacos has just enough of a mix of traditional and boundry pushing tacos to please everyone. The food is fresh. The salsas are tasty. And there are plenty of vegetarian options, for those like me who won't eat anything that had a face. I recommend the Good Start platter for two.

I will for sure be making a return trip.

As a disclaimer, I don't own stock in the company, or know anyone who works there but it IS a local chain. Support local businesses :)

Tomorrow, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming :)

https://citytacossd.com/locations-north-park/

Let It Go

In the end, after all the dissection of the Swan, the most important thing in the dance is to have a sense of freedom and not holding back. Were you on the edge for 3 minutes? Are you spent? Did you feel as if you made a personal statement? Did you expose something inside you? Did you communicate with the audience?

Years ago, I was lucky enough to see Maya Plisetskaya perform the Dying Swan. I actually had decent seats. I was sitting next to Walter Matthau (who knew he was such a balletomane?). Anyhow, she was kind of on a farewell tour.  When she came out with her back to us, she had perfected a technique that gave her arms a sort of boneless, snakey, ripply water quality. The audience applauded immediately. After that her performance was a bit past the prime of a great artist but you could see what had once been there. The thing I will always remember is that when the dance was done, she went into a series of elaborately choreographed bows. The audience went wild for the great Russian Ballerina. And then she did an encore... of the Dying Swan again. As were her choreographed bows afterwards. It was exactly the same. Every accent. Every nuance. And while I respected the integrity of her performance and her dedication to her art. I couldn't help but be disappointed. So here was a great artist doing the same piece twice. And she was trapped in the rigidity of simply repeating all of the effects that she knew "worked" in a 3 minute piece, night after night.

In the end, withis this particular piece, that doesn't interest me. Funny, but in a piece that is all about dying, I want the dancer to be... alive. :)

Justify It

I have to admit a bias here. And this is my own personal belief, but it is my own personal blog. For a long time, I have found the current state of choreography a bit... underwhelming. Not that I don't think that there is some wonderful work being done, but... The proliferation of competitions as an aspect of ballet and the almost too easy crossover with contemporary dance has created an odd beast. Too often I see dances that have no dynamic range that are just an almost stream of consciousness series of poses and random ballet steps. The only thing that seems to hold them together is some sort of unchanging drive toward forward motion. Linking steps are given the same emphasis as big jumps and everything just seems to be an exaltation of whatever extreme line the dancer can accomplish. I often feel that if I were to ask the dancer, "But what is the most important part of that 3 minute dance that you just did?" they would have no answer for me. That is really unacceptable in an artist. At least an artist who is trying to move the audience in a particular way.

As we were playing around with the Swan, there was one particular moment towards the end where Jessica kept going for a balance before she melted into the ground. The rest of the dance was coming along and then every time we came to that moment, I could see her mind working. "Pull up on the foot. Turn the leg out. What shape is my torso in. Look up at the exact correct angle." I stopped her and asked her. "Why do you want to put that balance there?" and she admitted that the reason wasn't because of a dramatic justification. It was to make it a bit more choreographically dense or interesting. At that point, I just reminded her that she doesn't have to be more "interesting", she just needs to get the idea of a soul in transition across in the clearest possible way. If that balance does that, great. If not, then it is just in the way of the movement that does do that. 

I will always remember Anthony Hopkins once making the point that as you rehearse, you should always be on the lookout for anything (speech, movement, gesture, etc) that distracts from what you want the audience to understand. In the end, your performance should be distilled in such a way that everyone is getting the same message. Who am I to disagree with Hannibal Lecter?

So the extras, the doilies (as an old dance teacher used to call them), that we are so fond of need to go away. External baggage that keeps us from focusing on the internal... that is now free to be revealed externally.

Breaking the 4th Wall

Often times, when you see a performer on stage, they are acting (pretending) as if the audience is not there. While they are aware of the audience's presence, they are giving the impression that they are not. They are portraying characters who live in a make-believe reality and the stage is their whole world. When a performer acknowledges the existence of the audience, it is called "breaking the 4th wall." As if that invisible barrier between  performer and audience has been removed. 

Breaking the 4th wall is a very tricky thing. In classical ballet, there is kind of a tacit acceptance that that is what performers are expected to do a bit in their performance of solos. So much so that dancers actually take bows after pas de deux and solos. This can seem jarring to actors and opera singers who would never take a bow in the middle of a straight play, musical, or opera. That said, by breaking the 4th wall, it is harder for audiences to actually invest in dancers as characters.

The Dying Swan is an interesting exemption to this rule. As usually done today, the swan drifts in, does her bourees, and dies. All in a pretty insular way. She is in her own world. Watching Pavlova, one sees a very different dance. She continually breaks the 4th wall and pleads with the audience for more life. It is a completely different experience. I can't help but wonder if THIS is what audiences were responding to when Pavlova was taking ballet around the world and exposing new audiences to her art.

Abstracted beauty for beauty's sake, detached from its observers or a direct connection between artist and audience? What makes the Swan special? 
 

To Swan or Not To Swan.

What would ballet be without swans? Ballerinas dressed in swan tutus inhabit every young girls (and some boys) dreams. They populate music boxes. They are featured in scandalous movies that cause the general public to ask, "Is that what ballet is really like?" To try to extricate one from the other, is to swim against the strongest current in what is part of the societal zeitgeist. 

Arguably the most famous part composition to come out of Carnival of the Animals is The Swan. Whene Saint Saens wrote it, he did not have a tragic end in mind for our lovely feathered friend. He simply wrote a 3 minute piece of music that sounded like a swan drifting across the water. We can thank Pavlova and Fokine for later using the music to create the miniature ballet that captures audiences imaginations.

To be clear, "The Dying Swan" is a complete piece unto itself. It captures the last moments of life of a being , tragically cut short. Indeed, when Pavlova performed it, she had a dark spot on her chest to symbolize where the hunter's arrow had pierced her heart. Nowadays. ballerinas perform the piece as a sort of smooth. one level salute to lyricism and beautiful lines. Pavlova's swan was a desperate creature alternating between hanging on to life and resignation. 

In trying to help Jessica find her "swan", it was important to also note that the swan in the piece is a metaphor for a soul, not just a bird, and more importantly, not a Queen. There are so many similarities in the part to that other ballet swan (Odette form Swan Lake), that it is easy to try to use her as a starting off point. And that is a big mistake. To do that would make the dancer feel as if she is just doing a solo that could have been dropped in a 3 act ballet.

So we begin by starting from scratch and asking "Does the behind the almost liquid, behind the back port de bras and the slightly arched back of the Swan Queen tell the story of this poor soul who is asking for just a few more moments of life? Or do we start with something simpler, in front of the body, with a less rigid upper body?" 

And that is Step One..

Detailing

Photo from Don Juan at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center

Spent the day giving notes of the Rhino pas de deux and the Swan. Also set the Aquarium section of Carnival. At this point, we are working with the original music, as opposed to the new score. I want the dancers to get very set with the old accents before we start working with new melodies. Things may, of course, change. But better to have a strong take on it before we change things up.   Just like the pic above. That moment in Don Juan was always a promenade supported by two hands. The dancers got so comfy with it that I asked them to change it to a one handed promenade,  but I wouldn't have done it if I knew they weren't rock solid. In the case of Carnival, I need the dancers to have the original intent in their abck pocket before we go to the next phase.

And We Are Back

Back in the studio today. Had a bit of a hiccup starting though. 

Yesterday, I had a lovely day in Coronado and as I was chewing on some salt water taffy, I scraped my teeth against each other hard and chipped two. So I had to make a semi-emergency trip to the dentist this morning.  Two fillings later. Good as new.

We started working on some of the dances that will be shown as part of Creative Conversations. Dying Swan, the Rhino pas de deux from Carnival of the Animals, and the peasant pas de deux from Giselle. Lots more dancing to come, but a nice way to ease back into it.

All the Carnival stuff will be interesting to revisit because we will be performing it to a new commissioned score. More on that tomorrow :)

Just a Reminder

The above pic is from a community outreach program we have in City Heights. Even though the ballet company was off for a week, that doesn't mean that we stopped working. The San Diego School of Ballet still had classes onsite at Liberty Station and we still had our educational outreach programs going strong throughout San Diego.

One More Pic

Another Don Juan pic.

This pic is from one on the big moments of the ballet. After a pas de quatre, where Don Juan's ideal dances an adagio with 3 men (including DJ), the corps runs in and we have this big dramatic restatement of the theme in canon. This was one of those moments where I was able to re-look at the ballet and futz things around to make it clearer. Because of the smaller stage, I made two changes whichI think improved it.In the old version, the two other guys stayed on and joined the corps girls in their movement. Because there was less room, I had them exit as the girls rushed in. I was happier with this as it really brought into  focuse that all of the women were aspects of the Don's ideal. Likewise, because of the smaller stage I simplified the floorwork the girls did as part of the background movemen. By doing this, it threw more focus on the pas de deux in the middle. Finally, in rehearsal, I noticed that Stephanie was coming out of her lift in plenty of time to do the final step (one of those penche attitudes I am so fond of) with the corps girls. I asked her to join them and it put a nice period on the sequence. So just because something was choreographed a decade ago, doesn't meant that it is set in stone. Far from it. I feel like it is just part of the natural process.

 

Just Some Pics

While waiting for Tuesday to start working on Creative Conversations, I thought I would share a few pics from Don Juan over thee next couple of days.

Stephanie Maiorano in a moment from the Gypsy Camp at the end of Act 1. She is in a penche attitude position I have always been quite fond of. I used to put it in dances for myself quite often. As I mentioned before, her part appears as various characters throughout the ballet. This is the third time she pops up. She has a very fast, dynamic solo that kind of puts her into the Athene, goddess of war slot in the Judgement of Paris type decision Don Juan has to make. The Judgement of Paris is a well known allegory where a shepherd has to choose who the loveliest is between Hera (the Queen of the Gods), Athene (The Goddess of wisdom and battle), and Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love and Beauty). Paris chooses rightly chooses Aphrodite (and thereby sets up a sequence that will take us through the Iliad and the Odyssey). By the Don picking Stephanie's more aggressive character to dance a pas de deux with, I wanted to highlight the idea that her was still making choices that were not in his best interest.

Jessica Conniff in the "Queen of the Gods" gypsy solo. I have always been fond of this solo. Some parts are extremely musical and some parts are almost anti-musical. The music as well has moments where it seems to want to rev up into something and then it decides to stop and become ore conversational. It really does have a bit of a "lecture" feel to it. Lots of "statements." And the choreography mirrors this. It DOES have one of my favorite ending diagonals. Just a series of small enveloppes en tournant. But the music ritards... and then accelerates... and then ritards. So the dancer has to be sensitive to that in order to get the right effect. And Jessica did so beautifully.

From earlier in the ballet. Elizabeth Tapia and Marshall Whitely as the Mistress of the House and Don Juan. This picture to me just highlights one of the truths about this art form. It is a VISUAL art. And it is a visual art in both aa aesthetic and dramatic sense. Aesthetically, the harmony between the two bodies is evident. Her right arm and his left make one long line. Additionally. if you include his outstretched left leg and her bent right leg, with their two bodies, they now make an expansive X. As a counterpoint, you can seethe 3 strong parallel directional rays created by her left arm, his right hand and her left thigh. All good stuff, but... In terms of dramatic sense, in performance, ballet does not use words to qualify what you are seeing. We cannot drop someone onstage and then have another character give us the backstory on all his sexual exploits. Dancers who are playing mothers to other dancers need to look more mature. A character who is meant to be a villain with gravitas, needs a certain physical stature. And if you are playing the seductive Mistress of the House and the Great Latin Lover, it is just better if you are both beautiful. I know "beauty" these days is seen as a subjective term, but storytelling must be clear or it is confusing. And nothing is clearer than the effect that a beautiful man or woman stepping on to a stage has on an audience.