Early in the twentieth century Isadora Duncan astounded the art world with a concept of dance that was entirely free. In her criticism of the ballet she wrote:
"The whole tendency of this training seems to be to separate the gymnastic movements of the body completely from the mind. This is just the opposite from all the theories on which I formed my school, by which the body becomes transparent and is a medium for the mind and spirit." (1)
At the same time Michel Fokine was as much disturbed by the contemporary state of Russian theatrical dancing. He wrote:
"Why in ballet was a psychological feeling always expressed by a fixed gesture which neither described nor symbolised anything? Surely if dance were not expressive it became acrobatic, mechanical and meaningless?" (2)
They were both right. The Romantic ballets of the nineteenth century struggled to exist in the early twentieth century because they reflected the ideals of a bygone era.
Duncan and her followers both in Europe and America thoroughly rejected the tenets of classical ballet out of necessity, if dance was to "give voice to the more fully awakened man." (3) For them the classical dancer's ideal of agility and lightness was at odds with their inner life experiences. The essential function of dance was communication and for communication to be valid the dancer and the dance had to register the change that had already taken place in twentieth century human experience and life manifestations. Thus the first generation of modern dancer/choreographers set out to "dance significantly". (4)
Fokine on the other hand knew wherein the staleness lay and how to effect a change through existing channels. During the early decades of this century, Russian born Serge Diaghilev initiated an exceptional period in European art which was essential to the development of classical ballet, and the emergence of the European aesthetic of the early twentieth century. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with Fokine as choreographer captured the imagination of European audiences whose intellect was being challenged by the revolutionary theories of Freud and Darwin. Fokine's Scheherazade (1910) was a celebration of sensuality and unguarded human passion and his Petrushka (1911) presented through its central character the emotional complexity of the human being. Indeed many of the ballets of this period presented by Ballets Russes were seen to reveal authentic human emotion.
Before Duncan and Fokine, Jean Georges-Noverre (1727-1810) in his Letters on Dancing and Ballets (1760) complained that the French dancers were abusing virtuosity. It was evident that they had well-trained bodies but their performances he thought, were emotionally wooden. He describes how he then began to study gestures, movements and expressions in order that he might discover those appropriately expressive of the passions and sentiments contained within the themes of his ballets.
The Italian, Salvatore Vigano (1769-1819) who received a professional education based on the model of Noverre's letters, developed an aesthetic "founded on the intimate liaison between plastic gesture and fundamental musical rhythm" (5), between normal imitative gesture and traditional dancing. His critics were those who feared the end of the marvellous French technique, for Vigano's ballets had "too much pantomime and not enough dancing" (6).
Here, as early as the eighteenth century is an example of the interminable record of quarrels between expressiveness and technical dancing which caused the birth of Modern Dance in the twentieth century and which continues to raise its head in the practice of ballet dance today and which is a central concern of this paper.
This conference "All about ballet - in every sense of the word" acknowledges that ballet today is a controversial topic raising pertinent issues relating to relevant art, and profound and serious questions about education and training and even the morality of traditional practices. I draw your attention to an article, "Balancing the Books" by Susan Crow and Jennifer Jackson, in Dance Theatre Journal 1999, in which they outline the present crisis in ballet and conclude that unless there is a fundamental change in the thinking, practice and politics within its culture," ballet will, overburdened with nostalgia, limp into the 21st century towards its just demise" Strong words but true. And what are we doing about it?
At this point I would like to share with you, two significant personal experiences that have been instrumental in directing my practice as a teacher of dance today. I was enjoying a career as a professional dancer and member of a ballet company in Cape Town, South Africa. A time came when I no longer felt the daily investment required was sufficiently rewarding. Something was missing. After much thought and discussion and agonising, I left the company. I still wanted to dance but I wanted something more, something else. Initially I returned to my old studio and started teaching.
As I faced my students from one day to the next it did not take me long to recognise that I was not teaching them to dance and about dance I was in fact teaching the steps. My frustration grew out of the recognition that I knew dancing/ballet intimately but in the teaching process I could not articulate this knowledge. Our dancing knowledge resides in our dancing bodies, but as a teacher I had to translate that knowledge into a form that was communicable and accessible and understandable. In order to teach ballet/dance I had to find a solution.
My second experience came when I was invited by a contemporary choreographer to join her company for the creation of a particular work. I accepted at once excited at the thought of being freed from the trappings of tutu and pointe shoes. Within the first few minutes of the first rehearsal I had the most significant recognition of my professional dancing life. I did not know how to move, where movement began in me, I was out of touch with the movement sensation of my own body. I was a victim of classical ballet! I was trapped in my trained body!
While I knew there was something enduring and of value in classical ballet I did not know what that was. And while I knew my own teachers had indeed taught me so much, I did not want to perpetuate a system that I had discovered to be fundamentally flawed. I realised sadly that however professional my own dancing had been it had not fully contained the central person, who was me.
I set out to teach significantly. I questioned traditional practices and spent many years watching ballet being taught in a variety of contexts. In my search for solutions I saw clearly that one of the first messages given to a child starting ballet lessons is that they have the WRONG body! This ranges from being too tall, too short, having insufficient turn-out, or perhaps just not being pretty enough! Our body is the only one we have, we live there!
It did not take long for me to see how this emphasis on the perfect body clearly encouraged the separation of technique from expression in the 'training of that body.' The exact delivery of the ballet vocabulary by a perfectly proportioned body seemed to me to be the pre-occupation of the majority of teachers. Individuality was trained out of you, obedience, discipline, conformity were admired. Asking too many questions was frowned upon. Indeed you could be accused of thinking too much. Education had no place in the training process and expression was something you added to the steps and had something to do with your face! 'Feeling the music', 'using your face' or 'projecting yourself' were common instructions for eliciting expression. As for musicality, this was the special gift of the talented few!
I stand here speaking to you today 25 years later, after a long journey. During this long and interesting search I came across the work of Rudolf Laban. My research and teaching is based on his theories which invite thinking about movement, its meaning, its syntax, and issues related to it. Choreological Studies is the discipline that has been established as a result of this thinking. Its concern is to establish approaches and practices that view dance as a performing art and a practically oriented scholarship.
The utilisation and application of these theories to the teaching of ballet is the specificity of my particular approach. This application provides for the identification of the seemingly elusive qualities of dance, (rhythmicality, musicality, expression), which are not the gifts of the talented few, but virtual components of movement itself, which must and can be explicitly addressed and taught in terms of dance skill.
My methodology is based on an approach to the understanding of human movement before we deliberately make dance/art. A key choreological model views the human body from a structural perspective. It reveals that the structure of the body's movement is inextricably linked with the structure of the body with its torso, limbs, head, joints and surfaces organised and arranged in their particular way. It identifies human movement as having five intrinsic structures, namely body, action, space, dynamics and relationships, all of which can be examined and explored separately. The relationships between them inform an understanding of the principles of movement that govern function, and in so doing illuminate and de-mystify the wonder - full complexity that is dance. It allows for the clear identification of what the dancer/mover does and what that visibly creates by naming the perceptual properties of movement.
Practical exploration, experimentation and application of the structures and principles of movement identified by this model encourage verbal and physical accuracy, developing movement literacy within the dance community. Observation skill, the ability to observe and name separately those perceptual properties of dance that so often remain unknown, unseen and unnamed in the teaching/dancing process, is developed. This is an invaluable and necessary skill for the teacher of dance. For the teacher being able to separately identify the physical necessities and perceptual properties of a danced movement in the teaching process means that communication includes information and not simply mere physical instruction. For a dancer the understanding of technique includes not simply what she/he does but what that doing serves to create. For the choreographer formulation/manipulation is understood as the turning of content into a visible entity, rendering content accessible to others.
Body movement is a learned form of communication. Only by participating in this patterned way are we able to incorporate our society's way of viewing and testing the world. Through the examination, exploration and analysis of communicative body motion (kinesics) and spatial manoeuvres (proxemics), we discover that a system of expression is already in place and patterned by our spontaneous reactions to our lived environment. That human movement is already expressive and dance does not 'invent' this expression (its not a facial expression!) That a choreographer's dance vocabulary or the vocabulary of an established dance style or technique is a selection, an organised elaboration, repetition and intensification of everyday movement patterns, which collectively generate a particular aesthetic. This recognition further demonstrates that our moving, dancing body is the place where the individual lives and the developing artist grows; where the origin of the impulse to move or dance arises, and where knowledge derived from the dancing experience resides. It also clearly suggests that as individuals we are our greatest resource for dance; that our own bodies are our unique and only instrument and that our own movement is that which we consciously manipulate and control for dance.
The current and traditional approaches to the teaching of ballet must be challenged making it impossible to separate:
- training from educating
- body from person
- the notion of technique from expression
- doing from making
- the physical from the perceptual properties of movement
- the actual from the virtual
- position from motion
- theory from practice
- and 'steps' from dancing.
This approach to dance training/education is unique and provocative but continues to impact significantly on those I meet. By questioning the value of tradition, through a consideration of the reasons for teaching ballet in the first place, the need to establish clear pedagogical practice is revealed. This in turn can support the construction of a rationale for innovation.
The understanding and knowledge that a choreological approach to dance brings, allows for a coherent development of artistic intelligence, physical competence, creativity and autonomy in students and artists of dance, be they performers, choreographers, or teachers. Dance scholarship is possible as a studio-based practice and needs to be developed if significant art and artists are to emerge from its practice...
My concern and my hope is to provoke the development of a vibrant, articulate ballet teaching community, individuals who practice as artists behind the closed doors of their studios; a community who can participate in significant dialogue with all dance artists and artists in general. After all, whose visions shape the future of an art form? If classical ballet today needs to give voice to the 21st century, I charge teachers to carry that responsibility.
And so the pendulum swings. I conclude with Lincoln Kirstein words, which are as pertinent today as when he wrote in 1935:
"Ballet is a vocabulary of gesture, collectively accrued for 400 years. Its uses depend on artists who understand its language but in a profounder sense who comprehend the moral and emotional idiom of the times in which they live. The use to which they put ballet is a reflection of their present; the closer the reflection the greater the reference and impact of their art." (7)
For more information see www.rosemarybrandt.com The content of this article was first presented at All About Ballet, a conference organised by the European Association of Dance Historians, London, February 2003 - see www.eadh.com
1. Lincoln Kirstein, Dance: A Short History of Classical Theatrical Dancing, (New York: Dance Horizons Incorporated, 1977), p.271
2. ibid., p.273
3. J Morrison Brown, (ed.), The Vision of Modern Dance, (Dance Books, London, 1980), p.50
4. Selma Jeanne Cohen, (ed.), Dance as a Theatre Art, (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1974), p.138
5. Lincoln Kirstein, op.cit., p.229
6. ibid., p.236
7. ibid., p.326