One of the most uncomfortable hours I’ve ever spent occurred in Brighton, Michigan, in the late 1980's.
I was taking ballet classes there. Most of the students were local high school students. The assistant instructor, a dance major at the University of Michigan, wanted us to wear costumes to class on Halloween. When I didn’t, I was derided and so wore my sweats for class.
I was startled when two girls showed up dressed like hoboes in black face.
I learned from those admiring their costumes that they were supposed to be Milli Vanilli, two European-born break dancers who had some hit songs at the time. A few months later, in January 1990, they were criticized for not actually singing on their records, but simply acting as a stage presence for others.
I was shocked. No one seemed to think black face was the least bit offensive.
I looked for an exit. I didn’t want to confront them. After all, they had probably picked these costumes because they admired the way the men moved. Dancers can be particularly myopic when movement is involved.
But, I wondered, what were their mothers thinking who must have helped them apply the make-up. It wasn’t simple dark make-up, like a white would use on stage to play a Black. It was minstrel show black face.
I wondered, did they wear these costumes to school, or simply spend that much time on make-up for a dance class? If they were in school, where was the teacher or administrator who should have taken them aside, explained the realities of modern social life, and asked them to wash their faces.
What about the college student leading the class? She was so interested in celebrating Halloween, she abandoned the standard center floor work for conga lines and other forms of free expression.
I knew about the area support for the Ku Klux Klan; the local dragon, Robert Miles, was still alive. I’d seen survivalists out on weekend exercises when I drove down some county roads. Weren’t any of the adults they met at all aware of what they were seeing?
I got increasingly angry, both from by my sense of helplessness in the face of innocent bigotry and at the way the teacher was conducting the class. More and more, I wanted to walk out in protest, but was restrained by my inbred manners.
However, I soon stopped taking classes in Brighton.
Showing posts with label Dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dance. Show all posts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Merce Cunningham
When Merce Cunningham died a week ago Sunday I kept looking back at a photograph of his foot from the 1958 production of "Antic Meet." He was dressed in black, against a black background, so all that showed was his face, hands, and left foot pointed straight down in a leap with a chair strapped to his back.
That foot captured the essence of dance. The straightness of the line resulted from the raw talent and anatomy of the dancer, the pointing that looked so natural was the product of years of practice, the lighting came from a production designed to showcase dance, and the lens captured what the audience saw.
The obituaries and eulogies carried the usual biographical information and praised his choreography for blendeding modern dance with traditional ballet to capture the randomness of life. The New York Times quoted a fellow teacher, Richard Glasstone, who believed that he, along with Fred Astaire and Margot Fonteyn, had been the greatest dancers of the twentieth century.
Among the personal reminiscences was one that revealed how, even in the most ephemeral of art forms, the materialism of the Reagan years has seeped into people's evaluations of greatness. Alma Guillermoprieto remembers visiting him a few years before and noticing the shabby furniture. I'm sure Cunningham didn't care about furniture after his best friend, John Cage, died in 1992.
She also noted that the man she believed was the "greatest living creator of dance beauty and contemporary fusions of art forms...did not even own his own home." The lack of real estate didn't signify to Cunningham. Diminishment came from arthritis that robbed him of his ability to move. He was like Monet with his cataracts and Beethoven without his hearing, an artist bereft of his medium.
He himself said dance left nothing - no copyrights like those of Cage for companies to haggle over, no paintings like those of his collaborator, Robert Rauschenberg, for auction galleries to hype - "nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive."
Every dancer knows the song from Chorus Line, "What I did for Love," has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a single foot eternally suspended in the air, defying arthritis and death.
Notes:
Guillermoprieto, Alma. "Merce Cunningham," New Yorker website, 28 July 2009.
Macaulay, Alastair. "Merce Cunningham, Dance Visionary, Dies," The New York Times website, 27 July 2009, includes quote by Cunningham and the photograph from "Antic Meet."
That foot captured the essence of dance. The straightness of the line resulted from the raw talent and anatomy of the dancer, the pointing that looked so natural was the product of years of practice, the lighting came from a production designed to showcase dance, and the lens captured what the audience saw.
The obituaries and eulogies carried the usual biographical information and praised his choreography for blendeding modern dance with traditional ballet to capture the randomness of life. The New York Times quoted a fellow teacher, Richard Glasstone, who believed that he, along with Fred Astaire and Margot Fonteyn, had been the greatest dancers of the twentieth century.
Among the personal reminiscences was one that revealed how, even in the most ephemeral of art forms, the materialism of the Reagan years has seeped into people's evaluations of greatness. Alma Guillermoprieto remembers visiting him a few years before and noticing the shabby furniture. I'm sure Cunningham didn't care about furniture after his best friend, John Cage, died in 1992.
She also noted that the man she believed was the "greatest living creator of dance beauty and contemporary fusions of art forms...did not even own his own home." The lack of real estate didn't signify to Cunningham. Diminishment came from arthritis that robbed him of his ability to move. He was like Monet with his cataracts and Beethoven without his hearing, an artist bereft of his medium.
He himself said dance left nothing - no copyrights like those of Cage for companies to haggle over, no paintings like those of his collaborator, Robert Rauschenberg, for auction galleries to hype - "nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive."
Every dancer knows the song from Chorus Line, "What I did for Love," has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a single foot eternally suspended in the air, defying arthritis and death.
Notes:
Guillermoprieto, Alma. "Merce Cunningham," New Yorker website, 28 July 2009.
Macaulay, Alastair. "Merce Cunningham, Dance Visionary, Dies," The New York Times website, 27 July 2009, includes quote by Cunningham and the photograph from "Antic Meet."
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Dance - Part 1 - The Nutcracker
It’s that time of year again - pumpkins are replaced with sugarplums, and we get our annual dose of culture with the obligatory Nutcracker. For several years now, I’ve respond by choreographing a version in my head that abandons pandering to children and rescues it from the implicit association that art must be sweetened for the obese masses.
My premise is quite simple. Instead of one company, use a different troop for each dance. Eliminate the boredom of a single choreographer who can only identify different styles of dance with props like fans and chopsticks; replace it with the real thing. Every person on stage must be able to dance. No more cameos for patrons and their brats
It’s easy to see act two. Imagine, a flamenco company doing the Spanish dance, a group of belly dancers doing the Arab, a Ukranian folk troop doing the Russian dance. For the Chinese, I’d recruit one of those dragon dance groups I associate with New Year’s celebrations.
The snow scene is easy to visualize - a genuine full classical corps de ballet, with soloists, pas de deux, pas de trois, and other combinations, all in white tutus, all women. When the choral part begins, the singers enter in the rear. Of course the music is live. The women are in full length tutus and ballet shoes, the men in white pants, white turtlenecks, silver tunics and jazz shoes. The men are the ones who pull the ice sleigh at the end of the scene.
Staging the rest of the ballet requires thinking about the narrative. I would set it in contemporary times, and have four children. The curtain would open on a living room with Clara in jeans combing the hair of her younger sister Cora. Her older sister, Carla, would be on the sofa at stage left rear with her hair in huge curlers, talking on a phone with a long cord using moves reminiscent of those from 1950s Broadway shows. Fritz is dressed and playing with his truck.
The Drosselmeyer catering firm is finishing its set up to the right. The company sent two black dancers. The male rushes over to add finishing touches to a theater arch downstage left; the maid fusses over the small table with a punch bowl downstage right. Please, no complaints about racial stereotypes: this is a snobbish, upperclass home that hires the underclasses.
The mother comes in, shoos off Carla and Clara, sends the caterers to their places behind the table, then takes her position with Cora and Fritz. Guests arrive. The men gravitate to the drink table and demonstrate golf swings, the older boys upstage left feint basketball moves, the young boys downstage take turns showing off to each other, perhaps a clogger, a shoeplotten, a Michael Jackson imitation. Her husband joins the men, the daughters drift in when they’ve changed costumes. The women’s ritual of air kissing is exaggerated when each new woman and female child joins the reception line.
The guests would include one couple with two teen-age children, one a boy for Carla, the other Carla’s confidant. A second couple would have two boys, one for Carla’s confidant, one for Fritz. The third would have two young children, one for Fritz, one for Cora. No one for Clara.
The adults are professional ballroom dancers. After the initial formal circle dance, each would get a solo spin doing a different style. Some might not fit the music as well as waltzes, but I’m sure salsa or tango dancers know how to adapt. The teenagers could demonstrate what ever is the current teenage jazzy dance.
It’s while the teenagers are dancing that Fritz begins fighting with his two friends, and the male caterer rushes over to start the entertainment - the dancing dolls. The first is a native American for Fritz, maybe a Hoop Dancer. The second is a statuesque Martha Graham dancer for Carla, who uses Carla and her friend as assistants, all dressed in the flowing Greek gowns we associate with that style. The last is a Black tap dancer who does a Bojangles routine to Cora and her friend’s Shirley Temples.
Nothing for Clara. The caterer realizes the problem, and pulls the nutcracker from under the drink table. Fritz gets petulant, and breaks it. The guests realize it’s time to leave. While the caterers are removing the table, the mother walks off with Cora and Fritz making faces at each other behind her back. The father gives his arm to Carla and they do a high strutting cake walk off stage.
No one notices the child in the middle, Clara, who settles down on the sofa to repair her nutcracker.
When the stage is empty, the caterers do their mock minuet followed by jitterbug dancing of the kind seen in pictures of Negro dance troops from the 1930s and 1940s. Clara applauds; he gives her a huge hush sign and they exit. Stage lights come down, then blink on and off as the tree in the center rear grows.
When the lights come back on, there are two dolls in fluffy tutus by the tree, one on each arm of the nutcracker. The three dolls from the party scene are posed outside the arch. A troop of soldiers stands or kneels in rows to the right.
The mice begin sneaking in while the dolls do their mechanical toy pas de trois. They are acrobats who have all the best parts as they gambol, form pyramids and leap around the soldiers. When they get too near the doll arch, those dancers protect themselves with karate style moves; the mice roll around, play leapfrog. The toy soldiers start to move, but fall like dominos when the mice tease them. It’s the comedy of insouciance against rigid authority.
The mouse king enters to great bows by his subjects, strides over to the nutcracker, picks him up and starts to toss him about. At this time, the part is danced by a teenage boy. Clara fells the mouse king, the nutcracker rolls over, and the toy soldiers right themselves. They are male dancers recruited from Broadway. They use a high kick line to push off the mice, then get a full chorus line turn.
Clara repairs the nutcracker again, and the two young dancers get a short pas de deux before the exit for the snow scene. Clara must be old enough to wear pointe shoes.
The opening of the second act is always difficult. It’s now set in the tropics with a backdrop of jungle vegetation. Oil or candles burn on tall columns. The curtain opens with a troop of southeast Asian dancers in ornate golden, jeweled costumes. Everything is meant to contrast with the cold north of the first act. Clara and the nutcracker, now adult dancers, enter in a sleigh that’s been transformed into a golden gondola pulled by black panthers.
After the ritual four dances, a troop of Afro-Cuban or African dancers enter. No more Mother Goose. Towards the end, the candles burn out, and the sky begins to lighten for dawn. The dancers leave the pair alone on stage.
Then, the jungle comes alive. The waltz of the flowers is given to a mixed company that can do Balanchine romantic ensemble work. The women are jungle flowers, the men in greens. Then the sugar plum fairy’s danced by a jungle queen, and the pas de deux by the adult Clara and her nutcracker prince. Towards the end, the cats return, and the flowers retreat. The panthers are male dancers, modern or classical, who do the male corps work we haven’t seen before.
For the finale, the couple returns to the gondola which is moved to the far right, and selected members of each group return for the farewells. There’s no reason people from the first act can’t also join this scene. Indeed, a few mice tumble across and land at the feet of the panthers, look up, quickly assume a passive position on the floor. The caterer and maid appear last to let us know Drosselmeyer has brought us this entertainment. He brings back young Clara and her nutcracker for a final turn before the curtain closes.
This kind of dance extravaganza is only possible in a few places like New York where there are so many kinds of dancers or Washington where embassies send their best. They’re probably also the only places with enough wealthy patrons to pay the price of admission.
Realistically, the stage manager would need to be saint. The producer’s legal firm would have gargantuan headaches getting so many prima donas to come together for such small parts and accept a Les Trocs clause, no bows during the performance. Don’t think about dressing rooms. And, as I’ve said, many of the dancers would have problems fitting their work to the Tchaikovsky score. But that union of talents is part of the fantasy that makes this a celebration of the spirit of dance.
My premise is quite simple. Instead of one company, use a different troop for each dance. Eliminate the boredom of a single choreographer who can only identify different styles of dance with props like fans and chopsticks; replace it with the real thing. Every person on stage must be able to dance. No more cameos for patrons and their brats
It’s easy to see act two. Imagine, a flamenco company doing the Spanish dance, a group of belly dancers doing the Arab, a Ukranian folk troop doing the Russian dance. For the Chinese, I’d recruit one of those dragon dance groups I associate with New Year’s celebrations.
The snow scene is easy to visualize - a genuine full classical corps de ballet, with soloists, pas de deux, pas de trois, and other combinations, all in white tutus, all women. When the choral part begins, the singers enter in the rear. Of course the music is live. The women are in full length tutus and ballet shoes, the men in white pants, white turtlenecks, silver tunics and jazz shoes. The men are the ones who pull the ice sleigh at the end of the scene.
Staging the rest of the ballet requires thinking about the narrative. I would set it in contemporary times, and have four children. The curtain would open on a living room with Clara in jeans combing the hair of her younger sister Cora. Her older sister, Carla, would be on the sofa at stage left rear with her hair in huge curlers, talking on a phone with a long cord using moves reminiscent of those from 1950s Broadway shows. Fritz is dressed and playing with his truck.
The Drosselmeyer catering firm is finishing its set up to the right. The company sent two black dancers. The male rushes over to add finishing touches to a theater arch downstage left; the maid fusses over the small table with a punch bowl downstage right. Please, no complaints about racial stereotypes: this is a snobbish, upperclass home that hires the underclasses.
The mother comes in, shoos off Carla and Clara, sends the caterers to their places behind the table, then takes her position with Cora and Fritz. Guests arrive. The men gravitate to the drink table and demonstrate golf swings, the older boys upstage left feint basketball moves, the young boys downstage take turns showing off to each other, perhaps a clogger, a shoeplotten, a Michael Jackson imitation. Her husband joins the men, the daughters drift in when they’ve changed costumes. The women’s ritual of air kissing is exaggerated when each new woman and female child joins the reception line.
The guests would include one couple with two teen-age children, one a boy for Carla, the other Carla’s confidant. A second couple would have two boys, one for Carla’s confidant, one for Fritz. The third would have two young children, one for Fritz, one for Cora. No one for Clara.
The adults are professional ballroom dancers. After the initial formal circle dance, each would get a solo spin doing a different style. Some might not fit the music as well as waltzes, but I’m sure salsa or tango dancers know how to adapt. The teenagers could demonstrate what ever is the current teenage jazzy dance.
It’s while the teenagers are dancing that Fritz begins fighting with his two friends, and the male caterer rushes over to start the entertainment - the dancing dolls. The first is a native American for Fritz, maybe a Hoop Dancer. The second is a statuesque Martha Graham dancer for Carla, who uses Carla and her friend as assistants, all dressed in the flowing Greek gowns we associate with that style. The last is a Black tap dancer who does a Bojangles routine to Cora and her friend’s Shirley Temples.
Nothing for Clara. The caterer realizes the problem, and pulls the nutcracker from under the drink table. Fritz gets petulant, and breaks it. The guests realize it’s time to leave. While the caterers are removing the table, the mother walks off with Cora and Fritz making faces at each other behind her back. The father gives his arm to Carla and they do a high strutting cake walk off stage.
No one notices the child in the middle, Clara, who settles down on the sofa to repair her nutcracker.
When the stage is empty, the caterers do their mock minuet followed by jitterbug dancing of the kind seen in pictures of Negro dance troops from the 1930s and 1940s. Clara applauds; he gives her a huge hush sign and they exit. Stage lights come down, then blink on and off as the tree in the center rear grows.
When the lights come back on, there are two dolls in fluffy tutus by the tree, one on each arm of the nutcracker. The three dolls from the party scene are posed outside the arch. A troop of soldiers stands or kneels in rows to the right.
The mice begin sneaking in while the dolls do their mechanical toy pas de trois. They are acrobats who have all the best parts as they gambol, form pyramids and leap around the soldiers. When they get too near the doll arch, those dancers protect themselves with karate style moves; the mice roll around, play leapfrog. The toy soldiers start to move, but fall like dominos when the mice tease them. It’s the comedy of insouciance against rigid authority.
The mouse king enters to great bows by his subjects, strides over to the nutcracker, picks him up and starts to toss him about. At this time, the part is danced by a teenage boy. Clara fells the mouse king, the nutcracker rolls over, and the toy soldiers right themselves. They are male dancers recruited from Broadway. They use a high kick line to push off the mice, then get a full chorus line turn.
Clara repairs the nutcracker again, and the two young dancers get a short pas de deux before the exit for the snow scene. Clara must be old enough to wear pointe shoes.
The opening of the second act is always difficult. It’s now set in the tropics with a backdrop of jungle vegetation. Oil or candles burn on tall columns. The curtain opens with a troop of southeast Asian dancers in ornate golden, jeweled costumes. Everything is meant to contrast with the cold north of the first act. Clara and the nutcracker, now adult dancers, enter in a sleigh that’s been transformed into a golden gondola pulled by black panthers.
After the ritual four dances, a troop of Afro-Cuban or African dancers enter. No more Mother Goose. Towards the end, the candles burn out, and the sky begins to lighten for dawn. The dancers leave the pair alone on stage.
Then, the jungle comes alive. The waltz of the flowers is given to a mixed company that can do Balanchine romantic ensemble work. The women are jungle flowers, the men in greens. Then the sugar plum fairy’s danced by a jungle queen, and the pas de deux by the adult Clara and her nutcracker prince. Towards the end, the cats return, and the flowers retreat. The panthers are male dancers, modern or classical, who do the male corps work we haven’t seen before.
For the finale, the couple returns to the gondola which is moved to the far right, and selected members of each group return for the farewells. There’s no reason people from the first act can’t also join this scene. Indeed, a few mice tumble across and land at the feet of the panthers, look up, quickly assume a passive position on the floor. The caterer and maid appear last to let us know Drosselmeyer has brought us this entertainment. He brings back young Clara and her nutcracker for a final turn before the curtain closes.
This kind of dance extravaganza is only possible in a few places like New York where there are so many kinds of dancers or Washington where embassies send their best. They’re probably also the only places with enough wealthy patrons to pay the price of admission.
Realistically, the stage manager would need to be saint. The producer’s legal firm would have gargantuan headaches getting so many prima donas to come together for such small parts and accept a Les Trocs clause, no bows during the performance. Don’t think about dressing rooms. And, as I’ve said, many of the dancers would have problems fitting their work to the Tchaikovsky score. But that union of talents is part of the fantasy that makes this a celebration of the spirit of dance.
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