My feelings exactly! I wish I could write so well! COACHING A FASCINATING EXPLORATION, A DAUNTING RESPONSIBILITY August 9, 2009 TRYING TO KEEP CLASSICAL BALLET ALIVE AND MEANINGFUL - There is so much talk of the art of Classical Ballet being ‘dead’ or ‘dying’ . As a free lance director and coach, I have the amazing opportunity of seeing ballet companies all over the world, and seeing some of the great things they do, as well as some of what I consider to be the mistakes being made world wide, for which we, the elder generation who are now Artistic Director, Ballet Masters, Teachers in ballet companies and ballet schools are responsible. It is common to hear the inside circle of ballet people, but also the real ballet lovers who are not practitioners, mourn the fact that most ballet dancers nowadays do not engage with their audiences. All too often, it is said, and with truth, the emphasis is on pyrotechnics, amazingly high extensions, exquisite feet and polished execution of steps -from the waist down. Where is the sense of movement – sense of Dance – dynamics and musicality which lifts people up in their seats, which shares the love of moving to music and dance with those in the audience – so they themselves feel almost that they are dancing themselves, and certainly that they would like to! It is possible to share and be generous with a feeling – with a movement – I am not at all sure it is possible to share the joys of a 5th position! A high extension if performed including the upper body (and not drowning in it), can be a very beautiful moment, and linger in time – I can remember Svetlana Beriosova doing a simple developpee in second (yes, some dancers did have high extensions at that time), and it being a revelation of extraordinary beauty and communicating something ultimately inexpressable through any other vocabulary… It is a generally known that it is extremely difficult to become a first rate exponent of classical ballet. It is also obvious that there are certain physical requirements which cannot be ignored (although these tend now to be overemphasized, no doubt overlooking some potentially great dancers with less then the ‘ideal’ body); that there is a language to be learned which is complicated; that there is a need for education in its history, and that constant attention to detail is required. This striving for perfection is awe inspiring and commands respect and admiration in itself. But striving for perfection is very limited if it restricts itself to technical intricacies…. It reminds me of the theory of ‘don’t let a student try two pirouettes until they know how to do one perfectly’ and such like. When in this life, has any dancer done one pirouette perfectly? Or for that matter, done any step or enchainement in the classical repertoire perfectly? Some more then others, indeed, but ‘perfect’? Let me be clear, I am not advocating that this quest for improving technique, searching for better placement, more polish, better line, higher jump, beautiful beats, more exciting balance, be curtailed. But there has to be a sense of priorities in relation to rehearsing/coaching a dancer to perform for an audience – and ultimately the reason for achieving this technical ability must be its use as a vocabulary. Otherwise it is as though a writer was only intent on exhibiting the most exquisite calligraphy. If one is to get people to be interested in what one writes, of course one needs to learn to spell properly, to know one’s grammar (although too, the occasional misspelled or ‘wrong’ choice of words can express better then the ‘proper’ one!). But, once all the elements of whatever vocabulary have been learnt, the idea is to be free. To check that spelling and grammar are correct and whether writing is legible is clearly important, but it cannot and must not be the priority. ‘How’ you are expressing yourself is important, but ‘what’ you are saying, and that it is coming across to the public, is vital, One of the problem we are facing at present, is that this generation of ballet dancers have few role models of genuine artists. Many have fallen into this profession through being picked for an ideal physique and a facility for executing the steps of classical ballet. Some, although I fear not many, are still drawn into the profession through a real need to express themselves through dance.. In the various specialized ballet schools throughout the world, thousands of children are taught endless steps with more and more care in relation to correct placing, anatomy, health and safety and so on. Students learn pilates, girotonics, anatomy, how to write a CV, warm up, warm down etc.. There is so much progress – but somehow the purpose of it all seems to get lost in the countless other day to day priorities. This is all very difficult… Each student is an individual – and the task of making sure the priorities are in their right order at any given time is hard – most of all because it is not the same for each. The same applies to professional dancers. But I begin with making the point about students, because it is what has been transmitted in the formative years which tends to stick later on, even if it has got lost for a while along the way. Indeed, I can offer no guaranteed solution, except to remind every single person who teaches, rehearses or coaches dance and has responsibility for dancers who are or will perform in public, to keep in front of them always, the vision of ‘what it’s all for’.. And I beg them to continually question themselves regarding how to get that across to those they are working with. What is coaching? surely it is an investigation and exploration of the possibilities of a given dancer in a given role at a particular time in their career. There should be a mutual trust and a sense of going on an adventure together. From my experience, there are some unique dancers, who may only be given technical feedback, and yet their artistry is so innate, that they would not dream of going in front of an audience, without prioritizing the communication. At the other extreme, others, and we must bear responsibility for this, find performing is a nerve wracking experience, uppermost in their minds is the knowledge that their technical execution will not be perfect – each step, each enchainement, each movement whether in the corps de ballet or in a principal role is going to be ‘inadequate’. I believe that what is said to a dancer after a performance is vitally important – and the most important feedback at that moment is a comment on the communication between artist and audience. Did it happen or not…and any key factors contributing to the failure or success of that. In any case there is a strong judgmental factor within the dancer themselves, before even the coach has said a word of critique – not helped if indeed the first comment after a performance is to say ‘ your knee wasn’t stretched there – your weren’t on centre stage’! Of course the comment should be made - but in the next rehearsal, and presented as a detail not as a priority…) So what is our duty? Well I think, bearing in mind the individual artist we are working with – we need to immediately encourage them at the start of rehearsals to have uppermost in their mind that when they get on stage in front of an audience, they have the goods they have – not perfect, but the best available to them at that particular time – and it is with this material that they have to express their point of view about the role they are dancing, and communicate it to an audience through the choreography that is given to them (and which they need to make their own as creative artists, not as good clones of their predecessors). The BALANCE when rehearsing is all important – by which I mean where the focus is in any given rehearsal. There is so much to explore. The word technique in fact does not just cover the execution of the steps. There is a technique to stagecraft too – to help a dancer make an audience care about the feelings they want to express through movement; a technique to changing dynamics; much experimentation to do so as to understand the style of a choreographer; a technique to working out how to take risks – all kinds of risks, technical, musical and most importantly, artistic. All these and many more need to be thought about and explored in the rehearsal room, and then more can happen on the stage – and the ultimate goal of shedding inhibitions and being totally in the moment on stage, achieving a sense of freedom which gives an impression of improvising to both artist and spectator, becomes a reality. It will never be perfection – but so very much more exciting and interesting and – unique; and each performance will inevitably be different. If a dancer goes on stage primarily worrying about their turn out, whether they are going to do three pirouettes, finish their fouettees – there will be no performance even if all those elements actually function as hoped for. As we get better at what we do, we have to think less of how we do it. Once we have learnt to walk we do not think about how we put one foot in front of the other. If we did we might never get to where we intended. Yet now, a dancer who will have done ‘tombe pas de bourree fourth, pirouette’ daily for umpteen years by the time they are professional, is often still thinking about how they are pointing that first foot, where the weight is in the fourth and so on – and all that is at the forefront of their minds. An audience doesn’t know this – they are just quickly bored! The dancer must rehearse in such a way that that enchainement becomes organic – that they can utilize their body weight to fall into the pas de bourree – and know that the feet will still point. And the tombe pas de bourree, was prompted at least, by a wish to go somewhere else in space… There must be a confidence that all that training was for a purpose, so that is doesn’t have to be thought about on stage, so that the dancer can go on to the truly important stuff! More often then not, there is simply not that confidence in the training which has already taken place. Often dancers are not coordinated, because they are so busy thinking about what their legs and feet are doing that their upper bodies are late – and even the incentive for the movement, coming from the centre of the body and radiating out, is inactive, and the extremities begin instead, producing a very shallow and false look and feeling. The disappearing use of torso, epaulement, beautiful arms, hands, fingers, use of neck, head and EYES being part of an all dancing body, is frightening. And yet if a trained dancer understands the need and interest of initiating movement rather then a step, and prioritises upper body movement, movement in different parts of space, a whole range of fascinating things can come about – and, oh apparent miracle – the feet and legs usually do their business as they should, without overmuch attention being paid to them! And interestingly, so often, classical ballet being very logical, what appears to be a technical hurdle can be overcome by truly coordinating the preparation for it with the entire body, and giving ‘sense’ to the step itself, be it a turn, a jump, a balancing pique arabesque or whatever. Only if this clearly isn’t working, is it necessary to analyze the whole process. I believe that the use of anatomical language to explain how to execute a step is rarely helpful – most dancers will respond better to a visual image – which often can provide the key not only on the ‘how to’ of a step, but also making it have a reason for being, which in turn provides the spectator with something beyond the physical body in space to relate to. Everything I describe relates as much to the corps de ballet dancer as to the soloist. There is no reason why a corps just has to be a ‘well drilled’ entity of bored dancers, trying to fit into a clone image of the ballet masters making. The requirements for dancing in unison of course make for more restrictive boundaries – but there is no reason that the joy of dance and movement should not be communicated to an audience by each dancer on stage, while they are still ‘together’. Here the rehearsal director has of course to ‘sell’ one vision to a number of people – the work cannot be as creative as with a soloist or principal. But the sense of dance can be encouraged, and the importance of each and every person on stage, whether they be standing or dancing in the background or foreground, must be emphasized – and believed in by the person at the front or the studio. And the sense that when there is an audience, they deserve at all times to watch any dancer on stage giving their utmost as performers, regardless of toothache, tendonitis, depression or whatever personal problems besiege everyone at different times of their lives. It is in rehearsal that this habit is taken – to learn the technique (yes, again!) of camouflaging how one is really feeling if necessary – the technique of actors, of how to bring up the feelings which will make faces and bodies express what is required of them at any given point in a ballet. It is also during the process of rehearsal, that dancers learn to use what happens to them in their lives, for the purpose of this profession. This is what makes interesting and truly professional artists To summarise, the dancers’ concentration cannot be primarily focused on the technical virtuosity and polish during a performance, or the raison d’etre is lost.. It is our duty to help the dancer prioritise their focus on communication in performance – and on how to achieve this through rehearsal. If time is found to explore all these and more techniques of performing, then our audiences will again be given living, breathing and exciting performances by creative artists. This article by Maina Gielgud appeared in the April 2009 issue of Dance Europe.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 13:33:44 +0000
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