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Ballet Scene
By Marc Shulgold, Rocky
Mountain News
Guys can get the point of ballet
For many guys, going to the ballet is right up there with
attending a bridal shower or a Tupperware party as a source
of excruciating boredom and self-conscious discomfort.
Ballet, they will announce, is performed by sissies for
sissies.
I don't buy it, and I'm guessing that most men who regularly
read this column [in the Rocky Mountain News] will agree.
If, like me, you're a man who loves ballet and/or modern
dance, you're not worried about the macho thing. I think too
many guys are afraid of beauty, as if it's some creepy
affliction.
So, why do most American males blindly bail out of the
ballet? Yeah, I know: men in tights. But no one snickers at
Robin Hood. Or Lance Armstrong. Or football players.
Maybe it's the impression that ballet is all about fairy
tales and nymphs, fragile ladies flitting about in tutus.
Even the great choreographer George Balanchine couldn't deny
it. Ballet, he once said, "is a woman." That quote was
included in a recent piece in The New York Times that
focused on the number of dance companies run by men. That's
a good point, but we're on another subject here.
Ballet in America is a woman thing. Stop by a dance school
and you'll see 10 young girls for each young boy taking the
class. Most of those would-be ballerinas will grow up to be
fans of the ballet, which may explain why, at any dance
show, you'll see a huge number of women in attendance.
Last [summer] I was in Vail for the International Dance
Festival and its annual showcase performances featuring
guest artists from several prestigious companies. I got to
thinking about the gender issue as I watched a contingent of
five marvelous dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance
Theater. A gorgeous woman named Dwana Adiaha Smallwood, a
former member of the troupe, performed Ailey's remarkable
solo, Cry, still compelling after 36 years. But more on that
in a minute.
What also impressed me were two pieces featuring three Ailey
men. Hans van Manen's Solo found the threesome--Clifton
Brown, Jamar Roberts, and Matthew Rushing--displaying
muscularity and understated wit as they took to the stage,
one by one, and danced to solo-violin music by Bach, played
onstage by Jennifer Koh. The three athletic black men hardly
fit the stereotype of dance, which is exactly my point: Art
is uninterested in limitations.
In the second half, the guys returned to perform the
virtuosic Sinner Man excerpt from Ailey's unforgettable
Revelations. Its recorded music is the familiar spiritual
("Oh, sinner man, where ya gonna run to?"), and as the
singing grew in intensity--changing keys, to underscore the
desperation--the men leaped higher and ran faster. Not
exactly sissy stuff.
I'm betting that a few feminine hearts were beating just a
tad faster as the piece ended. Which brings up another
subject. You've probably heard the clich�: Dance is a
vertical expression of a horizontal idea.
By chance, I picked up a copy of the Vail Daily while I was
in town. Inside was a piece by Cassie Pence that zeroed
right in on that very topic: "Dance is sexy," she stated.
She pointed to the dancers' "hard bodies," to the fact that
their costumes accent every curve, that most ballet
plotlines are about
passion and romance. Pence even suggested that guys and
their dates "will leave the [dance] festival aroused." I'll
leave that one alone.
Ballet, like most human activities, addresses the
relationship of men and women, often quite brilliantly.
Balanchine knew women intimately--he married or had affairs
with several of his ballerinas--and his choreography shows
it.
Ailey, too, understood the feminine. Cry, created for his
star dancer Judith Jamison, now director of the Ailey
company, carries this dedication: "For all black women
everywhere-- especially our mothers." It is an engrossing
examination of what it is to be a black woman; to think it
was created by a black man. From a striking, prayerful pose,
the solitary dancer, garbed in a magnificent, flowing white
dress, captures the despair of a repressed woman forced to
scrub floors by hand. A pause, and then the dramatic
centerpiece: a riveting ballad by Laura Nyro, "Been on a
Train."
There is unspeakable pain and hopelessness here, punctuated
by the lyrics "I saw a man take a needle full of hard drugs
and die slow." But then the mood switches to a twirling ode
to joy, danced to a rave-up titled "Right On, Be Free." That
finale may suggest a quaint holdover from the '60s, but the
piece remains timeless in its glimpse into the emotional
range of a black woman--or, for that matter, a white male.
The point here is that dance, as with other forms of
creative expression, attempts to capture the essence of what
it is to be human. It explores our emotions, our
relationships, our aspirations, our failures. Sometimes
there's a story line, sometimes there isn't. Regardless,
dance explores our potential for beauty and perfection.
And without a word being spoken.
Reprinted by permission from the Rocky Mountain News.
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