This post is not a reverential pause.
The good:
Improving technique.
He saw areas in technique that could be improved.
Echappé for example; he liked the feet to hit the floor at the same time. Perhaps not groundbreaking, but he saw the opportunity for technical finesse and drilled his dancers until they performed beautifully.
Roll-through was always done to strengthen the feet by Mr. B. No springing onto pointe in his technique class! This resulted in additional strength and control.
He was also always tweaking and refining steps.
Relevé Passé (bringing one leg up) was changed from a simple straightforward move to a beautiful move done with the standing leg working longer and harder as the working leg moved through a more prolonged but more pleasing movement.
(Source: Balanchine Pointework (Studies in Dance History)
In Fouettés (multiple turns) the emphasis usually was on the number of turns a ballerina could do consecutively. Mr B. thought the emphasis should be on technical/artistic quality, not sheer quantity. He started the fouetté with a rond de jambe, then whipped the leg to second and then relevé and then passé. The closing back/moving the leg front action was eliminated and therefore turnout was better and more pronounced. A standard ballet "trick" was turned into a bigger and fuller movement that became smooth and controlled due to the strength needed to do it "his" way.
(Source: Balanchine Pointework (Studies in Dance History)
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| Fouettés. Image borrowed from: http://balletomaneassoluta.tumblr.com/post/25613870280/polina-semiova-black-swan-fouettes |
Dancers gained tremendous strength and stamina just working with him and gaining control of movements they once thought easy. In this way he greatly improved the beauty of ballet when his dancers performed effortlessly.
The bad:
The Alpha and Omega, or just someone in the right place at the right time?
Conventional wisdom suggests that Mr. B. was a gifted choreographer. He created with the music in mind. But isn't that what you're supposed to do? If the wealthy Lincoln Kirstein had chosen a different choreographer to back, finance, and build a school for, perhaps that one could have achieved immortality instead of Balanchine. But then again, perhaps he was the only one who could have done what he did. Perhaps, in the paraphrased words of Eva Peron in Evita "[Anyone could be lifted up to where I am in the ranks], but no one else could fill it like I can." We'll never know, so we exalt him as the undisputed genius when maybe he was just in the right places at the right times.Demanding and Uncompromising
But does that mean he had to be so demanding with-his dancers? Perhaps his temper wasn't as famous as Jerome Robbins who would yell at everyone all day long, but he still would work them to their technical limits and ask for more. But perhaps that is how he honed his now famous technique; by finding the limits?
Obsession with young girls - even when he was no longer young
Balanchine would usually give leads to teenagers (his infamous "baby ballerinas"), after becoming obsessed with the girls. Leads are commonly reserved for women in their 20's and 30's, who by that time in their career have technical and artistic expression beyond the basics. Mr. B. would weed out any girls that were not as thin as he liked, and who might have been more developed (chest, hips) than other girls.
His first wife was 15, he was 18. (The dancer Tamara Geva in 1922).
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| Tamara Geva |
He then dated a 23 year old, he was 22 (The dancer Alexandra Danilova in 1926).
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| Alexandra Danilova |
His second wife was 21 and he was 34 (The dancer Vera Zorina in 1938).
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| Vera Zorina |
His fourth wife was 23 and he was 48 (The dancer Tanaquil LeClercq in 1946).
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| Tanaquil Le Clercq in the Nutcracker, the role of Dewdrop, which she originated. photo by Rad Bascome, the New York City Ballet Archive |
Suzanne was 24 at the time and he was 65. She said "no" to him though!
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| Suzanne Farrell |
Was he a male chauvinist because of his inability to accept women who aged? Did he secretly hate females as a misogynist because he found them inferior to young girls who perhaps due to dance training did not have the fully developed typical woman's features?
Or was he simply a man in a position of power?
The ugly:
Mr. B. seems to have sacrificed everything for his opinion of the final, beautiful result.Intentional Self-Injury: Undernourishment and Eating Disorders
Balanchine is often "credited as idealizing what the ballerina's body should be". This is a romanticized way to say that he may have brought eating disorders into the mainstream for ballerinas. If you are naturally thin, that is one thing. But Mr. B. wanted girls to be unnaturally thin.
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| Balanchine would have loved her. Could have been wife #5? |
He halted class and approached me for a kind of physical inspection. With his knuckles, he thumped my sternum and down my rib cage, clucking his tongue and remarking, "Must see the bones."
I was less than a hundred pounds even then. Mr. B did not seem to consider beauty a quality that must develop from within the artist; rather, he was concerned with outward signs such as body weight. His emphasis was responsible in part for setting the style that led to some of the current extremes of American ballet. I allowed him to use me to that end by trusting his advice. He did not merely say, "Eat less." He said repeatedly, "Eat nothing."(Source: Dancing on My Grave and here).
Mr. B.'s criticisms have paved the way for a new generation of critics. In 2010, critical critic Alastair Macaulay got away with saying in the New York Times that a ballerina named Jennifer Ringer had "eaten a sugarplum too many" in the infamous article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/arts/dance/29nutcracker.html?_r=2&
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| Jenifer Ringer: hardly a fat tub of lard. |
Intentional Self-Injury: Bunions
Balenchine liked the way a bunion makes a pointe shoe look. Without one, your line goes straight down and your weight rests between your first and second toes, making a straight line. With a bunion, the look of the foot is tapered. He actually encouraged his dancers to develop bunions by walking around on pointe, slightly rolling in toward their big toes. This developed the tapered look he desired. This is a good way to get injured, crippled, and end your dancing career, and either he didn't know or didn't care. I'm not sure which is worse.
(Source: Balanchine Pointework (Studies in Dance History)
Intentional Self-Injury: Incorrect Pointe Technique
Today it is generally understood that proper pointe technique involves straight toes. You don't "pointe" the foot so much as you stretch the entire leg. You only pointe the ankle joint. But none of this mattered to Balanchine. Again, he either knew and disregarded these facts or didn't know. All that mattered to him was the height of the arch. He taught that the higher your arch was, the straighter your toes could be. To him, you could curve and bend your toes to achieve the look of a higher arch.
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| According to Balanchine, you could cheat your way into a higher arch appearance by curling your toes in pointe shoes. This is incorrect technique, dangerous, and could injure you, ending your dancing career!! |
In fact, if you curl the toes under it results in 'knuckling' can lead to injury.
Edward Ellison, director of Ellison Ballet Professional Training Program in New York says clenched toes will place unwanted stress on the joints of the legs, leading to imbalance and overuse injuries. On pointe, knuckling over can damage the bones and tendons of the feet.
Master ballet teacher Sara Neece of Ballet Arts in New York says that when the first joint of the toe presses down into the floor too hard, the second joint of the toe jams into the metatarsal.
In ballet, the command to "point your toes" is really inaccurate. The accurate command is to "point the foot" or extend the ankle joint straight down (plantar flexion) and then further extend the toes (not "crunch") in order to feel that you are stretching and lengthening the entire foot.
... In the illustration below, you can see that when the toes are "crunched" (right illustration), the calf muscle shortens pulling the femur towards it. Extending and pointing the foot correctly (left illustration) allows the knee to straighten with ease.
(Source: http://www.balletforfigureskaters.com/ by Annette T. Thomas)
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| Annette T. Thomas, author of Ballet for Figure Skaters Mary Gainer illustration ©2006. |
Although this shows the result in a skating boot, the result is the same in a pointed shoe.
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| Sylvie Guillem with her out-of-this-world arches. Note the correctly straightened toes! |
(Sources:
The Pointe Book: Shoes, Training, Technique
by Janice Barringer,http://www.theperfectpointebook.com/ by Lisa Howard,
http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/January-2008/The-Seven-Deadly-Sins
http://www.lifeskate.com/skate/boots/
http://www.balletforfigureskaters.com/ by Annette T. Thomas
I welcome any thoughts or comments!
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Sources not mentioned above:
Random things I've read over the years that I can't remember the book/source.
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For further ballet reading:
Dancing on My Grave
by Gelsey KirklandBalanchine Pointework (Studies in Dance History)
by Suki SchorerThe Ballet Companion: A Dancer's Guide to the Technique, Traditions, and Joys of Ballet
by Eliza Gaynor MindenThe Pointe Book: Shoes, Training, Technique
by Janice Barringer
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