The Spectrum of Contemporary Ballet: Giving Your Students a Leg Up
To discuss dance, we grapple with a variety of terms: modern, post-modern, classical, neoclassical, contemporary, contemporary ballet and more. We volley this lexicon back and forth, assuming that the meaning is the same for all of us, as we attempt to position what we see in a neat little file. This is human nature: to connect dots, to make sense, to understand by definition so we can meet on common ground. Although this practice is sometimes useful, struggling with the term contemporary ballet makes it necessary to resist absolutes. A Venn diagram is more appropriate here – circles converging and dissecting each other, borrowing from one another and coloring the outcome so that a lot of gray is mixed in with black and white.
One of the major instigations for the creation of modern dance was the categorical dismissal of the rigidity of ballet, and yet a plié remains a plié, as do tendus and dégagés. Modern dancers borrowed from the ballet vocabulary, just as ballet had borrowed from its predecessors. In turn, ballet borrowed back from modern dance. Today, contemporary ballet choreographers consider the contraction to be just one of countless modern inventions available to them. But that is not all. These choreographers have also borrowed from African, Afro-Caribbean, jazz … even hip-hop, yoga and more. The difficulty in finalizing a complete picture of contemporary ballet is that it runs the full spectrum between modern dance and classical ballet. It elusively tips the scales one way or the other, often even within the same piece.
Some argue that contemporary ballet is whittled down to only those ballets in which pointe shoes are used, but in this we miss out on some extremely important choreography: Jirí Kylián, Lar Lubovitch and Nacho Duato come to mind. More important to this discussion is that although the line is often blurred between modern dance and contemporary ballet, ballet technique remains primary to the final outcome of a contemporary ballet, pointe shoes or not. Mind you, we have not fabricated a new technique. When we refer to contemporary ballet, we are acknowledging the style of a choreographic work, not the name of a technique. This is an important distinction, particularly for young dancers who aspire to dance in a company that performs contemporary ballets. The training remains the same; classical ballet technique is fundamental. Today, it is certain that a ballet-centered dance company juxtaposes works of both contemporary ballet and modern choreographers against its classical repertoire.
Attempts to label choreography or choreographers also creates problems. Most choreographers are not interested in viewing their work in terms of category. They are reaching for inventiveness, whether always successful or not and regardless of the movement style. In a recent article in The New York Times, chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay discussed the resistance to pigeon-holing Jerome Robbins’ choreographic legacy. William Forsythe patently dismisses labels, jockeying between pointe shoes, soft shoes and bare feet. Twyla Tharp purposefully blurred the lines and likes it that way. Considered first and foremost a modern choreographer, she has several ballets to her name, including her most recent ballet for American Ballet Theatre, Rabbit and Rogue.
“Contemporary has two distinctions: that it is present, and that its relevance keeps it present,” muses Alonzo King, long-time artistic director and founder of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, based in San Francisco. He continues, “Bach, Shakespeare, Homer, and Vyasa (the writer of the Bhavagad Gita), are certainly contemporary regardless of when they created work, because the essence of these works is based in primordial truths. What should we call it, classic contemporary? …For most artists the aim is clarity and accuracy, and the resultant look is a by-product. I would argue that any true classic, removed of its current sentimental and mannered approach, would be classified contemporary.”
Despite the difficulty in applying labels, it must be acknowledged that certain aesthetic assumptions are made by those who choose to choreograph with ballet at the core. There is an inherent value system that differentiates it and keeps it from slipping too far away from its roots to be ticketed as something other. I would argue that one of those assumptions is line. However, and in light of the demands placed on the dancers of contemporary ballet, we need to caution against thinking of line as a stationary position. To interpret position as stagnant in either classical ballet or contemporary ballet is a mistake.
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