Guest Blogger: Jean-Christophe Maillot of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo

”There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.”
 – Vicki Baum

During National Dance Week (April 26 – May 5), we invited notable artistic directors, choreographers and experts for a special posting on Center Scene. Here, Choreographer-Director Jean-Christophe Maillot of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo reflects on the complex yet enjoyable nature of narrative dance forms. Segerstrom Center will present Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo dancing their production of LAC (Swan Lake) March 6 - 9, 2014 as part of our International Dance Series. 

LAC (Swan Lake) by Jean-Christophe Maillot Ballets © Laurent Philippe

By Jean-Christophe Maillot
Choreographer-Director, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
www.BalletsdeMonteCarlo.com

One could believe that the narrative ballet, in case it’s telling the story, would bring the audience from the point A to the point B, on contrary of so called abstract ballet that stays open to all the possible interpretations. It has been now 30 years that I experiment the narration in my pieces and finally things don’t seem so simple. For example I am not sure that all the people in the audience arrive to the same conclusion at the end of my performances. The point B is obviously not the same for everyone. So we could ask ourselves if the narration is a support for the comprehension or ... on contrary, as I think, a walking stick to venture off the beaten tracks. Inversely, the intrusions that I allow myself in the more abstract forms are not necessarily difficult to understand. 

Cendrillon by Jean-Christophe Maillot © Marie-Laure Briane

Certain movements talk by themselves, starting up simultaneous emotion in spectators. The reason for this is that we all have a body and in a certain way we are « already always » connected with what the dancer is doing on stage. If he jumps, if he curls up, or shakes, our body feels in its flesh what is happening and the sensations are more direct than through the story. 

It happens that Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo return today to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts to present LAC (Swan Lake). It is a narrative piece that confronts us with uneasy characters, filled with the contradictory desires that are conspiring against each other. The narration in this case complicates things but unveils more and lets everyone to the self-interrogation until the point they choose to reach. This is why I love narration. Because it cures us of the environment where the messages and codes are simplified to the extreme in order to satisfy populist stakes.

Guest Blogger: Helgi Tomasson of San Francisco Ballet

“Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. 
Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner expression.” 
 – Lyall Watson 
Gifts of Unknown Things: A True Story of Nature, Healing and Initiation from Indonesia’s Dancing Island

CELEBRATE NATIONAL DANCE WEEK 
April 26 – May 5 
Join us during National Dance Week for a special posting in Center Scene by a noted artistic director, choreographer or expert. 

San Francisco Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour © Erik Tomasson

Helgi Tomasson

By Helgi Tomasson
Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer, San Francisco Ballet
www.SFBallet.org

National Dance Week is always a great opportunity to pause and reflect on where the art form of ballet is currently, and how it will be sustained in the long-term. One of the most critical elements of my job as artistic director is to create balanced programming that enables audiences to not only have a taste of the past, but also of the future. Our company is lucky to have strong relationships with many of the best and innovative choreographers working today including Mark Morris, and Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon. To keep our audiences challenged and engaged, it’s important to feature historic ballets, some of which were avant-garde for their time, alongside newer works. Showing the full spectrum of what ballet can be allows us to further nurture and deepen the audience’s relationship with dance. A varied repertory also allows dancers to thrive and grow as they perform a range of styles and techniques, while honing their dramatic abilities. In San Francisco, we have wonderfully receptive audiences though occasionally new works can leave them polarized. I think that’s great—the more dialogue we can create around the art form, the better. Good programming should be diverse—a reminder of the rich history of dance that should be celebrated and remembered— while pointing us toward new work and the boundless possibilities of the future.

Yuan Yuan Tan and Vito Mazzeo in Edwaard Liang's Symphonic Dances ©Erik Tomasson

Guest Blogger: Trey McIntyre of Trey McIntyre Project

”When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”
 – Paulo Coehlho, The Witch of Portobello

CELEBRATE NATIONAL DANCE WEEK 
April 26 – May 5 
Join us during National Dance Week for a special posting in Center Scene by a noted artistic director, choreographer or expert. 

Trey McIntyre's Sun Road 

Trey McIntyre © Otto Kitsinger

By Trey McIntyre
Artistic Director, Trey McIntyre Project
www.TreyMcIntyre.com

A dancer approached me recently for some advice about how to be the best participant in the process of creating a new ballet. This was my response:

I really appreciate your checking in and it speaks volumes about you that you want to learn. I can only speak from my own experience as a choreographer and what motivates me in the studio. I go right to a place of exploration and daring, and I want the dancers to do the same. I am inspired by dancers who try fearlessly. Always succeeding is not the point. I am not trying to simply bring an idea into the world that I think should happen. I am trying to discover. So, in that way, the dancer is a full participant in the creation. Whether or not you fall on your face, we don’t know what’s right or wrong yet. The important thing is to commit to it wholeheartedly. I find that dancers find ways to distance themselves from the hard, embarrassing parts of the process. Something goes wrong and you stop to laugh at it or show excessive exasperation, and, in essence say, “that mistake is not me.” But all I see is a wasted opportunity and distancing of oneself from the process…from the vulnerability and the discovery. Those mistakes are, indeed, you and need to be relished and examined. 

Trey McIntyre's Bad Winter © Liz Volles

Another thing to keep your eye on, especially with a new choreographer to you, is that the details of their way of movement are important. It may feel more comfortable to start by translating the information into what you know, but there are reasons for the specificity. So, to the extent that you can digest those things quickly and keep trying them to the point that they are uncomfortable, you are getting closer to what the choreographer is looking for. 

Finally, remember that you are helping an artist to pull something out of the ethereal into the concrete world. That is an uncertain, twisting, winding road that needs coaxing and inspiration. Study the myths of the muses because they really illustrate what I feel is the dancer’s main role in the creation process. Anything you can do to support the fantasy that is being spun … through excited presence, through reflecting the mood of the piece in your person, through doing your homework and coming in the next day better than when you left … you play a pivotal part in making art happen. 

I hope this makes sense to you and is not too big picture to be helpful. If you keep up this attitude of learning and implement what you find in a way that feels positive and growing for you, you will have a great career. Thanks again for reaching out. 

Celebrate National Dance Week April 26 - May 5

 “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” 

–  Friedrich Nietzsche 

During National Dance Week, the Center will post a special Center Scene entry from a noted artistic director, choreographer or expert. 

Diana Vishneva as Giselle © M. Logvinov

The Pointe of Dance
By Elizabeth Kaye
Author of American Ballet Theatre: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective 
Ms. Kaye will conduct many of the Center’s preview talks prior to performances in the International Dance Season. She will be the guest speaker for the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg May 3, 4 5 in Segerstrom Hall.  

Curiously enough, no one knows precisely how the pointe shoe came into being. What is known is that, on March 12, 1832, the pointe shoe transformed ballet when Marie Taglioni, dancing the Sylph in La Sylphide, rose to her toes and floated across the Paris Opera’s stage, enchanting an audience that had never seen such a wondrous, exquisite and mystical creature. 

Until that night, ballet was dominated by men, whose good fortune it was to dance in tunics and tights that freed them to leap and swirl, while women were encumbered by massive headdresses and skirts, corsets and shoes with heels. 

This changed in the early 19th century when the public’s preoccupation with the supernatural permeated ballet and led, in turn, to its Romantic era. The great Romantic ballets – La Sylphide, Giselle and Ondine – told of mortal men who fall tragically in love with gossamer, supernal females. 

LAC  (after Swan Lake) by Jean-Christophe Maillot
© Angela Sterling

To portray such delicate beings the pointe shoe was essential, for it allowed a ballerina to move in ways that endowed her with an otherworldly aspect and transformed her into an extraordinary amalgam of woman and goddess, sprite and spirit. Such a dainty creature required feather light attire, so heavy, floor-length costumes were abandoned in favor of skirts contrived from graceful layers of tulle that fell just to the calf, thus revealing, and highlighting, the arching beauty of dancing feet. 

Taglioni, all air and light, made an art of this new way of dancing; she took what could have seemed no more than a trick, and made it a style. As a result, the cult of the ballerina was born; ballerinas became ballet’s dominant force and were worshipped. Taglioni’s own followers were so fanatic that they ritually boiled her pointe shoes, cut them up, and ate them!