The Ballet Bag » Cult Blog Post

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:29:36 +0000

Our friends & collaborators at Sojournposse invite us to reflect on the healing power of the arts. For editor Zarina Holmes an art performance has the power to abduct minds, play with the senses and spur us into action. But in order to create objects of aesthetics that heal, we must first take pleasure in them:

Beauty is beyond skin deep. Real beauty shines from the inside out, and can help the process of day-to-day healing. It has spiritual values.

A beautiful performance – be it storytelling, music, dance and visual arts – can summon powerful emotions from within the hearts. This can galvanise action and change.

Creating beauty or aesthetics is an art in itself. I enjoy observing creatives from photography, fashion, dance and performing arts putting together their visions to inspire the audience.

Read the full post at Sojournposse

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:12:15 +0000

The V&A mini site for “The Golden Age of Ballets Russes” has now been loaded with photos, links and events. Ahead of the exhibition (opening 25 September 2010) we have been keeping up with their blog posts. While the press has been focusing on the frontcloth Two Women Running on the Beach (considered to be Picasso’s largest work on canvas) the staff at V&A reminds us of the magnificent proportions of Natalia Goncharova’s cloth for The Firebird:

Usually all the case building has to be completed before any objects are allowed in. However Diaghilev is an exception because there are two huge stage cloths which are so big they have to be installed first and the exhibition built around them The Firebird backcloth is 10x16m and probably the largest object in the V&A. It is exciting to see them being carefully unrolled and raised into position by the V&A’s skilled technicians and conservators.

For the full post including pictures of the Picasso and Goncharova cloths: visit the V&A Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Blog

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:54:12 +0000

Hot on the heels of the ballet reconstruction trend which hit London this summer (thanks to the Bolshoi and the Mikhailovsky Ballet), You Dance Funny’s Steve Ha brainstorms about authenticity in ballet. He illustrates his point with Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and the changes this piece has undergone throughout the years:

…what exactly does authenticity mean to the world of ballet? Rather than lead you to believe I have some coherent answer stewing in me brains, I’m just going to say up front there really doesn’t seem to be one. Some ballets do well with change while others simply can’t be touched. There’s no clear formula to decide what’s allowed and what isn’t and it seems no great choreographer’s work, whether classical or contemporary is completely invulnerable to change. There’s no gauge to say whether any of the changes are good or bad, but we discuss these changes anyway and that friends, is what makes art history so special in comparison to plain history…

Nobody knew the importance of change better than Balanchine (which is so ironic since the Balanchine Trust champions authenticity, terrorizing the masses with an iron fist). In my own obsession with (or as I like to call it, “amateur studies”) of the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, I’ve seen many of these changes and not just in historic versus contemporary performances, but within older performances that included changes made by Balanchine himself…

Read the full post at You Dance Funny, So Does Me

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:59:41 +0000

Just in time for the flurry of Giselles we’re seeing in London this week (thanks to the Bolshoi), here’s something to enhance your experience of this ballet. Eric Taub of Demicontretemps has written a very interesting post where he reflects on the similarities between Act I and Act II of Giselle: is one the bizarro world version of the other?

The greatest relation between the acts is a sort of dramatic chiasmus: Albrecht kills Giselle, Giselle saves Albrecht. It’s not just a dramatic reversal, but one that’s manifest in the choreography. Act I ends with Giselle dead at Albrecht’s feet; Act II almost ends with Albrecht dead at Giselle’s feet. Of course, where Albrecht brought about Giselle’s death, Giselle’s actions allow Albrecht to live; when Giselle falls, she doesn’t get up; when Albrecht does, Giselle helps him to rise, because that’s the kind of girl she is. Even dead, she’s a better person than Albrecht. Go figure.

Read the full post at Demicontretemps

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:24:52 +0000

Easy choice for Cult Blog Post this week: we’re simply loving TAD’s coverage of Boston Ballet’s recent tour to Spain, 30 Second Bunnies Theatre-style.

Watch it & LOL it here

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL54oR-kNAI

Link to full post at TAD/Thin & Dizzy (BTW, welcome back guys; we missed you!)

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:38:09 +0000

Anything that is inspired by the amazing PJ Harvey is likely to strike a chord with us. In this latest blog entry the Ballerina Project’s Dane and dancer Alex take inspiration from the indie muse to create their own “Stories from the City”:

This was the summer I rediscovered my obsession with one of my favorite musicians, PJ Harvey. I admired how her music gathered juxtapositions of both aggressive and soft characteristics that inexplicably fused into harmony. That essentially was the way I interpreted the Ballerina Project images, resulting in the two pairing seamlessly in my head. Although it was an early shoot on a Sunday (I also only had two hours of sleep the night before due to excitement and anticipation), my mind managed to create an invisible set of earphones that replayed PJ Harvey’s “Black Hearted Love” on full blast, giving me boosts of adrenaline throughout the morning. I also just returned from several outdoor rock climbing trips with my fiancé and his best friend, giving me an uncontrolled desire to climb everything!

Check out the full post and resulting image at Ballerina Project

Don’t be shy: if you have recently stumbled upon a ballet blog post that sparked your interest, please do share the link with us & we will post it in this space.

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:05:45 +0000

Is print journalism dead? Where is dance writing headed? In twenty years from now, who will we honor for their words about dance? In an article entitled “A Step to the Left, a Jump to the Write” My Two Left Feet brainstorms about the future of dance criticism:

Everyone seems to agree that dance writing is important. We all know the importance of documenting performances, the use of reviews for grants and press kits and faculty review files. We know that the best dance writing can build excitement for a new voice, give insight into work that sometimes artists don’t even see themselves, and provide a guide for non-dance audiences to try to understand this peculiar art form.

We need writing about dance because it makes dance concrete – something to grasp onto (which, I argue, does not undermine the uniqueness and beauty of this ephemeral art but rather translates it to a form that is easier to spread, so to speak) and because it takes dance seriously enough to analyze and contextualize it and treat it as a valuable mirror to our identities and communities.

Continue reading the full post at My Two Left Feet

What do you think the future of dance writing looks like? Is what we are reading today in newspapers, magazines and blogs good enough? We’d be very interested to hear everyone’s thoughts so feel free to weigh in.

Don’t be shy: if you have recently stumbled upon a ballet blog post that sparked your interest, please do share the link with us & we will post it in this space.

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:47:11 +0000

We’ve been meaning to flag this post by Ruminations by a Rogue Ballerina for a few weeks now. “The Future is Aszure” is an interesting spotlight feature on 34 year old Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton, director of Aszure Barton & Artists and close friend of Baryshnikov. Her list of achievements is long indeed and it makes us wonder why we don’t see more of her work in the UK (though in 2006 she created a piece for Transitions Dance Company at the Laban in London):

She has worked closely with Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was so impressed, he made her the first artist in residence at The Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2005. She still holds that position today, as well as being the artist in residence at The Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), former resident choreographer (2005-2008) for Le Ballets jazz de Montreal and is the Ambassador of Contemporary Choreography (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). And those are only a few of her accomplishments. Lucky might be an understatement.

Obviously, she also has the talent to back it up. Barton is no stranger to rave reviews. Her work has been hailed as “beautifully mad” by The Edmonton Journal, “deliciously revealing” by the Santa Barbra Independent, “brilliant” by the San Francisco Chronicle, “audacious” by the New York Times, and “fearless” by the Palm beach Daily News. The accolades keep her busy. Very busy. She’s already booking well into 2012.

Continue reading the full post at Ruminations by a Rogue Ballerina

Don’t be shy: if you have recently stumbled upon a ballet blog post that sparked your interest, please do share the link with us & we will post it in this space.

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:36:16 +0000

Check out some outtakes from our visit to The Tokyo Ballet via our collaborator Susanne Reffert’s own blog Chipango. With yet more rehearsal pictures, her feature is entitled Behind the Scenes: The Tokyo Ballet:

The Tokyo Ballet is a big company which performs internationally. I was a bit surprised to see that the dancers were exclusively Japanese. Usually, the dance world is as international as the scientific community, and companies consist of dancers from all over the world. The program that was being rehearsed were two pieces by the Swiss choreographer Maurice Béjart, “Don Giovanni”, and “Le sacre du printemps”. In fact, The Tokyo Ballet, which was in very good relations with Béjart who choreographed some pieces especially for them, holds the exclusive rights to perform his version of “Le sacre du printemps”.

Seeing a studio rehearsal is a completely different experience from seeing a performance on stage. The studio of The Tokyo Ballet is a big room with a high ceiling, lit from the side by a row of tall windows. I liked seeing the pieces performed in this atmosphere of work and practice, with other dancers looking on or warming up on the side. This is also what I tried to capture in my pictures.

Susanne also says that, after seeing the rehearsal, she is curious to see the performance on stage, complete with costumes and lighting. We hope she gets to see this wonderful troupe soon and that she’ll tell us all about it!

If you have recently stumbled upon a ballet blog post that sparked your interest, please do share the link with us & we will post it in this space.

Cult Blog Post of the Week

Emilia & Linda — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:13:29 +0000

For Jonathan Still, if ever there was a choreographer who could make dance the new rock n’ roll, it’s Kristen McNally. We agree, having raved about her latest work for the Linbury Studio Theatre ourselves. McNally shows that modern ballet can still use narrative threads; that it needn’t be pure abstraction in order to break with convention. We think it would be great if she took her “indie ballet” concept to some of London’s smaller theatres; she might yet convert a few ballet-skeptics:

Her send up of clichés of gender, music and movement is so funny, I thought I was going to be sent out for laughing too loudly. Towards the middle, there was a harmonica in the music that began to annoy me. Really annoy me. It whined on and on, and I began to hate what the harmonica stood for as a sound. Just when I thought ‘please stop this’, Tom Whitehead had a real harmonica shoved in his gob by a passing ballerina, and was left to continue his next solo with with it stuck there. It was a moment of such multifaceted comedy, you couldn’t quite work out what had happened. It was as if McNally was saying ‘Ha! You thought I didn’t notice!’ There’s no suitable phrase for the concept of being hoist by your own harmonica, but she just did it in dance.

Continue reading Jonathan Still’s fab review of The Royal Ballet’s New Works at the Linbury Studio Theatre.

If you have recently stumbled upon a ballet blog post that sparked your interest, please do share the link with us & we will post it in this space.