DANC 280g Lecture 6: Week6
Week 6
Monday 13th February
Alvin Ailey and Judith Jameson - Revelations
❖Alvin Ailey Biography
➢1931-1989 Week 5
Monday 6th February
Foster Reading
❖Dance and language/narrative/storytelling
➢Opera ballet/ Story ballet - experimental work - virtuosity/pantomime
➢Crucial in transitional moment - the way narrative was handled, dancing body
was used
➢Example where the binary between archive and repertoire doesn’t apply - similar
to Diana Taylor
➢Dancing body can participate in the meaning making - typically attribute to writing
➢Relationship - Ballet d’action at a time when dance notation was dominating the
understanding what choreography was about - 18th century Foyer notation
➢Story ballet - away from technicality from individual steps
❖Historical Context
➢Court dancers - 16th century
➢Ballet as a court dance practice - emerging from a social dance practice
➢Social to concert dance forms
➢Origins of ballet
■ Early 16th century - Renaissance Italy
■ Catherine de Medici of Italy marries the French King Henry II, introduced
early Italian styles of dance to French Nobility
■ Court dancers wore marks, brocade costumes, headdresses and
ornaments - difficult to move in
■ Steps included hope, slides, curtsies, promenades and gentle turns -
shoes had small hells and were formal dress shoes
■ Nobles were largely the performers with some professionals playing minor
roles
■ Court life was refined to the extreme - Beneath the manners, however,
was political and social intrigues. Nobles has continually prove
themselves through their social skills - especially through dance - rule
governed
➢Noble Person - Louis XIV (The Sun King) 1638-1718
■ Eager and accomplished dancer, highly influential
■ Transformed versailles into one of the most lavish places in the world
■ Established court in 1682, cultivating relationships with ranks of nobles
and foreign dignitaries - often though entertainments and ceremony that
was laden with symbolism
➢From the Court to l’Opera
■ Political developments at the French courts eclipsed the arts and ballet
■ Louis XIV established 2 academies where ballet developed The
Academie Royale De Danse (1661) and the Academie Royale de
Musique (1669)
■ Greatly influenced the evolution of ballet because it was created to
present opera and included dance
■ Professional from the beggining trained by a succession of distinguished
ballet masters
■ Combined singing, dancing and orchestral music unified by a loose theme
■ Ballet remained subservient to music at the Opera until 1770’s bit
elsewhere ballet masters were experimenting with mime to form a new
type of theatrical work known as ballet d’action.
■ Emerging ballet culture that was growing around the state sponsored
ballet - marginal context the story ballet had its roots
❖Foster reading
➢Highly narrative - had to by typically recognisable, not a new narrative
➢Libretto - programme, prior to the performance, difference in the Libretto in the
opera (general description) ballet vs story ballet (account read like a story, who
the characters were, dialogue physically spoken by the characters)
➢Paralinguistic - movement that is more of a pantomime, supplementary to a
language - functioning like a language, movement offered the audience blow by
blow account exactly what a character was thinking and what they may be saying
➢Language and storytelling is what modernises the ballet
➢Component of the story helps pull ballet to the modern conception we know today
➢Push and pull and narrative and technical virtuosity
➢What kind of body is created - dancers own interpretation of the movement,
bodies are constructed through the skills they gain in practice - Similar to Cynthia
Bull (Contact improv - 360 body), Ballet body is constantly striving upward
❖Jean- Georges Noverre
➢Established the genre of the ballet d’action in the public consciousness
➢Ballet needed to be reformed - ballet culture was too obsessed with the technical
language which overshadowed a holistic image of the art form which would
speak to the audience members on a more accessible level
➢Comparing dance to language - Steps are the alphabet - how words form
sentences and become a story
➢Boost dances status as an art form - comparison between dance and language,
communicative possibility
➢‘A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself’ -
Lettres sur la danse
➢Ballet goes beyond offering an image of nature, dance should mirror life back to
us - make us feel something
➢Art should imitate life
❖Mimesis - How dance makes meaning
➢Greek work meaning imitation
➢Plato and Aristotle spoke of mimesis as the representation of nature
➢According to Plato all artistic creating is a form of imitation
➢Western traditions of aesthetic though - mimesis has been central in theorising
the essence of artistic expression, the characteristics that distinguish works of ark
from other phenomena and the aesthetic response
➢In 17th and earth 18th C - Mimesis is bound to the imitation of both real and
idealized nature.
➔Comparison between court ballet and story ballet
❏Court ballet
❏Round
❏Nobles
❏Social
❏Symbolic
❏Less stage setting
❏Less movement
❏Dress clothes - restrictive
❏Rank and hierarchy - egalitarianism
❏Story ballet
❏Proscenium
❏Professionals
❏Concert
❏Narrative
❏ Backdrop - looks like a painting come to live
❏More movement - greater complexity
❏Costumes allow for movement
❏No gender roles or hierarchy
● Mimetic art form - Story ballet - Foster
○ More egalitarian
○ More democratic involvement
○ Put forward the notion of dancers as individuals
○ Dancers started being recognizable off state - interested in their outside lives
○ What kind of body is produced through various dance cultures
○ Constant dialogue of how well dance really tells a story - paralinguistic form
