Tuesday, September 8, 2020

On Preferring the Dance to the Dancer

This afternoon I took advantage of my Netflix connection to watch the documentary Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan. The film chronicled Whelan’s life during what turned out to be her final year with the New York City Ballet (NYCB). Whelan was one of those dancers that “rose through the ranks,” beginning as an apprentice in 1984 and subsequently going through a series of promotions up to the level of principal dancer in 1991. However, she had her first serious encounter with physical pain in 2012 after an accident and required surgical reconstruction on her hip in 2013.

The film begins as she is preparing for that surgery. It then follows her through physical therapy to her return to NYCB and her departure from the company in 2014. Ironically, the first time I saw her dance, I knew nothing about her biographical context. That occasion took place late in November of 2017, when she gave a duo performance with choreographer Brian Brooks of his one-hour composition Some of a Thousand Words. The music was performed by the members of the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Michael Nicolas, situated at the very real of the stage. For the most part none of that choreography triggered any memories of NYCB, the one possible exception being a reference to the two rehearsing dancers in Jerome Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun.”

Ironically, none of what has been reported in those two preceding paragraphs has anything to do with the title of the documentary. Restless Creature was the title of a collaborative project that Whelan had initiated in 2012 entirely independent of her NYCB activities. Indeed, any reference to this project is made only in casual passing over the course of the 94-minute film. As a result, watching this documentary reminded me that, as a rule, my focus tends to be on the choreography. The extent to which I pay attention to the dancers simply has to do with whether or not that choreography has been given a faithful account.

I realize that mine is a “minority opinion.” At the same time, however, it may explain why the ballet videos I discussed three or more months ago tended to elicit reactions of disappointment. That explanation can, in turn, be traced back to an attitude towards ballet cultivated by George Balanchine himself. This is particularly true of his abstract ballets, in which, for all intents and purposes, the dancers are practically interchangeable parts. Ultimately, all that really matters involves the relationships between the movements one sees and the music one hears. If personality is an issue at all, it lies in any narrative behind the choreography; and Balanchine himself was never that enthusiastic about narrative.

Mind you, whether Balanchine liked it or not, there were times when personality would impact the execution of even the most abstract of his choreography. My favorite example is probably “Donizetti Variations,” which I did not see until around 1970, some ten years after Balanchine had created it. This is a ballet that I discussed briefly on this site near the end of this past May. As the title suggests, was a ballet in which most of the movements involved elaborately elegant solo work, each variation serving as a platform for a different dancer. The variations passed dutifully in sequence, each given its own skilled account. The final variation, however, was allotted to Melissa Hayden. By that time in her life, she had what might be called “veteran” status; but, as she glided her way through her variation, she showed all the other “young pups” what it really meant to dance Balanchine’s choreography!

Obviously, no such “flash of enlightenment” takes place during Restless Creature. The documentary is about the woman immersed in the practice of dance, rather than about the practice itself. However, with my own past experience of Some of a Thousand Words, I realized that I was more interested in what this particular dancer was doing in the wake of deciding to put some 30-odd years of experience with NYCB behind her.

Furthermore, many readers may recall that I dealt with my disappointment of the NYCB broadcasts of this past spring by seeking out archival films and videos that left me less disappointed. Even earlier, I was lucky enough to enjoy the only performance by the San Francisco Ballet of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream before the War Memorial went into lockdown. There was more than enough to enjoy in this “transplanting” of Balanchine’s choreography from New York to San Francisco, which turned out to be far more satisfying than the video content subsequently presented by NYCB. Perhaps New York is no longer the focal point of Balanchine’s work, and we should pay more attention to how tradition migrates not only across performers but also across geography.

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