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Réflexions tardives sur le concours du Ballet de l'Opéra
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haydn
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MessagePosté le: Lun Jan 05, 2004 9:17 pm    Sujet du message: Répondre en citant

Aurore Cordellier a certainement un avenir de soliste devant-elle. Ses hadicaps sont une plus grande émotivité que D. Gilbert, qui a un culot stupéfiant, et surtout un répertoire plus limité. A. Cordellier est une danseuse qui est avant tout faite pour les grands ouvrages romantiques, type Lac des cygnes, ou certains Balanchine. En revanche, lorsqu'il s'agit de rôles qui requièrent beaucoup de sens théâtral, et où la technique ne prédomine pas, elle n'est pas à son aise.
J'avoue par ailleurs ne pas être un grand fan de M. Ould-Braham, mais bon, beaucoup de gens l'apprécient même si elle n'a pratiquement pas dansé depuis sa promotion en tant que sujet en 2002. Autrement, je reste persuadé - mais c'est toujours une affaire de préférence personnelle - qu'Alexandra Cardinale aurait du être promue, car elle possède une bonne technique et une palette expressive très large. Ceux qui ont eu la chance de la voir en Kitri à Marseille peuvent en témoigner.
Face à E. Cozette, je pense que D. Gilbert n'aura pas de mal à s'imposer. Quand à J. Gernez et C. Giezendanner, je pense qu'elles peuvent légitimement aspirer à une carrière intéressante, mais évidemment elles sont (surtout la seconde) moins "médiatiques" que D. Gilbert.




Dernière édition par haydn le Lun Jan 05, 2004 9:37 pm; édité 1 fois
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Aurélie



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MessagePosté le: Lun Jan 05, 2004 9:27 pm    Sujet du message: Répondre en citant

C'est vrai qu'Alexandra Cardinale a un visage très expressif, et une danse très habitée et expressive. Je l'ai beaucoup appréciée lors des dernières représentations de Balanchine à Garnier. Personnellement, je préfère les danseuses comme Alexandra, avec un peu de métier, aux très jeunes du corps de ballet.
Malheureusement, je n'ai pas vu Alexandra en Kitri; cependant, j'ai l'impression qu'elle est souvent invitée à danser hors opéra, et même à l'étranger.


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haydn
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MessagePosté le: Lun Jan 05, 2004 9:35 pm    Sujet du message: Répondre en citant

Comme quelques autres "mal-aimés" du Corps de ballet, Emmanuel Thibault par exemple! Et pourtant le public les adore... Mais bon, si on veut les voir dans des rôles intéressants, il ne reste plus qu'à aller à Marseille, Milan ou Istanbul... Tout le monde n'en a pas les moyens. Evil or Very Mad


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Aurélie



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MessagePosté le: Lun Jan 19, 2004 2:49 am    Sujet du message: Répondre en citant

Le Figaroscope a été emballé par ces promotions, et nous le fait savoir cette semaine... Et tout à son emportement, le rédacteur décrit Mathilde Froustey comme étant une "blonde renversante" Laughing ... Troublante Mathilde!


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Katharine Kanter



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MessagePosté le: Lun Jan 19, 2004 12:19 pm    Sujet du message: Thoughts on the latest "Concours" Répondre en citant

January 19th 2004

ZWIELICHT



CONCOURS INTERNE DE PROMOTION
PARIS OPERA BALLET, DECEMBER 23RD 2003


Twilight. The title is taken from a truly eerie song in Schumann’s Liederkreis, op. 39, based upon diminished fifths. Its song-text (by Schumann himself ?) begins,

Dämmrung will die Flügel spreiten

and ends,

Manches geht im Nacht verloren
hütte dich, sei wach und munter !


How very like the atmosphere of this sombre little event !


***

This brief comment has a history. A first draft was vetted by the writer’s Reading Committee of five or six sensitive people, who also happen to be well-acquainted with the trade, and all remarks that might have given offence, were struck out. Roughly three days after the Concours, that draft was published on an English-language Internet site. Despite the aforesaid precautions, distress erupted immediately on publication, and, at the writer’s request, the Website’s Director kindly removed the piece, a number of readers having questioned this writer’s sanity, and more importantly, technical competency.

As to sanity, how shall a madman judge if he himself be mad ? But, as to competency, those readers may well have a point. Although this writer devotes considerable time to thinking about technique, there can be little doubt but that one cannot know as much as a professional dancer, nor does one have the same, photographic memory for steps.

As an “outsider” one may nonetheless see something else, that the prisoners of this art form, aptly known as “insiders” because they are inside the cage, may not see.

And so, to avoid accusations of being a lily-livered coward, the article on the Concours, suitably redrafted, must go out.

***

The purpose in disputing this annual contest at Paris, one followed around the world, is to rise through the company’s ranks to attain that of premier danseur.

In the interest of transparency, the Concours was instituted in 1860 as a PUBLIC event. It is now by invitation only, even for the press ! WHY ?

As the old saw goes: A Cat may look at a King.

***

The contest is held at the Christmastime, viz., at the height of the ballet season, when people are exhausted, and consequently at risk of injury. Some will be rising at six in the morning for over a month to prepare the Concours, and the first man or woman to go down onto the stage at nine o’clock, will have been up at dawn, although they may have danced until eleven o’clock the night before.

So critical to one’s career is this event, that people have been known to go down and dance on a fresh injury, and then be off ill for weeks thereafter. I find that outrageous. Others will no doubt howl that “it’s the rules of the game”.

But these are not winsome puppies being pushed by their handler into Crufts Dog Show. They are professional artists, who are being tested in the real world, on a real stage, 150 nights a year. To see them thrust back into a frightened-schoolboy state is an unpleasant experience, and I am beginning to think that it is the last year I shall ever attend.

The more so, as one invariably walks away from the Concours with a queasy feeling that the dice have already been rolled beforehand, and elsewhere. Not on stage.

***

By current rules, the corps de ballet is judged by a Jury made up of Management, the odd étoile and premier danseur, two prominent teachers or ADs from outwith the National Theatre (although few, one imagines, would care to contradict the views of POB Management), and jurors elected from amongst the corps de ballet itself.

The marks are - so we are told - weighted. Twenty points are given by the Jury, based upon one’s dancing on the day of the Concours, while ten points are a Management prerogative and purportedly reflect both one’s attendance at class, as well as an imponderable, defined as conscience professionnelle.

A curious parallel to the French criminal justice system, where, by law, the Judges may rely upon what is known as “intime conviction” (innermost belief) in handing down their finding, and disregard, if they choose, the evidence produced before them.

Lest we forget - one is being judged not only by one’s friends, but, as one approaches the more august ranks, by one’s RIVALS. A practice, that may lead to the most awkward little misunderstandings, n’est-ce pas ?

Unfortunately for the credibility of the system, the most gifted individuals will never be mamma’s boys, or All-American cheerleaders whose life’s goal is “popularity”.

For its part, Management has pursued over the last decade a perfectly clear promotion policy, one fully coherent with its views on choreographic art.

Having seen this week the corps de ballet of the Bolshoi Theatre, we all of us in this fair city of Paris might wish to be a shade more modest about our technical accomplishments, and perhaps even to ponder whether there might be more to dancing than just using one’s legs and feet.

***

Finally, the Concours fosters a dog-eat-dog mind-set, unlikely to promote brotherly love.

I, for one, would like to see it scrapped.

***

With a few notable exceptions, over eight or nine hours, a display of raw force, harsh landings, and muscular derring-do, whereby variations of many a style and period, were bulldozered down to much of a muchness.

One finds oneself, willy-nilly, calculating the degrees in height of an arabesque, or the angle of aperture of an articulation. A shrill witness to present “artistic” trends.

To give one, easy-to-understand example, cambré. Cambré is an affect. In the dancing of the woman, it can evoke rapture, it can evoke abandon, it can evoke quiet resignation, and so forth, while in the dancing of the man, it can evoke a gathering of one’s strength, or a thousand other things. But it must evoke something, whether compelled by the drama, or, if the piece be abstract, by the music. It cannot just mean: “Now I bend backwards” - unless we are in the circus.

Has all this been seen before ? Yes, in 1846. This is Bournonville speaking:

“There is a flexibility that degenerates into weak-jointedness, a bravura that transforms dancing into gymnastics, and the question “How”, into “How Many” ? What warrant can be found in the entire realm of art, for a leg lifted to the height of the shoulder, nay, even to the crown of the head ? Is it a pleasing impression that is produced by an entire solo sur les pointes....? ‘But it is the fashion, Paris fashion’, people say, ‘we must go along with the times !’ ”

***

Another thought: there is a particular mental state perceptible in the dancing of the men, that tells of one thing: after a quarter-century’s rule at the Paris Opera School by a woman to whom one may tactfully refer as “forceful”, and a decade’s rule in the troupe, by another, it has become a matter of urgency to set up a men’s section in the school, that shall have its own Director, who shall be a man, and who shall run that section in accordance with his own lights, and as he please.

Another thought: Why, in a country where no less than twelve percent of the population is African or North African, does one see class after class go by, one hundred strong, year in, year out, and not a single black man or woman at any rank ?


***

Anyway, to the free variation: how does one sensibly compare someone who attempts to present a difficult classical piece, to some puff of candy-cane floss from Roland Petit, or to a girl writhing about upon the lavatory furnishings in the Bidet Scene from Mats Ek’s Appartement ?

That this sort of thing be tolerated, even encouraged, speaks volumes.

Let’s get this straight. Classical dance does not depend on fluffy tutus and pink satin shoes. It is, in a nutshell, a step-based art form. Evolved over several hundred years, those steps respond to the tonal system in music. They will never go away, just as tonality will never go away, corresponding as it does, to something innate and eternal in the human mind.

Unless it be step-based, it cannot be classical dance, and to pretend otherwise, is consumer fraud.


In his “Ton und Wort” (published in French in 1979 under the title “Musique et Verbe”), Wilhem Furtwängler has discussed this with far more knowledge than I can:

“Tonality (....) is what allows music to clothe itself with ‘form’, the structural element that allows a piece to take on a shape, to build a beginning, a development, and an end. Here, as support to defining a form whose growth is organic, tonality will never ‘wear itself out’ (....)° tonality cannot wear out, because it is the living vessel of an organic function. We are ourselves organisms, the laws of organic life are our own laws, and so are we bound by them. (...) Moreover, as a composer myself, I would never forego (...)what, in my eyes, remains the most critical aspect: the universal value of what one wishes to express. The moment one abandons that principle, one comes up against ‘individualism’, everywhere hard at work today digging the grave of art.”

Be that as it may, as the usher solemnly carried a bidet out before the poker-faced Jury, one had to stifle a fit of raucous laughter.

***

The class that has attracted most attention internationally is that of the Coryphées, contesting promotion to Sujet, the reason being the presence of Mlle. Dorothée Gilbert, aged 20, promoted.

Currently touted as France’s answer to Alina Cojocaru, Mlle. Gilbert has been placed onto the fast-track for appointment to première danseuse, just as was the disappointing Eleonora Abbagnato four years ago.

Well, we shall all of us have to be getting up very early in the morning, to match the deep seriousness, the spiritual elevation, and the simplicity, of the Romanian angel. Meanwhile, in forty-seven years in the trade, I have seen any number of twenty-year-olds touted as Major Talents. Few stick the course.

Whether quadrilles, coryphées or even sujet, this Theatre boasts a number of ladies who may well lack Mlle. Gilbert’s pretty jump, her pinpoint accuracy, her startling fluency, but who nonetheless strike this theatre-goer as equally, perhaps more, talented. They have already been brushed aside as “too old” – at 23 or 24, say (!) – and, like pine-trees standing idly about in the forest, are given neither role, nor repertory, to get their teeth into. Thus, one’s sole opportunity to see them, other than in a cast of thousands, is on the day of the Concours.

Which is, in point of fact, the main reason this writer attends.

To advance one’s technique, and one’s stagecraft, one needs roles to work on. How can one tell what those ladies would do, if given half a chance ?

What worries me has been better put by Bournonville,

“a materialistic view of art, that makes physical endowment the foremost qualification.... a handsome appearance, combined with careful instruction, is enough to let one appear with success in principal roles, and even to evoke an enthusiasm which, at a distance, resembles that aroused by genius.”

In all events, the strongest contest in this class was, to my mind, put in by Severine Westermann, who did something most intelligent and artistic with Lifar’s Shadow variation from Mirages.


***

In the class of coryphées, M. Matthew Ganio (19), a danseur noble well over six foot tall, was promoted to sujet, and highest ranked. Through no fault of his own - the lad is clever, and a very good dancer – this is a chessboard move.

Promoted to sujet as well, the Italian-trained Simone Valastro, who is one of the theatre’s few truly expressive artists, without ever being coarse or careless. A man of slight build, M. Valastro’s dancing is sharply-focussed and theatrical, his musicality infectious, and, in the variation from Dances at a Gathering, his port de bras studied and very interesting.

***

In the class of the men Quadrilles contesting promotion to coryphée, the set variation from M. Lacotte’s Sylphide is notoriously anti-musical and, also, notoriously too difficult, and one accordingly found one’s mind wandering. Wandering, to whether there might have been rather more pizzazz and razzamataz, had M. Mehdi Angot not been deemed “too plain”, and packed off to England, to cool his heels in driving sleet and eddying pools of icy water.

Amongst the ladies in the Quadrilles, contesting promotion to the rank of coryphée, let us salute Miho Fuji. One generally breaks out into a sardonic grin, as the serpent-infested basket gets knocked about like a tambourine in that dreadful variation of Nikiya’s – but Mlle. Fuji drew tears to the eyes, and, yes, cambré did evoke something, while one quite forgot to calculate angle of aperture ! A young Bulgarian, Sarah Kora Dayanova did some astonishingly beautiful things in her free variation (Aurora). But should one be astonished ? Mlle. Dayanova is, I believe, being trained by a lady who would appear to be our answer to the late Professor A. Pushkin, viz., Noella Pontois.

Apart from three intelligent teenagers - Mlles. Levy and Giezendanner, and, more especially, Mlle. Laure Hecquet - there are other, slightly older personalities in this class, who are more than strong enough to be tested at roles – but the roles are never forthcoming. Left to moulder away their youth in the obscurity of fatuous choreography.


A DEPRESSING APPOINTMENT

For promotion to premiere danseuse, the set variation for the sujets was a little gem of choreography, Neumeier’s variation (Louise) from the Nutcracker Grand Pas.

A keenly-felt and regretted absence, that of Mlle. Fanny Fiat (who rather recalls Alla Sizova, by the bye), a lady who not only has the technique, but above all, a mind exciting enough to wear the laurel wreath of première danseuse. For unknown reasons, she did not present herself this year.

Our freshly-promoted première danseuse is Mlle. Isabelle Ciaravola. As her head and torso are generally tucked well out of the way behind outlandish hyper-extensions, this writer’s attempts to appreciate her work have heretofore failed.

So depressing an appointment must give one pause.

In quite different ways, Mlles. Nathalie Aubin (33) and Myriam Ould Braham (21) were impeccable in both variations.

Like the exquisite Miteki Kudo, whom one longs to see, but is never to be seen, Mlle. Aubin is a high-level artist, who, for reasons impenetrable to an outsider, has been relegated to bit parts and stand-ins since the appointment of the current Director in 1995. Contesting the Concours for the first time in four or so years, hers was probably the strongest, but the lady was not even ranked. Was it in allegory to the situation into which current policy appears to have plunged her, that she selected as her free variation Nureyev’s Cinderella, in rags, and scrubbing the floor ?

Otherwise, the finest work from this class was put in by Myriam Ould-Braham, a perplexing mixture of delicate classicism, footwork of crystalline purity, and gruesome hyperextensions.

One would have preferred a deeper plié, but again, that’s the trend here. May one nevertheless issue a warning: one would not like to see the bod’ wrecked and the ligaments stretched out, by a combination of shallow plié, and picking up the leg.

Despite the obstruction created by those hyperextensions, one cannot but be swayed by her art. A small, fair-haired creature, Mlle. Ould Braham looks exactly – and I do mean exactly – like the Fouquet miniature at Den Haag, painted for Simon de Varye’s Hours.

At so early an age, the lady has already developed a line unique to her alone, her arabesque, in particular, being quite unlike anyone else’s, in the same way that the timbre of a certain singer’s voice cannot ever be mistaken. We are in the presence of a most unusual personality. Mlle. Ould Braham seems to be listening, with quiet fervour, to some inner voice.

As the strains of music died away, a knot of people in the trade were heard to breathe as one: “C’est elle !”

But it was not. Mlle. Ould Braham was ranked fifth. It is apparently felt that she must diversify into works excreted by the New Dark Age we are currently struggling through.

Lastly, but not leastly, a disservice was done the class by small errors, but errors nonetheless, heard from the piano.

IRON IN THE SOUL

And so, the 2003 Paris Opera Internal Promotion Concours has come and gone.

No contest was held this year for advancement to premier danseur for the men, for reasons that some would wish opaque.

On January 6th, Management pulled off a major publication-relations coup, unveiling to the world three teenagers, in the Ivan the Terrible leads.

Talented as the young people are, let me slam my dainty little fist down onto the table, just for once ! In the class of sujets are to be found, one man who is a genius (and who enjoys the somewhat off-beat honour, if that is the word, of being this writer’s Muse), amongst several remarkably able and dedicated artists.

These people are not toy-boys who entered the profession looking to marry into the European aristocracy. They are grown men, who have a degree of competence, and a sense of responsibility towards the public, that can be compared to a structural or nuclear engineer. In the face of such commitment, one would be entitled to expect from Management a serious attempt to provide them with interesting and intelligent things for them to dance.

The last time I can recall several of these gentlemen being given a proper role, was, if I’m not mistaken, in March 2003, nigh on a year ago. A year without a role, in a dancer’s brief life on stage, is an eternity, and it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, not only one’s technical standards, but the creative intensity that allow one to speak directly to one’s public.

Yes, let us give youth a break, and so on, and this may be the Consumer Age, or whatever, but a classical dancer is not a packet of chocolates, to be consumed, crumpled and tossed into the rubbish at age thirty.

Troubled times, where the Muses themselves go in want of a muse.

Were the world not plunged into economic crisis and earthquake-like political instability, the ideal solution would no doubt be to set up a new troupe, with people from here there and everywhere, who have something important to say in the classical dance, but nowhere to say it. A counterfoil, to the Orwellian throng of “Dancer-Athletes” currently wreaking havoc worldwide, with whatever is left of the art form.


***


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MessagePosté le: Lun Jan 19, 2004 1:00 pm    Sujet du message: Répondre en citant

Le post de Mme Kanter contient beaucoup d'éléments suceptibles de nourrir un débat intéressant ici, et nous allons nous efforcer de le traduire rapidement pour que nos lecteurs non anglophones puissent en prendre connaissance.


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haydn
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MessagePosté le: Mer Jan 21, 2004 12:54 am    Sujet du message: Répondre en citant

Avant d'avoir achevé la traduction, quelques remarques.

Je partage totalement le point de vue de Mme Kanter en ce qui concerne Nathalie Aubin et Miteki Kudo. Je serais en revanche plus reservé en ce qui concerne Mlle Ould-Braham, qui n'a pas pu nous montrer grand chose pour justifier sa promotion en tant que sujet en 2002. Mais qui sait, peut-être se révelera-t-elle bientôt?

Je suis également globalement d'accord avec elle sur l'analyse qu'elle fait de l'évolution de la danse à l'Opéra de Paris ; j'ai moi-même maintes fois répété que cette tendence à rechercher la perfomance athlétique et technique au prix d'une grande brutalité dans le mouvement était fort dangeureuse et faisait fi de ce qu'était réellement le "style français". En revanche, quant elle établit un parallèle avec Wilhelm Furtwängler, qui, dans Musique et verbe, rejette de la même façon l'évolution de la musique vers l'atonalité, au motif que la tonalité serait inhérente à l'entendement humain, je ne peux la suivre. L'histoire a donné tort à Wilhelm Furtwängler, qui, enfermé dans une esthétique héritée du romantisme déclinant, n'a su comprendre et faire sienne la musique "contemporaine" de son temps, c'est à dire, tout particulièrement, celle de l'Ecole de Vienne (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern). Mais là, nous nous écartons un peu de la danse...
Enfin pas tant que cela, car lorsque Mme Kanter condamne Roland Petit pour Clavigo, ou Mats Ek pour la scène du bidet, d'Appartement, cela procède de la même attitude, qu'elle revendique d'ailleurs. Son point de vue me paraît ici contestable dans la mesure ou elle s'appuye non sur des insuffisances objectives des chorégraphies incriminées (on pourrait aisément en trouver pour R. Petit, et beaucoup moins facilement pour M. Ek), mais sur des critères moraux. Et toutes proportions gardées, évidemment, je pense que, comme W. Furtwängler est passé a côté de l'Ecole de Vienne, elle passe, avec M. Ek, à côté d'un chorégraphe inventif et inspiré, qui marquera l'histoire de la danse, qu'on l'aime ou qu'on le déteste.


P.S. Si je conteste ce que Furtwängler écrit dans Musique et Verbe (Ton und Wort), je ne saurais toutefois trop recommander la lecture de cet ouvrage, qui n'en n'est pas moins un témoignage et une reflexion très précieux sur l'art et l'esthétique de l'entre-deux guerres. Il a été édité en traduction française en collection de poche chez Hachette (Pluriel), et dans la même série l'on trouve deux autres textes tout aussi essentiels, les Ecrits et entretiens d'Otto Klemperer et le Gustav Mahler de Bruno Walter. Je n'ais pas de pourcentage sur les ventes! Very Happy


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