New generation of choreographers

Gwen Herat

BALLET: Their significance and senses have transformed ballet to higher levels more in keeping with instinct rather than with intellectuality.

They all agreed narrating ballet is the silliest thing to do; dance it and it became the hymn of praise with celestial creatures crossing the stage. This was their principal guideline as it was with their predecessors as well as for the future generation of new choreographers.

I do not know with whom to start these wonderful artists because there are so many of them, all equally good and excellent in the craft of choreography.

Leonid Lvovsky, George Balanchine, John Cranko, Kenneth MacMillan, Vladimir Boumesister, Marius Petipa, V. Chabukani, Yuri Gigorovich, Igor Belsky, Fredrick Ashton, Peter Darrel, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley, Pavel Smok, John Chessowrth, Rudolf Nureyev, Clover Roop, Hans Van Manen, Eliot Feld, etc are some of the many.

Take for instance, John Cranko, Ballet OPUS I represented one side of Cranko’s talent. He was so fascinated with a painting of Francis Beacon, he had a ballet mounted at Stutgart titled The Interrogation.

He also did another ballet to the music of ‘avant garde’ composer, Bernd Aloise Zimmermann. He went further to do yet another ballet inspired by the archetypal figures from literature. But he remained essentially a traditional choreographer mounting ballets like Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Onegin, etc.

Cross fertilisation

In a cross fertilization within the art itself, ballet changes sprang mainly from its influence. Conveying meaning was the biggest change in its discovery. The new way needed no explaining who its characters were, where they were and why. The new choreographers left more to the imagination.

Most of them never depended on plots but rather made dancing the plot. There were brilliant dancers who inspired choreographers to ‘plot’ a ballet. Music, lyric and stage action were all what they needed. Most of the changes came about mainly at the beginning within the companies.

A good example was the Netherlands Dance Theatre that encouraged towards a mixture of classical and modern dancing. Most companies attracted intelligent and future minded artists. One such company was the City Center Jorrey ballet in New York.

Astutely, Geoffrey mixed into his programmes some old works which he thought will entertain and add variety. The company relied mostly on works created for it by their resident choreographer, Gerald Arpino.

One of the exuberant works was the production, Viva Vivaldi which later became the company’s signature work. Jeoffrey also mounted a mysterious nightmarish ballet, Nightwings to show off the company’s male dancers.

It was an allegory of man destroying himself through war. It was new thinking and Jeoffrey himself choreographed Astarte, deliberately with sensational qualities.

The new choreographers had arrived.

Ballet Rembert, Britain’s oldest established company was affected by the changes. The aura of touring had commenced though the audience insisted they wanted to see only the works they had heard of.

Most of the young dancers were not well suited and they were misfits for the repertory of the creations by the leading choreographers of the day which spanned over three decades.

Costs of touring

The company had to come up with new ideas for its revival and in 1966 with the increased costs of touring a large orchestra and their corp-de-ballet, the company had to look at its finances or go out of business.

So, they turned on to Norman Morris who for eight years experimented with ballets, making one per year, and he was made associate director and allowed to plan new developments to enhance the company’s reputation.

His ballets showed a strong involvement with real life. Slowly but steadily he brought interesting contents to his ballets under greater formal control. He had started the impetus for others to follow.

Rambert had provided new incarnation. There was the rapidly developing talents of Glen Tetley who by now had left the Netherlands Dance Theatre. Merce Cunningham identified himself in literary works while Paul Taylon captured the haunting splendour of Beethovan’s late string quartets in dance.

Among other later generation Hans van Menen opted entirely to work within the Netherlands Dance Theatre. Robbins and Roland Petit found their own voices and managed to convey fresh ideas with emotion and intelligence. In Five Sketches, petit emphasises the efforts that go into dancing which dancers usually try to hide.

Modern music

The visual designs of the costumes, stage setting, decor and the music too came up for revival with new trends brought in by the choreographers where logical consequences and experiments took place in form and content in ballet.

They were on the right track but the use of modern music became easier to follow though it made life harder for the choreographers as well as for the dancers.

In particular, the dancers had to explore a kind of limbo of the soul before finding themselves faced with the reality of adapting themselves to the new mood of the choreographer who on the other hand was aware that all the changes, innovations, trends they came with that at the end it was the dancers who had to translate them on stage.

It was a sensitive relationship between the dancer and the choreographer until the forms were established and acquired. Disagreement by both parties would have spelt disaster. The choreographers found it easy to mould the younger and new dancers on these lines since they were adaptable rather than the veterans.

Accompanying scores

Partly for different reasons the design for ballet had changed in a way very much like the accompanying scores. The other extreme appeared what seemed a contest between designers to achieve the most grandiose natural setting for classical revival. It was unmistakebly a tendency towards simplicity and solidity.

Martha Graham pioneered the use of sculpture in the designing of ballets and this innovation proved a great success.

I was at the New York City Ballet when she presented The Maple Leaf Rag and was amazed to find a bare stage only with a long plank set across it where the dancers pirouetted, jumped for joy in exuberance and displayed the joy of dancing.

Martha Graham was a remarkable woman and in her 70s or 80s when I met her back stage after this ballet. Sadly when I returned home a few months later, she passed away.

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