20th Century and Ballet

Ballet

George Balanchine and Serge Diaghilev were similar and yet different in various ways. For instance, both were prominent figures in the 20th century: they worked together in the Ballets Russes for five years in the latter half of the 1920s; Balanchine was the choreographer and ballet master, Diaghilev the promoter. Diaghilev had staged works, too, and is regarded as a pioneer in the field -- uniting new music and modernist styles and tactics with the traditional ballet forms to bring a new spectacle to the stage -- works like The Rite of Spring, for instance, which was so controversial that it caused a fight to break out in the theater on the evening of its first performance (Kelly 293). Balanchine, on the other hand, was devoted more towards the art of dance: he opened schools and worked in New York and in Hollywood. He lived for dance, it could be said, while Diaghilev lived for sensation and the revolution. By the time Balanchine developed Jewels for New York City Ballet, it was like he had returned to the pure form of ballet that he had spent so much time experimenting with in the early days when with the Ballets Russes.

Balanchine was creative and energetic, working with some of the greatest modern composers -- Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel and Satie, while having sets designed by the great modernist painters like Picasso and Matisse (and, of course, this all occurred while with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes) (Fisher 25). The two shared a few years of creative outpouring, but in the big scheme, it was a small chapter in Balanchine's life and career. He went on to New York to found the School of American Ballet, took dancing to Hollywood and worked on films, and formed the Ballet Society company that -- like his time with Diaghilev -- also worked alongside modern composers on new works. At the same time, Balanchine stayed devoted to traditional works like Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Diaghilev also liked to do this -- but his focus was on spectacle -- both on stage and in terms of ideas and what was being expressed. Diaghilev wanted to move things forward in powerful ways; Balanchine understood the lesson of moderation to a more business-like degree -- as his success over many years shows.

One of the works that defined Balanchine's career was Apollo, which he developed with Stravinsky while in the Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. It was a minimalist piece that was heavily influenced by Stravinsky's modernist or post-modernist sounds: accompaniments from the jazz-inspired times, filled with suggestions of a break with the old dance temperament of the past. It was jazzy and fast, with twirls and movements predicated by the jazz rhythms and beats: it was like jazz dance music performed by ballerinas -- an odd pairing that jars upon viewing. It was an expression of the neoclassical movement and both Balanchine and Diaghilev were at the head of it. Thus, they were similar in this regard -- they both desired to experiment with genre and movement, with ideas -- incorporating contemporary artists and movements into their works (Fisher 28). This was Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at its near finest -- employing top notch talent (both choreographer and music composer) in works that were genuinely effective, moving, novel and intellectual.

The choreographic structure of Apollo is minimalist, with a few dancers interacting, somewhat in unison, following the lead of the rhythm of the jazz. The style is very modern -- musically speaking -- but the dancer's movements are still very much inspired by the traditional movements and forms of ballet. The collaboration -- Balanchine and Stravinsky -- was at the heart of the work, fueling a merger of two seemingly disparate worlds -- ballet and jazz -- fusing them into a solid.

Balanchine's New York City Ballet was something altogether different in many ways, however. For example, with the New York City Ballet, Balanchine would create Jewels -- an even more minimalist piece than Apollo -- yet one that was in many ways more traditionally in line with the old world of ballet. The choreography was set to three pieces by three different composers -- Faure, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky -- and each piece flows like water infused by grace, and the dance movements are just as beautiful in their representation of the music.

Watching Balanchine's New York City Ballet perform Jewels and comparing it to the ragtime-inspired performance of Apollo under Diaghilev, one cannot help but see that in the former there is more magic linked to the past, to the idealistic, the pure beauty that traditional ballet can inspire in one's mind and heart. The latter -- the jazz-themed work -- is more like fun and enthusiasm let loose on stage: a reflection of youth. Youth certainly characterized Diaghilev's Ballets Russes -- much more than it did Balanchine's New York City Ballet, which essentially came at the end of the latter's career. There is then in this sense more reflection in Jewels -- more time to meditate on what made ballet great, graceful and beautiful in the first place -- and that is seen in the single dancer on stage, moving arms like they were water and lightly flying across stage like she is an ethereal being on whom gravity has no effect. Of course -- in the Stravinsky piece in Jewels, one sees the old Diaghilev Ballets Russes coming out in Balanchine. But then the two do have a history -- under Diaghilev no less.

Part II

The Rite of Spring choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and the ballet Giselle choreographed by Marius Petipa of the Imperial Ballet can be compared and contrasted to show two very different ideas about what was going on in ballet in the 19th and 20th centuries. The differences are reflective of the social differences that existed in these two times, and the reason for pairing these two works is that they reflect how in the 19th century there was more respect and dependence upon traditional styles and forms, whereas in the early 20th century, the social revolutions of the world had finally taken hold of the stage and the art form and inspired artists like Nijinsky and Stravinsky working with Diaghilev to produce a work that was suggestive of a world separating itself from the traditional forms and movements.

The aesthetic of Giselle by Petipa is very harmonious and reflective of the beauty of the rural setting, and the movements are infused with the romantic gestures inspired by the music, which is of course from the Romantic Era. Thus, everything about the Giselle ballet is representative of this Romantic mood -- its simple story of a love entanglement is characterized and told through the simple but evocative movements of the dancers, who are neither shocking in their expressions of form and gesture nor crude in their deportment. They are exactly what one would expect from a Romantic Era ballet -- nothing controversial or overly assertive or aggressive -- just a celebration of the beauty and harmony that dance can inspire through a traditional aesthetic.

The aesthetic of Rite of Spring on the other hand is quite different. It is characterized by rude, sharp, jarring movements and expressions that look and feel primitive -- like they are being performed by persons who never learned or studied traditional ballet. It is in many ways like a caricature of traditional ballet -- but that is also somewhat the point, as the dance is coming at a time when the world is about to be at war. Old forms and traditions -- the old sense of peace and society -- is falling down all around in the early 20th century, when the Rite was first performed. Nijinsky's choreography captures this essence (Parker): its diminutive-seeming dancers, prancing about like primitive savages from a pagan era in the midst of a ritual which will end in the sacrifice of a single dancer -- her life given over to satisfy some avenging power -- all of this effects a brutal kind of aesthetic that repulses and yet pulls on the emotions, directing the viewer in two different directions at once -- just as the music of Stravinsky seems to want it to do -- and in fact just as the whole world seems to want it to do in 1913 on the eve of World War I.

Yet, compared to the serenity of sounds in Giselle and the serenity of movements expressed by Petipa's choreography, there is a complete separation that can be seen in the performance of the earlier work and the performance in the latter work. Something happened in the world between these times to create this distance, to drive these artists in such different ways. The quiet rural romance was dead -- likely because of Industrialization, which stampeded to power in the latter half of the 19th century -- and it could be this which left the soul of dance feeling so neglected, so downright primitive that it had to be shown on stage by Nijinsky in just this way -- because this was what the world was giving the dancer to work with. For Petipa in the pre-Industrialized era, this tension, this lack of beauty had not yet transpired. Petipa could still reflect a world and society that was free of the beast of machinery, of labor outrages, of men huddled into urban areas, hurt by squalor and factories and disease. True, the 19th century also had its problems but Petipa's vision was not encumbered by them: he was an old man by the time the 20th century arrived -- Nijinsky a young man; their sense of time, of place and of the world was informed by a difference of generation.