Myths vs. Storytelling – Bejart

From the prior posts: I think my understanding of myth is somewhat personal.

What is the difference between a myth and a story?

Is is the presence of archetypal vs. ‘human’ characters?
Is it the presence of non-human, magical characters – like Sylphs?

I remember reading some Joseph Campbell when I was growing up – the Hero’s Journey, and some analysis of Star Wars… I don’t know. Didn’t really stick I guess.

Two years ago I went to Paris for a week to research Marie Taglioni at the Garnier Opera Archive. I was staying with a young scholar I had met in New York (we met while we were both working in the NY Library for the Performing Arts.) I was researching ballet families (Vestris, Taglioni, Coulon) and she was researching Balanchine.

While I was over there, we went to see Bejart Ballet.

Bejart passed away in late 2007. Here are a few excerpts from Lewis Segal’s obituary. (Bear with me – I know this seems disjointed: it comes together.)

Although he began his ballet career dancing the 19th century classics in pristine versions staged from the choreography notebooks of what is now the Kirov Ballet, Bejart eventually developed a complex style of contemporary ballet. It incorporated movement influences from a number of cultures, along with a flamboyant theatricality very much in the neo-Expressionist tradition of Western Europe but foreign to classical dancing. A key element of that new style was its refusal to accept conventional notions of what kind of dancing, roles and prominence “belonged” to males versus females.

Mauric Bejart

Contrary to their original versions, Bejart cast a man in the title role of his “Firebird” and in “Bolero” created a sexually indeterminate ballet: It is danced with 40 men and one woman, 40 women and one man or with an all-male cast.

“I and a few others have fought for men’s liberation in ballet — true equality,” he said in a 1985 Times interview, “though, of course, it is normal when you fight for equality that it looks like you are too much on the other side.” Above all, his approach to ballet was personal and intuitive, insisting, as he said, that “dance is a tool for expressing myself totally, for being, breathing, living, becoming myself.”

……. [C}ritics often disapproved of works that were long on philosophical and dramatic content but short on pure dance — particularly ballets that emphasized sensual and often openly homoerotic male dancing.

In hindsight, many of the attacks seem to be barely veiled homophobia, but Bejart took them in stride. “A creator who does not shock is useless,” he said at the time. “People need reactions. Progress is only achieved by jostling.”

Maybe myth is the difference between jostling, and attacking, an audience. One of the uses of myth is to create that slight distance necessary for audience comfort.

When I saw Bejart’s Ballet Mechanique, and his Bolero, I saw today’s myths. I saw the use of a highly dramatic, romantic peice of music, and a slowly expanding spot of light, to explore idealization, division, remove, and – what’s that word – ah yes, obsession.

I feel like I’m in good company with certain realizations about character/gender.

Maya Plisetskaya version of Bolero – 1st part:

Someone else – 1st part of the dance:

What are the myths of today? What are the lessons that we need to learn? Are they the same as the lessons transmitted by the greeks?

Have you seen today’s visions?
The ones that reflect and remove today’s barriers?

Who here got something from Balanchine’s Prodigal Son? Who here got something from Graham’s Errand into the Maze? Limon’s Moor’s Pavane?

Bejart has passed, joining Balanchine, Graham, Limon…. What’s next?

Finding the Meaning

So: to continue about La Sylphide from my last post…… A few years ago, I produced something called the D.C. Contemporary Ballet Festival. We took over the Takoma Theater for a week. I partnered with Mason/Rhynes Productions to pull it off. Cheles (and Gesel, and Liz, and I) really worked to fix up what was a run-down space with little tech.

I was really proud of what we did. Eight choreographers. Three classes, two shows. But no-one came to the classes, and only a few hundred came to the shows. I lost money on the event, and when I didn’t get any of the grants the next year, didn’t do it again.

I wrote a program note for the festival attempting to define contemporary ballet. What is ‘contemporary ballet’ anyway? I benefited from a conversation I had with Jonathan Jordan trying to figure out what the difference is between ballet and modern dance. (Congratulations to Jonathan, who earlier this week won the MetroDCDance Award for Best Performance.)

Jonathan posited that:

Modern dance tends toward the expression of the personal, while ballet tends toward the presentation of the universal, the archetypal.

While I can’t eat that one whole, I do think there’s something there.

The storyline of Sylphide is: there’s this Scottish dude who becomes enthralled with this otherworldly woman. She’s not actually a woman, though. She’s a sylph. She has wings. So, dude leaves his fiance, and tries to settle down with the sylph. (We’ve all been there, right?) But she keeps flying away. Dude meets a witch, who promises to help him secure his love. The witch says: just put this scarf around her, and she’s yours. So he does, and her wings fall off, and she dies, and dude ends up watching his ex-fiance marry his best friend. Curtain.

Here’s a clip of Nureyev in Sylphide:

The lessons there are real, the emotions real. The storyline is stupid. Myths allow us just enough remove to be entertained while we learn. Myth – not story – is one realm in which dance can thrive.

The Rising

I’ve been really enjoying this song by Bruce Springsteen called ‘The Rising’. While listening to it in the car Fani told me that it was written as a response to the attacks of September 11th. I like it even more now. The only song in response to the attacks I knew of was very aggressive. I find The Rising appropriately spiritual.

Performance of the Rising:

I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this is what we had to say:

The song tells the story of a New York Fire Department firefighter, climbing one of the World Trade Center towers after the hijacked planes had hit them. The lyric depicts the surreal, desperate environment in which he finds himself:

Can’t see nothin’ in front of me,
Can’t see nothin’ coming up behind …
I make my way through this darkness,
I can’t feel nothing but this chain that binds me.
Lost track of how far I’ve gone
How far I’ve gone, how high I’ve climbed …
On my back’s a sixty-pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line

The choruses are more upbeat, featuring a more pronounced drum part and “Li, li, li” vocal parts, but as the song progresses the verses trace the ever more dire situation. Images of fire engines and the Cross of Saint Florian are introduced, and then, “in the garden of a thousand sighs,” a series of final visions: his wife, his children, and all human experience:

Sky of blackness and sorrow ( dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears ( dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness ( dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear ( dream of life)
Sky of memory and shadow ( dream of life)

The single was released ahead of the album, initially appearing on AOL First Listen on June 24, 2002. There was a considerable marketing push for the single and the subsequent album, based on the September 11 connection and on being the first studio recordings from Springsteen with the E Street Band in 15 years. “The Rising” also debuted Springsteen’s collaboration with producer Brendan O’Brien, who gave Springsteen a somewhat more modern-sounding feel than did former producer Jon Landau. Although “The Rising” was not a pop hit, peaking at only #52 on the Billboard Hot 100, it achieved significant radio airplay in some quarters, making #24 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and #16 on the Adult Contemporary chart in the U.S. It did not place on the UK Singles Chart.

No music video was made for “The Rising”.

Critical reaction to “The Rising” was generally positive. Allmusic called it “one of Mr. Springsteen’s greatest songs. It is an anthem, but not in the sense you usually reference in regard to his work. This anthem is an invitation to share everything, to accept everything, to move through everything individually and together.” Rolling Stone worried that, “As with ‘Born in the U.S.A.’, the title … may mislead some who hear it, particularly those intent on retaliation, which Springsteen himself shows little interest in contemplating. His concern is not with a national uprising but with a rising above: the transcending of ever-mounting losses and ancient hatreds.”[2] The New York Times described “The Rising” as a work in which “one man’s afterlife is an endless longing for the physical touch of those left behind, and the music climbs toward jubilation as an act of will.”[3]

In looking up the song, I found this interview from the Letterman show in which Mr. Springsteen talks about his writing/creative process. You have to wait till about the third minute for the good stuff.