Ballet Meta: AintAppropriated?
In addition to having a whole lot of versions of La Fille Mal Gardee, Netflix has two (slightly overlapping) programs by Les Ballets Trockadero--which, as some of you may not know, is an all-male ballet company. When the Trocks got started in the 1970s, a bunch of guys in tutus was considered a joke in and of itself, and a lot of the humor was guys stumbling around on pointe. (Cut for length, this is even, like CULTURAL and stuff)
But if Ballet Barbie were to be totally candid, she would say, "Fuck math! BALLET is hard!" I read an interview with the great British dancer Anthony Dowell, who said that when his partner, Lynn Seymour, began dancing with the Royal Ballet, "she had her work cut out for her just standing up on pointe without a boy holding her"--with the result that she became a great dramatic dancer. As Dowell said, her Sleeping Beauty adagio wasn't about a dancer with a beautiful pose in attitude, it was about a woman choosing among four potential lovers.
I have a lot of ambivalence about drag, but I think the top layer is that I figure that just becuase one bunch of people is sick to the back teeth of femininity, it doesn't mean that someone else can't, as it were, gentrify it and get some enjoyment out of it.
After 25 years of expanded opportunities for dance training--and restricted opportunities for dance jobs--the company has depth on the bench of what can reasonably be thought of as Guy Ballerinas--they can absolutely do the choreography, although it's a little mind-bending to see somebody who's, like, seven feet tall on pointe. (They also have a lot of dancers of color--I'm sure that the employment opportunities for an Asian or Hispanic man whose ambition is to dance Giselle are legion.)
The regular-model ballerina is a short, skinny girl with big thigh muscles, so it isn't all that much of a change to see a tall, skinny "girl" with big thigh muscles and biceps. A running gag is that they usually have the shorter dancers playing male roles, and it's a trip to see a guy who looks like he'd blow away in a high wind doing a pretty passable Le Corsaire.
They do have some dance gags,like choreographing somebody missing an entrance or kicking a fellow-swan in the head, but there are also respectable, as in co-ed, ballets that make jokes like that (e.g., "The Concert") or use the jokes in a serious way (like "Serenade"). This disk has "Go For Barocco," the Balanchine spoof, or perhaps the Balanchine pastiche, although the "women" interact much more than the female dancers in a real Balanchine ballet. For that male-lesbian vibe.
Although I am deathly ambivalent about DVD extras, I enjoyed the interview with the company's artistic director. He said that a lot of their repertoire consists of one-time showpieces (e.g., Raymonda's Wedding) that have dropped out of repertoire, and in a sense, their campiest gesture is to perform these Blasts from the Past absolutely straight--albeit with must-be-seen-to-be-believed costumes.
I mean, standing on the toes of your right foot while you try to put your left knee in your ear is a fairly insane endeavor no matter WHO you are.
BTW, by analogy with "poof's football" I once had a tranny hustler in a B7 story describe politics as "naff's ballet."
KAYLEE: The whole point of swearin' is that it ain't appropriate.
But if Ballet Barbie were to be totally candid, she would say, "Fuck math! BALLET is hard!" I read an interview with the great British dancer Anthony Dowell, who said that when his partner, Lynn Seymour, began dancing with the Royal Ballet, "she had her work cut out for her just standing up on pointe without a boy holding her"--with the result that she became a great dramatic dancer. As Dowell said, her Sleeping Beauty adagio wasn't about a dancer with a beautiful pose in attitude, it was about a woman choosing among four potential lovers.
I have a lot of ambivalence about drag, but I think the top layer is that I figure that just becuase one bunch of people is sick to the back teeth of femininity, it doesn't mean that someone else can't, as it were, gentrify it and get some enjoyment out of it.
After 25 years of expanded opportunities for dance training--and restricted opportunities for dance jobs--the company has depth on the bench of what can reasonably be thought of as Guy Ballerinas--they can absolutely do the choreography, although it's a little mind-bending to see somebody who's, like, seven feet tall on pointe. (They also have a lot of dancers of color--I'm sure that the employment opportunities for an Asian or Hispanic man whose ambition is to dance Giselle are legion.)
The regular-model ballerina is a short, skinny girl with big thigh muscles, so it isn't all that much of a change to see a tall, skinny "girl" with big thigh muscles and biceps. A running gag is that they usually have the shorter dancers playing male roles, and it's a trip to see a guy who looks like he'd blow away in a high wind doing a pretty passable Le Corsaire.
They do have some dance gags,like choreographing somebody missing an entrance or kicking a fellow-swan in the head, but there are also respectable, as in co-ed, ballets that make jokes like that (e.g., "The Concert") or use the jokes in a serious way (like "Serenade"). This disk has "Go For Barocco," the Balanchine spoof, or perhaps the Balanchine pastiche, although the "women" interact much more than the female dancers in a real Balanchine ballet. For that male-lesbian vibe.
Although I am deathly ambivalent about DVD extras, I enjoyed the interview with the company's artistic director. He said that a lot of their repertoire consists of one-time showpieces (e.g., Raymonda's Wedding) that have dropped out of repertoire, and in a sense, their campiest gesture is to perform these Blasts from the Past absolutely straight--albeit with must-be-seen-to-be-believed costumes.
I mean, standing on the toes of your right foot while you try to put your left knee in your ear is a fairly insane endeavor no matter WHO you are.
BTW, by analogy with "poof's football" I once had a tranny hustler in a B7 story describe politics as "naff's ballet."
KAYLEE: The whole point of swearin' is that it ain't appropriate.