Modern dance and classical dance: two faces of authenticity

Материал из HEPTACHOR.

MODERN DANCE AND CLASSICAL DANCE: TWO FACES OF AUTHENTICITY

Natalia Zvenigirodskaia (Moscow)

I will start by claiming that authenticity is different for free dance and ballet. Unlike ballet, which is based on a canon, free dance celebrates individuality. In ballet, the perfection of forms is a value in its own right (in the critic Volynsky’s words, the mechanical is close to the ideal). Free dance values above all the inner impulse, which then is put into shape, every time an individual one.

The interest in authenticity comes alive in moments of crisis, when people seek support in the past. The past seems a lost paradise. Ballet – stability realised – is of great help here. It is not surprising that at the turn of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries there was a renewed interest in ballet. “Authenticity” became a great attraction and often an element in publicity. To what extent we can speak about authenticity in relation to ballet?

Recent stagings, which claim authenticity, reconstruct the mis-en-scène, movement patterns, roles, etc. Is it enough? One of the most recent Russian reconstruction, The Sleeping Beauty of the Mariinsky Theatre, was restored with the help of the Russian émigré dancer, Nikolai Sergeev’s archive. The performance was bright and colourful, but was it “the real Pétipa”? And how do we know what the authentic ballet looked like? How the audience saw it?

Authentic music is played on authentic instruments. The instrument in dance is the dancer’s body, which in its own right has changed. Women dressed in authentic costume but whose body has different proportions can be a joke. And what about fabrics, dyeing, flooring which causes different movements, etc?

Perhaps, we should admit: not all authenticity is for the better. The evolution of the “Sleeping Beauty” was slow and, in the process, the ballet achieved perfection. Should we argue with the Wise Man, Time? Yet, we need the search for authenticity for widening the range of our creative efforts.

After a century of its existence, free dance, on the one hand, stopped being “free”, having produced numerous schools, methods and its own canons; on the other hand, it opened its doors to non-professionals, with unexpected and creative consequences.

When the dancer and choreographer, Evgenii Panfilov, founded in his theatre two exotic groups, “Ballet of the Fat” and “Wrestlers’ Club”, not everybody took it seriously.

In the “Wrestlers’ Club”, he selected guys from the streeet, who never studied dance. The result was a pedagogical miracle. A combination of a creative goal, natural naivete and unlimited trust which the boys had for Panfilov produced touching performances-feelings.

Modern dance is above all a world-view. And a world-view should be shaped.

It is also a way of life – the one of ongoing master-classes, laboratories etc. Their value is participation not performance, at least if we believe the organisers.

Out of the scare of totalitarianism, the humanity has developed a syndrome of pluralism, which often comes forward in various cultural projects. There are better and worse ones. Dance has many faces, and everybody is free to choose his or her own. We do not know what the seekers of authenticity will recreate in the future.