Talk:Neoclassical ballet

Good start

Good start, needs more explanation in reference to style (lines - shape - form - technique - lineage)

I would also argue that some of the works are modern ballet and or classical ballet. I would mostly contest Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan as british ballet choreographers didn't really make it to Neoclassical ballet. and went from modern ballet to classical (Russian) and is almost reached Post-structuralist ballet (ashley page)

I would therefore suggest that Ashton and MacMillan are removed from this page.

Any ballet utilizing traditional ballet vocabulary created after Apollo can be considered neoclassical. This is not strictly true, a ballet is classed according to content and the choreographic process. It also does not allow for Post-structuralist ballet (William Forsyth)' also neoclassical ballet e x t e n d s the tradition ballet vocabulary can convention with is hyper extended lines etc and technical virtuosity above 'drama' and 'acting' also returned to the cult of the ballerina as male dancers slipped out of the limelight again.

How about neoclassical ballet dancers?

Ohka- 01:56, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• There aren't really any neoclassical ballet dancers, as such, just classically trained ballet dancers that dance neoclassical works. PrimateMover (talk) 09:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge with main ballet article

I'd like to merge this article with the main ballet article. Unless I hear an objection I will do so. Slhogan94 19:16, 12 March 2007 (UTC) Yes please! Sparafucil 11:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

• No, don't... Maybe merge it with Contemporary though? They are really close to being the same thing, and it would make both of them long enough to be an article, not a stub.TheBallerinaDoll 02:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

• Contemporary (dance) and neoclassical are not alike at all. Consider this quote about Martha Graham from renowned American dance critic Joan Acocella: "No one except George Balanchine had anything approaching [Martha Graham's] influence on twentieth-century choreography, and, unlike Balanchine, who was carrying on the tradition of classical ballet, she more or less formulated the art she practiced" (Twenty-eight Artists And Two Saints, 2007, p. 291) PrimateMover (talk) 06:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

• Please do not! Neoclassical and contemporary are very different styles. They belong separated!!! I would know. I have studied both styles of dance and they are very different!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.161.75.248 (talk) 06:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
• do not merge 3 different things also no rationale presented by proponent of most recent tagging. Paul foord (talk) 07:10, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Tim Scholl and Balanchine's Apollo

"Tim Scholl, author of From Petipa to Balanchine, considers George Balanchine's Apollo in 1928 to be the first neoclassical ballet. Apollo represented a return to form in response to Serge Diaghilev's abstract ballets."

Having read relevant sections from Scholl's From Petipa to Balanchine (pp. 74-80), I'm not sure that Scholl is saying, as it currently says on this page on neoclassicism, that Balanchine's Apollo is the first example of a neoclassical ballet, or that it is a departure from abstractionism. Indeed, Balanchine himself is known as an abstractionist, and referred to as such by renowned dance critic Joan Acocella (examples of which can be found in her Twenty-eight Artists And Two Saints).

Furthermore, Balanchine's works are seen as a return to classicism, as outlined by Acocella when she writes of former dancer Suzanne Farrell's influence on Balanchine:

"When Farrell arrived Balanchine didn't just change his styles; he seemed to change his content. Before, in what might have been called his classic years -- from 1928 (Apollo) to about 1962 (A Midsummer Night's Dream) -- his ballets had addressed sex and religion, grief and fate, but those matters, for the most part, were bound in by classicism: tempered, formalised."

But whether this classicism represented a neoclassicism was something that wasn't particularly clear to either Stravinsky or Balanchine. Here's an excerpt (cited in Scholl) of an essay Stravinsky wrote in 1927:

"There is much talk of a return to classicism nowadays, and works believed to have been influenced by works deemed 'classical' are termed 'neoclassical.' It is difficult to say whether this classification is in fact justified. Might this not be the result of an investigation more profound (at least in works worthy of attention -- works that reveal the visible influence of earlier works) than the simple imitation of a so-called classical language? This does not constitute neo-classicism, since classicism could never be characterized by technical methods (which change now as they do in every period) but rather by the merits of its construction."

Acocella also comments on Lincoln Kirstein and Balanchine's legacy to twentieth century art and life, and how these pulled classicism back into the limelight:

"Through the medium of Balanchine's choreography and teaching, ballet in the next few decades became a modernist art, and NYCB the hub of Western ballet. If Diaghilev had once saved ballet, Kirstein and Balanchine saved it again, and as with Diaghilev, their doing so affected not just dance but art in general."

Acocella goes on to cite Kirstein in an essay he wrote for Hound & Horn:

"Kirstein had characterized Massine as 'the first of the clever choreographers" -- those responsible for plunging the Ballets Russes of the early twenties into a sort of empty chic -- and described Balanchine as leading ballet out of that dry zone 'into a revivified, purer, cleaner classicism'."

This "cleaner classicism" could be taken as a reference to "neoclassicism," but is this valid?

Also interesting is Scholl's discussion on Faun and Apollo (From Petipa to Balanchine, pp. 77-76):

"Despite their stylistic incongruities, Nijinsky's Faune [sic] and Balanchine's Apollo show structural similarities. Both feature a male protagonist who chooses one woman from a small group. Both ballets are quasi-narrative, with easily understood, minimal plots. But Balanchine's very dissimilar realization of the basic plot represents a visceral, conscious response to the Nijinsky work. His revisions of Apollo over the next fifty years suggest a life-long dialog [sic] with Nijinsky's ballet and the aesthetic it came to represent. As Faune held its place in the repertory, Balanchine continued to revive and revise Apollo."

According to Scholl, then, the similarities between Faun's "empty chic", abstractionism and Apollo's apparent neoclassicism should be cancelled out with regard to identifying what makes a ballet either abstractionist or neoclassical.

Scholl says that both ballets share quasi-narratives and minimalist plots, so when using this criterion to define either abstractionism or neoclassicism in dance it's tempting to disregard those characteristics.

However, Scholl says that Balanchine realized his minimalist plots quite differently, and goes on to say that he achieved this through a greater emphasis and focus on three-dimensional space and a constantly geographical shifting of the performance space. But at this point we need to again reconsider Stravinsky's earlier comments above about what constitutes "neoclassicism", and in doing so ask ourselves whether Balanchine's Apollo is indeed a neoclassical ballet or merely a return to, albiet reinvigorated, classicism. If, as Stravinsky says, neoclassicism should not be "characterized by technical methods" or "classical language" alone, or, as Scholl says, narrative or plot construction, then the status of Balanchine's works as neoclassical ballets rests upon their investigation of space. I'll leave it for others to decide whether this characteristic alone is worthy of neoclassical status.

Scholl, however, seems to have some very clear ideas about the neoclassical status of Balanchine's ballet's (From Petipa To Balanchine, p. 75), especially that of Apollo:

"Stravinsky and Balanchine turned to classical ideals. The backward glance in Apollo is the 'momentary enthusiasm' Makovsky described; the retrospectivist conceit is far less important than the future the ballet foreshadows. Apollo can be called a 'classical' ballet because its Ancient Greek and neoclassical French sources are no longer incongruous: the ballet's theme refers to a classical ideal rather than a time or place... Stravinsky and Balanchine declared a new classicism [italics mine] for the ballet, sanctioned by the ballet's own history and tradition, no longer needful of ancient chronological antecedents."

Despite Scholl's apparent resolution of the incongruous, these seemingly contradictory or ambiguous comments from varied sources regarding Balanchine, Apollo, abstractionism and neoclassicism reveal the dynamic, fluid and ephemeral nature of dance and its classification. It's been noted by Acocella and others that Balanchine's works, for example, have taken on a different hue after Farrell and a myriad number of restagings and interpretations, so as to be almost indistinguishable from their earlier manifestations. PrimateMover (talk) 01:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)