Is it Dance? Is it Art? Does it Matter?

Courtesy of The Barre Flies

Courtesy of The Barre Flies

The May blog comes from “The Barre Flies” and in particular, this month is written about the Pilobolus Dance Theatre — always one of my favorite dance troupes. The writing credits go to Eliza Minden of Gaynor/Minden. Read on:

“My neighborhood is so buff and body-conscious that even the dogs wear muscle shirts. Chiseled, pumped-up physiques are commonplace here in Chelsea, as are the many gyms where such bodies are created with arduous daily workouts, ever-more esoteric equipment, and precisely formulated, vitamin-fortified smoothies. But when Pilobolus comes to the Joyce they bring bodies — both male and female — that put the gym-rats to shame. These bodies not just impressive to look at, they possess breathtaking flexibility and balance skills. Moreover, unlike my neighbors (and their dogs), they wear their physiques lightly. Onstage they are utterly self-effacing — like the greatest ballet dancers they make it look effortless and graceful.

Do they cross-train? Lift weights? Swing kettle bells? Is there some company class that builds and maintains such strength? Not at all. What the Pilobolus dancers do is just that demanding. Their zen-like serenity onstage belies the difficulty of their work. Like ballet dancers, they make it look so easy that no one appreciates how hard it really is.

In my favorite pieces they use each other’s bodies as human levers to create fantastic living sculptures that merge and cleave. They rely in part on a weight sharing technique that can be found in other forms of dance but that Pilobolus developed and theatricalized in its own way.

Pilobolus pictureI spoke with Beth Lewis, who toured with the company for five years and who still performs with it from time to time. “Weight sharing with a man is difficult because the amount he pushes is the amount the woman has to push back.” And referring to their signature cantilevers, “Also, the body doesn’t rest in space at a 45° angle without any effort. You have to engage everything in your body to make this happen, all while making it look pretty. It’s insanely difficult.”

Okay, so it’s incredibly hard. But is it really dance? Is it art? Does that matter? “I think everything is dance,” said Lewis, “walking down the street can be a dance. We can take pedestrian ideas and make them into an interesting work that we can call dance. We make shapes out of people while moving through seamless transitions. We move together as a unit to create something sculptural and beautiful to look at. “

Dance was only part of Lewis’s athletic training. She was a competitive swimmer and gymnast, and a long-time practitioner of tai kwon do. As a college dance major she did extensive aerial work with trapeze and silk. Dance is not necessarily a requirement for becoming a member of Pilobolus, though many do have some dance training. According to Lewis the requirement is having something to contribute to a collaborative process that’s based on improvisation and play. The diversity of their backgrounds just enriches the work.

“With Pilobolus you’re not seeing a show you’re experiencing art—experiencing physicality, theater, and process. You’re seeing what each dancer has gone through to create that piece.”

Lewis now teaches some of the physical skills required of being a “Pil” to a clientele ranging in age from 14 to 81. She prefers “movement specialist” rather than “trainer” as her job description. Her workouts look like play but result in increased strength, mobility, balance, and as she puts it, “walking through life with a little more grace.” (They also result in exhaustion and soreness in previously unknown muscles.) She helps clients achieve kinesthetic awareness — knowing where the body is in space — through Pilobolus-based weight sharing along with more conventional devices. “Anything you can do to make it trickier, and to make your environment more unstable, makes your body work harder to create that stability.”

Over the past forty years Pilobolus has created a body of work that is by turns exhilarating, provocative, goofy, and hauntingly beautiful. They’ve become more polished — some would say slick — but the work retains its quality of having originated in playful group improvisation. It’s harder on the dancers to work this way: there’s no rest and no familiar structure of tendus and pliés to fall back on.

Most pioneering dance companies, once they’ve hit 40 and established themselves, would consider codifying their technique and creating a vocabulary for their steps and positions. I asked Lewis if Pilobolus should do so, “No,” she says, “that’s not the way Pilobolus rolls.”

Brainy Quotes, Brainy Dancers

Recently I came across Brainy Quote, a website devoted to famous people and their “brainy” quotes. Looking up famous dancers, here are some of my favorites…

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
Martha Graham

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
Martha Graham

Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don’t quite know how I’m going to do them, because I haven’t lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited.
Suzanne Farrell

I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls.
Gene Kelly

I danced with passion to spite the music.
Gelsey Kirkland

We were all novices. We really were. We didn’t know a goddamn thing about doing a show.
Jerome Robbins

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
Agnes de Mille

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Agnes de Mille

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
Agnes de Mille

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.
Anna Pavlova

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.
George Balanchine

One is born to be a great dancer.
George Balanchine

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
Margot Fonteyn

My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day.
Merce Cunningham

I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.
Mikhail Baryshnikov

The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it’s with you all the time.
Alvin Ailey

The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.
Isadora Duncan

A pas de deux is a dialogue of love. How can there be conversation if one partner is dumb?
Rudolf Nureyev

My feet are dogs.
Rudolf Nureyev

Dance every performance as if it were your last.
Erik Bruhn

The Ballet Stage: The Marvelous, The Extraordinary, The Supernatural

In 2010, Jennifer Homans, Ph.D., wrote a book titled:  “Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet”. A former dancer herself, Ms. Homans is now a dance historian and a dance critic for the New Republic. In this monumental work, she follows the history of the ballet from the 17th century to the present and gives the future of ballet dismaying marks when she states:   “For those of us who were there at the end of the last great era, and who experienced its vigour and its decline, the change has been momentous…” and further, “After years of trying to convince myself otherwise, I now feel sure that ballet is dying… we are watching ballet go.” As she writes “Ballet is an art of high ideals and self-control in which proportion and grace stand for an inner truth and elevated state of being”. She makes an intriguing case for her stance, giving the reader the sense that the last great era ended with the death of George Balanchine in 1983.

Recently I came across this video, in which Ms. Homans is not only giving a presentation of material from her book, but also of her own experiences in the dance world and her view on the current state of affairs in the world of ballet. I invite you to listen and form your own conclusions….