SDP reprises Heidi Vierthaler’s “Surfacing” (pictured: Dana Hanson, from earlier presentation)
For the last week, the Seattle performing arts community–and particularly the dance community–has been up in the arms over a pair of issues. The first came up during The A.W.A.R.D. Show! at On the Boards, and has been smoldering ever since (I’ve invited one of the artists to respond here, and hopefully we’ll have that perspective soon, hint, hint). In short, the competition this year included several artists working in a more cabaret-vein, which (predictably–I’d imagine this is a button OtB wanted to push) gave rise to a discussion of what constitutes dance. While a lot of this happened in talkbacks, at least Michael Upchurch’s Seattle Times review addressed it directly.
Simultaneously, Alice Kaderlan, a freelance arts journalist and blogger at Seattlepi.com, reviewed the Seattle Dance Project’s Project 4 in extremely harsh terms. “As I wrote a few weeks ago,” she explains:
Olivier Wevers’ Whim W’him is an exciting entry into the Seattle dance scene and consistently offers the highest-quality performances of any local troupe apart from PNB. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for SDP, founded four years ago by retired PNB dancers Julie Tobiason and Timothy Lynch. Tobiason’s and Lynch’s motivation for forming SDP is understandable; ballet dancers are forced to retire at a young age, when they still have the energy and skill to continue dancing if not at quite the same level as before.
But the real money-quote, the one that’s got people raging pissed, reminiscent as it is of the dust-up over New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay’s snarky review of NYC Ballet’s Nutcracker, is the comment: “Tobiason and Dickson seemed awkward in Al Poco Tiempo‘s turning movements and the costumes, which looked like casual clothes the dancers might have pulled out of their own closets, were especially unflattering, especially for bodies no longer razor-thin.”
So, normally I wouldn’t go out of my way to nitpick my erstwhile colleagues’ reviews, but Kaderlan in particular has ticked me off, as I’ll explain shortly, so I’m going to break the rule and do so.
Now, if you want my two cents, the reason both reviews bother me, it’s because both are coming from an outmoded and dangerous perspective I’d like to see laid to rest along with the apparently no longer plausible career of being a paid critic. (If we have to give up one, let’s do both at the same time.) Namely, both reviews come at dance from the perspective that it’s not capable of saying anything, that it’s primarily an aesthetic thing about people twirling about and looking pretty, with content at best something to be summarized from whatever the press release states. This is a ballet-centric approach to criticism that views Balanchine’s later, purely aesthetic work as the high-point of the art form and is consequently why Jennifer Homans, in her new history Apollo’s Angels, has declared ballet dead, because how could anyone follow that up? (For a thoughtful response to this, see Claudia La Rocco’s excellent Salon review.)
Now as it happens, I don’t agree with Homans, even given that I’m not much of a ballet person. I’ve tried, but I’m not good at it. I just don’t care to ever see Balanchine again. Honestly. A couple years ago, I took part in a one-day dance writing workshop at PNB, which was fun (and yes, I was on the learning end; we all have to start somewhere). Gary Tucker, PNB’s wonderful PR person, showed us (the audience was comprised mostly of young college j-school majors as well as Cornish dance students trying to learn a new skill) several videos of PNB performances. I think there was a Swan Lake or a Sleeping Beauty or maybe both. I honestly wasn’t taken with the tutus-and-tiaras part of ballet. But when it came to William Forsythe’s work, I was blown away. Everyone else was the opposite. They hated Forsythe’s hyperkinetic play with a stage filled with metal tables slamming into one another.
Audiences in Seattle were general in agreement with everyone else in the class. Which is why ballet is dead, so to speak. Ballet costs a lot to do, and major ballet companies are wont to keep audiences happy–work that’s either narrative or pretty or, preferably both. Little girls will want to be ballet princesses (and it is sort of adorable, in a creepy, I’m-looking-at-future-Black-Swans sort of way, to see them dressed up for the ballet). But give me Ratmansky, Wheeldon, or Forsythe any day.
Both Kaderlan and Upchurch (who once famously encouraged people to pawn their children to score tickets to Whim W’Him) come from this tradition. Dance should all be aesthetic, apparently, with content a mere afterthought, with the choreographer’s intent superseding any discussion of whether he or she achieved that intent. The thought is enough; how lean, lithe, and unattainably fit are the dancers?
I find this tedious. As I have made clear, this treats dance as a dead, ossified art form incapable of expressing anything. And if that’s the case, no one should give a damn in the first place. Please, name me another relevant art form where “the point” of the piece is considered so unimportant to our experience of it? Oh, yes–theatre. Most critics also give theatre credit for its intent and concentrate only on how good the actors are, how entertaining the evening. That’s why, as my friend the playwright Paul Mullin would assert, we get a ridiculous explanation of how Glengarry Glen Ross is relevant in 2009 because it also has to do real estate. Is there a tenuous link? Yes! Mark this 20-year-old play cutting edge! (And for the record, I liked the Rep’s production of Glengarry Glen Ross, and like Wilson Milam, the director. But the point’s still valid.)
But with all that said and done, I don’t really care if some critics come at things from this perspective, because as someone who’s apparently had to help blaze the path to the future, a future where the newspapers that once employed us are sinking and taking those jobs with them, I believe in discourse. Multiple perspectives. Discussion. It’s okay, I tell people. Perspectives like Kaderlan’s are just one in a bucket. And Seattle does a remarkably good job of providing multiple perspectives. I was chatting with Seattlest’s Amy Mikel just the other day about The A.W.A.R.D. Show! debate, and she made the very good point that one of the reasons there was such a discussion was because there were so many responses, in newspapers, on outside blogs, and even solicited by OtB itself. It was an outgrowth of people putting forward their opinions and responses.
And that’s why Kaderlan has now pissed me off royally, because she’s had the nerve to start deleting comments on her blog. I wouldn’t have written this if she hadn’t had the temerity to use what leverage she has to try to maintain the voice-of-record critics used to enjoy when the few newspapers in town were the only game. Sorry, sister, that’s long in the past. On the subject of whether or not she’s right about SDP’s dancers being too fat or over the hill, I can’t comment. Michael van Baker on this site certainly didn’t seem to think so, and I have a great deal more respect for his opinion.
But that said, it is at least a legitimate question, a legitimate line of inquiry. I’ve written about the issue of discussion performers’ looks twice before on Culturebot (see here and here), and while I think that if you’re going to say someone’s too fat for a role (or at least insufficiently anorexic looking), you should both do so in polite rather than insulting terms and make sure you have a damn fine case to justify it, I still have to admit, it’s a legitimate thing to discuss.
But discussion is the key. A year and some ago I wound up talking about something similar with Donald Byrd of Spectrum Dance. Byrd has a bit of a reputation for being hard on his dancers, particularly female ones (as well as occasionally being accused of misogynistic imagery, but that’s a different topic). So I asked him about it, and to paraphrase, what he told me was that, yes, he knows people think this. Sometimes his dancers will complain to him. And his response is essentially that, well, that’s what you signed up for. Don’t complain now, you wanted to do this work with me, and this is what it requires.
Whether it’s Byrd’s choreography or ballet, the sentiment is completely correct. Whether the art created that way is relevant or important or worth the sacrifice of the artists involved is a different question, and that is what we should be talking about, and what we would be talking about in this case if Kaderlan had the courage to allow a response. But as of today, I have seen comments–not troll-ish comments, either–deleted from her blog. Look, I get this all the time. Artists never think you’re qualified to write a negative review.
In the last month, I’ve been accused of being unqualified to write about theatre, dance, and even had my degree in comparative literature insulted and held up as evidence. (I also studied theatre but never mind.) I get it. It sucks to get torn down in a review, and when I write a negative review, I know it may hurt someone because that person put a hell of a lot of work into something. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough to compare to others, who deserve credit and recognition for doing something a lot better. I can be respectful, I can be encouraging, but in the end, I have to say what I believe, which is, unfortunately for them, a pretty well-informed conclusion. If Alice Kaderlan isn’t willing to do so, to stand by what she said and allow for someone else to have a response, she has no business continuing to pass judgment on other people’s work.
Oh, and for the record, this comment I caught today before it was deleted. If you’d like to make your thoughts known, readers can of course do so here. The comment was anonymously left, I believe:
Interesting Alice, you deleted my previous comment. The part I like now though is how you apparently listened to is to an extent and deleted the favorable ones in order to apparently appease people. I would also like to say that I have read the Terms of Service and there is nothing in there that violates them. However as I think it is silly to delete comments in the first place, here is my previous comment:
Listen Alice, this is crap. If you want to post your opinion on the internet at the very least allow others to do the same. I’m surprised you would sink to the level of deleting the comments that many local artists thoughtfully took the time to write. This kind of censorship should at the very least be frowned upon.
However, my favorite part is how you leave up the ones that support you. I’m giving this comment until your next login until it’s deleted; however until you stop deleting peoples opinions and possibly apologize for you atrocious treatment of older dancers, other people will continue to post disgruntlement at this article.
I know from experience that it can be a trial to withstand the flames of trolls – all bloggers experience this from time to time.
I think it’s great that supporters seem to think that people like Mark Haim and other local artists are trolls. I would appreciate it if people would know what they were talking about before pettily insulting others. There is a difference between trolling (Being a prick on the internet because you can) and giving valid feedback on a terribly insulting article. This article fails to produce even the semblance of a balanced review and instead Ms. Alice decides to say that all women in dance should live up to the Barbie doll ideal of perfection and that other dancers are not even worth watching.
Simply, any blogger that has to rely on censorship – over and over and over again – to repress comments from those who disagree with whatever said blogger has posted, deserves ZERO clicks. As well as ZERO listeners.
Ms Kaderlan, either deleted or had her buddies at the PI delete, at least 6 substantive comments to her dull, mean-spirited review of SDP’s Project 4. That those comments were substantive unambiguously differentiated them from what Ms Kaderlan wrote and demonstrably was more than the self-absorbed blogger could handle.
Why anyone clicks or listens to Ms Kaderlin is a mystery, but, hey, Glenn Beck’s got a bunch of followers, as well.
I’ll defend their 1st Amendment rights, but I will not tolerate their violation of other’s.
1) Like you, Jeremy, I’ve come to dance fairly “late,” so it’s interesting to me how people perceive aging (and concomitant levels of fitness) in more “classical” dance. From my perspective, there’s a richness to experience that mature dancers have, in contrast to purely technical feats. If SDP’s dancers can no longer–every night–deliver the kind of performance that you might see from a 30-year-old at PNB, there’s an honesty to that limitation. I think they give you something else. (There are also rehearsal limitations, which leads to opening night roughness–for a company the size of SDP, I would make an allowance.) Alice’s dance experience and knowledge trump mine many times over, but I do feel like Whim W’Him and SDP are different enough in stated purpose that it’s an invidious comparison. But as you say, there’s room for all kinds of viewpoints–what’s disturbing is to see comments vanish when a conversation has been started.
2) I like Michael Upchurch’s reviewing; I find him very thoughtful more often than not, and that in context of writing an enormous amount on a more or less daily basis. I don’t agree at all that he comes from a formal-aesthetics-first camp.
I don’t have a problem with Upchurch in general either–within this context it was very much related to the piece he wrote that I referenced, which I think is related to his longstanding enthusiastic support for Whim W’him. Whim W’him’s not my favorite local dance company, but I like Olivier’s work well enough, he’s always been a perfectly nice person to chat with on the rare occasion I’ve chatted with him, whatever. My point isn’t exactly to drag Whim W’him into it.
That said, I’ll stand by my point about Upchurch’s review of The AWARD Show finale. Given what he’s previously written about Whim W’him, the comment that the performances beg the question of what is dance (some part of the rest being performance art with “some movement”), the slightly off-putting comment that it’s “On the Boards’s audiences” who want something “theatrical,” and his statement that if the criterion was technique exclusively Whim W’him would have won…well, that sort of adds up in my mind.
He likes Whim W’him dude, and he likes dance-y dance. There’s nothing wrong with that and I didn’t suggest there was. I said that I don’t agree as a matter of personal perspective, and I have a variety of reasons why. You’re certainly free to disagree with me–plenty of will, plenty do, and in general I think I made it clear that my big point here is that we create for discourse, which is why I’m making a counter-argument. I suppose I could have linked back to what I wrote about Whim W’him’s 3Seasons and how that related to the issue of content (in which, upon reflection, I have to admit they rate low with regard to the work of theirs I’ve seen, which includes Fragments).
And as for the general issue of what is dance, I do think his comment represents an extremely narrow perspective. Why should dance not include multimedia, music, text, and any variety of other non-movement components? I don’t want to get too technical here and break out Venn Diagrams, but no one accuses musicals of not being theater because there’s singing and dancing. I think it’s frankly a tiresomely academic response to suggest that somehow some of the people in a dance presentation shouldn’t be there because it’s not dance, which was the implication.
So yes, I think his comments are coming from a narrow perspective based in some sense on propositions that I don’t agree with. In this case (and I know he compliments tEEth too) but I was pleasantly surprised that audiences recognized the choreographer that, based on what I know of the artists who participated in the AWARD Show, has gone the furthest in choreographing for diverse bodies. Anyone who saw Grub knows that Hebert has ventured way outside of the typical professional dancer type in her choreography and movement work. I haven’t seen this piece (though I may in a couple months–here’s hoping) but based on what I know, it was a good choice.
Hebert demonstrates that you don’t have to be a traditional dancer type to use your body as a compelling movement instrument. That’s something that Olivier certainly hasn’t done yet, and that deserves recognition. And that, I guess, is as good an example as any of the differences between my approach and, from what I know and what I’ve seen, of Michael Upchurch’s.
Hey, I like dance-y dance; I also like non-dance-y dance. As an audience member, I like having a sense of which I’m being invited to see, which is why people use words like “dance” and “performance art,” and everything in between, in an effort to communicate nuances. The musicals analogy is specious–people do certainly say musicals aren’t “real” theatre, in certain contexts. It all depends on how you frame the question, and it is generally in an award shows context that that question becomes more defined, because people are concerned about comparing apples to apples. So far as the comment about technique, I think that’s a fair statement–the quibble I have with the review is that he doesn’t mention that audiences were explicitly given a number of criteria, so it was never the case that technique was or could be an overriding criterion (the tastes of OtB audiences aside).
Thank you Jeremy for calling critics on their hypocrisy while encouraging discussion and debate. And thank you for defending a broadening of our communities appreciation for what can be considered “dance” and what is an “appropriate” body for a dancer. I’m a local dance artist who has also studied comparative literature–so thumb-up for that too. Anyone who insults your degree in comparative literature is naive. You might love Forsythe because he’s partially inspired by linguistics and Barthes. Not to mention the two years of intensive study of post-structuralism Jerome Bel undertook before reshaping new dance in France and elsewhere.
T
I did like the one Jerome Bel piece I’ve seen–though it was more indicative of his process than his aesthetic, I think.
All I can say is thank you. Discussion and debate is exactly what we need.
Seattle’s dance discourse is getting oh so yummy!… Jeremy, bring your ass back here.
Heh. It’s even more interesting here. ;-)
Great article, sir. As someone who used to dance ballet & modern, and majored in Theatre, I think you do a fine job writing about it. I also have deep, ideological disagreements with professional arts & lit critics, in general.
If the arts aren’t a living, communicative discourse, then we’re all just standing around jerking each other off. That’s boring and pointless, and I don’t think it’s truly the fate of the arts. Keep fighting the good fight, Mr. Barker.
Thank you for the great article. This needs to be discussed and I find it insulting that the discussion on the original forum has been stopped. I went back to Ms. Kaderlin’s review and found that ALL of the comments had been deleted, and you can no longer comment on this review. You can of course comment on her other reviews or simply email her: .
Haven’t seen SDP’s latest and don’t know Kaderlan.
At this link ( http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=18742), Kaderlan discusses, among other things, her regret at the loss of content in the making of Robbins’ West Side Story. Are you knocking down a straw man here in criticizing Kaderlan (whose interest in dance is by your own admission more eclectic than yours) for having too restricted a view of what constitutes interesting dance? Can you provide better evidence that she holds the views you assign to her?
About this:
“Audiences in Seattle were general in agreement with everyone else in the class. Which is why ballet is dead, so to speak. Ballet costs a lot to do, and major ballet companies are wont to keep audiences happy–work that’s either narrative or pretty or, preferably both. Little girls will want to be ballet princesses (and it is sort of adorable, in a creepy, I’m-looking-at-future-Black-Swans sort of way, to see them dressed up for the ballet). But give me Ratmansky, Wheeldon, or Forsythe any day.”
But PNB where you can see work by those three, supported by the PNB audience who you think are so limited in their appreciation. Under Boal, Balanchine is outnumbered by post-B choreographers. (If you see a six-year-old kid pick up a sax, are you creeped out by implications of a future lost to heroin addiction, because jazz is also dead? At least you’d have more than a movie as a basis.)
There’s a difference between older dancers failing to execute choreography created for dancers (of whatever age) having the physical abilities typical of younger bodies, and older dancers failing to execute dance created with their current abilities in mind. SDP exists in recognition of this, no? (cf. Donald Byrd’s comments above and your agreement with them). How do you know Kaderlan isn’t talking about the former, as just a year ago she had nothing but praise for SDP’s execution, Tobiason and Gorboulev’s included? ( http://www.seattlepi.com/theater/397282_seattleproject24q.ht)
If I want to see ungainliness done right, I head to the A.W.A.R.D.S. show or the Moisture Festival.
Correction, should be “two years ago” re K’s positive SDP review.
Ed–You do a much better job of defending Kaderlan than she does. Which you’d be aware of by actually reading what I wrote, since that was basically my point–that Alice Kaderlan should stand by what she wrote at least enough to allow for dissent.
Does personal taste come into play in some of what I wrote? Yes. Though your argument vis-a-vis PNB is pretty specious. They’re the ONLY people who could do the ballet that interests me. If your argument is that they consistently DO that work, I’m afraid you haven’t paid much attention to their scheduling.
As for the loss of content in a balletic response to West Side Story…I don’t even know where to start. My argument is that dance can be a relevant way of approaching the contemporary; to suggest that the ballet’s adaptation of content from a decades old musical–which I love BTW–is apparently vapid…well, my response would be, what did she expect? It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that the ballet’s Broadway turn is probably lacking in content or depth. I guess a more interesting question would be, if PNB’s West Side Story hadn’t shorted the content, would it be remotely relevant or important? I tend to think not.
As for the fact that Kaderlan didn’t have a problem with Seattle Dance Project a year ago–please, again, read the above. Where, you know, I argue that such would be a valid and defensible response to their work. I don’t truck with the content of Kaderlan’s approach, nor do I with Upchurch’s response the AWARD Show. But I never–again, read what I took the trouble to write–argued that their opinions weren’t valid. Quite the opposite, I treated them like their perspectives were worthy of a response.
Kaderlan–as I made clear–disappoints me because having made an argument that I’ve taken the trouble to defend her right to make, has nevertheless sought to quash discussion of. She just needs to own her damn review. It’s not that hard. And if she’s right, it’s an important review because it’s pushing people.
What I have a problem with is the imperious implication that her word is somehow God’s and can’t take an attempt at rebuke by people who disagree with her. From a purely editorial perspective I think it’s stupid–given how marginal most arts journalism is, to try to negate the traction you get from a story is ridiculous.
Yes, amazing, thoughtful discussion.
The thread that interests me here is about content vs abstraction. Would we have this discussion about visual art? It seems to me that the entire history of art and dance is about the movement of the focal point where meaning or experience is made, whether it’s spelled out moment by moment, or laid bare for the audience to complete.
There are three amazing dance shows in town this weekend, all with multiple artists involved, sometimes in both shows, all perfect opportunities to compare and contrast, like and not like, get and not get.
http://velocitydancecenter.org/events/tentiny/
http://www.chopshopdance.org/
http://www.tinyrage.com/schedule/
Let’s dig in.
(Disclosure: I produce Ten Tiny.)
Well I don’t know if it is more interesting there or just ‘more’… Also I don’t care that it might be more interesting there cause I am here. What I am interested in is how to make it more interesting here, cause I’ve been there. And in my opinion, your being here would contribute to that… Clearly, we both are coming from a place that is about satisfying our own particular needs… Bring your ass back!
I’m doing my best to make it more interesting there, too.