Is Ballet Humane?

By Leda Meredith

Today one of the young student dancers I rehearsal direct in a Nutcracker production came up to me and pointed to her right foot. A bad blister had bled through her tights and through her pointe shoe. She looked up at me with wide eyes and a well-trained ballet-school smile and asked if it was okay if she did the run-thru on flat. I said yes, the other ballet mistress said no. She kept the shoes on. During the run through, I heard, “Smile, girls, it’s Nutcracker not a tragedy!” shouted at the dancers. I looked at Susan’s foot. Her shoe was red with blood. She was smiling.

This is complicated. There are times when I think a dancer does need to perform despite bleeding blisters and such. When the curtain is going up and there is no understudy, for example. On the other hand, if this were foreign policy rather than ballet I’d say it was utterly inhumane.

I think ballet is beautiful. The ancient Chinese bound women’s feet because they thought small feet were beautiful. What did those women think? My ballet students are willing to put up with real physical and psychological pain in pursuit of beauty. Is it worth it? Is there an alternative way to get to the beauty without the torture? Are we willing to break with tradition to investigate what that way might be?

In a recent dinner conversation with Cynthia Gregory, she mentioned that during her performing career she was very protective of her body. For example, she would let whoever was running the rehearsal know that she could only do one full-out one through. This was not laziness, but a guarded attention to what her instrument could handle. She had no major injuries during her remarkable career.

Sometimes dancers abuse this principle. “I have to mark this run thru because the floor is slippery” (when it isn’t), “I can’t do the lifts today because my back is bad” (when it isn’t). Directors are sometimes right to be skeptical of dancers claiming physical excuses not to perform full out.

But then there is Susan with her bleeding feet at a rehearsal when it won’t make or break the show if she does the run thru on pointe or not. Given enough longevity, professional dancers learn how to make this call for themselves: yes, I can do this and it won’t injure me and it’s necessary vs. no, this would actually injure me and/or isn’t really necessary. But what are we teaching our dance students?

“Smile, girls, smile!” Right. Maybe that needs some rethinking.

Leda Meredith is the author of “Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch” (Heliotrope Books 2008). She is the winner of the 2007-2008 Teaching Excellence Award from Adelphi University. For more, go to www.ledameredith.com

Photo: Leda Meredith and Jonathan Riseling in Francis Patrelle’s “Macbeth”, Photo Credit: Eduardo Patino

Powwow 101

Powwow 101 – Songs, Dances and Public Participation
An article about the original American dance form
by Corina Roberts

The Dances

There are a number of dances that have evolved from tribal traditions into the styles we see in the arena today. The men’s northern and southern traditional dances are adaptations of ceremonial dances practiced by tribal nations throughout the current-day United States. Northern traditional dancers can be recognized by their bustles, often made of hawk and eagle feathers, and their style of dance, moving to the fast rhythm of the northern drum. The southern straight dance, often referred to as the “gentleman’s dance”, is more reserved, keeping time to the slower, deeper beat of the southern drum. Southern dancers do not have bustles, but their regalia is no less impressive.

The Fancy War Dance, or Fancy Feather Dance, is an adaptation of the dances of men’s warrior societies of the northern plains. The regalia is flashy and includes a great deal of ribbon work. Double bustles flash and sway with the athletic movements of the dancers as they perform this stylized version of their tribe’s ancient ceremonies.

Grass Dancers served an important function when nations had celebrations or ceremonies. Their task was to flatten the grass where people would gather and smooth the ground. They bring good energy into the circle and make the way for the dancers who will follow. Their movements emulate the motions of smoothing the grass and soil, although today they often dance on manicured athletic fields and on gymnasium floors.

Women’s dances have also evolved over time. They too are divided by region, Northern and Southern, and further divided into buckskin and cloth. The northern woman’s regalia may weigh 70 pounds; rich with full yokes of beadwork and breastplates that hang to their ankles. Southern regalia usually employs less beadwork, and breastplates of shorter length. There are numerous tribal variations, some of which have very little or no beadwork whatsoever.

The Jingle Dress is covered in small cones. It is a healing dance, the sound of the softly jingling cones and intricate steps of the dance invoking well-being. It is said to have come to a family in a vision, and the dress is created with 365 cones – one for each day of the year. The Fancy Shawl Dance is beautiful and energetic. The dance is said to represent the girl or woman’s emergence into the world as a butterfly emerges from a cocoon, surviving the struggles of its metamorphosis and gaining strength and beauty with each floating step.
The Gourd Dance is actually a ceremonial dance originating with the Kiowa nation.
It is a warrior society dance, often mistaken for a veteran’s society, but the Gourd Dance predates the formation of the United States. Men dance within the circle to sets of ceremonial gourd songs while women wearing shawls support them from the edges of the circle. The gourd dance honors both men and women and affirms their roles of protecting and supporting each other. Please do not photograph this dance.

Public Participation
Arena Etiquette, Intertribals and Blanket Songs

There are numerous times throughout a powwow when the public is welcome to experience the circle first-hand. There are some simple things to know about the arena that will help you enjoy the experience.

The dance arena is a place of positive and healing energy. Dance for native people is an active form of prayer. We are letting our feet carry our prayers into the Earth. You will notice that many women who enter the arena have shawls around their shoulders even if they are not dressed in dance regalia. This shows respect for the circle and for the feminine aspect of all women.

During dances called Intertribals, you are welcome to come out into the arena. We dance in a clockwise pattern, except for some members of warrior societies who will dance counter-clockwise around the outside edge of the circle. They are performing the function of a warrior, keeping an eye on the arena and watching over their friends and loved ones.

Your children are welcome to come out during these Intertribal songs as well, but please ask them not to run through the arena, cut across the arena from one end to the other, shout or touch the regalia of other dancers.

You do not need to wear regalia to come into the arena during Intertribal songs. Blankets and regular shawls can be worn over a woman’s shoulders; we know that not everyone owns a dance shawl, and if you choose to cover yourself this way, we will understand and appreciate this gesture of respect.

Throughout the weekend you will notice a number of times when a blanket is placed in the arena while a song is being sung. These blankets are for people…all people…to place donations on, for specific dancers or groups of dancers who have come to the powwow without compensation to share their culture, songs and dances with anyone who wishes to experience them. It is a way of honoring the commitment of these individuals and groups, who may have traveled from other states just to take part in the gathering. It is a tangible way of saying thank you. We will impose upon our dancers and visitors several times throughout the powwow to express their generosity during these blanket songs.

Some gatherings are supported by casinos, tribal nations, cities, counties or chambers of commerce. Putting on a powwow involves an enormous commitment of time, energy and money. The Children Of Many Colors Powwow is an all-volunteer effort, produced entirely through donations and vendor fees. As such, most of the people who will dance throughout the weekend have come without any compensation. The blanket dance helps them pay for their gas and food. It is not unusual for this money to be shared among as many as twenty people, or to be given as a gift to a needy family.

Cultural Preservation – Why It Matters

For many years Native American elders and wisdom keepers have been saying that we must care for the Earth if we expect the Earth to care for us. Now, the threat of global warming is no longer a threat…it is a reality. Today, more than ever, we need the wisdom of our indigenous elders to guide us in our actions.

Native peoples worldwide have always understood that humans do not somehow exist separately from the rest of creation – regardless of our ethnic or religious upbringing, our fates are intertwined. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. Our actions matter. They have impact not only upon ourselves, but on the generations to come.

We need to take responsibility for our actions…for our health, for our planet’s health, for our children and for our children’s children. We need to come into balance with our finite resources and protect them. We need to act in ways that create a sustainable future.

Cultures that are aware of this balance have always existed, but they have always faced and often fallen to the pressures of the more “civilized” dominant societies; societies often out of balance with themselves and their relationship to other living things. When we talk about preserving and promoting Native American culture, we are talking about something much larger than powwows, or dancing, or learning ancient songs. We are talking about keeping alive the teachings that guide us in healthy ways to relate to other beings, human and non-human, and instruct us on how to care for our Earth so that the Earth can continue to care for us.

Indigenous cultures are not immune to the effects of the dominant societies they are surrounded by. We struggle with complex issues; what is sacred, what is marketable, and where to draw the line. We carry the additional burden of understanding that, while we must live in a society which dictates success in terms of wealth, our hunger for amassing wealth must be tempered with the teachings we know in our hearts are right and good. We know a different kind of prosperity exists; one which is inseparably connected to the health and well-being of all living things, one which has very little to do with money, property and prestige.

For native peoples worldwide, cultural preservation is about survival; personal, emotional, spiritual and planetary survival. We stand on the brink of environmental catastrophe now. The wisdom of our elders and the right relationship of ourselves to all other beings is perhaps more vital now than ever. Many of us were not raised traditionally. We have had to re-learn that wisdom which keeps us in balance.

We are in the process of revitalizing our songs and ceremonies, not for public display, but for something much greater; our survival as nations, as a species and as a living ecosystem, inter-related on all levels, from the smallest microbe to the distant stars. Our elders understood this, and they knew what was coming. It is time now for us to come forward and preserve not only our diverse and vibrant cultures, but the knowledge upon which they have been built.

Author: Corina Roberts is the founder of Redbird www.RedBirdsVision.org

The Urban Tango Phenomenon Explained

An interview with Makela Brizuela, by Jeffrey the Barak.

In 2006, a very different dance performance was first presented in Venice California. Entitled “URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace”, it was different in many ways and attracted the attention of many in the dance community.

Directed and choreographed by Makela Brizuela, the cast consisted of amateur Tango dancers, not professional dancers, and most of the cast were students of Makela. But even more unusual was the theme.

In a dance performance without spoken word, whether ballet or in this case, Argentine Tango, it takes a little more than the performance itself to explain what exactly is being conveyed by the dance. In 2006, the amateur performers seemed inspired by the passion of this event, and were heard enthusiastically explaining the concept and theme of the show to anyone who would listen.

The concept was repeated and passed along, and in some cases the theme may have been, shall we say incorrectly described as third and fourth hand versions made it down the line of communication. But one thing was clear, something about this event really got everyone stirred up.

With the reappearance of the show in February 2007, it is appropriate that the creator get a word in and talk a little about herself as well as Urban Tango…

It is unusual to find a Tango instructor with a B.A., an M.A., or a PHD, but despite her chosen profession, Makela has one of each.

J the B: How does someone with your academic qualifications choose the life of a Tango instructor?

MB: I studied ballet since an early age, and danced my entire life. When I was 10-12 years old, I used to direct my little sister (she was 6 years younger than me), to create little plays for our family. Even though dance was a major part of my life, my parents thought that I also needed to stimulate my brain, and that is why I chose a career that was as close as art as possible: Literature. I went to the University of Buenos Aires where I finished my BA

When I started to study Linguistics as a requirement, I got fascinated by the power of language in communication. At that time I realized, that I am the most passionate when I can make a difference in peoples lives by helping them out to communicate between each other. I finished my MA and PHD in General Linguistics at USC in 1999.

J the B: How did you get local Tango dancers, and students of dance to cross the line into public performance?

MB: When I started dancing tango in 1995, the power of language in communication made even more sense. I was for the first time able to connect to another human being at a total different level, feeling ecstasy without using words.

Being an Academic and a Professor would not have given me the opportunity of touching the lives of people in the same way. When I teach Tango, I can see how human beings are transformed to the best that they can be. Tango takes them to a journey of interpretations of rejection, inadequacy, isolation; all these feelings are rooted in each individual’s past. Dancing Tango is so rewarding, that most of the people are willing to face those fears, and overcome them to enjoy the dance.

J the B: In many of the descriptions of the theme of this performance, people are talking about the typical situation at a Milonga (Tango Dance) where the women have to wait for the man to ask them to dance, and of course it’s quite the same in the Ballroom community. How does Urban Tango address this?

MB: Being a woman without a steady partner in this Tango Community had taught me lots of things. There were periods where I was thinking that there were ’scarcity of men’, other periods where I thought that ‘men are all losers’, other periods where I thought that ‘the women are the problem’, and it was a very long journey, until I realized that the power of enjoying tango is within myself. When I go to a MILONGA (social event) it is up to me to enjoy it or to be miserable in it. So, in order to have a good time, I consciously either try to meet friends there, or I will try to have a goal (for instance learning by observing dancing), or I would go just to see people. Suddenly everything started to open up.

When I started teaching I got lots of complaints from women that men are this or that, that they sit and wait forever at the Milonga, and that they do not enjoy tango, and I wanted to do something about it. That is how URBAN TANGO was born. I saw that I have a responsibility as a woman on my own, to allow other women to see that the experience of tango is totally up to them. It doesn’t matter if there are not enough men, or if some women are not nice to each other. It is up to us what we create in our community.

As a result, we started to see great changes. The men in our show, are very supportive of us, and they understand that they are helping us to express a female point of view. We are very grateful to them, and they are the proof that there are AMAZING men in the tango community, we just need to let them show up like that. We also started creating strong bonds between women, that went through difficult process of healing, but that resulted in a safe community where dancing is enjoyed.

Urban Tango shows the process that woman goes through when they chose Tango as their way of self-expression. First she goes to a Tango Class and feels the joy of it, she starts practice and to have fun with it, until she goes to a milonga and have a bad experience. That bad experience (for instance, sitting and waiting all night, or being hurt by a man, or falling in love with the wrong man, etc. etc.), does not allow her to enjoy the dance, so her first reaction is to be angry at women. That competition does not go anywhere, and then she starts to feel really sad. By supporting each other, and by allowing herself to experience that pain, very slowly she realizes that the power is in herself. From there on, she starts enjoying tango fully.

J the B: How did you approach the students and local Tango dancers with the opportunity to perform publicly?

MB: When I called my students with this opportunity I was surprised, because most of them told me that they would do the project just to work with me. I was blown away. They saw, even more clearly than me that I was aiming for a transformation of an entire community. I made sure that they understood that this project would allow them to see their dream come true, not only to enjoy the ecstasy of tango, but also to be able to share this with the women and men in the audience.

URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace will again be performed in Venice, California, at the Electric Lodge, in February 2006.

Makela’s website is: http://www.makelatango.com/

Tickets for the show can be purchased here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/8979