“No One Cares”: On Ballet’s Deaths by Irrelevance
In 2011, through some spectacular feats of historical hyperbole, Jennifer Homans proclaimed in her Apollo’s Angels that, “ballet is dying.” As many are about Timothée Chalamet’s recent claim that “no one cares” about ballet, I was outraged. I thought maybe it was the grossly ahistorical elements of her book, or the arrogance of his statement coming from such a privileged person raised in the theatre that were bothering me. It was not.
Others throughout history have shouted ballet’s death-by-irrelevance, and they’ve pushed ballet to change, to evolve, to grow. They inspire a shift in which some element of ballet retreats or dies so another can emerge. Given this most recent face-to-face encounter with our own existence, I’m starting to hope that this moment, too, will catalyze us. I hope it helps us make space for possibilities. I hope it pushes us to consider what is valuable enough to keep, and what needs to become a relic.
I’m not justifying or celebrating Chalamet’s choice to stab fellow artists in the back. Just try, though, doing 32 fouettés on unboxed pointe shoes from the early 19th century. Somethings and someones pushed the unboxed pointe shoe to its eventual death: Cecchetti and Nicolini among them. Deaths like this one inspire rage, not unlike the current moment with Chalamet. I mean, can you imagine having danced your whole career in soft-boxed pointe shoes only to have boxed shoes emerge only after you’d retired? Those dancers were FURIOUS. Having become teachers, they had to endure the indignity of girls with little to no training being able to stand on their toes because the shoe just… held them up there?! How dare they! How dare ballet change! How dare ballet leave them behind…
Some other notable examples of ballet deaths:
In 1760, Jean-Georges Noverre called the ballet at the Paris Opéra “monotonous and dull,” “devoid of ideas, meaning, expression, and character,” before instituting his own reforms that allowed ballet to develop and flourish under his directorship.
Codified by Carlo Blasis in 1828, ballet technique came into its current form as the Baroque Era steps changed and the then-new vocabulary took hold. (Today, many dancers wouldn’t be sad at all to see steps like the gargouillade fall away. Just to say. Entrechat huit and even entrechat dix are in ballet dictionariesfor a reason, but we sure don’t see those around much anymore.)
Sergei Diaghilev and the avant-garde artists in his Ballets Russes (1909-1929) ushered in a whole new way of making ballets. Their mixed-bill productions featured several works, each much shorter in length than the four-act ballets that were all the rage in the 19th century. At the same time, the production of those four-act ballets slowed dramatically. I won’t call this entirely causal, because Petipa’s literal death in 1910 was probably part of this too. And the Russian Revolution. And and and. Change needs catalysts.
During the Vaudeville era in the U.S., before Balanchine, ballet had to adapt—as in, become entertaining—as in, Harriet Hoctor’s backbends en pointe—so it could compete for audiences under capitalism. It didn’t have the government or monarchic support it was used to elsewhere. I wrote a whole book on this subject. Whew.
Today, Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin are re-envisioning ballets and operas to eliminate elements of Yellowface. The catalyst in this instance is their insistence that marginalizing people with racist tropes need not be part of any art form. The harm of racism is a welcome death inside these fields.
So we’re used to seeing elements of ballet become irrelevant and die some pretty regular deaths. To suggest that at any point ballet has not been dying is probably ahistorical, even if we know that ballet on the whole hasn’t died, but its most irrelevant elements—often thankfully—are exiting stage left.
Most times when people suggest or try to prove that old ways are irrelevant, they’re looking to pioneer something new and exciting. Recently, for example, we’ve seen efforts to make ballet more inclusive and equitable—welcome and necessary shifts. The total lack of “caring” in this recent Chalamet incident is what makes it so infuriating (like Melania and her stupid coat). There was no contribution to match it. No curiosity. No artistic solidarity. No CARE. So take him out of the picture. Now what.
Death-by-irrelevance is how ballet has evolved. This is why it’s important that ballet has preservationists like the New York Baroque Dance Company operating alongside contemporary ballet companies with no classical works in their repertoire—Alonzo King’s LINES, Ballet X, and Kidd Pivot, for example. Ballet has range. Those who participate in ballet, from directors to audiences, decide what’s still important. The challenge for America’s largest ballet companies has a LOT to do with their efforts to be both living archives for 19th-century ballets that also meet today’s socio-cultural expectations, and innovators of new works, new people, and new ideas. As ballet grows and expands, so does the challenge of relevance, given the growing breadth of possible programming in tandem with the need to reach the largest swath of the ticket-buying public.
Companies have an ever-growing selection of ballets and choreographers they can put on programs during their more and more limited performance runs—theatres are expensive. They have to satisfy existing audiences and reach new ones, to say nothing of curating and supporting a company of skilled dancers who can perform all those varied styles. In the U.S. capitalist system with no guaranteed funding, this is a Sisyphean task. The fact that ballet hasn’t died yet in its entirety is evidence for just how relevant it is given these obstacles. Ballet endures because it matters to people. It endures because it’s relevant.
I believe in ballet. I know I’m not alone. I don’t care, frankly, who thinks ballet is or isn’t cool or current, but I do care that it’s changed countless lives and that it continues to find ways to adapt and change in difficult circumstances. I care that it’s becoming more open and inclusive, welcoming more kinds of people into the field and onto the stage than ever before. I care that it creates communities of artistically minded people all over the world. Might ballet need to keep working on its heteronormativity, racism, sexism, and fatphobia? Yes please. Might ballet need some creative, intelligent people to consider new business models given its not-government-funded struggles in the States? Sure. Might it already have some? You know it does, and you know they’re already working on it—at conferences, in board and staff meetings, and in audience/donor conversations. Might ballet also benefit from some celebrity financing to make up for a particularly unfortunate shout-out? Abso-fucking-lutely.
The catalyst of this moment has so much potential, as so many of us (except, ironically, NYT dance writer Gia Kourlas?) are coming together to consider why ballet matters and what’s possible for its future. I can’t wait to see what happens once Chalamet’s name is out of our headlines and we can get involved in the important things that are already underway: conversations about and action supporting ballet’s futures. In the meantime, I’ll be teaching gargouillades and going to the ballet.
Photo credit: Maria Moroz on Unsplash