Before every performance at the Four Seasons Center, the National Ballet of Canada hosts a short lecture on the ballet about to be shown.  Sometimes the speaker is a historian, sometimes a costume designer or, if you’re lucky, a dancer from the company.   The idea is brilliant.  At once, new comers are put at ease by learning some basic cues and context while ballet veterans are able to bolster their trivia and insight.

Last week’s Ballet Talk was monumental.  Preceding the dazzling world premiere of Innovations, Clement Crisp, the “dean of the critics,” flew from his post at the Financial Times to talk about the performance and the overall state of ballet.  His attendance was something to mark on the once-in-a lifetime-opportunity list.  I got there 40 minutes early and secured a front row seat.

Clement Crisp does not disappoint.  His knowledge is encyclopedic, where nothing stumps him and everything can be elaborated upon.  As the Financial Times ballet critic for the past 35 years, his ability to recall dancers and scores from over four decades is uncanny.  And though that upper crust accent seems like a total parody, it serves to offset his unmerciful honesty.  Describing a company’s ballet as “quite simply total rubbish” doesn’t seem so insulting when said in king’s English.

Clement’s outlook on today’s classical ballet companies is grim though he offers clear prescriptions.  After the talk, I spoke with him further not only about the future of classical ballet, but the future of the ballet critic.  Upon hearing of this site, he remarked, “Oh hooray! Hooray!  Push on my dear!  The young ones will save ballet!”

If you haven’t read anything written by Clement, I suggest you do so.  It doesn’t matter if you like, or know anything of ballet.  His writing is clear, hilarious and indisputably informed, making for a very entertaining read.  A good place to start would be his very kind review of the National Ballet of Canada’s, Innovation, in yesterday’s Financial Times.

As per usual, I sat in the front row, taking notes and quotes.  Mega fans, read on:

• The National Ballet of Canada is the first company in the world to ever feature entirely new work, by local choreographers, all set to new scores.  Coming from London, Crisp insisted this was “something worth flying the Atlantic for.”

• Ballet is rife with snobbery that prevents broad attendance and the sharing of opinions
• Clement Crisp’s advice: you cannot be wrong with art.  “If you come to the ballet and you love it, hoorah.  If you don’t love it hoorah too.”
• As Merce Cunningham once said, “Right you are if you think you are.”

• Clement compares the new, nervous ballet goer with his love for hip-hop dance:  “Hip hop is my absolute favourite right now.  It is the most beautiful thing in the world!  What do I know about hip hop?  Nothing.  What do I know about 15-year old kids?  Nothing!  But I see it and I love it.”
• The 2-Minute Rule: If a ballet isn’t exciting to you within the first 2 minutes, forget it.  You don’t need to know all the rules of ballet to have an opinion.  You either love it or you don’t.

• But it’s very hard to excite when the same ballets are done over and over, as “deja-vu programming.”
• The Royal Ballet is currently doing 18 straight nights of Swan Lake.  “What an utter bore!  Yes, yes, Swan Lake is a masterpiece but everyone has seen it!  And, as a side, those ballerinas actually able to dance Swan Lake, these days, are benumbered on the fingers of one hand.”
• Ballet is not a museum art.  It must keep moving on with new things.  Failure to recognize this will kill ballet attendance over the next 50 years.
• Currently the Soviet ballet companies are trapped by tradition and unable to produce new work due to a restrictive regime and lack of resources.  This will destroy the Russian ballet tradition, unless new choreography is  created.

• The trick for a ballet company is to get new people to go, not tell them what to think.
• How to get more people to go: keep a small selection of the old, story ballets, like Swan Lake and Giselle, but keep adding new works, each year.  The new works should be classical, not all post-modern!
• How to produce a pipeline of new works: encourage young kids in ballet schools to start thinking about choreography and classical music, not just the execution of dance steps
• “If hip hop kids - kids! - can create what they’re doing, unguided, then kids in a ballet school should be able to do that too, with half a push.”

• There are 3 problems with creating new work:
• (1) Too much is post-modern ballet.  To learn these new ballets, dancers risk destroying their classical frame, the basis of the entire art
• (2) There is a global shortage of classical, academic ballet choreographers
• (3) Company management is too fearful of new ballets and how these will be sold to an audience

• A new ballet doesn’t reveal itself right away.  See it more than once and your appreciation is guaranteed to increase with each time.

• “Ballet is the only art where not one stupid word is said all night…from the stage, that is.”

This entry was posted Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Les Bon Mots, National Ballet of Canada, Reviews, The Pros. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.