Royal Ballet Research Articles

Dancing against History: (The Royal) Ballet, Forsythe, Foucault, Brecht, and the BBC

On 5 July 1997, The Royal Ballet danced William Forsythe's Steptext as part of a final programme at its Royal Opera House home before the theatre closed for an extensive Millennial programme of rebuilding. Filmed by the BBC, the performance was televised as part of the 1997 Christmas schedule. This paper explores the striking parallels between the institutional critique staged by Steptext and the literal deconstruction which the Royal Opera House was about to undergo. It considers how the programme debated Covent Garden as British cultural institution just as the reconstruction of the Royal Opera House was imminent. Focusing first on Steptext's post-structuralist desire to excavate, disrupt, and disavow the apparently logical structures which have shaped the governing institutions of western performance, it moves to consider how the BBC programme makers co-opted, and extended to the fabric of the Royal Opera House itself, ballet's same potential to critique its own institutional history enshrined in Steptext. Having argued that Brecht might be an especially apt ally in Forsythe's realisation, through performance, of some of the fundamental tenets of Foucauldian theory, those relating to Foucault's re-conceptualisation of history especially, this paper moves finally to propose the performance and televisual adaptation of Steptext as a portal into new modes of reading the post-war Royal Ballet as Foucauldian subjugated, or effective, history.

The prevalence and clinical significance of sonographic tendon abnormalities in asymptomatic ballet dancers: a 24-month longitudinal study

IntroductionSonographic abnormalities of the achilles and patellar tendons are common findings in athletes, and tendinopathy is a common cause of pain and disability in athletes. However, it is unclear whether...

Music-Dance (and Design) Relations in Ballet Productions of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé

This article investigates music−dance (and design) interplay and balletic challenges in Daphnis et Chloé, focusing upon the Ravel−Ashton−Craxton production for The Royal Ballet (1951, revived in 2004), in comparison with the Ravel−Fokine−Bakst original of 1912. Sources drawn upon include accessible choreographic materials of Frederick Ashton (1904−88), held at the Royal Opera House Archives in London, as well as first-hand correspondence with the designer John Craxton (1922−2009). In order to explore the main music−dance relationships and emergent meanings, the study engages with multimedia ideas founded upon “consonance” and “dissonance” (Albright 2000), supported by music analytical (Cook 2001; 1998) and conceptual blending approaches (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). Particular moments from the ballet are selected for interpretation and, moving beyond rather over-simplified oppositions of unity versus independence or consonance versus dissonance, a case is made for complexes, transformation, and plurality.

Cherevichki , and: Der Zwerg , and: Der zerbrochene Krug (review)

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Cherevichki. DVD. Alexander Polianichko / Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Directed by Francesca Zambello. With Olga Guryakova, Vsevolod Grivnov, Larissa Diadkova, Maxim Mikhailov. London: Opus Arte, 2010, 2009. OA 1037 D. $29.99. Alexander Zemlinsky. Der Zwerg. Viktor Ullmann. Der zerbrochene Krug. DVD. James Conlon / Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Directed by Darko Tresnjak. With James Johnson, Rodrick Dixon, Mary Dunleavy, Bonaventura Bottone. Halle/Saale, Germany: Arthaus Musik, 2010, 2008. 101 527. $29.99. Cherevichki was Tchaikovsky's 1887 revision of one of his earliest operas, Vakula the Smith (1876). Based on Nikolai Gogol's tale Christmas Eve, it is said to have been one of Tchaikovsky's own favorite works, but it has remained outside the standard repertory, even in Russia. Part of the problem may be the earthy peasant humor which is abundant in the libretto. This was never Tchai - kovsky's forte, but he excelled in the more human, introspective passages, in particular a duet for Oxana and Solokha at the beginning of Act 4, and the ballet numbers find him in his element. This 2009 revival at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which billed itself as The Tsarina's Slippers, could change the opera's reputation. Cast mostly with Russian singers and designed by Russian book illustrator Mikhail Mokrov (whose style recalls Maurice Sendak), this production is absolutely wonderful. Director Francesca Zambello eschews any conceptual reinterpretation and presents us with a colorful fairy tale which could turn into a seasonal family favorite for Covent Garden. The singers are uniformly excellent, notably tenor Vsevolod Grivnov in the central role of Vakula the love-sick blacksmith, soprano Olga Guryakova as the capricious Oxana who sends him on his quest for the golden slippers of the title, and alto Larissa Diadkova, who appears to be having the time of her life as the witch Solokha. Mariinsky Theatre veteran Sergei Leiferkus makes a welcome return to the stage in the cameo role of Potemkin in Act 3. The ballet numbers are performed brilliantly by members of The Royal Ballet, and the gravity-defying Cossack dancers are spectacular. The production was filmed in High Defi nition, offers stereo or DTS sound options, and is absolutely state of the art. This delightful DVD belongs in every collection. Conductor James Conlon has made a special effort to revive and re-evaluate musical compositions that were labeled degenerate and banned by the Nazis. …

Body learning: examining the processes of skill learning in dance

This paper was stimulated by the authors' attempt to understand the process of skill learning in dance. Its stimulus was a period of fieldwork based at the Royal Ballet School in London, and subsequent discussions with the school's teachers and with academic colleagues about how it was that the young dancers developed their characteristic set of skills. The paper's focus and method is philosophical, although it draws on empirical data (albeit sparingly) where it is relevant to the discussion. Many accounts of skill learning are premised on the presumption that learners come to know about their environment by representing it in the mind and that such representation is a result of a computational process involving information received through the senses. This is the dominant position of researchers in the field. In this paper, we discuss weaknesses in this information processing theory, and explore the elements of a more satisfactory approach. The account offered here locates dance skills within the context of development, in which skills are incorporated in learners through practice and training in dance environments. Dreyfus' theory of expertise and Bourdieu's theory of practice offer insights into the practical mastery young dancers carry in their bodies, which cannot be accurately formulated in terms of a system of representations. Dancers, from this perspective, do not passively follow instructions, but actively engage in tasks involving characteristic ways of moving that are situated in the nexus of relations between people and the distinctive contexts of dance. The paper suggests that skill learning in dance (or indeed any domain) is not a matter of processing information, but is imminent in the active, perceptual engagement of learner and context.

Philosophy and the Bodily Arts

and I wouldn't know what the spirit of a philosopher might more want than to be a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety […]. Friedrich Nietzsche, Th...

Arts, dance, cultural infrastructure, and city regeneration: Knowledge, audience development, networks, and conventions, and the relocation of a Royal Ballet company from London to Birmingham

The development of new cultural infrastructure has long been part of the urban regeneration toolkit. Cultural infrastructure is incorporated into major urban regeneration projects as part of a proactive entrepreneurial approach to planning designed to enhance a city's overall image. The existing literature on cultural industries concentrates on exploring film and contemporary music and ignores dance. The article explores the development of ballet in England from the 1920s and the relocation in 1990 of one of England's Royal Ballet companies from London to Birmingham. These events required investments in hard cultural infrastructure (provision of facilities, e.g. theatres) and soft cultural infrastructure (audience development). The development of new hard cultural infrastructure must be supported by a process of audience development and knowledge brokers. The establishment of ballet in England and the relocation of Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (SWRB) to Birmingham were contingent on the articulation of networks of individuals, resources and institutions that had the power and resources to facilitate these developments. The analysis highlights the interplay existing between local and national policies and the ways in which the local can mobilize elites and others to shape the artistic and cultural character of a city.

Globalization, Habitus, and the Balletic Body

The aim in this article is to write an evocative ethnography of the embodiment of ballet as a cultural practice. The authors draw on their fieldwork at the Royal Ballet (London), where they conducted 20 in-depth interviews with ballet staff (and watched "the company at work" in class, rehearsal, and performance). They explored dancers' (n = 9) and ex-dancers' (who are now teachers, administrators, and character dancers; n = 11) perceptions of their bodies, dancing careers, and the major changes that have occurred in the world of ballet over their professional lives. They focus on their accounts of the homogenizing effects of globalization on the culture of the Royal Ballet. Although this research is set within the elite and narrow cultural field of dance, the authors hope that it is an interesting addition to broader debates on the interrelationships between individuals and institutions, the body and society, and globalization and culture.

Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet

The overall aim of our research was to produce an ethnography of ballet as a social practice. We draw upon our fieldwork at the Royal Ballet (London) where we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with ballet staff, and observed ‘the company at work’, in class, rehearsal, and performance. We explored dancers’ ( n = 9) and ex-dancers’ (who are now administrators, teachers, and character dancers: n = 11) perceptions of their bodies, dancing careers, and the major changes that have occurred in the world of ballet over their professional lives. In this article, we draw upon Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, physical capital and cultural capital. The main focus of our article is an extended discussion of our threefold distinction between individual habitus, institutional habitus and choreographic habitus. Although our ethnography of the body is set within the elite cultural field of professional classical ballet, we hope that our research adds to debates on the interrelationships between individuals and institutions, the body and society, and on the salience of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus for understandings of the social world.

The Bridge of Aspiration, Covent Garden, London, UK

The Bridge of Aspiration between the Royal Ballet School and the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden comprises an aluminium beam of highly complex geometry and a series of aluminium and timber square frames forming a twisted box arrangement (Fig. 1). This paper describes the design and construction, and addresses the reasons for selecting aluminium as the primary structural material. The innovative design had to deal with several complex issues and permit installation in a single operation to minimise disruption to the function of the Opera House.

Ashton and MacMillan in Fairyland: Contrasting Styles in Le Baiser de la Fée

choreographer for the Vic-Wells Ballet is surprising. The story is complicated and the initial performance of the work, by the Ida Rubinstein company in 1928 with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, had mixed reviews.3 Ashton knew this well?he had danced the role of a peasant in it?but he felt that the problem was caused by the ungainly dancing of Rubinstein, who played the Fairy.* He chose the ballet because he loved the score and, in an article written in November 1935, he hinted that the music as op posed to the story would take precedence.4 If Baiserwas an unlikely story for Ashton to tackle, it was even more so for Kenneth MacMillan, whose scorn for fairy stories is well known.5 But he, too, was drawn to the music and mounted his version in 1960, later reworking it for a revival in 1986. According to Lynn Seymour, who danced the Bride, her first major role for MacMillan, "Baiser was Kenneth's homage to Frederick Ashton."6 And she points out that because of the earlier Ashton version in which Margot Fonteyn danced the role of the Bride, many critics drew parallels between the Ashton-Fonteyn partnership and that of MacMillan and herself. But forming celebrated dance partnerships

‘Just Crumbling to Bits’? An Exploration of the Body, Ageing, Injury and Career in Classical Ballet Dancers

Ballet is, for reasons that are unclear, a neglected topic in the sociology of the body. Our article works on three levels: firstly, as an account of ex-dancers’‘lived experience’ of embodiment; secondly, as an application of Bourdieu’s theoretical schema; and thirdly, as a philosophically grounded critique of radical social constructionist views of the body.We describe Royal Ballet dancers’ perceptions of their bodies, of ageing, of injury and of their careers.We draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural capital in our investigation of embodiment. Ageing and injury are potential epiphanies that encourage dancers to reflect on their embodied habitus and their career. We argue that the decline in a dancer’s physical capital undermines radical social constructionist views.This study, although set within the narrow field of dance, illuminates the broader relationships between the body, self, and society.

Ken Russell's The Debussy film (1965)

First telecast on 18 May 1965 as part of the BBC's Monitor series, The Debussy Film was Ken Russell's first fully-realized composer biopic—‘one of Russell's major contributions to the art of film b...

Fractured identities: injury and the balletic body

Social worlds shape human bodies and so it is inevitable that there are strong relationships between the body, professional dance and identity. In this article we draw on Bourdieu's notions of habitus, and various forms of capital, as the main theoretical framework for our discussion. Our ethnography of the balletic body elicited dancers and ex-dancers' perceptions of their bodies and sought to reveal some of the facets of their embodied habitus. The sheer physicality of their working lives - of feeling exhausted, sweaty and out of breath - is something dancers (like all athletes) become 'addicted to'. Ageing and injury can reveal this compulsion to dance and so dancers invariably find it very difficult to, for example, give up class once they retire from the stage; or miss a performance if they have a 'slight injury'. In other words, the vocational calling to dance is so overwhelming that their balletic body is their identity. In addition, there is an unremitting loop between individual habitus and institutional habitus (the ballet company), which affects both the meaning and management of injury. All our informants at the Royal Ballet (London: n = 20) had suffered dance injuries. The injured, dancing body is perceived as an inevitable part of a career in ballet. Everyone spoke of the improved athleticism of dancers, and of the expansion in facilities to maintain healthy dancers. However, most dancers can expect several major injuries during their careers. Such epiphanies force dancers to confront their embodiment, and their thoughts invariably turn to their body, career and self. Critical injuries threaten to terminate a dancer's career and so endanger their embodied sense of self. On a more everyday level, dancing and performing with painful, niggling injuries is the norm.

Epiphanies of embodiment: injury, identity and the balletic body

Our ethnography of the balletic body is a contribution to the relatively small corpus of empirical research studies on embodiment in general and on dance as a social practice in particular. In contrast, much of the literature on the sociology of the body is characterized by its theoretical discussion of the nature of the body. We draw upon our fieldwork at the Royal Ballet (London) where we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with ballet staff, and where we also watched ‘the company at work’(in class, rehearsal and performance). We explored the perceptions, of their bodies and dancing careers, of both dancers ( n= 9) and ex-dancers ( n=11: who are now teachers, administrators and character artists with the company). Furthermore, we especially focused upon the epiphanies of injury and ageing that endanger their balletic vocation, and that may even threaten their personal identity. Although our ethnography of the balletic body is set within the elite and narrow cultural field of dance, we hope that our research is also an appealing and constructive adjunct to discussions on the interactions between self and society; the body and culture; embodiment and identity; and individuals and institutions. Our article is one example of our broader research programme on the embodiment of vulnerability in the arts, medicine and society.

Grace under pressure: passing dance through time

A sweeping examination of the ways in which dance has changed in the last 20 years, this book contains penetrating interviews with 18 teachers, coaches, ballet masters and company directors - former dancers all - who now bear the responsibility for the performances we see. Trained in England, France, Denmark, Russia and America, they lend their talents to companies and schools around the world. Having left the stage behind, they devote themselves to the future, passing their vast experience, their impeccable standards, and the repertory they cherish, to young artists everywhere. Among those interviewed are Kathryn Wade (English National Ballet School), Anne Marie Vessel (Royal Danish Ballet), David Bintley (Birmingham Royal Ballet), Irina Kolpakova (Kirov Ballet), Helgi Tomass on (San Francisco Ballet), Mark Morris (Mark Morris Dance Group), and Violette Verdy (New York City Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet). Supplier's Name: Vine House Distribution Ltd

Reflections on a Degree Initiative: The UK's Birmingham Royal Ballet dancers enter the University of Birmingham

This paper provides an opportunity to share experiences and perceptions of the first 5 years of a degree programme for professional dancers. A partnership developed in the mid-1990s between the UK's Birmingham Royal Ballet and the University of Birmingham, Westhill (now School of Education), to provide a part-time, post-experience, flexible study programme for full-time Company dancers. This is the first 'company customised' higher education programme to dovetail studies around rehearsal, performance and touring schedules. Methodology is based on a narrative by the author, informed by ongoing internal and external evaluations, in-depth interviews with dancers and Company managers, documentation and secondary sources. Outcomes indicate that the programme has made a positive difference to the Company, to the dancers and to the wider education and dance/arts world.

The Celluloid Cubicle: Regressive Constructions of Masculinity in 1990s Office Movies

Starstruck British boys under the spell of the film Billy Elliot have made history at the Royal Ballet by outnumbering girls for the first time in its 76-year history, according to Sunday Telegraph. Two years after the story of a miner's son who becomes a ballet dancer hit movie screens, this year's intake at the Royal Ballet's junior and senior schools includes 14 boys and 10 girls, the newspaper said. The film has certainly had some effect on the younger boys, said Gailene Stock, director of the Royal Ballet School. A number of boys at the school have said Billy Elliot made them feel more comfortable about telling people they are ballet dancers. Globe and Mail, 4/16/02 Mike's a junior at Beacon, a public high school; he asked not use his last name. He's a bodybuilder, likes to fight. used to go out I'd pray to get into a fight, he said. They liked Fight Club. Yeah, said James, who's a junior at Horace Mann School, we do shit. Ben and Dara are in Love Vanity Fair 9/01 Kozoll's 1980 script... still veered too close to the truth for any studio's comfort. You have to understand, Kozoll said, that this movie was done in an atmosphere where Warner Bros, said to us, 'Absolutely nobody wants to see a movie about the Vietnam War!' Kozoll finally washed his hands of the project and put it out of his mind. I don't even like war anyway. When Rombo came out, never even saw He would not think of the screenplay again until Halloween of 1985, the year Rombo: First Blood Part II was released. Kozoll lived on a street in Santa Monica was always inundated with trick-or-treatcrs. He opened his door night to a sea of identically dressed monsters. At first thought they were pirates, he said. Then realized, they were They were all Thousands of little Rambos. Susan Faludi Stiffed 1999 (394-395) Film is not just text. It is also cultural practice, and should be approached and studied as such. It is made under specific cultural circumstances, and yet it also influences the circumstances of culture. We allow, even crave, film to speak to us and for us. Even more importantly, film is aware of its influence, or at the very least tends to promote this idea and comment on it. For example: two scenes in Boiler Room (2000) indicate film has taught a generation of young businessmen how to do business. Seth, training at a stock brokerage, is told to remember ABC from Glengarry Glen Ross: Always Be Closing. Later, Seth visits the home of one of his co-workers. He and several other young male traders are watching Wall Street and reciting Gordon Greed is Good Gecko's lines from heart. They have committed his role to memory, and are attempting to live it. In each of the above incidents, boys and young men use film in a very direct way to explain or model their identities, their masculinities. These are males living in a time when their gender is often said to be in crisis, and, as ever, Hollywood has attempted to echo this. feeling. Much has been written on how Hollywood has responded to the contemporary social climate in order to shore up, reinforce, or shape our culture's perception of what it is to be a man. Post-war films tended to emphasize the role of the father at home (think Vincente Minelli's 1950 Father of the Bride) to solidify the traditional family after its disruption (dad at war, mom at the factory). uber-male action films of the 1980s (think Schwarzenegger and Stallone) can be read (and often are) as a corrective response to the feminist boom of the 1970s, or the sagging US economy. In the 1990s, an entirely new genre has come about to reflect the position of the disempowered middle-class white male: the drone of the new corporatized, managerial late capitalist culture. have come to call these films office movies, not because they all take place in an office, but because the films let us know the protagonists are caught in the mid-rungs of an increasingly corporate culture, usually somewhere in the cubicle class. …

British subjects: an anthropology of Britain

Nigel Rapport, ed., British Subjects: An Anthropology of Britain, Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002, 340 pages.Despite its subtitle, British Subjects is intended to highlight anthropological endeavour which addresses contemporary rather than, as Rapport writes, to offer a definitive anthropological account of Britain or British. Rapport argues for strengths of such an approach, as well as ways anthropology about can be paradigmatic of discipline's possibilities, skills and significance (p. 15). Such aspirations are largely borne by collection of 17 essays which make up this volume.The essays are grouped into five broad topical clusters: Nationalism, Contestation and Performance of Tradition; Strategies of Modernity: Heritage, Leisure, Dissociation; The Appropriation of Discourse; Methodologies and Ethnomethodologies; and The Making (and Unmaking) of Community: Ethnicity, Religiosity, Locality. This placing of chapters within groupings is well thought and Rapport has written useful introductions to each cluster, drawing thematic intersections amongst chapters appearing in them. The first cluster begins with Anne Rowbottom's considerations of paradoxical relationship between hereditary privilege and democracy. Through fieldwork with people who regularly attend events where members of royal family appear in public, Rowbottom builds an argument about practices of vernacular religiosity amongst this dedicated group of people who call themselves Royalists. She demonstrates in turn how Real Royalists alternate between frameworks of difference and of unity in order to circumnavigate inherent contradictions of civil religion, constitutional monarchy, and democracy in Britain. The second chapter in this cluster is based on Isle of Man where Susan Lewis describes a different sort of civic event: Tynwald Day. She traces some of contested meanings this day holds and argues that despite such contradictions, event can still serve as a site of collective identity. Helena Wulff's chapter, exploring styles, is final contribution to this section. Her research, based on British Royal Ballet, demonstrates the ongoing symbolic construction of difference in transnational world of ballet (p. 79); ways in which aesthetics, dance styles, performance costumes, rehearsal clothing, and bodily decoration are employed towards these ends; and contradictions of a discourse of a national style in face of transnational flow of dancers.The second topical cluster, Strategies of Modernity, begins with a contribution by Sharon Macdonald. She draws on fieldwork at Museum of Island Life on Isle of Skye, Scotland, to explore the 'fetishization' of past everyday life (p. 89) as a form of cultural practice. Macdonald's illuminating piece describes how once everyday objects (tools, crafts, domestic items, mass-produced goods) come to reside in a museum, they become in effect sacralized, and in turn de-alienated from being just commodities. She goes on to contextualize this practice within particular contours of social uncertainty, arguing that valorization of everyday things is a way of seeking existential anchors (p. 103) in face of social fragmentation as well as a way perhaps of talking back against an all-pervasive consumerism. The next chapter, from Andrew Dawson, takes up theme of social upheaval and strategies for managing it but within context of a former coal-mining town in north-east of England. Dawson is first author in collection to explicitly address gender relations. He does so through an exploration of ways in which pursuit of leisure (allotments, writing poetry, attending local football matches) serve to help people work out social change, and postindustrial change in particular. Dawson interweaves ethnography of postindustrial transformations, gender relations, and lived experiences of older people with notion of leisure practices as cultural resource. …

Position-matching in the upper limb: professional ballet dancers perform with outstanding accuracy.

To investigate the accuracy in position-matching in the upper limb in two groups of subjects who were physically fit and movement aware. A mixed-group design was used. Objective measurement of the accuracy in position-matching at the shoulder and elbow in both dominant and nondominant arms consisted of photographic record of the position-matching test, with goniometric measurement. Physiotherapy department at the Birmingham Royal Ballet and School of Health Science, University of Birmingham. Two subject groups: physiotherapy students (n = 10), professional ballet dancers (n = 10). A mixed design analysis of variance found significant differences between the accuracy in position-matching at both the shoulder and elbow joints in the two groups (p < 0.05), with the ballet dancers having greater accuracy then the physiotherapy students. A significant difference in the joint positions tested were demonstrated (p < 0.05) with the positions of abduction at the shoulder and extension of the elbow showing greatest accuracy in matching. There was no significant difference found between the dominant and nondominant upper limb in position-matching. Professional ballet dancers demonstrated greater accuracy in position-matching the upper limb, implying that mass and continuing practice can improve a motor sensory skill.