Piffle Pieces: Camargo in D.C.,"Giselle" in Phoenix, and dance criticism in America

The National Gallery has moved Camargo again. They are renovating the 18th century French rooms, and Nicolas Lancret's beautiful little painting, La Camargo Dancing, has been moved down to the back corner of the farthest room on the ground floor. I take my students there to see her every autumn, when we study early 18th century French ballet history, and it took us some time to find her. Pre-Revolutionary French painters such as Lancret and Fragonard are out of fashion now (too pretty, too pastel), but, out of fashion or not, La Camargo is still there, dancing at a party, the beautiful ankles daringly exposed, the feet, in their heeled shoes, twinkling. Walking through the Gallery, I couldn't help but notice how many paintings there might be considered unfashionable if one considered only their subject matter: paintings of minor Greek or Roman myths, of dukes and knights and dragons, of pampered women and children and their little dogs. Not what one would see at the mall or on TV, but there they are, masterpieces of the past, looking the viewer square in the eye, as if they were important. Not once did the students (aged 16 to 18) grouse that they were having to look at old paintings, or ask where was something new and now that spoke to Them. Not once did they even seem momentarily bored. Instead, they were genuinely interested — beguiled, as millions of people have been before them, to see the humanity shining from those 500-year-old eyes, or how a particular painter was fascinated with light, and bent it to his will.

I was particularly struck by this since my heart was still smarting from a review I found on Ballet Talk's Links Forum last Monday of a production of "Giselle" by  Ballet Arizona, in Phoenix. That's a long way for "Giselle" to travel. She was born in Paris in 1841 and comes down to us courtesy of Marius Petipa, Russia's great 19th century choreographer, and generations of dancers who have loved and honored her and found greatness through dancing her. Yet the company's hometown paper published a review that painted "Giselle" as something totally outmoded, and an unwelcome choice for the company's repertory: In "Giselle," worn-out tale undermines impressive dancing. Richard Nilsen, the Arizona Republic's arts critic, spent most of his review telling us not how the company presented the crown of Romantic Ballet, not how this or that dancer compared with famous dancers in "Giselle's" personal pantheon, not even what the production looked like, but that "Giselle" should no longer be danced: "a relic of an extinct zeitgeist, and one we are well rid of."

Well, that's that. The Kymer Rouge approach to arts criticism: if it's old, or you don't understand it, smash it. Nilsen, of course, is more than welcome to detest "Giselle" or find it boring, but usually when a critic is in such a pickle, he squares his shoulders and writes about what's onstage. The audience doesn't want to read, "I've been watching 'Nutcracker' for 20 years and if I see one more party scene I'm going to scream," and if someone is forced to write a review of "Sleeping Beauty" who hasn't thought of it as anything more than a fairy tale she thrilled to when she was three, she might take an hour or so to read about the ballet and find out why it's considered a masterpiece.

 

I don't fault Nilsen for the review. He explains his point of view very clearly and bends over backwards to be fair to the dancers. I fault the editors who do not seem to understand the responsibilities of a newspaper to its readers and the arts. Once upon a time, newspapers in large cities had dance — and music, and art, and literary — critics who knew their subjects thoroughly. Once upon a time, an editor working on a review that took so much space to object to the existence of a work rather than explaining, analyzing, or commenting upon the production or the performance would have pointed this out, and guided the writer. Once upon a time, an editor, even a weekend editor, would have known that "Giselle" wasn't an odd, obscure little ballet that a whimsical artistic director had misguidedly inflicted upon the public, but a masterpiece that is currently in the repertory of every major ballet company in the world. Bashing "Giselle" for its existence is on a par with giving the same treatment to "Hamlet" or "Faust" (Oh, come on. Does anyone really sell his soul to the Devil these days?) Complaining about mime in ballet is like complaining about recitative in opera (They should cut the monotone stuff and stick to the hit tunes.)

Why does any of this matter? It may not matter much to Ballet Arizona, because Nilsen went out of his way to praise the company, writing, "even if they attempt to resurrect a ballet better left in its grave, they will do it with style and class." They're professional dancers and can undoubtedly get over the fact that the only critic who will ever write about them completely dismisses classical ballet, which is what they do. Of course, such a review may matter to subscribers ("It says here this one's got lots of mime in it and it's sentimental piffle'.") Someone new to ballet who saw the production will look in vain in this review for guidance as to what the ballet is about or how it was danced in any detail, and someone who was thinking about going to the ballet might be discouraged. Classical ballet is relatively new to Phoenix, and newspapers once took that into account, understanding that it was part of their mission to educate readers. The Arizona Republic ran a preview piece: Giant canine will take center stage for"Giselle" which may have brought a few dog lovers to the ballet, but didn't explain transcendentalism, or why a work of art whose premise is that love can outlast death might possibly still be relevant.

And so such a review matters to Phoenix, which is one of the largest cities in America now, and one trying to attract residents by building world class performing arts companies. How will a ballet company, a symphony, an opera company, and/or serious theater troupes grow in such an atmosphere? Reading dance criticism today (in many cities, not merely Phoenix) one sees that editors know little about the arts, and seem to care less. Many reviews are of the level one could read in smaller American newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s, when there really wasn't much ballet in America and one could forgive a critic for not having seen much. There were no videos, no DVDs, and very little to read. Some of those old reviews were superficial, or slightly off-kilter (often written by music critics, pressed into service for the once-yearly ballet performance by a touring company), but for the most part the writers understood the context of the works, and the art form, they were writing about.  Otherwise, criticism is piffle — not the "sentimental piffle" that this review called "Giselle," but just plain piffle.

It is likely that Camargo will continue dancing at the National Gallery; she has a long-term contract. Museum directors understand art and realize that they have an obligation to guard its treasures. But nothing that she danced remains — not a single step. Not the great "Les Caracteres de la danse," in which ballerina after ballerina made her debut in 18th century Paris, not any of dozens of ballets or "pas" (divertissements) in which La Camargo thrilled the balletgoers of her era. The reasons are complicated — the French Revolution and subsequent restructuring of state funding of the arts, box office pressures, change in public taste, and, perhaps most importantly, the French penchant for novelty: it's old, throw it out. Bless the Russians for understanding the philosophical  importance of  "Giselle"  as well as the beauty of its choreography, and bless the 20th century dancers and directors who kept it alive.

By bringing "Giselle" to Phoenix, Ib Andersen, a world class dancer who is heir to both the European Romantic tradition (through Denmark) and the American neoclassical tradition (through Balanchine), brought world class ballet to his adopted city. It's as if he had given the local museum a Vermeer or a Renoir. It's not too much to expect that the local newspaper would understand this.

Photo:
Nicolas Lancret's "La Camargo Dancing," detail. Photo copyright National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.