Lucking Out: my life getting down and semi-dirty in seventies new york by James Wolcott and Vaganova Today, The Preservation of Pedagogical Tradition by Catherine W. Pawlick recently arrived in the mail in the same box, bound tightly together with thin, stretchy plastic wrap. Haglund stared at them in the box for several days trying to decide which one to read first. In the above photo of the book on the right side, Agrippina Vaganova's spooky eyes glare out into a ballet studio at the famous Vaganova Academy while an advanced student confidently grasps the barre to execute a grand battement. On the left book jacket, a spooky fellow hovers under the glare of lights shining down from the Manhattan Bridge while perhaps he searches for an open bar or someone with whom to share a battement. Cozy plastic wrap aside, these two books which focus on cultures that are worlds apart were written by two strangers who Haglund now estimates are probably linked by fewer than three degrees of separation.
In Vaganova Today, Pawlick introduces us to the woman whose teaching methods and influence have held Biblical importance in the ballet world for many decades. No other methodology or school has produced as many universally recognized icons in ballet as the Vaganova Academy. In the years since Vaganova's death in 1951, generations of gifted dancers have continued to be schooled in the traditional methods at the Vaganova Academy. However, modern western influences that appeal to a broader, less sophisticated audience have pressure-wormed their ways into the school's artistic end product which lands on the Mariinsky stage. Gymnastic feats that employ extreme flexibility in a single joint or limb which then disassociates from the overall harmony of the body have sent the needle on the meter of moronic applause wild the world over. The dancers and directors at the Mariinsky are not immune to the applause meter, especially if the sound of the ovation floats in from the west where the grass of artistic opportunity has always been perceived as being greener.
Pawlick recites a recent Italian study that firmly illustrated the audience's changing preferences for higher extensions from 1962 to 2003. As she notes, there had been no change in dancers' abilities to crank up their legs over that time; rather, the change evolved as an artistic choice in response to audience appreciation and expectation.
What Haglund observed is that during the 41 years covered by the study, there was a significant broadening of the western audience for ballet and a corresponding and significant watering down of sophistication of the ballet audience. As the uninitiated were seduced to ballet performances, they brought with them expectations informed by gymnastics, diving, basketball, high jumping, ice skating, and other sports where the more extreme the physical action, the greater the reward and the more likely the win. Ballet has done little to educate audiences about what they should assess or value in a ballet performance. In fact, ballet's media campaigns have pushed along the concept that ballet is just another sport that everyone will enjoy for the height of the legs, the extreme flexibility, and big jumps. That is all that mainstream media can measure, and that's all ballet companies can think to do in order to tap into a broader audience.
Employing some fancy footwork herself, Pawlick managed to secure brief but revealing interviews with reigning pedagogues, coaches, and teachers at the Vaganova Academy and the Mariinsky, the current director of the school, Altynai Asylmuratova, and the current predominant classical ballerina in the world, Uliana Lopatkina. So many of the interview subjects expressed to Pawlick their concern and sadness over the waning of the high standards created by Agrippina Vaganova and the overall adverse effect it has had on the way the Mariinsky Ballet dances. Lopatkina, who now and then slips an excessive extension into her balletic voice, is considered by many to be the ultimate representation of what the modern Vaganova-born ballerina should be. That she is also beautifully articulate in her speaking came as no surprise. Pawlik writes:
At the mention of the shifting of aesthetics in ballet today, Lopatkina is very frank and direct in her response. She doesn't hesitate to point out that the Vaganova style can be preserved even while adopting new "trends" in dance, but that it must be done with extreme care:
'The tendency of modern classical ballet to change the measure of degree of the pose, the approach toward what is artistic gymnastics, it's my opinion that the Vaganova system saves classical ballet from entering into sports, if you understand her system correctly. What is "correctly"? I can explan: no matter how high you lift the leg, each position must be a harmonious composition that incorporates the diagonals of the legs, arms, and the pose of the head. So you have to look very carefully at how high to lift the leg. The requirements of beauty must be harmoniously combined together; if you pay specific attention to the beauty of line, then classical ballet remains ballet even under the changes in the degrees of a position. The line must be logical.'
It may not be too soon to offer a little prayer that Uliana Lopatkina will one day be the Director of the Mariinsky Ballet.
While Baryshnikov, Makarova, and even Gelsey Kirkland were all sailing through success after success in New York in the 1970s promoting the purity of the Vaganova aesthetic, James Wolcott was caressing the underbelly of the big city ship as it slowly sank into the sludge of hard times. In his memoir Lucking Out: my life getting down and semi-dirty in seventies new york, Wolcott escorts us through the years that were the high times and the low of times for New York. He makes you smell every part of it, and at times, makes you want to wash your hands before turning the page.
Upon first arriving in New York, Wolcott was introduced to the charms of the locals at the Port Authority Bus Terminal – pimps, winos, etc. – before making his way down to the Village Voice where he eventually landed a desk job of sorts. Some time later, the Village Voice Vaganova principal, Maryia Perotrova Nicholova, expelled him for throwing his leg all the way up to his ear one too many times – or something like that – the H.H. Fact Checkers will need to verify that when they return from sabbatical. But he continued to write critical pieces for the Voice and many other publications, covering the evolution of punk and rock at CBGB's and other significant clubs, all the while hanging with the likes of Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, and especially film critic Pauline Kael.
Wolcott notes that Kael was the driving force in the 1970s who persuaded The New Yorker to enhance its dance coverage by hiring writer Arlene Croce. "Croce's arrival at The New Yorker was a signature moment for the magazine and for dance criticism, another masterstroke by the editor William Shawn." Kael's mentoring force and friendship are warmly remembered through much of the book. In recalling the first time he was blown away by a relatively unknown Patti Smith and her drummerless band and then had to pen his review in the Village Voice, Wolcott recalls:
One thing I learned from Pauline was that when something hits you that high and hard, you have to be able to travel wherever the point of impact takes you and be willing to go to the wall with your enthusiasm and over it if need be, even if you look foolish or "carried away," because your first shot at writing about it may be the only chance to make people care. It's better to be thumpingly wrong than a muffled drum with a measured beat.
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in the '70s that drew Wolcott into the New York State Theater where sitting in the Fourth Ring he first breathed in Balanchine and Robbins in a bill of Firebird, Afternoon of a Faun, and Serenade – the last which he recalls was his "Song of Bernadette moment, my face bathed in miracle light." A few more innocent excursions to the NYCB followed, and then bam!, he was one of them – a subscriber in the Fourth Ring who referred to his favorite dancers by first name "I saw Patty last week in Coppelia" and haunted The Ballet Shop on Broadway. He was in the audience for Suzanne Farrell's first performance upon returning from Bejart and for Darci Kistler's return after her long layoff from injury. He witnessed PAMTGG and Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir. He recalled Baryshnikov's first Giselle with American Ballet Theatre as "not only a comet moment for ballet but one of the defining jolts to hit New York in the seventies."
Wolcott recalls that back then:
To the faithful, New York City Ballet was the only true team in town, the diamond crown. I once asked a literary intellectual if he followed ballet, and his response was, with a distinct note of corrective, "I follow New York City Ballet," as if any other brand were simply too lower shelf. NYCB was the monarch Yankees and its closest rival for attention, American Ballet Theatre, the patchwork Mets, its bench strength and institutional heritage nowhere near as deep or storied. NYCB prided itself on not being fame-driven in its casting and promotional material (it didn't import internationally renowned dancers for B-12 ass-bumps of glamour)
Of course, it took a renowned import, Baryshnikov, to guide ABT on a path toward blessed, blissed-out organic growth before the current director reversed its evolution to its current sorry state.
On the accessibility of ballet, Wolcott writes:
And what I grew to learn about the ballet world was that, once inside, it was like every other subculture high and low in Manhattan in the seventies. It looked like a members-only society only if you lacked the nerve and desire to enter; it wasn't warm and welcoming–what was?–but it offered its own gradations of grudging acceptance, based not on money, breeding, boarding-school connections, Ivy League affiliation, the right address, or the ability to wield a salad fork like a neurosurgeon's scalpel but on the measure of knowledge, passion, and dogged curiosity for seeing what was out there to see because there was always something new to see even in things you had seen so many times before, a fresh interpretation that blew off the chalk dust. It made you come to it, rise to the challenging occasion.
It still does.
[Purchase Lucking Out here. Purchase Vaganova Today here.]
16 responses to “Lucking Out with Vaganova Today”
Excellent post, Haglund! Both have been on my to-read list for awhile, and even more so now.
Excellent post, Haglund! Both have been on my to-read list for awhile, and even more so now.
What fabulous reviews! While we’re on the subject of successors, e.g., to the directorship of the Mariinsky Ballet, I would like to nominate you, Haglund, for the post of (1) AD of ABT and/or (2) dance critic for the NYT and/or (3) book reviewer and dance critic a la Joan Acocella.
For myself, I was very disappointed in the Vaganova book. Although I completely agree with the main thrust of the book’s argument, the unfortunate shift from artistry to gymnastics, I couldn’t help but feel that this was a dissertation of sorts, published by a University Press, for some hope of academic promotion. It was mostly a series of quotations, surrounded by uninspired prose. I can’t find my copy at the moment to examine it closely, but for me the cover picture doesn’t begin to represent the beauty of the Vaganova style (was that intentional?), and although I may be way off base, that back foot seems to me to come perilously close to a sickle.
The portions that you quote from the Wolcott book, however, cause me to want to rush right out and buy a copy, or better, click on your link. There is so much more depth to his perceptions, and the prose is both limpid and graceful.
Thank you for reading both of these books and for writing such penetrating reviews!
What fabulous reviews! While we’re on the subject of successors, e.g., to the directorship of the Mariinsky Ballet, I would like to nominate you, Haglund, for the post of (1) AD of ABT and/or (2) dance critic for the NYT and/or (3) book reviewer and dance critic a la Joan Acocella.
For myself, I was very disappointed in the Vaganova book. Although I completely agree with the main thrust of the book’s argument, the unfortunate shift from artistry to gymnastics, I couldn’t help but feel that this was a dissertation of sorts, published by a University Press, for some hope of academic promotion. It was mostly a series of quotations, surrounded by uninspired prose. I can’t find my copy at the moment to examine it closely, but for me the cover picture doesn’t begin to represent the beauty of the Vaganova style (was that intentional?), and although I may be way off base, that back foot seems to me to come perilously close to a sickle.
The portions that you quote from the Wolcott book, however, cause me to want to rush right out and buy a copy, or better, click on your link. There is so much more depth to his perceptions, and the prose is both limpid and graceful.
Thank you for reading both of these books and for writing such penetrating reviews!
Hi Angelica.
I think the photo on the jacket cover of Vaganova Today represents quite literally what the school strives to produce today. While there is a clear relationship among the lines of the body, there is less harmony than we’ve been accustomed to seeing out of dancers such as Asylmuratova, Makarova, and even Lopatkina. As you noted, the winged back foot isn’t especially attractive. Nor is the supporting foot with so much of the weight to the back. Nor is the tension in the hands. If we want to know why arabesques are looking more and more like checkmarks and less arab-esque, here’s your answer.
Hi Angelica.
I think the photo on the jacket cover of Vaganova Today represents quite literally what the school strives to produce today. While there is a clear relationship among the lines of the body, there is less harmony than we’ve been accustomed to seeing out of dancers such as Asylmuratova, Makarova, and even Lopatkina. As you noted, the winged back foot isn’t especially attractive. Nor is the supporting foot with so much of the weight to the back. Nor is the tension in the hands. If we want to know why arabesques are looking more and more like checkmarks and less arab-esque, here’s your answer.
The foot is not even properly winged, if that’s the dancer’s objective–it needs to be more turned out. I’ve seen photos of feet that were beautifully winged, as was Diana Vishneva’s in that gorgeous moment in Giselle caught by a brilliant photographer that appeared in the New York Times last ABT season.
Everything about that dancer’s position looks wrong. Does the Bolshoi Ballet School follow the Vaganova tradition, and have those dancers capitulated also?
The foot is not even properly winged, if that’s the dancer’s objective–it needs to be more turned out. I’ve seen photos of feet that were beautifully winged, as was Diana Vishneva’s in that gorgeous moment in Giselle caught by a brilliant photographer that appeared in the New York Times last ABT season.
Everything about that dancer’s position looks wrong. Does the Bolshoi Ballet School follow the Vaganova tradition, and have those dancers capitulated also?
The Moscow Choreographic Institute aka Bolshoi Ballet Academy is affiliated with the Bolshoi. However, of late, the Bolshoi has been snatching some of the premiere graduating students from the Vaganova Institute.
The company directors don’t necessarily take the students which the affiliated school may consider its best. Case in point (according to a NYT article): Ratmansky hired Osipova after watching the student exams even though the examiners had substantive negative assessments of her due to her lack of aesthetic. She still lacks it, but the less informed public perception is that since she jumps so high and is so circus-y, she must be the best ballet dancer.
The Moscow Choreographic Institute aka Bolshoi Ballet Academy is affiliated with the Bolshoi. However, of late, the Bolshoi has been snatching some of the premiere graduating students from the Vaganova Institute.
The company directors don’t necessarily take the students which the affiliated school may consider its best. Case in point (according to a NYT article): Ratmansky hired Osipova after watching the student exams even though the examiners had substantive negative assessments of her due to her lack of aesthetic. She still lacks it, but the less informed public perception is that since she jumps so high and is so circus-y, she must be the best ballet dancer.
Sigh. I just got the ABT subscription renewal brochure in the mail and I’m not even excited to open it.
It’s interesting to me that Hallberg has fallen for Osipova, despite her lack of classical, well, classicism. At least for the moment, Fate has separated them. Next thing you know, the Mikhailovsky will recruit him. But didn’t I already read something about that?
Sigh. I just got the ABT subscription renewal brochure in the mail and I’m not even excited to open it.
It’s interesting to me that Hallberg has fallen for Osipova, despite her lack of classical, well, classicism. At least for the moment, Fate has separated them. Next thing you know, the Mikhailovsky will recruit him. But didn’t I already read something about that?
“James Wolcott was caressing the underbelly of the big city ship as it slowly sank into the sludge of hard times.”
I second K in commending you on a great post, Haglund.
I’m probably going to pass on the Wolcott book. The quotation above illustrates why. There’s something very stagey and poseurish about Wolcott’s voluptuous love of NYC in the 1970s. I was born and raised here, in a “blue-collar” nabe, and the city’s descent into crime and decay was disgusting and horrifying to us. One senses that Wolcott would curl his aesthete’s lip at such conventional feelings. It always seems to me that the people who bemoan the sanitization of the Times Square area are people who moved here from some middle-class place, and who will move away once they get tired of la vie de boho. I don’t have much patience for such people. All I remember of Times Square in the 1970s is being disgusted and propositioned. I don’t care what this sounds like, give me disneyfication any day.
But I DON’T believe in disneyfying ballet technique, and I’m with you 100% in applauding ostentatious hyper-extension and hijinx in ballet.
Can we not blame our beloved NYCB for this, just a little? Was it not with Allegra and Co. that the 182 degree penchee, and the bendy, twisty, ankle up against the ear distortions began? Now, Allegra (most of the time), combined this with melting purity of line, and proper placement (when she wasn’t being weird….) – but it has gotten out of hand. In any case, some of these distortions did start with the Great God Balanchine.
As for gymnastics as ballet, it reminds me of the obsession with jumping in figure skating to the detriment of pure figure skating. A pure, exquisite figure skater like Peggy Fleming would not be a champion today, the gold medal winner would be Janet Lynn. Remember them?
“James Wolcott was caressing the underbelly of the big city ship as it slowly sank into the sludge of hard times.”
I second K in commending you on a great post, Haglund.
I’m probably going to pass on the Wolcott book. The quotation above illustrates why. There’s something very stagey and poseurish about Wolcott’s voluptuous love of NYC in the 1970s. I was born and raised here, in a “blue-collar” nabe, and the city’s descent into crime and decay was disgusting and horrifying to us. One senses that Wolcott would curl his aesthete’s lip at such conventional feelings. It always seems to me that the people who bemoan the sanitization of the Times Square area are people who moved here from some middle-class place, and who will move away once they get tired of la vie de boho. I don’t have much patience for such people. All I remember of Times Square in the 1970s is being disgusted and propositioned. I don’t care what this sounds like, give me disneyfication any day.
But I DON’T believe in disneyfying ballet technique, and I’m with you 100% in applauding ostentatious hyper-extension and hijinx in ballet.
Can we not blame our beloved NYCB for this, just a little? Was it not with Allegra and Co. that the 182 degree penchee, and the bendy, twisty, ankle up against the ear distortions began? Now, Allegra (most of the time), combined this with melting purity of line, and proper placement (when she wasn’t being weird….) – but it has gotten out of hand. In any case, some of these distortions did start with the Great God Balanchine.
As for gymnastics as ballet, it reminds me of the obsession with jumping in figure skating to the detriment of pure figure skating. A pure, exquisite figure skater like Peggy Fleming would not be a champion today, the gold medal winner would be Janet Lynn. Remember them?
Hi Diana!
When I moved here at the end of the ’80s, Times Square was still fairly seedy. They hadn’t yet transformed the porn house marquees from XXXX-this&that to advertising poetry and Bible verses. I lived nearby on 39th Street off of 9th Ave – an area that was an occasional body-dumping ground for whoever needed to dump a body. The sidewalks south of 42nd on 9th were some of most urine-saturated sidewalks in the city. The only way to rid the area of the stench was to tear up the concrete. Across the street from my apartment was a “private club” with no name where each night around midnight black limos and towncars driven by muscle-y thugs dropped off well-tailored middle aged and silver-haired men for a quiet evening of whatever. It was a time to be careful in New York.
I, too, appreciated the “clean up” although it may not have always been administered cleanly itself.
Hi Diana!
When I moved here at the end of the ’80s, Times Square was still fairly seedy. They hadn’t yet transformed the porn house marquees from XXXX-this&that to advertising poetry and Bible verses. I lived nearby on 39th Street off of 9th Ave – an area that was an occasional body-dumping ground for whoever needed to dump a body. The sidewalks south of 42nd on 9th were some of most urine-saturated sidewalks in the city. The only way to rid the area of the stench was to tear up the concrete. Across the street from my apartment was a “private club” with no name where each night around midnight black limos and towncars driven by muscle-y thugs dropped off well-tailored middle aged and silver-haired men for a quiet evening of whatever. It was a time to be careful in New York.
I, too, appreciated the “clean up” although it may not have always been administered cleanly itself.