The still point of the turning world
I’d never heard of ballet dancer Zenaida Yanowsky before. But I idly clicked on a video while procrastinating about something-or-other, and what I saw puzzled me.
It was the “Black Swan” pas de deux, and I didn’t love her dancing. Her line didn’t seem particularly beautiful to me. Her body, though flexible, didn’t seem pliant; something about her seemed too rigid and unyielding.
But something was wonderful there, too, and for a few seconds I couldn’t quite figure it out. But then I decided it was two things. The first was her calm, unruffled and unhurried manner, the fact that she took time to show you what the movements meant and what they were there for (the musical tempo is slow here, too). But even more, it was her extraordinarily centered quality.
All dancers must have a center, a plumb line that runs straight down and around which everything moves and swirls, whether the dance is fast or slow. Some of my teachers used to tell us that we needed to imagine that a string ran right through the center of our heads down through the middle of our bodies, and that we were suspended from it like puppets on strings. Or that we had a headlight on each hip, and those headlights had to shine straight ahead of us at all times (unless a hip-twisted movement was required, which it rarely was in ballet).
Watch, and you’ll see it:
I immediately was reminded of Cynthia Gregory, an American Ballet Theater dancer I saw in person countless times during the 70s. She also was tall, and was known for her calm center and rock-solid balances. You’ll see the similarity I think, but also the differences, particularly in Gregory’s more expressive arms, and the sharpness of her movements in this particular interpretation of the role. A couple of times towards the end of the passage I got a little shiver while I watched; something about her evil calculation and swanlike arms, mimicking Odette (the White Swan she is pretending to be, in order to convince Prince Siegfried to betray Odette—the section I’m talking about starts at 4:10 and ends around 5:42). Her partner Bujones was a rare dancer, too, although sadly he died relatively young:
And here’s Gregory now, talking about “Swan Lake”:
Interesting. Somehow, looking at the dancers, thinking of the center, I preferred Yanowsky, *because* of her less expressive arms. They emphasized that centered quality– her entire body seemed equalized and focused on holding the center.
Not to take anything away from Gregory, she was gorgeous, but looking from the pov of the plumbline, her pliant, expressive, emotional arms seemed to be separate from her legs, which seemed to be serving only to present her arms. It felt almost unbalanced– from that point of view.
But, if I let go of the center thing, her arms were like flowers, and her legs, like stems.
Esther:
Agreed.
Neo, I appreciate your efforts to buff out my rough edges and refine me. Especially memorable was the exposure to Georgian ballet, mostly because of the knife throwing.
I am afraid, though, that despite your best efforts I’ll still be the embarrassment pulling meat off of the fire saying, “Here, I just killed this, try it.”
The set and other dancers in their costumes is fairly stunning in HD on the top video.
I wouldn’t know a good ballet dancer from a great one, but all the control she has in the top video is mesmerizing.
Very hard to evaluate – the dynamic between the black swan and her master is an integral part of the choreography in the first clip. The hardness of the character and the situation mitigate the somewhat “clinical” overextended modern style that neo has pointed out before… it also motivates the ballerina’s looking out at the audience, which would otherwise be distracting.
The second clip does not have the gravitational pull of the sorcerer character- it’s just a pure pas de deux of seduction. This changes the motivation for some of the choreography. I can see what you mean about a plumb line – but Gregory’s arms really soften that. It seems that she consistently arrange her arms less symmetrically than in the first clip.
More dance posts, please….
Ben David:
“Swan Lake” has long been one of my favorite ballets. But I’ve always been puzzled by the premise of Act III and the Black Swan pas de deux. The conundrum is: how on earth can the Prince be so stupid as to be fooled by a woman who, granted, looks superficially like his beloved Odette, but acts almost nothing like her—except for those swanny arms, which she only exhibits now and then?
I therefore prefer some of the more subtle Black Swans, the ones who don’t go over-the-top with the evil cackles and the nasty stuff. It’s a hard line to walk, because you don’t want to seem too Odette-like, either. But the best ones, in my opinion, act less brash and the impersonation and duplicity is more subtle, just for the audience to see, but not for Siegfried to notice as much.
Maybe some time I’ll write about this and try to find an example.
Well that’s about the best description I’ve ever heard of Yanowsky’s dancing! “the fact that she took time to show you what the movements meant and what they were there for”
I wonder if you’ll enjoy this biomechanical comparison of Yanowsky and others in Swan Lake.
OK – but Yanowsky (and the choreographer for that production) seems to express “what the movements mean” without going over the top – in fact, the eerie thought that she in thrall to/just a projection of the sorcerer is introduced quite effectively.
She seduces the prince not by vamping or flattering him, but by constantly turning away from him – or rather being pulled away from him by her puppet-master, which lets the audience see what’s going on. I thought it was done very well, and as you wrote – it showed the motivation for the movements. Perhaps at the expense of the Black Swan being a character with her own will.
Without that triangle the breaking away from coupled movements is just normal flirtation in a pas de deux. It would be much harder for the ballerina to embody both the flirtation and the evil edge given by the sorcerer.
And thanks for the clips of Gregory then (when I was also young, but not as limber 🙂 ) and now.
More dance posts please!!!!!
I have spent the last month trying to explain the American elections to my Israeli friends, neighbors, and coworkers – which involves explaining the Anglosphere’s emphasis on individual free agency to people whose political thought is still colored by Israel’s Socialist past, and by our left-leaning press regurgitating the canards of the left-leaning American press.