Agon: no contest, no struggle
“Agon” is the name of a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine, with music by Stravinsky. It premiered in 1957 and was revolutionary at the time, but nowadays it doesn’t seem so strange. It featured a pas de deux between a man – Arthur Mitchell in the original, who happened to be black – and a white woman, Diana Adams, and the interracial aspect was part of its novelty and daring in 1957. Now it would hardly be noticed.
But none of that is my concern. What I’m interested in is the change in performance style and technique between then and now. “Agon” was always part gymnastics, in which the woman’s body is twisted and pulled into poses that are elegant and yet extreme. But in 1957, although ballet dancers were very flexible, they were not so remarkably and almost freakishly pliant as they are today, and that changes this ballet. When the woman’s body was not so loose there was something in the choreography to be struggled against, a heightened tension and stress. Now there is no such thing.
What I see when I view this ballet now is a more athletic exercise, and a gymnastic rather than balletic one at that. Your mileage may differ.
Here’s a dance critic who agrees with me:
In today’s “Agon,” I think, you will see less vulnerability and more boldness, more sex and less pain. Balanchine, by asking so much of his ballerinas, won for them great freedom and mastery, but, some nights, it seems that they traded something—shading, poignance—in the process.
Not just “some nights” – I’d say all nights.
The dancer in this video, Maria Kowroski, makes it quite explicit when she says (starting around 1:50) “Everything came very natural to me” when she learned the ballet.”I didn’t feel like I’m struggling.” Well, I suppose one doesn’t have to feel the struggle in order to convey the sense of struggle that should be there. But it helps. She not only doesn’t seem to feel that sense or convey that sense, but she doesn’t even seem to realize that she should convey it in this particular ballet, the meaning of whose title is not just “contest” but also “struggle.”
From the New Yorker piece:
Arthur Mitchell has said that when he and Adams first performed the “Agon” duet, it looked different from today’s renditions. For dancers of that period, the steps were very difficult, he said, and Adams was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to do them. This made her seem vulnerable. She might also have been nervous about the duet’s sexual frankness.
Here’s the original. You will probably notice almost immediately the markedly reduced flexibility demonstrated by Diana Adams (typical for her time), but also the different emotional quality that critic Acocella describes. This clip shows a bit more of the pas de deux than the first one did, but neither video is long:
[NOTE: I agree with Acocella about how difficult it used to be to view old performances like that, years after the fact. One had to go to a special dance library such as the one at Lincoln Center, and the films had to be viewed there and neither taken out nor duplicated. Now there’s YouTube and an abundance of them – although I believe there are still many that are only available at the library.]
[NOTE II: And by the way, this is not one of my favorite ballets. I can take it or leave it. But I find the then-vs.-now aspect of ballet very interesting.]
Choreo as an auxilliary to song is more engaging.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bzIVYyVNUY
Agon will reach its zenith when androids are able to perform it.
Physicality 9.5 – Artistic merit 3.5 – Soulfulness 0.5
Sort of like comparing Bob Cousy to Michael Jordan… (Basketball.)
Geez. I get it when I watch Michael Jordan videos. He probably is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time), but I don’t really enjoy watching him play. He doesn’t seem human — more like someone genetically modified to play basketball like Jesus on the court against high school kids.
Bob Cousy on the other hand — I watch old B&W of him playing and I can almost imagine if I were a half foot taller and worked like a sumbitch from the age of ten on, I might be able to touch some of Cousy’s moves.
I had a hard time watching the first dance video. I could practically feel my joints dislocating as I watched that splendid ballerina do impossible things with apparent ease.
I take neo’s point that the first dancer’s ease contradicts the theme of the dance.
She not only doesn’t seem to feel that sense or convey that sense, but she doesn’t even seem to realize that she should convey it in this particular ballet, the meaning of whose title is not just “contest” but also “struggle.”
I had a French horn instructor in college who got me started playing The Bach Cello Suites, as exercises. I spent good bit of time, that I didn’t really have, playing them. Because of the time constraints I suppose, I never got around to listening to recordings of them.
A several years later, my musicianship had lapsed, and I thought I’d put my grad school’s library to better use and I pulled out the recordings of the BCS performed by Pablo Casals. Holy f__k. The guy bent the rhythm and timing to the max. I’m not sure that’s what Bach had in mind, but Casals certainly had something very specific and artistic to say.
My take, is that a musician or dancer can have competent or even excellent technique, but not really achieve serious artistry. I get annoyed when merely competent people (usually in Hollywood) make a big deal out of being artists.
huxley,
Bob Cousey was my basketball hero. Yes, Jordan is the greatest ever but IMO he couldn’t match Cousey’s inventive improvisation on the court. Jordan was awesome, Cousey was exciting.
TommyJay,
The classical guitarist Segovia maintained that he did not attain true artistry with the guitar until after he’d achieved technical mastery of the instrument.
Geoffrey Britain: Something I didn’t know until I looked it up on wiki:
On August 22, 2019, [Bob Cousy] was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump.
All right!
TommyJay, Geoffrey Britain: True, technique is not enough. If that’s all an artist or a sports figure has got, I will politely clap and move on. I know that technique is long, hard, and painfully acquired and I don’t have much of it myself. I respect it, but it’s not enough.
I want to sense the human in there pressing against limits, personal and artistic or athletic. I want the hero’s journey. Some of that is about vulnerability, the quality neo mentions wrt Diana Adams.
How about Kerri Strug, the gymnast whose performance won a team gold for the USA, when she made her last vault on a broken ankle? Then her coach lifted her into his arms and carried her off the stage.
“Kerri Strug Vaults at Atlanta 1996 | Epic Olympic Moments”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwa5Bf656As
Larry Bird is my basketball hero. It galls me to admit that Michael Jordan is the better individual player. Who can compete with a guy who can palm the ball, leap from the free throw line, fake three ways, then dunk? (Only slightly exaggerated.)
Larry Bird was not all that impressive athletically (though not as bad as some have said), but he made it for up for it through sheer will power, hard work, intelligence, creativity, psychology and awareness of everything and everybody on the court.
Bird was a genius team leader. You could tell that all the guys who played with him, and they were plenty talented, played at a higher level because Larry Joe was there, holding them to a higher standard, making it fun and pulling everyone into the game with him.
And when the game was on the line, Bird was always the guy who said, give the ball to me and I’ll make it happen. Not just cocky words. His clutch play was legendary.
If I had to choose a player to take a shot to save a game I’d choose Michael Jordan; If I had to choose a player to take a shot to save my life…I’d take Larry Bird.
— Pat Riley, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers
My eye for this is not in the least as good as yours, Neo….
But I find it interesting that Maria Kowroski uses the expression “our circus moment” to describe one movement, because they had already struck me as being like acrobats perfoming one trick after another. The same movement in the original is both astonishing and carries the illusion of spontanaiety.
Caedmon:
The illusion of spontaneity.
– – – – – –
This is what sets apart the best of the performing arts.
Not to diminish the point, but this seems like a very widespread phenomenon: Someone pushes or breaks a boundary in art, and if it succeeds, the boundaries shift and a decade or two later it’s hard to see how revolutionary it was. To take a less refined example: Lenny Bruce sounds tame today compared to any stand-up routine you’re likely to hear at the local comedy club. There’s a sort of futility in that, compared to what seems like the less exciting route of creating within the existing norms.
Lenny Bruce sounds tame today
Or maybe he was always a lame-o bore and people were just giggling nervously at whatever obscene thing he was saying.
So true Jimmy. I’ve made the mistake a few times in the past, of showing an old classic movie to a young person or two. “Oh, that’s so commonplace” they complain, not realizing or caring that the film they just saw was the very first instance of something.
Or maybe [Lenny Bruce] was always a lame-o bore and people were just giggling nervously at whatever obscene thing he was saying.
I wonder how much Lenny Bruce Art Deco has actually experienced. Or whether he is just grinding his axe per usual.
In high school, several years after Bruce’s death, I read the paperback collection, “The Essential Lenny Bruce,” found it hilarious and was stunned by its subversion. One must remember Bruce’s humor emerged in a context where “Take my wife … please” was considered the height of funny.
Bruce had a reputation for obscenity — he was busted for it a lot — but obscenity was only a tiny slice of what he did. (I’d be surprised if Art knows that.)
Bruce opened stand-up comedy to the whole of experience, not just material recycled from the Borscht Belt and vaudeville, as venerable as those venues were. Like it or not, almost all stand-up comedy since has been informed by Lenny Bruce. If he sounds tame today, well, the Wright Brothers look tame, even silly, next to today’s jetliners. We still remember the Wright Brothers.
Comedy tends to date badly. Likewise Bruce. (Who would get Bruce’s joke about Nixon being attacked in Venezuela?) I wonder how many people today truly find the Marx Brothers funny.
I did find Bruce funny and still do. Here’s a skit where he imagines a couple acting agents interviewing candidates to be the new German dictator.
“Lenny Bruce – “Adolf Hitler and the MCA”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtgCJv3CmEY
Bird, Jordan, Cousy, and . . . Kobe Bryant dies today in a helicopter accident, four others onboard. Sadness on that.
I wonder how much Lenny Bruce Art Deco has actually experienced. Or whether he is just grinding his axe per usual.
As usual. Just biding my time until I can give you the Lizzie Borden treatment.
Oh, once again the subtle wit and grace of Art Deco.
bob cousy, we live in NE my husband caddied for him, the cheap SOB would not by my husband a hot dog ! The other kids were treated by their guys but not my hubby, that has put him off Celtics for life.
Many thanks, so instructive. Dancers dancing with a musical grace compared to an architecturally inspired imposition on the stage and the music. Dance vs performance art?
Neo isn’t interested in Sandy Dennis.
bob cousy, we live in NE my husband caddied for him, the cheap SOB would not by my husband a hot dog !
MollyNH: Sorry to hear that.
According to wiki Cousy grew up poor:
Cousy was the only son of poor French immigrants living in New York City. He grew up in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan’s East Side, in the midst of the Great Depression.[4] His father Joseph was a cab driver, who earned extra income by moonlighting.
Perhaps that’s an answer of sorts.
Huxley I tend to doubt that unfortunately, that was back in the 60s what was a hot dog ? 25 cents, it was just a family run snack bar how did he think my husband felt being embarassed as other kids were treated. These kids just earned money on saturdays caddying could not have been a ton of money. BTW my hubby is French too the Canadian variety.
Isn’t there a notation to record dance, as there is for music and chess? I seem to recall this from our university dance library.
Surellin:
There is. But it just notes the very basics. Sometimes dancers learn the steps and formations of a dance from notation, prior to the person coming to set the actual production on them, rehearse them, teach it what it’s about and all the subtleties of movement and timing. It would be nearly impossible to actually recreate a dance from notation, and you certainly cannot see a dance or its performers through notation. For example, notation for both of these performances would make them nearly the same, because there are only minor variations in the movements. But the performances themselves are hugely different. That cannot be conveyed through notation.
Yes, notation hits the wall pretty hard with some forms.
Music notation is amazingly great, breakthrough stuff, but a Jimi Hendrix solo in all its feedback glory so others could just play it off the page — fuggedaboutit.
Perhaps that’s an answer of sorts.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that in 1930, total (nominal) expenditure on housing and utilities in this country was $12.5 bn. There were at the time 30.5 million households in the United States. So, mean expenditure on housing and utilities was about $410 per household per year, or about $34 a month. Someone in the Cousy household in 1930 informed a Census enumerator that they were renting their apartment for $50 a month. The Census enumerator recorded similar sums for their immediate neighbors. There were in 1930 three adults and one child in the Cousy home. There were ten years later four adults and one child. The fourth adult in 1940 was a boarder. The family in 1940 owned it’s own home. NB, in 1940, 44% of the households in the country were owner-occupiers. The remainder were renter households or were institutional residences.
The vast majority of people in 1929 were, by today’s standards, uncomfortable and impecunious. The Depression reduced people’s fortunes even further and induced an intense sense of insecurity even in those were were not injured. That having been said, it appears the Cousy family was in satisfactory shape compared with the typical run of people living and working in America at the time.
There is a small section that I noticed has different movements in the two samples.
The woman, in front, slips backwards between the man’s legs, lifts her legs in a wide V, then he pulls her up again (original cast begins at 1:47, new one at 0:49).
I liked the original much better, although I don’t know that I have the words to say why. Both are very expressive and fluid, but the first seemed more connected.
Personally, with all due respect for the dancers’ skills, I like melodies, stories, and tutus.
I am not familiar with the story. Sorry I must ask; What is the issue to which the woman is to be vulnerable?
For most guys, the sign of perceived vulnerability is a closed down posture, fists tight, feet slightly spread. a non-physical threat causes the same but to a lesser degree.
I’m not getting the source of the threat nor how a perceived strain in the movements tells us. The story probably does but does one need to be able to “read” dance to see the physical significators of vulnerability?
Richard Aubrey:
Funny thing, I have a post planned (maybe tomorrow?) that will revisit this one more time, and I think it actually will end up dealing with your question.It involves the close analysis of a few seconds of this dance, on the two clips, pointing out the major movement differences and what they suggest.
Stay tuned.
And by the way, there is no “story” to this ballet. It’s abstract, which means the only story is the one the movement implies, which in this case is the struggle that can occur within a relationship.