Dueling Odiles
[NOTE: I’ve been working on a big long post today but finally abandoned it for now because I just need to take my mind off ugly, depressing things. So I’ve pivoted to this one.]
“Swan Lake” is one of those ballets just about everyone knows something about. White swan queen, black swan pretender, evil magician’s spell, beautiful Tchaikovsky music.
But this post is about dancers, then and now, and the way they dance a single Odile (Black Swan) variation. First we have the mid-20th-century performance of Maya Plisetskaya. This was filmed in 1973 when Plisetskaya was either 47 or 48 years old, an age when most dancers have retired or are very much faded:
And this is another Russian dancer who is thought to be excellent in the role, Olga Smirnova. I don’t know the exact year in which this was filmed, but since she’s only 31 years old now, it’s fairly current.
These two videos demonstrate a paradox in ballet development. Smirnova has the more conventional ballet body – long and lithe and elegant. Her line is beautiful, her feet highly arched, her technique stellar all around, and her extensions high.
And yet what she’s doing here doesn’t interest me. In fact, it disturbs me somewhat and makes me feel uneasy. She looks uneasy, at least intermittently. Her dancing stops and starts, with flowing movements one moment and then a pose that interrupts the flow for just a split second but enough to notice.
If there’s one thing separating older dancers from more recent ones – in addition to their lower extensions – it’s their amazing speed. Plisetskaya’s turns just whip around, or appear to. It’s not even clear that she is faster but her emphasis makes her look faster to me. There are also fewer dynamics in Smirnova’s performance compared to the older dancer. That relative monotony is typical of more recent dancers, whose movements don’t tend to have as many accents and whose emphasis is more even.
I find it disconcerting, as though something is ever-so-slightly off but you don’t know what it is because everything is so elegant and lean and gorgeous. But to me, it’s not exactly dancing. I perceive their mental focus on technique, and they are relentlessly, enerringly centered and careful. But ballet should sometimes be more daring, and Plisetskaya is bold and unafraid – which suits the role of Odile in particular. She projects an unusual combination of power and femininity, as well as flirtatiousness when required. Her eyes never reveal uncertainty, unlike those of Smirnova who every now and then seems to have a brief moment of anxiety.
What do I see more recent dancers such as Smirnova conveying in this role? They know that the role of Odile requires that they pretend to be Swan Queen Odette. So they must flap their arms and look evil now and then to show they’re nasty Odile and not really sad Odette. But Plisetskaya embodies the character and never forgets it. She dances with abandon, a trait I’ve never seen in ballet dancers today. When seen in person (which I witnessed as a child) Plisetskaya’s effect onstage was explosive. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since, and I’ve seen a lot of dancers.
I can see what you mean. The first is artistic expression by a master. The second is more of a recitation, a highly practiced procession of movements, but her arms and legs lack the coherency of expression from within. It’s lesser art.
I agree with you. Plisetskay is more entrancing to watch. She may not have the extension that Smirnova has, but I think it actually adds to the character. There is a “tightness” about evil. I am not sure Plisetskay is dancing with abandon, so much as she is dancing a cohesive dance, where movements flow out of the previous movements, and she is the character as she dances. When she moves her arms up and down, she is not just flapping Odile’s wings, but she is trying to cast an evil spell…
Smirnova has lovely form. Beautiful extension. But it is a series of dance sequences, punctuated by a brief pose. The arms up and down is not wings, nor casting a spell. Just “This is my arm movement for this particular phrase of music.” She does not perform a cohesive dance that flows, much less one in character. It is a bit more dance recital-ish, though a very good dance recital, than a character on stage. It makes me think of the way opera was prior to Placido Domingo: Singers on a stage. Stand over here and sing. Move over there and then sing….
I am butchering the words, but it makes sense in my head: Newer dance is more athletic, but less artistic. I see that in ‘normal’ sports as well, like gynmastics, football and basketball. The emphasis is on speed and efficiency, and so removing excess motion, adding power to ALL moves. It’s like they are moving more to track and field and away from dance and expression.
This post goes a ways in answering a question that I’ve always had about the traditional ballets. Is the choreography standard? Is there notation, as in music, that is passed down so that every Odette/Odile performs the same? Apparently there is plenty of room for interpretation.
Obviously, while I can appreciate dance, I’m no aficionado.
1. Watching the Smirnova clip calls up the phrase “painfully thin”. Is it even possible to create a flowing line with those stick-like arms…
2. Plisetaskaya’s performance benefits from the softer video technology of that era which blues detail to reveal the complete body line, and from the distance of the camera which shows the whole arc of the character’s movement in space.
The high definition, less saturated modern video does not flatter in the same way. And the space is compressed.
3. That said – there *is* a definite line and motive in Plisetskaya’s variation. Even without the male partner present you can sense that she is addressing someone, has a purpose. The partner work earlier in the clip shows even more focus of the temptress on her prey.
Smirnova makes the mistake of addressing the audience – where the camera is – too directly. In all the performing arts this risks breaking the spell.
More ballet posts please. We need them. As the attempt to precipitate the ruin of the West comes to a head, here is more ugliness in store. We need beauty and humanity.
My daughter-in-law, now 40, was a professional ballerina,starting at age 13 in ballet school. She insisted on that, including years away from home to attend the NC School of the Arts.
Her feet have been ruined. She can walk but not run. Her feet are an ongoing podiatric challenge. Her income as principal ballerina in a smaller city ballet group was pretty modest.
I accordingly have reservations about ballet as an art form. its performers pay a chronic price, not offset by their compensation. Not everyone achieves prominence!
If some is good, more is better. You can’t do more Plisetskaya. You have to do something of which you can do more.
Instead of a long, graceful line, how about a right angle showing massive pelvic flexibility?
Cicero —
I danced for years, and fortuitously was not good enough to dance professionally. My feet were in VERY bad shape; it took a long time for them to recover, but they were not as bad as professional dancers’ feet. (They are still not completely recovered and never will be. But at least they are not as bad a the feet of a professional dancer.)
After I quit dancing, I walked with my feet pointing wa-a-a-a-a-a-ay out to the side. I walked like a duck. I WADDLED like a duck. My father would walk behind me and yell at me to point my toes forward. You can really see what I am talking about if you watch “The Turning Point.” It took a little over a year of him yelling at me, but I finally did start to walk normally.
neo:
I know dance about as well as I do French. But I always get it when you point something out. Thanks.
Plisetskaya has what poets call duende (from flamenco).
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Merriam-Webster defines duende as “the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm,” but to flamenco aficionados it means so much more.
Duende or tener duende (“having duende”) can be loosely translated as having soul, a heightened state of emotion, expression, and heart…
The Spanish poet, Federico García Lorca, who was executed by Nationalist forces during the country’s bitter civil war, offers this romantic definition: “The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, ‘The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.”
https://www.languagemagazine.com/in-search-of-duende/
huxley:
Feast your eyes.
Cicero:
It is true that – as with some athletes – some dancers sustain injuries and the feet are particularly vulnerable. Ballet is not a natural action (the turnout, for example, or pointe work). However, most dancers don’t experience all that much of this and are often vigorous and strong into old age. I’ve seen plenty of those. But there is no denying that ballet can be punishing to the body.
neo:
Duende!
Plisetskaya’s wiki entry verifies she was indeed a wild powerful woman who took chances. Though she remained loyal to the Motherland, in her way she took on the Soviet state:
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In 1958, Plisetskaya received the title of the People’s Artist of the USSR. That same year, she married the young composer Rodion Shchedrin, whose subsequent fame she shared. Wanting to dance internationally, she rebelled and defied Soviet expectations. On one occasion, to gain the attention and respect from some of the country’s leaders, she gave one of the most powerful performances of her career, in Swan Lake, for her 1956 concert in Moscow. Homans describes that “extraordinary performance”:
We can feel the steely contempt and defiance taking hold of her dancing. When the curtain came down on the first act, the crowd exploded. KGB toughs muffled the audience’s applauding hands and dragged people out of the theater kicking, screaming, and scratching. By the end of the evening the government thugs had retreated, unable (or unwilling) to contain the public enthusiasm. Plisetskaya had won.
https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Maya_Plisetskaya
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An extraordinary person at all levels. The whole article is worth reading.
huxley:
And if you read about her early years, you know her father was executed by the government and her mother and brother imprisoned for several years.
Plisetskaya herself was considered a defection risk and was not allowed to tour all that much. I saw her during the thaw, when she came to the US and I was a young child.
Beautiful and active even in her 80s.
The differences begin with the purpose of the dance. In the 1973 one, the dancer is contained within the music, the story, and the character. For her, the audience doesn’t exist or is incidental to the dance.
For the recent one, she’s putting on a show or recital for the audience. They are her focus. She is looking at them almost continually, and looking for approval with that smile (almost smirk) to the people out there.
Oddly, by being so engaged with the audience, the later one becomes disengaged from the dance and creates more distance with the people she is trying to show off to.
If I had any duende, I’ve managed to control it. You don’t want to see me when my duende gets loose. Seriously, is it part of the rest of life?