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CHOREOGRAPHY

What Does a Ballet Mistress Do?

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What does a typical day entail for a ballet mistress?

I’ll be in studio for six hours a day – usually until 6pm or 5.30pm if there’s a performance. I’ll then check-in with the dancers 30 minutes before curtain up before taking my seat in the auditorium to watch the performance.  The dancers like to be told corrections and ways they can improve their performance, so I’ll give a few notes after each show to ensure that their dancing stays at a high standard.

How do you teach choreography?

Choreography is written down using Benesh Notation but I prefer to use my own notes and drawings to help me teach it.

A new dancer will have to learn a lot of ballet in their first few years. I usually start new dancers off with a big corps de ballet number. Often students of The Royal Ballet Upper School will join, so they can slowly pick up the patterns and counts in the choreography.

In rehearsals with the rest of the Company, I focus on the fine details like eye-line and arm height. Keeping straight lines and order is an essential part of a strong corps de ballet. I then have to push the dancers to increase their stamina so they can handle the run of performances on stage.

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Whose Dance Is It Anyway? The Show That Asks You To Guess The Choreographer

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Unknown pleasures

Unknown pleasures: do we enjoy art more if it’s anonymous?

What kind of value judgments and viewing habits do we bring to the theatre when we are watching a new piece of dance? It’s a question posed by Dance Umbrella and CCN-Ballet de Lorraine in their new, joint production, Unknown Pleasures. By presenting an evening of five new works, whose choreography, design, lighting and music all remain anonymous, they are inviting audiences to look at the stage with their senses rinsed clean of all preconceptions – and all PR.

It’s a bold and engaging experiment, challenging the roles that reputation, context, gender and age play in our evaluation of dance. But much as I enjoyed the novelty of the concept (and the freedom of arriving at the theatre without making any advance preparation)

Photograph by Tristam Kenton.

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Tips On Picking Up Choreography Quickly

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Lesley:
Your answer is Moto Memory or Muscle Memory.  Your memory in choreographed dance depends on your neuromuscular systems to do their work.  Muscle Memory is also dependent on repetition and imagery connections.  A huge thing that helped me when I was a younger dancer in Drill-Team was a technique we named “calling it”.  Try to label each part of the choreography that you are struggling with.  Name the sections something that can provide you with an image in your head so there is a cognitive connection to the actual movement.  As you are dancing you “call it” in your head to help you remember the phrases that come next.

Sherise:

Here are some tips I have given students:
If possible stand towards the front of the class. This way you can see your teacher and not have any distraction in front of you. Sometimes the teacher will show a combination or step first. Watch them do it – don’t try to do the movement along with them. Just watch and take it in. When doing the choreography in groups, mark it when it’s not your turn. If it’s not physically possible to do this, you can do it mentally.
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Break The Status Quo When Teaching Dance

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Wise Moves: deviating from the standard– the usual, the status quo– to ensure impact

Wise Move #1: Know your strengths and stick to them

I don’t yet know her instructor, but I admire her efforts to honestly communicate where her strengths  (or interests) are and knowing where to send students searching for something else.

Wise Move #2: Get specific

We can’t please everyone all of the time and we can sure make ourselves miserable in the process of trying. One example of choosing wisdom is being honest about with whom you do your best work and focusing on that.

Wise Move #3: Seize the opportunity

When I first met with this dancer, within minutes I knew I had a choice. We could spend our time on vocabulary and terminology (which had been the initial request), or I could help her understand her body. There is a lot going on there…lordosis, knock-knees, hyper-extension, rolling ankles, etc.

Wise Move #4: Keep them moving

For this dancer, with this body, I suspect there are instructors out there that would tell her she shouldn’t dance. No one has done that. I have opted to gain the knowledge needed to help such dancers. Her other instructor opted to know where to send her to gain that help.

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Women’s Offstage Role in Ballet

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Ballet is woman

George Balanchine is often quoted as saying, “Ballet is woman.” Though a simple statement, his ballets illustrate a deep love and appreciation of women. Even as his ballets age, audiences are drawn to the way he flawlessly highlighted the beauty of the females who interpret his steps. He is known to offer moments of such simplicity that all the audience can do is admire a ballerina’s beauty.

This is a topic I tackle with fellow Miami City Ballet dancer, Michael Sean Breeden, in this week’s installment of our new podcast, “Conversations on Dance”: why are women are not as prominent in the world of choreography? The professional ballet world tends to be more competitive for women. With most repertoire requiring larger numbers of women, men often find themselves with spare time which some often use to dabble in choreography. Perhaps this explains the larger number of men interested in creating dance.

But it seems to me that the real truth is starting a career in choreography is extremely difficult. Finding the time and opportunity to put your talent to the test is almost impossible. In order to create, a choreographer needs good, willing dancers, studio space, and a venue to showcase the work. A lot of things need to fall into place just for a first big break. That’s why it is often up to teachers or school/company directors, to offer the opportunity. Hopefully in the future this is something the field will work to cultivate.

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The Gender of Choreography. Is It Time for Quotas?

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The audience, Dance Umbrella - Big Dance debate - photo by Tom Simpson
The audience, Dance Umbrella – Big Dance debate – photo by Tom Simpson

Is it time for quotas? This was one of many questions discussed at a Dance Umbrella debate, part of the Big Dance 2016 events, at the beginning of this month.

The subject of gender inequality in choreography has been stirring up a lot of press in recent months. During a panel discussion in October last year, the Rambert Dance Company’s artistic director Mark Baldwin said,

I want Rambert to be a company which is diverse in its choices of choreographers. Programming work by women and choreographers of ethnic backgrounds plays a role. It is about embracing diversity.

The Rambert company certain plays its part with a large proportion of female dancemakers. Of course, you say, where are the female conductors? The cinema directors? True, but as Michael Cooper in the New York Times pointed out,

The dearth of female choreographers at major ballet companies is perhaps more startling, given the prominence of women in the rest of the ballet and dance fields — and the way pioneering female choreographers helped shape ballet during the 20th century.

Jennings, in The Observer, swiftly wrote off a ‘Dear Akram’ letter:

In saying that we should not have more female choreographers “for the sake of having more female choreographers”, you are choosing to disregard a gender imbalance so egregious, and of such long standing, that it shames the British dance establishment.

In the contemporary sphere, female choreographers are routinely passed over for commissions in favour of less experienced men. The more large-scale and high-profile the commission, the smaller the probability that it will be awarded to a woman.

In classical dance, female choreographers face even greater discouragement; no woman has been commissioned to choreograph a main-stage ballet at the Royal Opera House since the 1990s.

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