Talk:Contemporary ballet

Problematic Article

I think this article is highly problematic because "Contemporary Ballet" is at best an ill-defined marketing term. The complete lack of citations is a symptom of this problem. This article lacks any objective basis for the terms it sets out to use or define.

A good article on the subject would probably need to rely on the works of various dance scholars. I have not collected such works in front of me at this point. But... I think that the resulting article would be (factually) very different from what we have here. Some major problems of fact I see in this article:

1. "Classical ballet" does NOT just mean "traditional." Rather, "classical ballet" and "romantic ballet" must be defined in the broader contexts of classicism and romanticisms that swept all the other major art forms in Europe --- painting, sculpture, architecture, theater, etc. There are specific ideals that make a piece of art "classical," no matter what century it was made in. Some of those ideals in ballet involve verticality, length, geometric formalism, order, and simplicity of movement. Classicism is often contrasted with romanticism and modernsim. Articles on classicism and romanticism usually mention that most works of art have some aspects of both --- and this is true for most ballet as well, past and present.
2. Whether a ballet has a story or not has nothing to do with its degree of classicism. To the contrary, the "high classical" period of ballet (late 19th century Russia) saw ballet evolve away from librettos as it gained independence from opra as its own art form. Pantomime was successively replaced with dancing. This evolution was continued into the 20th century, when people began making ballets that contained no libretto at all. Rather than being something different or against classicism, this development was simply a matter of taking the evolution of classical ideals to their logical conclusion.
3. George Balanchine was a classicist, through and through. And he has a direct connection to the high classical Russian period (through the Ballets Russes, for which he danced). The changes he made to ballet --- shorter skirts (or none at all), longer lines, faster feet, more focus on the dancing rather than the costumes or stories --- these were all aspects of taking classical ideals further, to their logical conclusion. It doesn't matter whether you call Balanchine's classicism "neo" or not --- he was more classical than anyone who came before him. A couple of turned-in feet here and there doesn't really change that. And despite the modernest mid-20th-century aesthetic that Balanchine used to finish his ballets, they were still based on a VERY classical technical core.
4. There isn't really much of a thing of "mixing" modern dance and ballet. That's because pointe shoes dictate certain (classical) ways of moving, including a strong emphasis of verticality. You really can't do modern dance in pointe shoes. If you remove the pointe shoes, there's a lot more possibility to do modern dance or somehow "mix" the techniques. But still --- most ballet dancers can't do much modern dance and vice versa, the two techniques are rather different. So you're still most likely to end up either with ballet in flat shoes, or with modern dance proper.

Some of this stuff is explained in: http://www.amazon.com/Ballet-101-Complete-Learning-Loving/dp/0786881550

In general, most (almost all) of what people call "contemporary ballet" these days, as far as I can tell, is just ballet. Sure, maybe they didn't use an fairy tale story line --- but is that enough of a difference to create an entire new artistic sub-genre? Every artist is different. To define "ballet ballet" as only ballets that look like they were made by Maurius Petipa --- that seems rather narrow to me, as well well as being incredibly subjective. We need (and we have) objective standards for what "classical ballet" means (as explained above).

So... I would suggest that:

1. The main ballet article should include a more full development of the influences of romantic, classical and (later) modern aesthetics on ballet choreography and technique (although I must point out, classical influences dominate the technique and that's not likely to change soon).
2. This article should be merged into the main ballet article, basically as a footnote. I believe that the term "contemporary ballet" has no well-defined meaning. But since people use it these days, it is worth some mention.

Cleanup

This article needs a great amount of cleanup and expansion. However, I have never formally studied modern ballet and have no sources. If anyone could clean this up to adhere with encyclopedic tone, source it, add images, and expand it, it would be greatly improved and also appreciated. --Keitei (talk) 18:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Expansion

Hi, everyone (especially Keitei and E@L) -- I've just renamed the article (from "modern ballet" to "contemporary ballet"), expanded it, cleaned it up, and added the image of the ridiculously beautiful Drew Jacoby. I'll be adding more soon, as more information comes in! Thanks to all, Emmegan 02:31, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be useful to explain if there is a relationship of contempoary ballet to contemporary dance. Maybe as a see also. Paul foord 10:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

"Contemporary dance" is a kind of dance that evolved after modern dance, late in the 20th century. It is not the same as "contemporary ballet."

Merge with main ballet article

Hello! I'd like to merge this article with the main ballet article. I plan to do so unless I hear otherwise. Slhogan94 19:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose
  • Hm... Slhogan, I think maybe a link to this article from the main ballet article might be in order, but I'm not sure of an actual merge. In my head, contemporary ballet warrants an article of its own, as in recent years it's really become a separate entity from "ballet ballet." I'd love to hear the opinions of others, though (I haven't been around in an extremely long while!). Thanks! Emmegan 23:17, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • A summary of this article there would be good but this stands alone and is a useful link to contemporary dance Paul foord 13:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I disagree... Contemporary is an important part of dance today and needs its own article. It is quite different to ballet —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.161.75.248 (talk) 06:34, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I have to disagree with P-nut-buh-tuh's argument below that contemporary dance (as opposed to contemporary ballet, which this article is about) is derived from classical ballet. Modern dance, and its contemporary offshoots, began as a revolt against the codes of ballet, which resulted in a number of techniques very different to classical ballet -- such as, for example, Graham and Cunningham techniques -- which are not formulated with ballet at all. It's quite possible that P-nut has conflated contemporary dance and contemporary ballet mistakenly, but if not, it must be made clear that contemporary dance and ballet have very different roots. Contemporary ballet, conversely, does have a mixture of ballet and various contemporary styles, but even taking this into account I'd still hesitate merging contemporary ballet with ballet. Would you merge modern painting with classic European painting simply because modern painting followed from or was a reaction to the early European styles of painting, or because they both happen to use the same medium or brush stroke technique? As someone who has both been a professional dancer and dance writer for many years, I can tell you that both contemporary dance and contemporary ballet could easily fill two separate Wiki pages with no problem at all. PrimateMover (talk) 02:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• Agree
  • Being a dancer myself, i can inform you that contemporary dace is derived from a combination modern dance and ballet. Being one part ballet, it should be merged with the ballet article. I'm not saying anyone's wrong, though. Make no mistake, contemporary dance is very much it's own style. But without ballet, there would be no backbone for the technique of contemporary dance. Take Alvin Ailey's Dance Company, for example. They have many different styles of dancing, but most of them are formulated with ballet. Watching them perform, an expeirienced ballerina like myself and even an inexperienced one can point out specific movements that are strictly ballet. Thank you for reviewing my input!

P-nut-buh-tuh 21:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Not merged open discussion since March 2007, balance is against merger. Removed tag. Paul foord (talk) 06:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Removed tag to merge with neoclassical ballet - no rationale presented

Paul foord (talk) 06:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Added editing banners

Added editing banners to two subsections that need more inline citations. --SpiritedMichelle (talk) 02:04, 29 November 2019 (UTC)