This is a response paper to a ballet dance event I attended at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London on the 2nd of April 2011. The title of the dance was ‘Early Works’ created by Rosa, a ballet dance company belonging to Ann Teresa De Keersmaeker. This was part of a series of dances that had been taking part in the previous 5 days. The main idea was to showcase the early pieces of ballet dance by starting with ‘face. The piece that I saw was titled ‘Rosas Danst Rosas’ and it was choreographed by Elena Aria. In the main dancing hall were several dancing couples entertaining the huge audience that had turned up for the show. The ladies were dressed in white stockings ballet tights while the men were in black dancing suits. On their feet, they were wearing ballet dancing slippers that were so tight and fitted them like gloves. The ladies dancing were displaying good coordination and immense body strength and control. They were able to stretch their bodies to achieve the right elongated posture of dancing ballet with their feet turned out.
Reading from the program, this dance was created on the 12th of June 1965 by the initial choreographer George Balanchine. Today, dance has developed and there are a lot of different kinds of ballet dancing such as classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballet. This particular ballet dance at the Sandler’s Wells Theatre was neoclassical. It uses vocabularies from traditional ballet such as dancing at an extreme tempo. The first time it was danced was in 1978 as Balanchine’s Apollo. The artistic team involved in coming up with the dance includes theater directors such as Sergei Diaghilev and Ross Stratton. The team also includes choreographers, dancers, teachers, designers, and scenographers.
In the auditorium, the audience is more of a conservative neoclassical. It consists of both young and middle-aged adults. I could quickly judge that the ratio of males to females is almost equal. The audience’s reaction is quite normal since this is not the first time that neoclassical ballet is shown at Sandler’s Well Theatre or rather in London. It is a re-staging of an older work performed severally in many theatres around London. Usually, in ballet, the audiences come expecting something not different from what they know. This is the reason for the conservative nature of ballet audiences.
As a contemporary audience, I find the dance more rigid. It does not allow room for experiments and new ideas that challenge the old works. As time progresses, another group of choreographers and artistic team with creative output, need to come up. This creates diversity in ballet dancing. For a company desiring to build an enterprise in ballet dancing, might find it very expensive to come up with a new choreography. They will have to engage the services of a new choreographer with no guarantee that it will succeed. This is also another reason for the conservative nature of ballet dancing.
Ballet is part of the ballroom dances; others being tango, flamenco, waltz and foxtrot. There are some differences and similarities in ballet dancing and the other forms of ballroom. The steps in ballet are unique and identical to it. When it comes to how much energy is used in each form, they all seem to require equal amount of activity except for vigorous dancing styles like hip hop.