Jennifer Homans, a professional ballet dancer who became a historian, recently published a book, “Apollo’s Angels,” about the history of classical ballet. The book is an academic analysis of “four centuries of ballet – from its origins in 16th century France to its elevation in the court of Versailles, through the Renaissance, Bolshevism, modernism and the cold war – describing the dance’s evolutions and revolutions in the context of political, philosophical and aesthetic currents.” The book is very interesting because it teaches you historical facts about ballet the perspective of a ballerina herself. This gives the reader the best of both worlds, in terms of wholly appreciating the art form of ballet.
Interestingly, Homans introduces her discovery of old ballet rehearsal notes. One of the notebooks that she unearthed was had dance notations written out, with music written above it. In order to authentically recreate the dance, she got a violinist to record the music from the notebook. Then, she reconstructed the dance by assigning steps to the music.
While most of the criticism about Homans’ book has been positive, one of the negative critics is Rachel Howard of the San Fransisco Chronicle. Howard criticizes Homans for including “unsubstantiated forecasting” at the end of the book. Howard is referring to certain claims made by Homans that ToniAnn discusses in her blog post below mine. That is, Homans claims, “After years of trying to convince myself otherwise, I now feel sure that ballet is dying.” This statement is very strong, and Howard isn’t the only critic who harshly criticizes it.
Despite her critics, Homans maintains that ballet is going to continue to decline, unless something changes. While she doesn’t offer a concrete solution to the problem, Homans does advise ballet choreographers and dancers to “look at the history” in order to find the answer. Homans hopes that her book can be a resource to artists, allowing them to be inspired by ideas of the past to revitalize ballet today.
So in response to ToniAnn’s question about whether or not ballet is dying, Homans argues that yes, ballet is dying, but if we understand its past we will be able to revitalize it in the present.
Ballet has had a long and difficult history of preserving the art form. 150 years ago, the dance lived only in the memory of the Dance master. in the 19th century there was a rudimentary dance “notation” that was developed, but the dance master was still necessary to fill in many details. the dances could then be handed down from dance troupe to dance troupe, and dance master to dance master, like a decades long game of “telephone.” In the 20th Century, with film and later with video, it is possible to preserve modern choreography as never before. If Homans is intent on preserving ballet exactly as it was 100 years ago, then he is probably right: ballet is dead. But that rich tradition can inform modern dance and modern ballet without being slavish to the tradition.