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Swan Lake: Combining Storytelling With Stamina

October 28, 2014 by 4dancers

Fernando Bufala w Joseph Gatti in Corella Ballet
Ashley Ellis and Joseph Gatti in Swan Lake, photo by Fernando Bufala

Today Boston Ballet‘s Ashley Ellis joins us to talk about how she gets ready to dance the classic ballet Swan Lake. Read more from her in the coming months as she authors posts for us as a contributing writer to the site…


Dancing the role of Odette/Odile is an incredible challenge for any dancer. What steps do you take to prepare your body for this role?

Dancing the dual role of Odette/Odile is a challenge in various ways. There is the obvious technical challenge that most full-length classical ballets demand. However, Swan Lake is different in that to dance this ballet the ballerina is required to portray two characters that are completely opposite of one another.

When preparing to dance either Odile or Odette I like to start with my arms. The style of the upper body is quintessential to becoming a swan. Like with dancing any role, but especially Odette/Odile, I like to spend a bit of time before rehearsal or a show just to gear my body up for the specific style it will have to feel. I go through the movements so that when I have to dance it feels more organic. When I enter in the second act I don’t want to have to think about if my arms are making the right lines, I want to think about how I feel at that moment with my partner and the music.

So until I feel that I have these extreme and sometimes contorted positions feeling more organic in my own body I am constantly checking in the mirror to see what line the public will see. For me this comes with time as I’m working on the role. Each day my muscles remember more and I have to think less about the positions.

Then it is important to build stamina, so as we approach the shows, I like to run each act to build strength.

Black Swan Pas with Joseph Gatti
Ashley Ellis and Joesph Gatti dance the Black Swan pas de deux, photo by Fernando Bufala

What do you do to make each character (Odette and Odile) unique?

Each swan, the white and the black, the good and the evil, represents a completely opposite identity from the other. I try to embody the characteristics of each and do my best not to let them bleed together. I take on each role and try to let them shine through my movements. For example, Odette is a kind spirit, embodying love. However she is not weak, she is still a proud swan queen.

Odile on the other hand shows up in the 3rd act with Von Rothbart and carries out her actions under his command. Her mission is to trick the prince into swearing his love for her. To bring this role to life I try to use my eyes and more commanding movement to show strength and lure the prince in.

It does require a moment though to calm down going into 4th act after running off stage from the high of dancing the black swan–especially because in this act Odette is heartbroken.

When getting coached by the incredible, Larissa Ponomarenko, she constantly reminds me as I execute my steps that although I may be creating an esthetically pleasing classical line with my arms, that I look human, and “at this moment you are a swan.”

What is your rehearsal schedule like for this ballet?

Well, at Boston Ballet we are often working on various ballets at the same time. We just finished putting together Lady of the Camellias as well as various shorter pieces for later in the season. So things can get a little bit crazy, and some days going from contemporary into classical makes it especially challenging. The most important thing is to go into each rehearsal focused on the role to be mastered. So much of dance is about being mentally prepared.

As we get closer to the performances I like to run the ballet in order, beginning with second act and going to black and then back to white. It is so important to build stamina. It’s funny because I find that I tend to stress about not having stamina, but I know in the end I will get there. The feeling of not being able to get through a variation, ballet, or whatever is so daunting. It’s never easy, but it can get easIER.

IMG_4688
Ashley Ellis as Odette, photo by Fernando Bufala

You have danced Swan Lake before, but Petipa’s version. How is Mikko Nissinen’s version different?

Like the version I danced previously, Mikko’s has the same classical base, with variations in the steps that he has chosen to apply to make it his own. I do find it interesting to see how the ending changes from version to version; if they die, or live happily after, or in some, they even die and then rise up into the clouds. I don’t think I’m supposed to reveal the ending of this version because it is NEW, and he probably wouldn’t like it if I spilled the beans. Haha!

There are many beautiful, interesting, and original touches in Robert Perdziola’s design and it is sure to be stunning. I can’t wait to see the production on stage; I know it will definitely be worth coming to see.

Swan Lake has such beautiful music. Is there a particular section of the score that you find you gravitate toward?

One of my favorite moments is the introduction to the Black Swan Pas de deux. The music begins while we are still off stage and then we fly on from the wing together. From the very beginning it gives me such a feeling of strength and command.

In terms of your pointe shoes – how do you prepare them for Swan Lake, and how many pairs will you use in a performance?

I definitely want good shoes, and will most likely wear a different pair for each act. Not a new pair for each act, because they will be broken in and worn just enough that they are ready to provide what I need. They have to have good support because there is so much technical dancing throughout the whole ballet.

As Odette I like to have supportive shoes but they should be well broken in. There is a lot of running around as well as movement that is very controlled so I need to be able to really feel the floor. As Odile I can wear a slightly harder pair. There are a lot of turns throughout the pas, variation, and coda and I need to know they will support me until the end.

sitting swan by Hoggerandco
Ashley Ellis in costume for Boston Ballet’s Swan Lake, photo by Hogger & Co.

What do you find to be the most difficult part of dancing this ballet, and what do you do to cope with it?

The stamina is quite hard, but it is more than just doing the steps and getting through to the end. It is so important to make everything seamless, while maintaining your portrayal of a swan, and on top of that telling a story. So the hardest part is doing all of this at once. I find that the best way to achieve this is to spend time on it.

It sounds simple, but spending time moving like a swan and listening to the music, and thinking of how the character feels at that moment within the ballet is the best way for me to prepare.

What is the thing that you enjoy most about dancing this ballet?

I love dancing both Odette and Odile so much, the challenge to becoming both is quite exciting. I love various aspects of becoming each character. On a physical level, although the dancing is very classical, the style feels quite freeing. Also, for me the music really brings both characters to life. You can really hear the emotions through each composition; from the tranquil feeling of Odette when she is all alone in her entrance to how frantic she is when the prince startles her, to the second act pas where she is falling in love, but is torn because of the spell cast on her. Tchaikovsky carries you through all of these emotions. Then for Odile, I feel thrown at a high speed onto the stage with the entrance of the 3rd act pas; the music screams grandeur and power.


Boston Ballet will be performing Mikko Nissinen’s Swan Lake from October 30th through November 16th. See Ashley Ellis bring Odette and Odile to life on stage. View the rest of the company’s offerings for the season here.


Boston Ballet's Ashley Ellis
Boston Ballet’s Ashley Ellis

Contributing writer Ashley Ellis is a principal dancer at Boston Ballet. Ellis hails from Torrance, California and she received her dance training at the South Bay Ballet under the direction of Diane Lauridsen. Other instruction included Alicia Head, Mario Nugara, Charles Maple, and Kimberly Olmos.

She began her professional career with American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company and later joined American Ballet Theatre as a company dancer. In 1999, Ellis won the first prize at the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award, and went on to become the recipient of the Coca Cola scholarship award in 2000 and 2001. She has performed in Spain with Angel Corella’s touring group and joined Corella Ballet in 2008 as a soloist. In 2011, Ellis joined Boston Ballet as a second soloist. She was promoted to soloist in 2012 and principal dancer in 2013.

Her repertoire includes Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty; Mikko Nissinen’s The Nutcracker; Natalia Makarova’s  La  Bayadère;  Marius  Petipa’s  Swan Lake; Christopher Wheeldon’s DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse, VIII and Polyphonia; Harald Lander’s Études; Michel  Fokine’s  Les  Sylphides;  Rudolf  Nureyev’s Don Quixote; Christopher Bruce’s Rooster; George Balanchine’s  Serenade,  Coppélia,  Symphony  in Three Movements, Symphony in C, and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux; Clark Tippet’s Bruch Violin Concerto; Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room; Stanton Welch’s Clear; Angel Corella’s String Sextet; Wayne McGregor’s Chroma; Jorma Elo’s Awake Only; Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free; Jiří Kylián’s Wings of Wax, Symphony of Psalms, and Petite Mort.

Filed Under: Editorial Tagged With: Ashley Ellis, ballerina, black swan, black swan pas de deux, Bostone Ballet, lady of the camellias, Mikko Nissinen, odette, odile, petipa, swan lake, white swan

Opus 4, No. 3: The Personality Dynamics of the Music for Tchaikovsky’s White Swan Pas de Deux (Part II)

January 27, 2013 by 4dancers

by Allan Greene

PART THE SECOND

(Read the PART THE FIRST here)

Games Musical Personifications Play

Let’s parse some of the possible stock personality types we’ve met in White Swan score.  We may use the language of Jungian analyst David Kiersey popularized in his books on personality types, Please Understand Me (1984) and Please Understand Me II (1998).

Here a little homework is in order.  We’re entering the Kingdom of Personality Typology, that lovely branch of Jungian psychology that sorts temperaments and predicts behavior based on the interplay among temperaments.

First, if you’ve not done so, take the test, just for fun.  After you’ve scored yourself and determined which of the sixteen personality types you belong to, read the blurb about that type (in the right-hand column of links).  Again, for fun, see how close or how off-the-mark the blurb about your type is to your actual behavior.  Read some or all of the other blurbs.  Incidentally, I always score as an INTP (Architect), which is my former profession.  Curieux, non?

(A quick side note:  The sixteen four-letter acronyms relating to the sixteen personality types originally proposed by Isabel Myers Briggs are composed of a shorthand for the three categories Jung identified as components of personality, and one category added by Myers Briggs.  Each category is either/or, so the number of permutations is sixteen: sixteen personality types.  I am including the acronyms as a reference for readers who either already know about these or who want to find out more about them.)

I have selected personality types for the various sections of the pas d’action.  I couldn’t administer any temperament-sorters or temperament-indicators, so I’ve had to rely on a what you might call a musician’s clinical observation of the various sections.

As I view it, the scheme is pretty simple.  There are four distinct “personalities” in this music,  five if you include the coda.  There’s the harp solo, the “notturno” music, the pulsating woodwinds and the “Peasant Pas” music.  There is no overlap among appearances: the harp solo does not become blended, either polyphonically or texturally, with the notturno; the notturno does not blend, harmonically, rhythmically or thematically, with the pulsating woodwinds, and so forth.  Musically, the interactions between sections are one-to-one: B reacts to A, C reacts to B, D reacts to C, B reacts to D…

We will also have to look at a branch of Jungian typology favored by Russian researchers, Socionics, which focuses on the interaction among personality types.

Introduction: Harp Solo

Counselor (INFJ): My reading of the “personality” of the harp solo is that it is a portrait of Nature as a spiritual, centering influence.  The ripples of surface tension on the lake are, figuratively, beckoning the prince into the swans’ world.  Kiersey: “Counselors have an exceptionally strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others, and find great personal fulfillment interacting with people, nurturing their personal development, guiding them to realize their human potential. interested in helping people with their personal problems…

“Counselors… are highly private… with an unusually rich, complicated inner life…  They have mysterious, intricately woven personalities which sometimes puzzle even them.

“Counselors are concerned with… feelings and are able to act as a barometer of… feelings…

“… Counselors are often seen as the most poetical of all the types, and in fact they use a lot of poetic imagery… Counselors are highly intuitive and can recognize another’s emotions or intentions – good or evil – even before that person is aware of them.”

Section A: Notturno 1:  This melody, with its chromatic swoops and leaps, and its harmonic yearning, is a courting song.  Accompanied by the spare strum of the lute, it awakens the ear gently.  It is Orpheus.

Performer (ESFP) or Composer (ISFP), depending on whether the tenor is outward- or inward-looking, Gene Kelly or George Balanchine.

The “Gene Kelly” Performer (ESFP)  interpretation of the prince:  It seems a little ridiculous to analogize this music to Gene Kelly, but hear me out.  If the prince is a leading his merry band of huntsmen in pursuit of adventure, amusement, and what we reductively refer to these days as male bonding, then capping the day with an evening full of wine, a feast, song and bonhomie.

Kiersey: “Performers have the special ability… to delight those around them with their warmth, their good humor, and with their often extraordinary skills… Whether on the job, with friends, or with their families, Performers are exciting and full of fun, and their great social interest lies in stimulating those around them to take a break from work and worry, to lighten up and enjoy life…

“The Performers’ talent for enjoying life is healthy for the most part, though it also makes them more subject to temptations than the other types. Pleasure seems to be an end in itself for them, and variety is the spice of life. And so Performers are open to trying almost anything that promises them a good time, not always giving enough thought to the consequences…

“In so many ways, Performers view life as an eternal cornucopia from which flows an endless supply of pleasures.”

Don’t say the prince isn’t played that way, because he is, frequently.  So I’m suggesting it as one possible “personality” for the Notturno 1 segment of the music.

The “George Balanchine” Composer (ISFP) interpretation of the prince: I’m a composer, and since my composing activity has always been solitary, I have always assumed that all other composers were just like me.  Then I read Kiersey, whose observations of the “composer” type described a person unrecognizable to me.  Unrecognizable in the sense that it wasn’t remotely me.  I’m constantly holding back and self-editing, preferring to say very little very well.  Kiersey’s composer can’t hold back, the music spills forth, the compulsion to create overwhelms modesty.  Kiersey’s characterization of the composer made me look at all composers with an eye to their work habits.  It got me to see that, indeed, most people who call themselves composers have a compulsion to express themselves, a compulsion which is only a sufficient and not necessary component in my own creative process.  But when you look at the productivity of  Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Schubert, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, there’s not much self-doubt. As much as Beethoven worked and re-worked scores, the amount of music he penned, and much of it while in a great deal of pain, is stunning.  And even though Tchaikovsky was wracked with misgivings about much of his œuvre, and destroyed or hours of music, the music continued to gush forth, mostly fully-formed and unrestrained.

Tchaikovsky reveals in his letters that he believes deeply that all music tells specific stories, even Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; and that his own music is at least partly autobiographical.  Thus it is easy for me to see a self-portrait in the notturno.

Kiersey: “Composers are in tune with their senses, and so have a sure grasp of what belongs, and what doesn’t belong, in all kinds of works of art…

“Although Composers often put long, lonely hours into their artistry, they are just as impulsive as the other Artisans. They do not wait to consider their moves; rather, they act in the here and now, with little or no planning or preparation. Composers are seized by the act of artistic composition, as if caught up in a whirlwind. The act is their master, not the reverse. Composers paint or sculpt, they dance or skate, they write melodies or make recipes-or whatever-simply because they must. They climb the mountain because it is there.

“This ability to lose themselves in action accounts for the spectacular individual accomplishments of some Composers, and yet on their social side they show a kindness unmatched by all the other types. Composers are especially sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, and they sympathize freely with the sufferer. Some have a remarkable way with young children, almost as if there were a natural bond of sympathy and trust between them. A similar bond may be seen between some Composers and animals, even wild animals. Many Composers have an instinctive longing for the wilds, and nature seems to welcome them.”

Shall we visit the lake, see the water-fowl, anyone?

Introduction’s “relationship” with Notturno 1:  Another variant of Jungian typology, Socionics, addresses the kinds of relationships there are, typically, between type-designated individuals.  It delves into some detail to characterize these relationships.

According to a suspiciously reductive table from www.the16types.info, a Socionics forum, the  ESFP (Performer, Gene Kelly, Notturno) tends to dominate and be judgmental in any relationship with an INFJ (Counselor, Harp Solo).  Accepting this requires a little imagination, but the claim is based in certain strong personality similarities and certain equally strong dissimilarities, enabling the extroverted Performer to hold the introverted Counselor in thrall.

In Swan Lake terms, the prince easily and quickly wrests the situation from the relatively passive natural setting.  He swoops in and grabs the reins.

Back at the Socionics table, we find the ISFP (Composer, Balanchine, Notturno) and the INFP (Counselor, Harp Solo) have what is called an Activity relationship, which means that they bring out the best in each other.  In my opinion, this is another perfectly good way to interpret the prince.

Section B: Pulsating woodwinds 1:  Odette is trying to fight her physical attraction to the prince.

Provider (ESFJ) or Protector (ISFJ): My conception of Odette is as either the provider for or protector of her flock of swans.  How she’s portrayed depends on whether she draws impulse from the world around her or from her inner life.

Again, the music is Pulsating Woodwinds, a little staccato folk fragment and ear-worm, a unique musical moment.  Marrying this musical moment to the story that Tchaikovsky is very clearly telling requires letting go of being literal; in the same way, the beautiful slow melody of the notturno cannot be understood as a musical portrait of the prince without accepting Tchaikovsky brandishing his poetic license.

This is how this Jungian musical analysis sloshes differing layers of understanding back and forth in one flask.  Eventually one reaches an equilibrium where the music, the story and personalities become one.

Provider (ESFJ): Kiersey: “Providers take it upon themselves to insure the health and welfare of those in their care, but they are also the most sociable of all the Guardians…

“Providers are extremely sensitive to the feelings of others, which makes them perhaps the most sympathetic of all the types, but which also leaves them somewhat self-conscious, that is, highly sensitive to what others think of them. Loving and affectionate themselves, they need to be loved in return. In fact, Providers can be crushed by personal criticism, and are happiest when given ample appreciation both for themselves personally and for the tireless service they give to others.”

Socionics:  ESFJ / ESFP relationship: Quasi-Identical.  V.V. Gulenko, A.V. Molodtsev, Introduction to Socionics: “This is a relations of coexistence in complete misunderstanding of each other…  Sometimes there is a sense that you are wasting time. Because nothing in particular unites quasi-identicals, these relations break up easily, without regrets. Rather colorless relations, which are described well by a [Russian] proverb: ‘You have your own wedding, and we have ours.’”

At the moment that Section A joins Section B, this may very well be the state of the relationship.

ESFJ / ISFP relationship: Mirror.  Wikisocion: “Mirror is an intertype relation of intellectual stimulation and mutual correction. The pair shares common interests, but differ slightly in thought process and methodology…

“Perhaps more than any other relation, Mirrors can stimulate each other’s creativity and work in tandem on the same project, but this interaction is primarily intellectual (i.e. work-related) and does not result in a feeling of closeness or needing the other on a more instinctive level.”

It’s hard to imagine anything involving Tchaikovsky’s music that is “primarily intellectual”.  But it’s not that difficult to play these roles as two intellectually distant personalities at this point in the drama.  All etiquette, no passion… all form, no substance.

Protector (ISFJ): Kiersey: “[Protectors’] primary interest is in the safety and security of those they care about – their family, their circle of friends…  Protectors have an extraordinary sense of loyalty and responsibility in their makeup, and seem fulfilled in the degree they can shield others from the dirt and dangers of the world…  Protectors believe deeply in the stability of social ranking conferred by birth, titles, offices, and credentials. And they cherish family history and enjoy caring for family property, from houses to heirlooms.

“They are not as outgoing and talkative as the Provider[s]… [ESFJs], and their shyness is often misjudged as stiffness, even coldness, when in truth Protectors are warm-hearted and sympathetic, giving happily of themselves…”

Peasant Pas 1 (Personality D):  This is a Baroque violin solo stretched out in time and pulse, as if a country fiddler were sight-reading the Bach Chaconne. (Here’s Maxim Vengerov nailing it.) Tchaikovsky transforms a moment of high drama in Undina into a moment that verges on comic parody in Swan Lake.  Did he deliberately juxtapose the Russian nationalism (folk-derived) popular in his circles with the moment of maximum drama in the choreography?  Was this meant to be a political statement?  Since there’s such a disconnect between the music and the story line here, what would the true Personality D be?  Parody would entail exaggeration, which would be at cross-purposes with the drama, so I would keep this section sober.  The music is Sancho Panza to the drama’s Don Quixote.

Peasant Pas 1 is the Swan Queen’s moment.  She is in crisis, her world rent apart by the sudden appearance of this prince.  How does the Protector (ISFJ) behave under these stresses?  Eve Delunas, another Jungian therapist, in her book Survival Games Personalities Play (1994, SunInk Publications), hypothesizes that the four major personality categories (remember Galen, the First Century physician, who described Melancholy, Phlegmatic, Sanguine and Choleric?) play each a particular game and assume each a particular role when in crisis.

Dr. Delunas writes that “[Protectors and Providers] play Complain when their ability to be accountable, unselfish and to belong is at risk.  To play this game, they present themselves as decommissioned by complaining loudly of being sick, tired, worried and/or sorry.  As they immobilize others with fears, pains, worries, fatigue or sorrow, [they] manage to entangle others who feel obligated to take care of them.”   That’s a pretty damn good description of what plays out between the Swan Queen and the prince.

Pulsating Woodwinds 2 (Personality B):  Here is Odette in further conflict with herself over the prince.  Expressively and according to the musical structure, however, this is Odette confronting herself (Personality B versus Personality D).

Socionics: R.K. Sedih, Informational Psychoanalysis: “This interaction leads to an interesting effect. The mask that every person fits for living in society is almost transparent for your identical. This effect has both positive and negative sides.”

Is this the foreshadowing of Odette/Odile?  Could the seed of that schizophrenia be in Odette’s struggles to escape her instincts?  Interesting.

Peasant Pas 2 (Personality D): This is the second attempt at achieving escape velocity from the prince’s magnetism.  Personality D versus Personality B presumably plays out the same as Personality B versus Personality D.  The music is meanwhile adumbrated and increasingly tense.

This personality is in crisis.  Sick, tired, worried and/or sorry?

Pulsating Woodwinds 3 (Personality B):  Last attempt at escape.  How does the ISFJ or ESFJ deal with this?

Cello Cadenza (Personality A1) and Notturno Duet (Personality A1+2): The Queen surrenders.  The Prince takes control.  Two spirits enlace.  The music tugs, tightens and knots them together.

No matter how many times I’ve played this, whether in rehearsal or performance, I can never get enough.  I’ve rehearsed it for hours with ballet stars and with students (using the Alexander Siloti piano transcription).  I’ve performed it with a violin soloist and in my own violin, cello and piano transcription.  It only gets better with repetition.

In a future post I’ll explore what inspiration means.  Suffice to say that this music is one of Tchaikovsky’s inspired moments.

Now, dealing with the personality of the duet is problematic.  Is the counter-melody in the violin a new personality superimposed on the notturno personality A, or is it an elaboration of it?

To me, it  is clearly a new personality, which we could then subject to the same Socionics (or whatever other personality-versus-personality analysis we choose) as we have between prior sections.

I’m calling the two personalities A1 (cello) and  A2 (violin).  Musically, the two solos are stylistically similar and melodically complementary.  They are yet another allusion to the Baroque.  This time, its DNA comes from the Baroque trio sonata.

A trio sonata as understood by Bach and Handel is really a duet with accompaniment.  In many cases, the ensemble would be violin, cello and cembalo (any available keyboard).  The violin has its thematic material, the cello has similar or contrasting thematic material, and the cembalo has a set bass line and set harmonies which would be realized as improvisations.  Aesthetically, it’s a three-threaded braid with two much more prominent threads.

Understanding the Baroque trio sonata makes understanding what Tchaikovsky was doing here clear.  The musical braid was even a metaphor for how the Swan Queen and the prince had come together.

Nottturno Duet (Personality A1+2): Remember the two personality types suggested for Notturno 1?

Performer (ESFP) or Composer (ISFP),depending on whether the tenor is outward- or inward-looking, Gene Kelly or George Balanchine.

Socionics has a category for this kind of relationship: Extinguishment.  This is what happens when Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby sing a duet (as they finally, unconvicingly, did in Cole Porter’s High Society).  Eugene Gorenko, Vladimir Tolstikov, Nature of Self:  “Partners have all functions in common, except their direction is opposite. It would seem that they should have a lot in common, but in practice it turns out that what one see from the outside, while the other sees from the inside. This leads to misunderstanding of each other. Partners do not find each other interesting, dialogue is not too fascinating. Peaceful communication is possible if there are no other people in presence, but as soon as someone else comes into picture, the attention of one partner (usually the extrovert one) switches on to the third person.”  [As an occasional cembalo player, I appreciate the attention in trio-sonata dynamics.]

This suggests that the way to approach interpreting the duet is to highlight the rivalry between the two solos, to play up their emotional tension.  This makes sense.

Coda (Personality E): Two Performer (ESFP)s, although I’m inclined to stop at this point, since neither the drama nor the story is developed in this pro-forma end-cap.

IN SUM

So here we have another way to interpret the story told by the Pas D’Action, through an interpretation of Jungian personality dynamics.  We can use our poetic imaginations and artistic skills to retell the story inside the music by telling the story of so many “personalities”, strutting onto the stage one after the next.  The personalities tell the music’s story yet depend on the communicative skills of the musician to shape their voices.

I’m not claiming that everyone should or even can take this approach.  The approach makes sense to me because I happen to possess a rich creative mental world.  This is a world out of which I am able to draw the many strands, feelings and experiences of my life and analogize them into the characters I find in the music.

In a way, such analysis is the social scientist’s version of what the ancient storytellers did to make their heroes both universal and real.  Tchaikovsky the storyteller would have been drawn to the archetypes embodied in the prince and the Swan Queen, as he had been with those of Undine and Huldebrand.  He would have relied on his observation of human behavior and his intuition as to its trajectory in this particular situation.  The prince, on a hunting expedition, comes across a bird so beautiful, so alluring, that he finds himself falling in love with it.  As a hunter, he is impelled to capture it.  The bird, of course, is really a woman who has been put under a spell, which is enough to deal with.  But she needs to kiss the prince to regain her human form.  Being a bird, she behaves like a wild creature, not a civilized person.  That wildness is part of all of us, and all our learned civility is a thin cloak that strains to keep the animal inside us from shredding our civilization.

As an interpreter of Tchaikovsky’s score, I see it as my job to elucidate these tensions and their resolutions for my audience, which happens to include the dancers, the folks in the seats and my fellow musicians.  The more deftly I can relate the musical material to the story’s emotional fever chart, whether it’s the water imagery of the harp solo, the crooning of the solo violin, the nervous flight of the pulsating winds or the double love arias between the cello and violin, the better I serve my audience.

In my own mind, I imagine there is a necessary relationship between a personal encyclopedia of cultural references, including a particular provisional understanding of human behavior and an amateur’s grasp of neurobiology, and what’s going on in the Swan Lake score.

But then again, I would.  I’m just the type.

 

Filed Under: Music & Dance Tagged With: ballet music, swan lake, white swan

Opus 4, No. 1: The White Swan And A Jungian-style Of Musical Analysis

September 18, 2012 by Ashley David

by Allan Greene

Cue the strings.  Prepare yourself for something big.  I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

Opus 4 is going to be big project.  It’s going to synthesize several streams of thought that I’ve been carrying around with me for a while, one going back 36 years to when I was a senior at Carleton College.  I’ve been intending to do something with these ideas for a few years, since George de la Peña, who was Artistic Director of the Joffrey Ballet School at the time, suggested I give a talk to the faculty and students on music and dance.

In order to get paid for such a talk, George had me submit a proposal to the school’s executive director.  Unfortunately, George and the executive director parted ways before my proposal was ever processed.  I had proposed doing five lecture/demonstrations on various topics, including the use both Stravinsky and Balanchine made of French Baroque poetry in Apollo, and the how the Ivanov/Legat choreography of the White Swan Pas de Deux in Swan Lake and Tchaikovsky’s music for it are interlaced to create a masterpiece.  Long story short, no money, no revelations.

When the editor of this blog, Catherine, asked me to write about music and dance, and gave me carte blanche to write what was on my mind, the first thing that popped into my head was that long-delayed White Swan project.  I had intended originally to recruit two dancers to demonstrate various parts of the dance while I played at the piano and did my Leonard Bernstein routine.  In cyberspace, however, my audio-visual aids will be a little different.  But it will get to the same place.

The more I thought about how to do this, the more I realized that my project rested on assumptions that, to be charitable, not everybody agrees with nor understands. [Read more…]

Filed Under: 4dancers, Editorial, Music & Dance, Music Notes Tagged With: balanchine, Carleton College, George de la pena, joffrey ballet, joffrey ballet school, music and dance, odette, rothbart, stravinsky, tchaikovsky, the four temperaments, white swan, white swan pas de deux

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