'Stravinsky Dances: An Alternative Perspective' - The examination of a composer's choreographic legacy

Lead Research Organisation: University of Roehampton
Department Name: Drama, Theatre and Performance

Abstract

No composer has been choreographed more than Stravinsky. The project Stravinsky Dances: An Alternative Perspective examines his legacy for dance from the 20th into the 21st century, in all its variety and exuberance. It includes some of the most unlikely or unsung responses to his music, looking to the future through current postmodern work, as well as interrogating in a new way, and in the broader context, some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century.
Tile outcome is a book, tile first to examine the legacy of choreography set to the full range of an individual composer's work. It is also one of very few publications to look in depth at Stravinsky as a dance composer. It integrates the two disciplines, dance and music, although it is driven primarily from the point of view of the dancer and the dance.

An explosion of musicological research on Stravinsky in recent years has revealed a wealth of important new historical data and information on his style. However, often, dance information hits the page piecemeal; systematic treatment is needed that illuminates Stravinsky's complex connections with dance culture, his business manoeuvrings as well as artistic endeavours. From the dance point of view, writings on Stravinsky have been dominated by his affiliation with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and his collaboration with George Balanchine, and largely restricted to historical documentation on collaborations. Analytical research on Stravinsky dances is rare, both choreographic analysis and analysis crossing music and dance.

The key aims of this project are: to examine the Stravinsky legacy for dance as an evolving, now-global tradition; to examine the breadth of Stravinsky dances, extending beyond the familiar canon and familiar ways of looking at the canon and examining lesser known works by lesser-known choreographers created outside establishment dance institutions; to highlight the dance 'line' through Stravinsky's career, drawing from existing sociological research and new documentation from archive sources. The book will begin with two survey chapters discussing Stravinsky's dance aesthetics and experience and broadly examining his legacy through the lens of choreography and performance. Two further chapters are devoted to the Stravinsky work of two choreographers, including analyses of Frederick Ashton's Scenes de ballet and Persephone and Balanchine's Movements for Piano and Orchestra and Divertimento from Le Balser de Ia fee. Finally, two chapters compare different settings of The Rite of Spring (from Vaslav Nijinsky through Maurice sejart and Pina Bausch to Jerome Bel) and Les Noces (from Bronislava Nijinska through Jerome Robbins to Ana Teresa de Keersmaeker).

This project contributes to the small but rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary, chore musical work. it will be useful to scholars and students (undergraduate/postgraduate) in the fields of dance, music and interdisciplinary studies, as well as to a broader audience of music and dance enthusiasts. It will also be valuable to members of the profession interested in choreographing or dancing Stravinsky, and the style analysis could contribute to practical consultancy work in connection with revivals and reconstructions.
 
Description Objectives 1-3 (concerning the broad legacy of Stravinsky to dance) were addressed across Chapters 2-6. I undertook an analysis of discoveries from my database chronology, under the headings of general distribution, ballet and concert scores, choreographers, companies and countries, partly statistically based, but also raising issues about individuals working within and upon particular institutional, social and political contexts. Later chapters (7/8) discussed the use of the present in reflection upon the past (dance as well as broader historical tradition), comparing different choreographies set to the same score, and introducing discussion of the work of many lesser-known choreographers, whose work expressed a range of cultural roots (e.g. Japanese, African, Arab, Russian, Australian aboriginal) as well as crossing with popular dance forms. The topic of Stravinsky's musique dansante became part of the broader one of 'Subjectivity' (ref. research questions). It involved analysing the physical behaviour and perceptions of musicians interacting with his music as well as Stravinsky's own movement patterns in life and as a conductor, and the observations of choreographers and dancers (6). It also pervaded discussion of the Stravinsky styles of Balanchine and Ashton (7). In the case of Balanchine, I uncovered a variety of rhythmic/structural ingenuity that validates some pieces as 'concert' rather than theatre ballets, in Movements, resulting in an extreme physical autonomy that links Balanchine with Cunningham. Ashton, on the other hand, sharpened the Stravinsky sound, restraining his own 'romantic' inclinations, hardening his movement vocabulary, a fact highlighted by the very different, often more 'lyrical', settings of the same music by other choreographers. Tracing the dance line through Stravinsky's career in Chapter 1 (4/5) revealed an early interest in experimental theatre and hybrid interactions with non-classical dance, but, from the 1920s, the composer's outlook narrowed as his single collaboration with Balanchine acquired a kind of institutional status. I highlight Stravinsky's controlling personality in matters of production and choreomusical aesthetics, also his reticence in addressing the issue of plotless dance. There is the irony, overlooked because of the power of canonic status, that Nijinska's Noces was an overt mis-translation of Stravinsky's intentions, a theatrical concept that was far more hybrid and colourful than her ballet. Then there is the story of the piano rehearsal score of Sacre (Basle), annotations upon which Stravinsky and his close colleagues maintained were his directives to Nijinsky in 1913, promoting a high degree of choreomusical counterpoint. Research reveals that his annotations were most likely his response to Massine's style in his 1920 Sacre.



Chapters 2-6 contain detailed choreographic analysis (9), combining structural with 'narrative' approaches, sometimes privileging one approach, or at least, weighting one more than envisaged. Bausch's Sacre prompted far more detailed structural analysis than I predicted. On the other hand, my analysis of Balanchine's 1972 Divertimento from Le Baiser de la fée became a meditation on the 'ghosts' lying within the score: Tchaikovsky, Sleeping Beauty and Balanchine's early setting of the full ballet score.

In the 2011 article on Michael's Clark's Stravinsky project, I was able to consider his own individual reading of three seminal scores, Sacre, Les Noces and Apollo.
Exploitation Route Broadcasting: Radio 3, on music and dance (general, introduced by Deborah Bull), 2008; on Ballets Russes (July and August, 2009-July programme also filmed and now online as part of Promenade Concert); on Ballets Russes, for ABC (Australia), 2008.

Programme notes for Royal Ballet: Jewels, Rite of Spring, Firebird, Ondine, Scènes de ballet.

Public conferences/lecture events for wide public: Adelaide (on Ballets Russes, several items of national press coverage, with my name mentioned, 2008 and a chapter in a conference book, drawing from Stravinsky Dances); Salzburg (including press coverage mentioning my name, on Stravinsky, 2008); Soirée Balanchine, Paris (at launch of Ann Hogan's edited book on Balanchine, 2000); Boston (on Ballets Russes, 2009).

Book on Michael Clark marketed as art book to wide public, not as academic book (already publicised in Sunday Times, Vogue USA, Art Review and Creative Review).

My own professional writing: for Dancing Times: review of Charles Joseph's book on Stravinsky and dance.
Sectors Creative Economy