Indie ballet

Dear Ken and Marina,
I'll have to look at it more closely when the Balanchine "Nutcracker" comes around this year, but in the case of the Tea dance, the wit of Balanchine's musical response seems to me to reenforce the stereotype--that is, he has them do a note for note pluckiness, a musical visualization, that accentuates their "chinaman" head nods, and wise-finger pointing. I guess that could count as knowing caricature. In any case, every time I watch it, I imagine being a Chinese-American six-year-old and thinking, fuzzily, "Oh, this is supposed to be me." In other words, Balanchine may have wanted to be "before everything, about the music," as you say, Ken, but the world has a troublesome way of intervening.

Thanks so much for writing--and write again!
Apollinaire

So true, Ken! The key is usually in the music, which itself, is a fantasy. And also in Balanchine's wit, which allowed for the inclusion of elements that might be considered "lowbrow" or "in poor taste" by some.

It may be a metaphor too far (thought I don't think so) but the dancers in Act 2 of Nutcracker personify musical representations of tea and chocolate - not the people who grow or make them. Historically, Balanchine was in the forefront of integrating dancers of different ethnic backgrounds, starting on Broadway in the 30s and 40s, through the ascension of Arthur Mitchell in the NYCB of the 50s so, for me, he's cleared of the charge of lazy racial stereotyping. My own experience with watching Balanchine is that when I have had similar superficial reactions the answer invariable is to look closer at the steps. Balanchine is, before everything, about the music. Having said that, I'm unconvinced that the current NYCB management, and, by extension, it's dancers, makes that clear enough

I agree with pretty much every thing you say, but I also think there can be irony not just in the choreography itself (à la Ratmansky or Mark Morris), but also in the eye of the viewer. I can enjoy Don Q or the parrot dance in Bayadere or the antics of Le Corsaire's Ali as something silly, with a twinkle in the eye, i.e. with some sense of irony, even if it wasn't created in that spirit.
I haven't read the comments—I shudder at the thought...

Dear Marina,
I agree that when the stereotype is so obviously a ballet trope, it's not dangerous--you know, the feisty "ethnics" in Don Q. I still prefer the sort of thing that Ratmansky did with his gypsies in "The Humpbacked Horse"--where he's very actively playing with and against the stereotype, rather than just reproducing it-- or, in fact, what he does with the identically dressed maidens at the end of his "Firebird", who both invoke and caricature the ballet blanc standard (uniformity = happiness). (Clearly, I disagree with Macaulay on this point: he's missing the maddeningly teasing layers of irony that are so typically Russian. I talk about the Ratmansky ending to "Firebird" a bit more at the end of this essay here: http://www.artsjournal.com/foot/2012/06/ratmansky_redux_firebird_again.html).
If in "Raymonda," for example, they made a caricature of the caricature of the bad Arab, a la the "South Park" boys' "Team America," I'd enjoy it thoroughly. That's what Mark Morris does with his Arab queen in "The Hard Nut" or Ratmansky does with his macho bald harem lord to Tchaikovsky's "Chocolate."

Maybe that's how you understand the tea dance in Balanchine's "Nutcracker"--it's how I understand his cheesecake Arabian Chocolate. But for me the Chinaman single finger and the head wagging is mortifying. It's not even inventive. It's just dumb. So I'm not trying to not enjoy it, I don't enjoy it.

Still, I was mainly responding to the responses to Macaulay. It was as if it hadn't occurred to these objectors that there was any issue at all in these racial portraits. They weren't talking about whether there was a sell-by date for caricatures--nothing as subtle as your argument here. They were accusing him of advocating bowdlerization, as if these portraits were treasures that needed to be protected against the philistinism of political correctness. Ugh. Marina, did you read the comments? They are an education unto themselves--a scary one.

Thanks so much for writing,
Apollinaire

{Ed note: Marina Harss writes--splendidly--on dance for The New Yorker, The Nation, The Faster Times, and Dance Tabs.]

Dear Apollinaire,

I'm all for well-wrought characters and intelligent choreography (as you know), but here I have to disagree, just a little, and maybe just for the sake of argument. I don't know, but I feel like these caricatural dances are so dated and so far removed from their sources, and so tongue in cheek at this point, that they are difficult to be offended by. Not all Spanish women are proud and feisty vixens like Kitri, but should we not enjoy Don Quixote for what it is, a rollicking roller coaster of bravura and faux-Iberian attitude? Is it not ok to just put it in mental quotes and have a good time, taking it for what it is?Is it really necessary to be offended by things like the "tea" dance in Nutcracker in order to be a good person? I'm not sure...