DG1Full extract - Royal Academy Of Dance

GAZETTE
I S SU E
Women at work — Good pain, bad pain — John Neumeier
DANCE
I AM
A DANCER
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G A Z E T T E
The magazine of The Royal Academy of Dance
Issue 1 — 2016
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Front cover Sophie Don by Spiros Politis for
Dance Gazette. Make-up by Carol Morley
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40
FEATURES
Transformers — 22
Transgender actors and activists have a new
public profile – but what about dancers? How
does ballet treat students in transition?
The wilderness within — 40
Take dance out into a harsh Nordic landscape,
and something rich and strange emerges. We
visit dance beneath the Northern Lights.
Work with it or let me go — 28
Meet Leroy Mokgatle, who wowed audiences
and judges alike at Genée 2015.
Survivors — 46
Amid the conflict and hardships of war-torn
Syria, teachers and students still attend the
Damascus Ballet School. We hear about their
dedication to dance.
Divine decadence — 32
Aubrey Beardsley’s sophisticated illustrations
shocked and delighted Victorian Britain.
Girls aloud — 34
For too long, choreography has been a boy’s
club. Meet the women who are changing the
rules and making their voices heard.
Painspotting — 50
No pain, no gain: but does it have to be this
way? Dancers, teachers and medical experts
explore pain in the dancing mind and body.
28
5
Editor’s letter
46
50
REGULARS
First things — 9
Picasso, Angel Corella and
an Examiner’s travels
Feedback — 14
Being the best dancer you can be is the
simple, demanding goal of ballet training.
But imagine how much more challenging
that goal becomes if you are in transition
from the gender of your birth to the
gender of your heart. How do transgender
dancers journey through ballet’s rigid
gender roles?
I was surprised and delighted to
learn that students can take RAD exams
in the gender with which they identify:
a liberating policy. But there are many
other hurdles for transgender dancers.
Sophie Don, our cover star, was turfed
out of her first class before finding a
sympathetic ballet teacher. She and other
dancers tell Sally Howard their moving
stories: you, like me, may read this with
tears in your eye.
Dancing against the odds inflects
other stories in this issue. Leroy
Mokgatle, the charismatic South African
gold medallist at Genée 2015, was told he
was too small to dream of ballet success.
Ballet students in war-torn Damascus
cross a conflict zone to reach class. Does
this stop them? Not at all.
David Jays
Editor
Subscribe to
Dance Gazette — 21
Sally Howard writes for
the Sunday Times, Forbes
and Sunday Telegraph, and
is author of The Kama Sutra
Diaries.
Deirdre Kelly writes for
the Globe and Mail in
Toronto and won a 2014
Nathan Cohen Award for
criticism.
Mona Mahmood, Middle
East reporter and video
producer for the Guardian,
has also won a BBC World
Service award.
Katlego Mkhwanazi is
an arts writer and content
producer based in South
Africa.
Spiros Politis, an awarded
photographer, is Greek,
originally from Denmark
and based in London.
spirospolitis.com
Sanjoy Roy writes on
dance for the Guardian
and other publications.
sanjoyroy.net
Inside the Academy — 64
Style and spectacle at
Dance Proms
What I’ve learned — 72
John Neumeier
A master choreographer,
from cinema to Hiroshima
CONTRIBUTORS
Join the conversation!
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or subscribe online at www.radenterprises.co.uk
Rachell Sumpter is an
artist and illustrator whose
work is exhibited and
published worldwide.
Lyndsey Winship is the
Evening Standard dance
critic and author of Being
A Dancer.
Linda Gertner Zatlin is
professor of English at
Morehouse College.
First things
News and views from the world of dance
Crazy fresh
Spin and jig: Jessica Wilson on New York’s contra dance scene
To work up a sweat and meet new people
through dance, young New Yorkers are
embracing contra dance. This became popular
in the US in the 1970s, but increasing numbers
of New Yorkers choose to spend their evenings
dancing in circles with strangers to fiddle music,
which itself dates back hundreds of years.
Contra dance offers an inclusive, invigorating
environment, like high-impact aerobics with a
live band and a true sense of community. For
many, contra dance goes deeper than exercise.
Derived from English country dancing, with
long lines of couples crisscrossing and partnerswapping, it presents a mentally, socially and
physically challenging activity.
For singles and couples alike, it uses similar
vocabulary to square dancing, but with more
interaction on the dancefloor. Dancers face
each other in lines while a live band plays. In
response to the caller’s instructions, each dancer
interacts as a couple, a four person set or a
complete group, spinning, jigging and looking
into each other’s eyes. The caller’s prompts
diminish until dancers are left with a shared
energy, accompanied only by the lilting music.
For those used to dark clubs with pounding
music and drinks, the folk culture of contra
dance can be a surprise. Some contra converts
adhere to tradition; others are adapting it and
even request new, higher-energy dances. In
Washington, Contra Sonic is loud and fuelled by
glow sticks; the traditional dance is set to live
mixed techno, trance and electro pop music.
Some dancers don’t welcome these
changes: the fast pace of ‘modern urban contra’
leaves no time for ‘courting’, changing the
nature of the dance itself. Traditionally, dancers
interact with everyone on the floor and say ‘yes’
when asked to dance. But such historical terms
as ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’ have become genderless
– in Brooklyn, one caller uses ‘jets’ and ‘rubies’
– but regardless of the terms , contra dance is
experiencing resurgence.
Signature tune
An eclectic mixture of guitar,
fiddle, piano, feet, vocals and
electronic (such as the Moving
Violations)
Signature moves
Take country dancing and add
swings, promenades and twirls
Difficulty level
3/5
See more
Jets and rubies…
Brooklyn Contra in full swing
Photo: Chloe Accardi/
brooklyncontra.org
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Doug Heacock’s Contradance
Channel on YouTube
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Curator’s choice
Roberta Olson celebrates Picasso’s stage curtain for
Le Tricorne, the zenith of his ballet designs.
Picasso was drawn to the dance world
because in the early 20th century the orbit
of the visionary and imperious Diaghilev
and his Ballets Russes was a pivotal avantgarde nexus for all the arts and a crucible for
modernism. Picasso also became infatuated
with one of its dancers, Olga Khokhlova,
whom he later married.
The curtain for Massine’s Le Tricorne marks
the apogee of the artist’s involvement with
ballet and sums up the first two decades
in European art. Protean Picasso brought a
refreshingly edgy sensibility and a seeming
simplicity that was different from Diaghilev’s
earlier designers. The style of the curtain was
appropriate at the end of World War I, when
everyone hoped to wipe the slate clean and
initiate a new world order. Most people believe
that Picasso’s Le Tricorne designs mark the
zenith of his designs for ballet. The rapturous
reception of the ballet in the ornate, Moorish
pile that was the Alhambra Theatre, London
in 1919 launched – according to Picasso’s
biographer John Richardson – ‘a fashion for
things Iberian: a fringed shawl on the piano, a
beribboned guitar on the wall, kiss curls on the
cheek and fans and gypsy earrings. London was
soon full of Spanish dancing schools.’
I danced semi-professionally, and was
weaned as a child on the last tours of the
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; but like most
other New Yorkers, I first saw the curtain in
the narrow ‘Picasso Alley’ of the Four Seasons
Restaurant. Recently I have had the privilege
of discovering it as curator of the exhibition
at the New-York Historical Society, where
one can stand back to view it properly and
Picasso’s achievement can be appreciated.
It has been a voyage of discovery. I learned
a lot about traditional Russian set painting
reading the essay by Vladimir Polunin, the
man in charge of executing the gigantic
curtain with Picasso in the Covent Garden
studio. I was surprised by the deal that Picasso
struck with Diaghilev, being paid 10,000
francs with the right to keep all of his set and
costume designs, in exchange for his work on
the ballet. But most surprising is that there are
no contemporary descriptions of the original
large drop curtain from which Diaghilev cut
the central scene that exists today to sell it to
finance new productions.
Roberta Olson curates Picasso’s ‘Le Tricorne’ at
the New-York Historical Society. nyhistory.org
New-York Historical Society,
© Estate of Pablo Picasso/ARS New-York
Costume party
Masquerade costumes from Nigeria
(top) and Haiti Photos: Phyllis Galembo
The photographer Phyllis Galembo’s
fascination with folk festivals began with
the Halloween costumes of her Long Island
childhood. Her first visit to Nigeria in 1985
ignited a passion for masquerade rituals in
Africa and the African diaspora.
Masquerade encompasses traditional
ceremonies, carnivals and parties, with
participants often in costumes of fantastical
ingenuity. Galembo’s photos of this living
tradition are collected in her book Maske.
‘Often we would work the day after our
first meeting with the local chief, which was
usually sweetened with gifts of cash and
gin,’ she says. ‘Masqueraders would show up
in twos or threes, followed by children and
onlookers. Once a whole troupe arrived by
motorcycle.’ She remains captivated: ‘I’ve
photographed in one village for over 10 years
and there’s always something different.’
Maske is published by Aperture.
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IS S U E
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On the horizon
Spring dance, from Charlotte Brontë to David Bowie, via the Wizard of Oz.
Wizard and Queen… Gianluca Falaschi’s design for The Wizard of Oz and Daniel Roberge
in Bowie and Queen Photos: RNZB; Dean Alexander
4 February, The Hague
12 April, London
Crystal Pite and Marco Goecke both premiere
work, alongside pieces by NDT directors Sol
Léon and Paul Lightfoot. ndt.nl
She Said, a triple bill dedicated to female
choreography, includes premieres from Aszure
Barton, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Yabin
Wang. www.ballet.org.uk
7 March, Paris
Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new production of
Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (paired with
the opera Iolanta) involves no less than five
leading choreographers: Cherkaoui, Lock,
Millepied, Pita and Scarlett. operadeparis.fr
4 May, Wellington
Follow the yellow brick road as The Wizard of
Oz takes the stage in a magical new ballet by
Francesco Ventriglia. rnzb.org.nz
4 May, Washington
7 April, San Francisco
Justin Peck unveils In the Countenance of
Kings, alongside work by Balanchine and Mark
Morris. www.sfballet.org
Ballet meets glam rock: Edward Liang unveils
a new work to David Bowie’s music, paired
with a Trey McIntyre piece set to Freddie
Mercury and Queen. washingtonballet.org
19 May, Doncaster
‘Poor, obscure, plain and little’: the heroine
of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre dances into
Mr Rochester’s heart in Cathy Marston’s new
ballet. northernballet.com
28 May, Copenhagen
‘I try to catch your eye in the shaken mirror
of the poem.’ Søren Ulrik Thomsen, one of
Denmark’s classic poets, inspires a new ballet
by Kim Brandstrup. kglteater.dk
T R A N S F
Transgender role models have never been so visible. But what about
ballet, with its rigid gender roles? How can you become the dancer
you want to be? Sally Howard hears about the struggle.
O R M E R S
‘I couldn’t stop dancing’… Sophie Don (also overleaf) Photos: Spiros Politis for Dance Gazette. Make-up by Carol Morley
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L
T R A N S F O R M E R S
ike many little girls living in the North of England in the 1980s,
Sophie dreamt of escape. As the miners’ strike raged and riots
reached the streets of nearby Leeds, Sophie would ruminate on an
episode of the children’s television programme Blue Peter which
staged The Nutcracker with the Russian dancers dressed as Liquorice
Allsorts: ‘I’d look out at the wet Yorkshire skies and in my mind’s
eye I became the Sugar Plum Fairy: spinning and spinning in a tutu.’
Sophie’s parents didn’t share her dream. They laughed at her
when, aged five, she asked for a tutu for Christmas. When she begged
for ballet lessons for her birthday – at the age of seven, ten and again
at 12 – her father rolled his eyes. When, they wondered, would their
son get over his peculiar fixation? You see Sophie was – is – James:
born biologically male, and unhappy about the fact for as long as he
can remember. These were the years before Billy Elliot gave coalminers’
sons tacit permission to dance. There were no boys enrolled to
dance male roles at their town ballet school, let alone strapping prepubescents who identified as girl ballerinas.
Thirty years on, this is a pivotal moment for transgenderism in
popular culture. In May 2014 TIME magazine featured a cover image
of transgender actress Laverne Cox, an Amazon in blue bodycon, and
heralded transgenderism as ‘America’s next civil rights frontier’. In
June 2015 retired athlete-turned-American-reality-TV-star Bruce Jenner
came out, in a photoshoot by Annie Leibowitz for Vanity Fair, as the
postoperative Caitlin, provoking a social media storm and gathering a
million Twitter followers in a record four hours.
The new transgender figureheads give faces to a debate that’s
raging across pop-culture and academia. Is gender biological predestiny? Or, as influential theorist Judith Butler would have it, nothing
more than a performance: a slash of red lipstick, a wide-legged
swagger; the fragile ballerina, en pointe, in a diaphanous tutu? Indeed,
few figures distil performed femininity as does the ballerina: whether
Swan Lake and La Bayadère, with their extended meditations on the
feminine mystique, or the popular ballerina cult that litters millions of
little girls’ bedrooms with tinny music boxes and polyester tutus.
‘Dance is the last bastion of gender stereotypes in the arts,’
says San Francisco-based female-to-male transgender dancer and
choreographer Sean Dorsey. ‘In theatre, visual arts and multimedia
IS S U E
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2016
we’ve seen a fracturing of gender and sexual identities; but dance
remains a space that excludes bodies that don’t fit strictly binarised
gender stereotypes; so – and I’m singling ballet out as particularly
guilty, here – we see few tall women or short men, let alone genderambivalent or disabled bodies.’
Yet ballet’s cartoonish take on femininity also makes it a promising
stage to question and subvert gender norms. Dorsey’s company has
won two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for works including Epilepsy Is
Dancing (2009), a brooding collaboration with Antony and the Johnsons.
Currently touring, Missing Generation explores the experience of
transgender survivors of the 1980s aids epidemic.
Dorsey seeks to bring the dance world up to speed with this
cultural turn. So too, in various ways, do the all-male Les Ballets
Trockadero de Monte Carlo, performing in tutus and en pointe to
spoof gendered clichés in classical ballet; and Chinese choreographer
Jin Xing, who danced as a male with the People’s Liberation Army
state dance troupe and launched her own company shortly after sex
reassignment surgery in 1996. There are signals, too, of a sea-change in ballet pedagogy. The
RAD Examination Board’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy now
takes the bold stand of permitting candidates to be examined on the
gender syllabus with which they identify, and a handful of US women’s
colleges, including the Massachusetts Academy of Ballet, have extended
enrolment to transgender girls.
Sophie Rebecca, né James Don, knew nothing of the early works of
Jin Xing when he nervously jumped on a bus to Scarborough to buy his
first tutu aged 13. Twenty years later, the IT specialist is ‘coming home’
to his gender identity, as he embarks on the graded hormone therapy
that will lead to a series of operations to render him genitally female.
James’ decision to fully transition into Sophie is spurred, in part, by
the growing cultural acceptance of transgenderism; but as importantly,
he explains, by ballet’s role as a site within which he could explore his
feminine identity. ‘I don’t do ballet because I’m transgender and I’m not
transgender because I do ballet,’ he says, ‘yet, in my life story, the
two are somehow inextricable. Ballet has given me those moments of
gender recognition that are so precious and rare to someone born with
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