75 Years: Ballet and the Cuban Regime & Artists in Diaspora Podcast Series Interview with Claudia Hilda

We may think of artists and their work as inherently needing total freedom in order to thrive, but this isn’t always the case especially when it comes to ballet. Similarly to how ballet undeniably flourished in many respects under the communist Soviet Union, Cuba produced (and still produces) some of the best ballet and ballet dancers in the world after the Cuban Revolution, and with the full support of Castro and the communist party.

Alicia Alonso Prima Ballerina and founder of National Ballet of Cuba and Fidel Castro

There have of course been artists who have fled their countries, the most famous being the big 3 Soviet Union defectors: Mikhail Barishnikov, Natalia Makarova and Rudolf Nureyev. Most do not flee and ballet being an art form that requires a tremendous amount of support simply to exist at all did quite well under these governments if we are measuring by the quality of the dancers and the integrity of the mostly classical rep. 

Why does  ballet get so much support from these so called oppressive regimes? 

Well, across centuries, really since its inception in the 1500s ballet has been used as a form of soft power. Employed to represent the sophisticated culture of the nation and its leaders and to exalt the values of the respective leading class. Or at least the purported values, really it was PR and/or propaganda for the ruling class. This was true for Catherine de Medici, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Soviet Union and finally in this case the Cuban regime. 

Although this is also true of under governments that aren’t monarchies or under communist dictators. In the cold war era when tensions and competition were high between the US and USSR, Krushchev came with the Bolshoi Ballet and clearly bested us with their dancers and their reverence for the arts. Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center were subsequently built, with George Balanchine founder of NYC Ballet on the advisory committee. These temples to the performing arts were part of a competition for power and prestige (along with moon landings and kitchen gadgets) between the US and the USSR.

Today the National Ballet of Cuba, in it’s 75th year is one of the best ballet institutions in the world, developing and occasionally exporting some of the top dancers in the world including Fernando Bujones and of course the revered Carlos Acosta. But it wasn’t the regime that founded the company, it was one of Cuba’s daughters. Prima Ballerina Assoluta Alicia Alonso, world wide ballet super star and a ballerina with a tremendous disability she was nearly completely blind in even many of her prime years as a dancer. If we think about what that means, to be a performing artist in an art form that requires exacting spacial awareness and visual communications with lines, bodies and space you begin to comprehend what a force to be reckoned with she was. 

Although the Cuban born Alonso was a ballet star in the US, she danced under Balanchine in one of the precursors to NYC Ballet, Ballet Caravan, and American Ballet Theater among other companies including the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, for many years she was not allowed to perform in the US on account of tensions between the US and Cuba. Fun fact: Balanchine created his iconic and notoriously difficult Theme and Variations on Alonso and her partner Igor Youskevitch. 

What about contemporary dance in Cuba? 

There is also a national contemporary dance school and company founded around the same time as National Ballet of Cuba in 1959. Similar to traditional big state ballet schools, it integrates academics into the studies and the students come out with full degrees. The dance training is a mix of contemporary,  classical ballet, modern and folk styles. There are few countries in the world that have contemporary dance training that is this comprehensive. For example in the US there isn’t a school that compares to this unless perhaps you are looking at certain university dance programs. But if we are talking about the prime training years as a dancer which are age 8-18 give or take, then there isn’t a program that compares. Which means in classical and contemporary dance, Cuba is producing some of the best dancers in the world.

Where are these dancers today?

Come with me to talk to principal dancer Claudia Hilda on the Dance Lens Podcast. She is a Cuban dance artist, choreographer and director. We’ll talk about her journey and the influence of Cuban politics on dance and dancers. 

Artists in Diaspora Series: Turkey

Ballet’s role in Turkey’s revolution (in honor of its 100th birthday) and an interview with the US’ only Turkish ballerina.

Full interviews in The Dance Lens Podcast here

What does ballet have to do with the development and reputation of the Turkish Republic?

Ballet and the arts in general have been used for centuries as a way to communicate to the public the power, sophistication and ideals of whoever is in power, be it a pope, a prince, a queen, a ruling party or a nation. Many great works of art have come out of this relationship between those holding power and the artist, a famous example is of course Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel commissioned by the church.

This was also a part of the story when the Turkish Republic was formed 100 years ago, in 1923.  Following the end of WW1 the remaining parts of the empire had been given to Greece, France, Italy and Britain. This occupation prompted the formation of the Turkish Liberation Movement.

When Atatürk, a leader of the movement united the country from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire was quoted as saying: “The basis of Turkish Republic is culture”. The arts were supported as a way to lift the society and tell a public story about the nation being as culturally sophisticated as its European counterparts.

He set about to create or recreate a productive modern society that would have an artistic and cultural heritage comparable to Europe’s. Now, this is not to say that there wasn’t previously a rich and dynamic artistic history in Turkey. It is after all in the place of one of the oldest cultural, financial, historical and political hubs in the world, not to mention Mesopotamia in general being the birthplace of civilization. But this particular time period had a similar western looking gaze in the vein of when Peter the Great in Russia adopted European styles and arts for Russia. Ballet being one of them, and of course Russia took ballet and made it  inarguably her own. It was in this spirit that Ninette de Valois was brought in to develop a national ballet school and company for Turkey. 

Ninette de Valois is a legend in the ballet world. Most notably she founded the companies that were later to become The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet and their respective schools thus making one of the most impactful contributions to the development of the art form as whole and on a world scale. 

There had been other ballet teachers in Turkey, some had come in the Russian diaspora following the 1917 revolution, but it was de Valois who was tasked with organizing and developing the national school and company. Which became a part of a network of national conservatories for the arts and with school and ballet companies in each major city. 

Auditions were held for the first class at the school, children were only taken who were thought to be candidates for a full professional career. 11 boys and 18 girls were accepted. De Valois remained involved for more than 2 decades, establishing and developing repertoire and developing the pedagogical methods. The repertoire under her was a mix of classical works and newer works that were based on traditional regional folklore and blended traditional folk dances to encourage the art form becoming truly a representative of the people rather than a copy and pasted European import. 

What about ballet in Turkey today? The schools and companies set up by de Valois are still in existence and the dancers are on a very high level however internationally neither the dancers nor the companies are well know either within or without the dance world. 

Come with me to the next episode where we’ll speak to the only Turkish ballerina in the US. Buse Babadag, began her training in Istanbul and is now a soloist with Ballet San Antonio under Sofiane Sylve. She is also an entrepreneur with her own coffee company: Buse and Rose. Come on over to the podcast to hear Buse’s story. 

Buse Babadag. Photo by Jeremy Kyle, courtesy Babadag

A Dancer’s Story: From The Big Apple to The Lone Star State.

Photo Credit Jon Taylor

Sitting down with director, educator and choreographer Lily Balogh to talk about her surprising journey through dance. Born to Hungarian immigrant parent in Queens NY, Lily joined NYC Ballet while still a promising student at SAB. Her career took a different turn as she was accepted into the company on the eve of massive budget cuts. She danced in Canada and Europe before having two surgeries that would pivot her path completely to business owner, founder and creator.

Listen to the whole conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Paris Opera Ballet’s First Black Star: Guillaume Diop

Paris Opera Ballet, the world’s oldest national ballet company has just promoted the first black dancer to the rank of Etoile, which literally translates to star. Guillaume Diop is 23 years old and the announcement to him and the rest of the world was made by the new artistic director José Martinez onstage after a performance of Giselle in Seoul Korea on Saturday March 11. Diop is an enormously gifted dancer, with the physical beauty and technical brilliance one would expect, along with the artistry and dignified carriage that brings dancers like Roberto Bolle and Marcelo Gomes to mind. Paris Opera Ballet is an institution that has historically set a precedent for norms in the dance world and I could not think of a more deserving dancer to be the face of this one.

Paris Opera is a company to which every ballet company in the world can in some way directly trace its roots. Founded in the 1600s under King Louis XIV, it is where ballet was codified and birthed as a defined form of dance and is still one of the world’s top 3 companies (or the top depending on whom you ask). Most ballet companies in the world have 3 ranks, the Paris Opera has 5 full ranks (plus another beneath the full ranks so technically speaking 6 levels).

Typically a dancer’s ascension through the ranks is based solely on the whims and discretion of their artistic director, this is not so at Paris Opera. They have a completely unique system which dates back to the days of Napoleon and the French revolution, he introduced legislation to the opera to make it a more meritocratic institution (down with the monarchy and inherited status). Each year there is an internal competition with a full panel of judges and dancers choose to compete to get promoted through the ranks, if you don’t compete you don’t get a promotion. This is true for all the levels except for the etoiles. They are hand picked by the artistic director and anointed publicly onstage during the bows in a very emotional ritual for everyone involved, including the audience.

Very few dancers make it to this rank, and most who do spend many years climbing the ladder within the company and may spend only the last few years of their dancing life wearing the crown. Guillaume Diop leap frogged over the rank just under Etoile: Premiere Danseur (where most spend years waiting to be picked for the highest rank).

Guillaume was one of the authors of the manifesto published in 2020 “About the Race Question in Paris Opera”. Paris Opera Ballet’s artistic director José Martinez told the press that he chose Guillaume because of his "artistic qualities, his charisma and his potential. At no point did it cross my mind to appoint him because of the colour of his skin," Martinez said, and added: "It's a very good thing that this has happened."

Clip below of Guillaume Diop in Swan Lake with veteran Etoile Dorothée Gilbert

Notes on finality

Cherry Blossoms by Cynthia Dragoni

Unlike so many professions, even in the arts: painting, acting, playing an instrument, the dancer doesn’t ask will I be able to make my living for my entire life on the stage? They know their time is limited, yet they continue, continue without hesitation- with the full force of their being. A madness of sorts. And yet the finality is built in, not with death, but with the marching of time, in this life.

It makes one wonder what is the point? As if any of life where ever meant to have a point beyond the ecstasy of nowness. Their approach to life, driven as they are is an acute kind of aliveness. Knowing that the first death blows just behind them, they are still asking do I have more inside of me to give? How can I be better, more beautiful, more musical? It is a life lived without illusions: tomorrows, perfections, all illusions. This is the great benefit of years spent in the studio, the practice of tangling with nowness and the inevitability of death. What to do with that? Continue to offer ourselves to beauty, to generosity, to life.

“We all live in the same time forever. There is no future and there is no past.”

-George Balanchine

Circus and Ballet: The Source

Photo Credit: Heidi Lee

In collaborating this year on 2 upcoming projects with Angela Buccinni Butch of @themuseabcirque: Stravinsky’s Firebird and Nutcracker as part of a performance workshop series, I find myself in awe of the potentials and the full circle/spiral nature of marrying classical ballet with circus arts. The beauty inherent in these ballets wants to be lifted and surrounded by the magic and mystery of circus, bringing a symbiotic dimensionality to both.

These projects, are a coming back to the source. Evolutions happen in spirals, as you return to a point on the circle you find that it’s a new level that balances on the one behind it. And what have we come to define as ballet? A set of poses and coordinations? Definition by design is limiting and even as we learn to work with the body and the technique we experience a spiral and an expansion that continues for as long as we would give ourselves to it. Why would it not be the same in the form itself? For a continued spiraling expansion that is meant to summon us to the truth about ourselves. To shed the dross of our humanness and reveal the godhead versions of ourselves. So these projects feel like an arrival home, to the beginnings of ballet, motivated by the call not to a particular form, but to the harmony, the magic, the realm changing potentialities.

If you go back the origins of classical ballet, King Henry II married Florentine Catherine de Medici, and it was Catherine’s influence on the court and her sons that spawned the future of classical dance. She brought to France the tastes of the Italian nobility who mounted huge dance spectacles that included “flaming torch dances, choreographed horse ballets with hundreds of mounted cavaliers and masked interludes with heroic, allegorical, and exotic themes.

The ballet master Gugliemo Ebreo, writing in Milan in 1463, described festivities that included fireworks, tightrope walkers, conjurers, and banquets with up to 20 courses served on solid gold platters with peacocks wandering on the tables.”

Then, in 1570 Charles IX (Catherine’s son) established the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, another step in the direction of the eventual codification of classical dance, influenced by Neoplatonism, its member “poets believed that beneath the shattered and chaotic surface of political life lay a divine harmony and order- a web of mathematical relations that demonstrated the natural laws of the universe and the mystical power of God. Melding their own deeply religious beliefs that the Platonic notion of a secret and ideal realm more real than their own perceived world, they sought to remake the Christian Church- not through the old practices of Catholic liturgy but through theatre and art. Working with players, poets and musicians, these men hoped to create a new kind of spectacle in which the rigorous rhythms of classical Greek verse would harmonise dance, music and language into a measured whole. Number, proportion, and design they felt, could elucidate the occult order of the universe, thus revealing God.

A powerful alloy of mystical theology, recondite magic, and classical rigour, the new Academy represented a distinct form of idealism: music and art could summon men to their highest capacities and goals.”

Quotes taken from Jennifer Homan’s Apollo’s Angels. The greatest and most comprehensive ballet history book ever written.

Mirror Selves

The dancer spends so much time in the mirror that the reflection becomes a point of reference for their balance and really their existence. Once onstage, without the mirror, the lights are blinding, and the audience is a visual abyss. The reference point needs to then be rediscovered from an invisible internal point. It can take a dancer many years to understand their technique without the mirror. Who am I if nothing is reflected back to me? Is the question experienced. Therein lives the difference between creating a step and mimicking a shape. You enter the studio and stage and enter a rabbit hole leading to the center of yourself. 

Diversity in Dance: A Ballerina’s path

Photo Credit: Jaqlin Medlock Photography

Apr 29 2020

Andrea Long was a professional Dancer with NYC Ballet for 8 years where she performed much of the Balanchine Repertoire including: Serenade, Four Temperaments, Concerto Barocco and was part of the original cast of Peter Martins’ ballets: Fearful Symmetries and Ash. 

While at City Ballet, she toured Internationally with Peter Boal & Dancers, appeared in the NYCB Nutcracker Film produced by Disney and modeled for French Vogue. 

In 1998 she joined Dance Theater of Harlem where she became a principal ballerina and danced for 13 years. While at DTH she toured internationally and performed principal roles in: Firebird, Serenade, Allegro Brilliante, Four temperaments, Concerto Barocco and Manifestations. She has appeared as a guest artist with Complexions and Washington Ballet. 

As a teacher she has been on the faculty of Dance Theater of Harlem, School of American Ballet and Dance Institute of Washington. She is currently on faculty at world renowned Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. 

Hear one dancer’s path to a professional career. What did it mean to be a dancer of color in the classical ballet world 20 years ago vs today? Who were her greatest mentors? When did she get her first break?

Interview:The Making of a Dance Maker

Becoming a professional choreographer with Andrew Skeels

What does it take to live one’s life as a professional choreographer? In this elusive art form, how does one package a gift as ephemeral as dance making?

Andrew Skeels, artistic director of Skeels Danse Montréal and Artistic Advisor to The Ballet Institute New York tells us one story, his story of his journey from staging shows in his childhood living room to the greatest stages in the world. From Tap and Hip Hop classes to the Paris Opera Ballet: One dancer's path to becoming a professional choreographer.