The DANSOX Autumn 2023 season looks both forward and backwards, exploring ways in which scholarly investigation and practitioners’ bodily memories can enable today’s dancers and audiences to rediscover the life and meaning of 20th century dances in new cultural contexts.

Professor Stephanie Jordan’s lecture ‘Serial Stravinsky Dances: Choreomusical Discoveries with Balanchine’ (10 October 2023), drew upon her analytical film project with New York City Ballet (NYCB) dancers, ‘Music Dances; Balanchine Choreographs Stravinsky’ (2002). Jordan started working on Agon (1957) in 1993, and her presentation showed how musical analysis, allied with meticulous attention to detail, clarifies the structural patterns within the dancing. Clapping and counting, she explained how the dance moves around and within the music, criss-crossing it in a dynamic interaction, finding the pulse in moments of silence and making the musical score visible. Snatches of film contrasted performances by Wendy Whelan and Violette Verdy, and showed how the dance had changed over time; Jordan singled out a particular plié in second position on pointe, and noted that there is a lot of room in Balanchine to do things in different ways. Richard Alston, speaking from the floor, described watching NYCB performances during Balanchine’s life time, and reminisced about dancers such as Allegra Kent, who seemed to inhabit the music without recourse to counting, and Suzanne Farrell, who was always taking risks and pushed her balance to extremes.

Jordan’s sophisticated choreomusical approach demonstrated the application of a critical methodology from outside the discipline of dance, to illuminate the depth and complexity of Balanchine’s work; in contrast, Yorke Dance Project’s new film based on Kenneth Macmillan’s ballet Sea of Troubles (1988) shows how translating dance into a new medium can change the point of view and emphasise aspects of a work in new and exciting ways. Although the company danced the full choreography, maintaining the integrity of the work, film director David Stewart has chosen not to show it all, creating something other than a ‘ballet film’.

It presents the dance text in a different and magnified font; everything is there, but some of it is not visible on the page. The result is a work that expresses ideas and emotions through both the dancers’ bodies and the setting. The film’s focus on Claudius’ and Gertrude’s relationship lends itself to the intimacy of close-up shots, such as Gertrude running her hand along Claudius’ arm, while the location, Hatfield House, also plays a key role. The oppressive interiors, along with the filmed portraits that link each scene, are vivid and visible representations of power and the well-ordered formal gardens contrast sharply with the characters’ inner emotional chaos.

Afterwards, Deborah, Lady Macmillan, Yolande Yorke-Edgell and Stewart, talked about the creative processes that lay behind both the original ballet and the film. Lady MacMillan described how when Kenneth MacMillan returned to the Royal Ballet from Germany, he found that the Covent Garden company had not really moved on from where he had left it. He wanted to help Dance Advance, the tiny group of six dancers with four musicians who had broken away from the Royal Ballet to take new chamber ballets to a nationwide audience, and it was also a chance for him to experiment with a barefoot work. Susie Crow, to whom it had fallen to approach MacMillan with the request that he make them a ballet, remembered how the creative process had flowed during the four weeks that they had to work on it. He always involved the dancers, and Lady MacMillan noted his intense interest in what happens when people get together, and his capacity for seeing things in dancers that they did not know themselves.

On 24 October, DANSOX revisited the work of another 20th century choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska, in a different way, through a conversation between Dame Monica Mason and choreographer Avatâra Ayuso. Ayuso’s ballet Nijinska premiered in Santiago in July 2023, and she described how her ideas developed, moving beyond her original intention of creating a new version of Les Noces (1923) to choreograph a full length biopic ballet inspired by Nijinska’s life and work. Her decision to embrace and give recognition to Nijinska’s legacy in this way entailed extensive historical, biographical and dance research. By interviewing people such as Dame Monica, who had known and worked with Nijinska, Ayuso developed an understanding of a bodily aesthetic and way of moving that she could translate into her own dance vocabulary, using classical ballet as the starting point. If only we could see this ballet in Oxford!

Dame Monica began by reading from the opening pages of Lynn Garafola’s book La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern (OUP, 2022), before contributing a rich seam of fascinating anecdotes and memories. She recalled how Frederick Ashton had called the company together to tell them that Nijinska was coming, and warned them that she would be very demanding. Dame Monica remembered Nijinska’s extraordinary presence and her ability to compel an audience’s attention with the smallest movement, such as the Hostess’ beckoning finger in Les Biches (1924). She spoke of Nijinska’s requirement that dancers’ faces should be alive but not making expressions and her use of upper body fluidity and épaulement; rhythm; detailed, quick, precise intricate footwork, and petit batterie. She noted her influence on Ashton, Ninette de Valois and Marie Rambert: most of Nijinska’s ballets are lost, but her way of moving lives on in dancers’ bodies and the work of other choreographers.

The fourth DANSOX event in the JdP (26 October 2023), with Yolande Yorke-Edgell, John Pennington and dancers from Yorke Dance Project, clearly manifested the centrality of the dancing body to a living art that continually renews itself. Yorke-Edgell described her experiences dancing with the Lewitzky Dance company, speaking of the great care that Bella Lewitzky, a dedicated political activist, showed her dancers, offering 42-week contracts, and carefully balancing strengthening and stretching; she mentioned that during her time with the company she never had an injury.

John Pennington, who worked with Lewitzky for 14 years, led a fascinating demonstration class for five dancers illuminating her movement style, before they showed two examples of Lewitzky’s work: a lyrical and sculptural solo from Suite Satie (1980) danced by Ellie Ferguson, followed by an excerpt from Meta 4 (1994), a piece for four dancers to a score by Robert Xavier Rodriguez. Bella Lewitzky’s stipulation that dancers should commit to her company for at least four years and also become teachers has been key to the survival of her work and dance style. Although she helped to codify Lester Horton’s technique, she had a fear of ossifying her own philosophy of movement, which was living, breathing, and constantly changing. This DANSOX event was further evidence of the ways in which Yorke Dance Project is finding the new in the old, presenting works to 21st century audiences in ways that make them live for us today.

There will be a further, unmissable, chance to see Lewitzky’s work, alongside other 20th century dances by Macmillan and Martha Graham, on 6 December when Yorke Dance Project bring their exciting programme California Connections to the Mill Arts Centre at Banbury. https://www.themillartscentre.co.uk/shows/californiaconnections/

Maggie Watson

19th November 2023

You can find more information about DANSOX here

Watch out for the next DANSOX event:

Monday 27th November, Jacqueline du Pré Building, 5.30pm. New Movement Collective (Gosia Dzierzon). New Movement Collective present their new version of Les Noces, in part developed with DANSOX this summer. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-movement-collective-a-new-les-noces-tickets-748449842627?aff=oddtdtcreator