Today's news: the San Francisco Ballet, the oldest ballet company in the U.S., has selected Tamara Rojo as its first woman artistic director, effective at the end of this year. But, given the long lead time needed for developing programing, just what she has in mind for the company won't be fully evident until the 2023-24 season.
According to a New York Times article, Rojo was rather vague on what that might be, saying only that she was interested in keeping ballet "relevant to a younger audience that sometimes has new values and principles" and that she would be instituting a system of "checks and balances" when it came to casting and dancer evaluations. The latter may be necessary in part because Rojo's husband, Isaac Hernandez, recently rejoined the SF Ballet as a principal dancer, providing Rojo with a built-in conflict of interest. The search committee asked "difficult questions" about that, the NYT said, but not so difficult as to rule Rojo out.
Rojo also told the NYT that along with focusing on female choreographers, she would bring "new voices to interpret the classics."
In what was probably a foretaste of what is to come on that front, in her current position as head of the English National Ballet (not to be confused with the Royal Ballet), Rojo mounted a reimagined version of "Giselle" created by Akram Khan, a Londoner born to a family from Bangladesh. The choreography was infused with modern dance and Indian dance elements and the story was reset in what has been described as "present-day dystopia." Instead of peasants, there are disposed migrant workers labeled "the Outcasts" and the underworld is full of "ghosts of factory workers who seek revenge for the wrongs done to them in life" instead of the traditional Willis -- the spirits of maidens betrayed by their lovers dancing in floaty white dresses.
What then will SF ballet audiences see? Swan Lake set in a Superfund site? Or maybe Coppelia in a highly automated factory with a bunch of out-of-control robots astonishing the visiting children?
Sunnie Evers, co-chair of the SF Ballet's search committee, told the NYT that the company initially contacted over 200 possible candidates as possible replacements for Helgi Tomasson, who has been the SF Ballet's artistic director since 1985. By last July, when the list had been narrowed down to eight: "we had three people of color and three women in that round," Evers said, adding "there is a lot of talk about ballet being dominated by white men, so I am thrilled we were not."
Well, that's pretty much where it's at these days if one spends much time reading the NYT. When it comes to the arts, just who created something -- their gender, color and sexual orientation -- is more important than what actually gets created. In the case of Khan's "Giselle," one could argue it was a case of cultural misappropriation, but that is apparently only the case in a reverse situation -- a white artist making use of something stemming from a non-white culture. The Western canon, if not cancelled, is up for grabs.
No comments:
Post a Comment