(339) Reimagining La Bayadère with Phil Chan, Doug Fullington, and Sarah Wroth
Today on Conversations on Dance we are happy to bring you a panel discussion on a very special project: the reimagining of La Bayadère. Joining us are Phil Chan, of Final Bow for Yellowface, Doug Fullington, dance historian and musicologist, and Sarah Wroth, Associate Professor and Chair at Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. The trio talk with us about the idea to reexamine La Bayadère for a 21st century audience, how they are transforming the ballet while preserving it's history, and Indiana University's important role in it's creation.
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After a nearly-decade-long hiatus from live performance, ChrisMastersDance returns with Mausoleum, at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fishman Space, June 2nd to 4th. Reckoning with the dance field’s history of systematic exploitation, ChrisMastersDance is building a Mausoleum — a place to acknowledge and remember a past that has been laid to rest —making way for a tomorrow that sets aside unsustainable forms of life and work. Don’t miss Mausoleum at BAM this is June 2- 4. Tickets are available at bam.org/Mausoleum or click the link in the show notes.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:58]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:00]:
And I'm Michael Sean Breed, and you're listening to Conversations on Dance.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:01:07]:
Today on Conversations on Dance, we are happy to bring you a panel discussion on a very special project, the Reimagining of Labaya Dare. Joining us are Phil Chan of Final Bow for Yellowface doug Fullington, dance historian and musicologist, and Sarah Roth, associate professor and chair at Jacob School of Music at Indiana University. The trio talk with us about the idea to reexamine Le Bayadaire for a 21st century audience, how they are transforming the ballet while preserving its history and Indiana University's important role in its creation.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:46]:
Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us. It's been a while since we've had a panel like this of esteemed guests, so let's just dive right in. Doug and Phil, we've had both of you on twice prior to this, but Sarah, it's your first time, so we'd love to just get a little bit of an introduction to our listeners. Tell us a little bit about your career and what's led you to your role at IU right now.
Sarah Wroth [00:02:09]:
Oh, I'm so happy to get a chance to be on this program. Thank you so much. Thank you for the work you do for Ballet. I have a pretty cyclical life. I grew up in a very small town in Maryland and trained in Maryland growing up, and upon graduating high school was given the directive to go to college, and I ended up at Indiana University, Bloomington, at the Jacob School of Music at the Ballet department. I completed three years and graduated under predominantly the guidance and leadership of Violet Verity, along with Jacques and Virginia, says Brendan and Derisha Sales, and a group of wonderful teachers that came along while I was here. But Violet was a really big change agent in my life and took this beautiful moment for me and saw something that no one else had seen in my dancing. And she really fanned that flame while I was here. And that's a pretty big power that she was able to wield over my life story. And she took that power even further when she wrote a beautiful recommendation letter for me to Boston Ballet's. Mikonisanin and I went there and auditioned and then was accepted in a 200 person cattle call into Boston Ballet's Court of Ballet and ended up dancing there for 14 very happy years, doing that broad range of beautiful repertoire that they perform. And then upon graduating from my professional career oh, I like that.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:03:45]:
Instead of retiring.
Sarah Wroth [00:03:50]:
Because it is I don't believe in the Graham quote that we have two deaths. I really think we have two lives. And I feel like that's what getting in my education early gave me is because I transitioned seamlessly out of Indiana University into a leadership role here at the Jacob School of Music ballet department, where I had trained under violet, who's no longer here in physical presence, but very much here in spirit and carrying on that good work, bringing in great repertoire, like what we're about to discuss today, and just really happily getting the opportunity to work. With a beautiful group of artists that are in a very vulnerable part of their career where they're trying to figure out who they want to be for the ballet world. And that also lends itself to the discussion at hand today with the Bioter project.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:04:41]:
I love that. All right, Phil, it's time to catch up with you. It's been about two years since we last spoke with you. What's really cool, too, is you kind of teased this project, so we know it's been going on for quite some time. So before we get into that, tell.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:04:54]:
Us what else you have been up.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:04:56]:
To over these past couple of years.
Phil Chan [00:04:58]:
Yeah, Doug and I were going through our emails, and by the time it premieres, we will have been working on it for six years, which is kind of crazy, but you got to figure out how to make these things happen and manifest them. But no, I've been good. I've been running around like crazy the last little bit, doing a couple of fellowships at Harvard at Drexel University. So really looking a lot of at the roots of these Orientalist portrayals. I'm about to go to Paris for a month in April to study at the French Art History Institute because that's sort of like, the root of French Orientalism is a lot of the archives. So I'm really excited to go there and sort of be a ballet nerd and also live in Paris and just eat.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:05:45]:
Number one priority.
Phil Chan [00:05:46]:
Yeah. I'm also directing a production of Madella Butterfly for Boston Lyric Opera that will premiere this September. So really thinking a lot about we have these texts that are problematic but also beautiful, that are racist, but also have something that speaks to the human condition or beautiful music or choreography. And how do we not just say, well, it's inherently white supremacist let's throw it out. It's inherently colonialist. How do we reimagine it? So it's not just for European people, but for a diverse community that we live in, which includes white Americans, too, who are not Europeans. So how do we make this work bigger without canceling tradition? And so by Dare sort of this perfect storm of a lot of those conversations that I've been having as an advocate but also as a writer. Yeah. So it's been busy.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:06:40]:
Phil, you have a new book out now.
Phil Chan [00:06:42]:
I do. It's called Banishing Orientalism, and it came out of a fellowship I did with the New York Public Library in 2020, where I looked at about 100 Orientalist ballets from Louis the 14th to today. So really asking the question, like, when we set a story in India or China or the Middle East, what are we doing? What are the only things we can say when there's this exotic setting? But also, what did Orientalism as a genre do for ballet? How did it help ballet expand and innovate as an art form? And so that's really what the book is about. And I do talk about this production of Baidare in the book as well, but just really thinking about this larger question of how do we shift ballet, opera, these Eurocentric art forms, into a diverse 21st century audience, right? Because we look at our audiences and we're like, oh, my God, everyone's so old and white, and the art form is dying, but then we're still doing things the way we did 200 years ago, and we're not really understanding why those two things are going together when this is a big part of that shift. So as a person of color in this predominantly white art form, how do I make space for myself? By getting rid of some of these outdated, offensive, caricatured stereotyped depictions of non white people? But also, how do we keep this ballet tradition alive that I also grew up in and that there's so much beauty, and it's so important to know where we came from, especially as someone who's interested in pushing the boundaries forward. So if you don't really get the opportunity to dance these roles and embody them in your body and feel the music and the transitions and the structure of these dances, how are you going to break the art form forward? How are you going to innovate? How do you know what's already been done or what's cliche unless you've actually done that work? So I think that is where we are with this process and just want to pass the ball over to Doug, because it's really, like, the perfect storm of how to do this work together. It's like, my advocacy can only go so far, and Doug is, like, brilliant musicologist, dance notation expert. But, yeah, also, I think we're both asking a similar question of, like, how do we keep this traditional alive, but do it in a way that isn't problematic.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:09:05]:
Right, let's rope Doug in. Doug, can you tell us a little bit about just give us some background on Bayadair. What are the origins of the ballet? Was it a success upon its premiere? Just tell us a little bit about Bayadaire in the 19th century.
Doug Fullington [00:09:23]:
Sure. It premiered in 1877 in St. Petersburg. Marius Pettipa was the choreographer and a colabetist putting the story together. But he was inspired by previous works, The God and the Bayadair, which was a ballet done in Paris earlier in the century. Shakuntala, the Indian story, had been made into a stage work also earlier in the century. And also Pedophile really kept up with current events. The Prince of Wales had just visited India a couple of years earlier and that was documented in these magazines that he would subscribe to and a lot of the public subscribed to, like World Illustrated and things like that, where there would be drawings of these events. And those were his visual inspirations for the ballet. exoticist stories were exciting for the public. It was sort of escapist. It allowed them to travel, if you will, when they otherwise couldn't, and the ballet was successful. The ballerina Acaderina Vazam had a big success as Nikia. She was sort of the leading star at the time. The music is by Ludwig Minkus, who collaborated with Pettipa for years. He wrote Dong Kyote, that was in the late 1860s. And then Pedophile revived Bayadair in 1900. And at that time, it was notated many of the dances were written down in real detail, especially the ensemble dances. So that's a major source for us. There's also a Panam script written at that time, which is kind of amazing because it lets us know what they really said I'm saying this in quotes what they said on stage in Pantomime. So it's a real window into what a stage work was like at this time. So these are sort of treasures for us because it allows us to really see and know what the Valley was like when it was made, as we're trying to take that then and reimagine reinterpret it now.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:11:44]:
Where did you find some of these notations for your research?
Doug Fullington [00:11:49]:
The dance notations are, fortunately, at Harvard. They were brought out of Russia after the Revolution. They were used by a former director from the Marinsky, Nikolai Sergeyev. It's what he used to stage the classics at what is now the Royal Ballet Giselle at Paris Opera in the 1920s, the Dioglob Sleeping Beauty or Sleeping Princess production in 1921. So they really helped establish a lot of these sort of canonical classics in the west and then they made their way to Harvard at the end of the 1960s. The Mime script is held in Moscow at the Bolshe Theater Museum. But I was able, through colleagues, to.
Phil Chan [00:12:32]:
Have access to that and also friendly tip for dance nerds out there I was just at Harvard last month doing a fellowship, and I was actually probably one of the last non scholar, like, internal people to touch the documents and handle them because they're in the process of being digitized. So they actually pulled out by a dare for me because they're like, oh, we're working on it now, but we'll pull it out for you. And so now it's going in a box forever. But the good news is, for Dance Nerds, that all of this will be soon publicly available on the Internet for everybody. So anybody can have access to this. You can really take a look at it yourself, and it's just a source text that's so rich that just having access to it, I think will be really beneficial for the whole field.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:18]:
So could we talk for a second about what some of the major issues are with the way by there is presented in its 21st century form today. Who wants to take that?
Phil Chan [00:13:34]:
Because I actually opened my book, Banishing Orientalism, about an experience I had going to the premiere at the Pennsylvania Ballet. And basically, long story short, just seeing that the reaction from Asian advocates, south Asian people, new Jersey, and surrounding areas around Philadelphia are among the fastest growing South Asian populations in the United States. So really, just thinking about how we are presenting this work that is about this specific culture in this specific place, but has nothing to do with that culture and is really just sort of like made up, right? And so especially when we don't have too many Asian representations. Although Mira Nadan at New York City Ballet is our first Asian principal woman there. So hats off, Mira, but there aren't a lot of South Asian artists working in classical ballet historically and even today. So just thinking about who is in charge of that narrative of of representing this culture so specifically, like, you know, having Hindu people rolling around on the floor, the sort of casual Buddhism, Hinduism, whatever, often there's there's blackface in in the opera or a darkening of the skin or racializing and just that compounded. It's also beautiful. It's an opportunity for spectacle. I mean, all of those bikini tutus and elephants and palm trees. It's gorgeous and opulent. So it's really hard to get rid of because it's so beautiful, but it's also highly problematic at the same time. So that was our conundrum. And as people deeply committed to not just the preservation of this history, but also of this specific ballet itself as a dramatic work, we start to think about, well, what else could it be? I love that question. When you're like a little kid and there's like a pencil, and you're like, is this a rocket ship or a magic wand or a broomstick? What else could it be? And we had to do that same thing with this notation. Like, these are just squiggles on a piece of paper until we make them into a ballet every time we do that. So how else could we turn those steps into something that was not about those Indians over there, but about us? And that's, I think, where Doug and I started chewing on this idea of what else could it be? And there's so much richness doug, I don't know if you can talk about the sort of the era that we've been inspired by both in film and on the stage, and what was happening.
Doug Fullington [00:16:14]:
I think, too, with Biadare, just the particular characters and the way they were handled. The biadar itself is a sort of Western conceptions. Conception. It's kind of the taking down of a more elevated female role in India. And so instead of a sort of more authoritative, autonomous person with agency, Nikia is abide there as someone who has to rely on others, is thought of.
Phil Chan [00:16:45]:
As.
Doug Fullington [00:16:50]:
A questionable vocation, or somebody that is. There are a lot of negative connotations to the character. Also, the Fokirs, the Hindu religious, are depicted not as elevated, but yeah, as kind of crawling on the ground and just much lesser. And also the way that skin darkening was used. It was used for those that were of the lowest rank in the ballet troupe, either the youngest students or the male dancers or supernumeraries. So that was reserved for all of the lowest ranked people. So that gives us an idea of how those with darkened skinned were viewed at the time. So those things within Bayadair, I think, are problematic. That Western view or that Western kind of filtering of something they know very little about, but really through that colonialist lens of these people or these particular roles are lesser, or we're going to make them lesser.
Phil Chan [00:18:01]:
I think that presents a barrier, too. When we want people of color in this art form, we need to question some of these depictions and say, hey, is this a barrier for us? And is there another way to save this history? And I think that's where this resonated with Sarah, who's on the front lines of these students who are coming in, who are just a lot different than previous generations of students and what that looked like.
Sarah Wroth [00:18:27]:
Yeah, I think students today, young dancers today, are fully apparent in their questioning of the systems in place, which is something we want. We want to encourage their minds. We want to encourage their hearts and spirits to create a world of dance where everybody is included. And especially as Phil pointed to, like, all of our audience members, we don't want anybody leaving the theater. We don't want to say, oh, well, it's just going to be a couple of people are going to feel really disgusted and uncomfortable. No, we don't want anybody to leave the theater of a ballet performance feeling that way. And I think that's where taking up this work is really important in what it's telling the next generation needs to be done. I have memories of darkening my skin to play these characters on stage in Biadaire. I mean, that is a reality. And I didn't have the executive level thinking to say, this isn't right, or, this isn't something that for me, it was honoring the art form. And I loved the physical gauntlet of Biadaire. It is an amazing rite of passage to me for a female presenting dancer to do however many 36 Arabesques and suddenly arrive in place in seamless fashion. And it's a team building experience to go through the physicality of that amazing work. And so this, to me, this idea of not because the choice for artistic directors today is to say, the choice without Phil and Doug's project is to say, okay, we'll just do Act Three, like, we'll leave everything else alone, and we'll just do Act Three. But then you're omitting so many neat innovations in our classical ballet history in terms of movement that was chosen. So I think this allows this honoring of the choreography while allowing for an inclusive context, a new space for the story to take place, is going to really change the way students, the way future artistic directors, the way future leaders think about how we honor those classical works.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:20:47]:
I really like the way you're talking about how important this can be for students. And it just makes so much sense to be working on this like you're talking about in an environment of students who are going to go on to continue to change the art form and evolve it. So, Sarah, how did you and IU get involved in this project?
Sarah Wroth [00:21:05]:
Well, like so many other people during the pandemic, we were on Zoom in as many different fashions as possible, and we were very lucky to have Carla Corbez on faculty. And Carla had developed a relationship and understanding of Doug's work in the ballet field and Phil's work through Final Bow for Yellowface. And she was really the originator of the idea to bring Phil and Gina on to discuss Final Bow and its work. And I immediately saw, even over Zoom, the inspiration that their leadership has lended my students, and in casual in telling of the tale, because it's been in his mind and heart for so long. Phil brought up Biadaire as an idea, and I think it was immediately after that meeting, I just emailed him, and I was like, let's talk about how this could be supported at IU just because of exactly what you said, Rebecca. This should be an experimental field here at this school for what the future could hold. We are beholden to put on a show of the highest quality and hold our students to the highest standard of execution. Standard of execution. But we can afford to experiment with what the future can be. And this is a pretty safe experiment, but it's very exciting to see what's coming from this talk in this process. For that population. So then talks just kept talking, and we ended up in this space where we can now tell you when we're going to premiere this work in March 2024. So it's really exciting.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:22:55]:
Yeah, that's great. I'd love to hear now a little bit more about the specific concept for how we are stepping away from 19th century Orientalism in Bayadair to something that's going to be appropriate for our 21st century audiences, maybe. Phil, do you want to start?
Phil Chan [00:23:12]:
Sure, Doug. And I think we started with the constraint of the music and the steps. So what else could it be within those things? We were really trying to think of how do we make this not about you, but about us? And really just that's really the spirit and the ethos of this process. We were inspired by looking at different periods. We were trying to think of what are reasons or excuses for dances that would make sense. We sort of settled on, I don't know, this sort of singing in the rain dynamic. Right. If you imagine Nikia as Debbie Reynolds and Solar as Gene Kelly and Lena Laman as Princess Gamzadi, we had the same love triangle that crosses all of the gender and hierarchy, political class, all of those things are retained. So that has to be part of the story for the drama to make sense. And so trying to find a congruent I think that's a good word, congruent setting for these dances. And this music was really important for us. And so Doug was also talking about the 1920s. And maybe, Doug, you can share about some of the sort of the dance hall vibe of these dances, but also looking at other film directors from that period. Looking at Busby Berkeley. Right. If you go see a Busby Berkeley film, all of those views from above, all of the core work he uses, I mean, he was a choreographer and a director, and if you look at it, you immediately see petty PA. It's all there. So I think we found right away both a period and a style that made it about us. And I think the cowboy, the sort of Western element, they're filming a country western musical, and that allowed us to not only choose a behind the scenes, on stage, off stage feeling for the dances, but also you don't have to change your race to play any part in this ballet. Right. And it's not uncomfortable, it's not weird for a performer of any background to play a cowboy. Everybody has been everyone's been a cowboy. And so also, audience members can come to this and they'll also be able to see themselves in this fantasy. It's a fantasy that is about them as well. So really trying to take this multiracial approach. And, Doug, maybe you want to talk about some of the historical mirrorings that we found that might be interesting for folks.
Doug Fullington [00:25:48]:
Yeah, I always thought looking at Pedophile's character choreography in Bayadair. I thought, okay, he obviously doesn't not going to know what real Indian dance was at the time. I mean, there might be the occasional visiting troupe to Western Europe but he just developed a really kind of basic vocabulary and I don't mean that in a negative way at all, just a basic vocabulary of character steps. And I always thought these look like musical steps to me. You take them out of the costume and I can just see this on a stage in a variety show. I can see it in musical theater, I can see it in vaudeville. And that really then suggested sort of the me. I also just love the Gershwin musical Girl Crazy from 1930 which was a big hit. It's set on a dude ranch in the Southwest and the musical was revived for a recording with the original orchestration that I just have always loved. And I thought also Minkus was writing just all these dance forms waltzes, Gallups, polkas and those just translate so easily to softshoot and a two step and a foxtrot and a tango and all these kind of dance forms that were being used in the early 20th century. One of the guys who worked on that Girl Crazy recording is named Larry Moore. And so we have engaged Larry to reorchestrate the bioder score as though it were orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett who was one of the orchestrators for the Gershwins jerome Kern, Cole, Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein. And we're using period sources. Larry has a period piano reduction and a period violin rehearsal score to build this off of. Just last thing, too. I think Phil and I both agreed that the highly melodramatic story of biadaire that was put together in the 1870s really could take its place as a backstage drama of the kind we see in a lot of these early movie musicals, where the drama happens backstage and then everyone goes out front and does these big production numbers. And so that's kind of how we've slotted in the story and slotted in the dances for our reimagining.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:28:12]:
After nearly a decade long hiatus from live performance, chris Master's Dance returns with Mausoleum at Brooklyn Academy of Music's. Fisherman's Beast june 2 to Fourth reckoning with the dance field's history of systematic exploitation. Chris Master's Dance is building a mausoleum, a place to acknowledge and remember the past that has been laid to rest, making way for tomorrow that sets aside unsustainable forms of life and work. Don't miss mausoleum at Bam this June 2 through fourth. Tickets are available@bam.org mausoleum or click the link in the show notes.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:28:52]:
I'm wondering what role these notations are playing. So you found things that Pedopa actually choreographed. You found some of the panam. How much of this are you guys using and what's your process? Doug and Phil for collaborating together on this, reading it, fitting it into kind of your new time period?
Doug Fullington [00:29:16]:
Well, with the mime script. Because of the way the music is written, you can tell there are themes and passages for certain characters, and we can kind of link up or we can link up these mime conversations to specific passages of music. So Phil and I have put together a document where we, side by side, have the biodarer script and what portions of music and then how it's going to be in the new work. Dancing wise. I'm really going off of the notation. It gives, in many instances, the absolute full body work. What your head's doing? What your hands doing? They held their hands a lot with the wrists flexed, like you see a lot with Fred Astaire dancing. And I thought, oh, man. All these things that we might not do in ballet now, we can actually do here, because they have that period feel. I'm doing a lot of research looking at dance on film from the teens. Twenty s. Thirty s. Forty s, fifty s. Anything that has a sort of Western setting. Looking at Agnes DeMille rodeo, even looked at Western Symphony the other day. And there's one of these funky character steps that the men do in the finale coming in from the side to the center. I thought, oh, man, that's this really odd kind of hobbling step that's in the notation. So I'm trying to make a lot of these links.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:30:40]:
I love that stuff.
Doug Fullington [00:30:42]:
Very fun stuff, right over the notations. So I'm trying to make all these connections to take this movement off of paper and get it on people in this new context.
Phil Chan [00:30:56]:
But I think another thing we're thinking about, too, is the impact on contemporary audiences, right? This ballet was premiered in the 1870s, and so we have changed as a society since then. A key example is when you hold your heart and then you .2 fingers in the air. What does that mean? We know what that means. It's valet people, right? Like, I'm going to love you forever, right? But your normal people you meet on the street have no idea what that means. And we forget that. And so if you're bringing a new friend to the ballet to see that moment, and someone points at their heart and points at the sky with two fingers, your friend is sitting there going, wait. What does that mean? What does that mean? What do they just do? Wait, now that I've been thinking about that, I've just missed what's happened. Wait, who's this character? Oh, now I'm not paying attention. I'm too dumb for this. I don't understand ballet. This is not for me. Oh, my God, I'm so nervous now. I'm deeply uncomfortable. I've now forgot what's going on? Where am I? Oh, my God, I need a drink. I'm definitely leaving an intermission that is the train wreck in someone's brain when they're coming to this for the first time. And so, in our version, that same moment when Solar comes. Up to Nikki and he points his fingers in the sky. In our version, he comes up to her and he reaches into his back pocket and he gets done on one knee and he proposes to her. And everybody in the audience will know what that means. And yes, are we losing something? Yes. That gesture of pointing in the sky, that's lost. But look at society, that's also lost in the world. Nobody does that. Nobody knows what that means anymore. So maybe that's okay to lose if what we gain is someone not losing themselves in the story and feeling like they understand it and they are part of it and they get it and they are on this emotional journey with us, as opposed to feeling like you're stupid or did they just do a Nazi salute? Like, what's going on? There's so many other cultural meanings that have been layered on. Let's keep it simple so that's another part of our process, too, is questioning is the intention matching the impact? And if not, how do we have to change it?
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:08]:
Well, I love that too, because what.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:10]:
New choreographers making a narrative work? Like, say they're doing a one act whatever with a little narrative work? They're not going to use Panama in classical Panama. So it's already kind of lost anyways, right? I mean, you're just kind of bringing the two together. So I like that. And Sarah, I can't help but kind of think about all this behind the scenes work, all this research that they're doing that really lends itself well to academia and to your students. So what kind of experience are they getting? Also kind of learning about the history behind this work now that you guys are starting to be in the studio with it?
Sarah Wroth [00:33:46]:
Well, we will get in the studio with it. We're not quite in the studio with it yet, but I'm just looking forward to them being a part of the process of bringing a ballet forward from notation. I mean, most dancers today don't get that opportunity unless you are part of a Cranko ballet that's being staged or somebody brings in that giant binder and you know, it's going to be a really big work being set. So I'm excited for that element of it also. We as a university, I mean, we as the Jacob School of Music, it's the number two school of music in the world or something like that. There's such a wealth of scholarship here that's interested in this project. As soon as we met with our dean, Abraham Bush, and posed this, it's like you could see the bubbles starting to boil on the water. Everybody is so excited to be a part of this conversation. Doug is going to be speaking with our musicology colloquium when he is on campus with us. And Phil and Doug met with students when they were in town. Just what feels like yesterday, but was actually in December and just some beautiful, unfoldings, even Phil, something that sticks in my mind was the way that just light is shed upon creativity and how what Phil had my students do was close their eyes and picture an alien from another planet. And how would you picture an alien? And, Phil, I'm probably going to completely mess up your teachings right now if you're going to do it somewhere else. But picture an alien from outer space, like, in your mind's eye, what do you see? Like, is the skin green? How does it move? How many arms does it have? All of these different things. And that creative outlet of othering is what was being used in a very negative space in the past. But they were using that sense of, well, what is a person from another country like? How do they move? They used it to kind of get out of their own box and what they had been doing the whole time. So I think in this reimagining is unlocking a new way of thinking about creativity and how we can open ourselves up to new things without creating problematic situations for others. But all of these conversations that are happening lend themselves to this. It isn't just an academic mindset, though, because I don't want this to be something where it's, oh, it's a university, they should be doing this. We shouldn't be doing this because I think it is smart people talk, but it's not in the sense that it's not something everybody should be thinking about. Many of our companies in these United States are taking steps forward, and I think that's a beautiful thing to highlight. I agree with you. The academic conversations surrounding this are very intriguing to our university. But everybody can be having them. You can all have them out there.
Phil Chan [00:37:12]:
Well, I think it's important to note that we're the only production of by Dare North America since 2020 or since COVID right? So this ballet has otherwise been canceled. And we're not canceling. We're doing quite the opposite. And we're doing it in a way that is both deeply honoring tradition and heritage. And it's quite a conservative approach, but also doing something that is radically forward thinking and opens it up. And also not just with this ballet, but shows that there's so many other versions of Baidare that you could do if Russia weren't so unpopular right now. You could also set this ballet in Russia where you have the Tsar, who has to choose between his wife, the empress, and he was having an affair with the prima ballerina of the Mariansky, the temple dancer, right? And at the end of the ballet, the whole temple crashes down, right. The Russian Revolution. So if you wanted to stage it in Russia and have that be your story, you could also do it that way and keep the dances. And this approach just shows there's so many other ways to do what we've always done. If we have a little imagination and we really don't want to be racist about it. It's actually fun and easy and generative.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:38:35]:
Right. How do you distinguish between works like Biadaire that have intrinsic artistic value and works that just either because they're so entrenched in Orientalism or maybe they're just not that important to begin with? How do we make that distinction? What are we going to save and what are we going to leave behind?
Phil Chan [00:38:58]:
I think it's got to be something that really we see the potential for the past, like see what it was. And there's value in looking at it from where we stand now. There's something of value for the present. So there's something that we need to see in this work right now. And that also there is value for the future generation. And I think you have to check all of those three boxes for it to have enough value that it's worth reimagining. A lot of these works have just value to look at it in the past. For example, Birth of a Nation. Great film. I don't need a remake of it today, nor do I want to see a remake of it in the future. So it is good where it is and let's look at it in the context of where it is for what it was. Right? But a work like Bidare, it's a live performing art. I'm curious to see what it looked like in 1870. I'm curious to know, to see it today in this moment when we do want a little fun. We just came out of a pandemic. Let's do this big, grand, fun, exciting romp. And I also think future generations will want to still keep doing this and saying, hey, let's keep chewing on this. Let's feel the challenge. Sarah was saying, let's rise to the challenge of this work. So I think that's my sort of goal. Poster or barometer, if you will.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:40:31]:
I think it's really interesting you brought up film. I hadn't thought about it like that before. But ballet is inherently flexible as it lives and dies in the moment. So if the moment is past, you don't have to recreate it exactly, whereas something like Gone with the Wind is Gone with the Wind, and it will be that way forever. So you have to either add context or move on or whatnot. But ballet does have that flexibility to evolve. So it's a plus for our art form.
Sarah Wroth [00:41:01]:
And I want to bring up again the fact that Bioder is a ballet where it brings up the level of the company performing it. It always brings up the group of individuals that chord. A ballet that has to work together with such synchronicity is building not only a relationship to each other, but their dancing level is improving. So it's like one of those swan lakes. It's like an a tudes in that regard. And I think that's so worth preserving. And I think that's something to look to when you're canvassing how to preserve the work and which works to preserve is what kind of education do they provide in terms of our physical growth as dancers? And I've always felt that, I mean, your career is an education. Your career is this amazing curriculum of movement that lasts the test. It spans your life as a dancer, so you want it to be filled with these markers that change you for the better through the physicality of what you're doing. And then the hope is that it is a story that is compelling, that the audience loves. But we as dancers, we know this. We've been a part of works being created where we're like, I don't understand what's happening on stage, but I'm having fun through the physicality of movement that's happening or not, in the sense that I don't understand what's happening, or the audience might not be having the experience I'm having, but I'm enjoying the physicality of this. So let's make the audience have the great experience, too, while we're going through this physical learning.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:42:46]:
That's so good, because I think there's such a tendency for companies to set full program, full lengths because they sell tickets or it's just an easy grab to get people in. And sometimes the dancers are like, oh, God, Romeo and Juliet again. So this is kind of I like that idea that here's something classic that can still bring people in in that way, but there's an exciting element to it. There's something that's feeding the dancers as well and kind of giving everybody that experience from both physicians. I like that you guys are going to be premiering this in March 2024. What is it going to look like over the next year? What is this process going to be like?
Sarah Wroth [00:43:28]:
Well, Doug is a wizard of ballet scheduling in addition to being a passionate ballet nerd and has every item laid out and how long he anticipates it taking to teach. So I'm really excited to put that into our own schedule. But Doug, if you want to delve into a little bit the amazing organizational skill that you wield.
Doug Fullington [00:43:58]:
Well, right now, Larry's working on the score. There's about 40 odd musical numbers in the ballet, and he's doing about two a week. He does them long hands, scans them, sends them to me, and I'm computer setting them. And then we make MP3 s and share them. Phil's got them.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:44:21]:
They sound really good.
Doug Fullington [00:44:23]:
They just sound really good. Music will be such an important part of setting Biodarer in a new place, in a new era. And then Phil and I will be and are working on the plan for the action scenes, just how the music fits the action. And that will really be Phil's area, developing the characters. So we're still fine tuning that. And we're researching our ideas still for costuming and set, so we can provide our collaborators at IU with as much research as we can, but we'll really start in December. Once IU has finished their Nutcracker, we'll go for a week there. I want to set kind of some of the technically the hardest stuff, and then we'll come back at the end of January and 24 and just really work through to the premiere. But, yeah, I like to have a plan. It still work, but I worked full time many years at PNB here in Seattle, which is a repertory company, rotating all kinds of ballets. I mean, we all know how this goes for the large companies now that do constantly changing rep. You really have to have a good plan for how long it's going to take to teach what you anticipate. What's the best point? To start something so that the dancers will have time to master it and to feel really secure doing it. I did want to say, if I can, just one other thing I love about working with the source material is that with Bayadair, it really comes down to us through this 1940s production that was made in the Soviet Union, where there were lots of changes to the choreography. I mean, the framework is there, but just a lot of small things about use of Quasi versus FSA and are you facing upstage or downstage and what's the tempo going to be like? And I'm really looking forward to kind of wiping that slate clean, really recovering a lot of speed in the choreography, which I do think is something that 19th century classical ballet really needs now, is to recover the sort of speed and brilliance of that movement and just that broad step vocabulary. Maybe steps that have gone out of fashion, maybe now that it's 20, 23, 24, they can come back into fashion. Can we risk doing a step that we wouldn't have done in the 1990s? Now are we okay doing that step? So I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to work on these kind of things with the student dancers.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:47:01]:
Well, we have a very packed year ahead of us, I presume, but I'd love to just let's fast forward to March 2024, and I just want to hear from each of you what you hope the impact is on the students and the dancers, the audience. What do you hope that this production, how it impacts the community that will be viewing and performing in it. Sarah, you want to go first?
Sarah Wroth [00:47:27]:
I'll start us off. Let's see, March 2024 will be here in a minute. I am so hopeful that this community in Bloomington, Indiana, feels the weight and importance of what it's been a part of in viewing this labayader. Reimagined I really feel like the dancers will. I know the dancers will. I hope they will. But I also know they will come away from this project understanding how to tell an inclusive story, not only how to dance well, not only how to refine their technique to perform a rigorous classical work. But how to tell a story, not only to be entertaining and engage an audience, but how to tell a story that can be told this day and age and on into the future, including people, all people with a sense of belonging in the theater for everyone who leaves. So that is my hope that they come away with the tools that they need to use their imagination the way Phil has, the way Doug has in creating this project.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:48:49]:
Beautiful. Phil?
Phil Chan [00:48:53]:
I would just say looking at how big the Nutcracker is as a phenomenon and how much money it brings in and how many different types of Nutcrackers there are, like, the diversity we have of Nutcrackers doesn't make it smaller or a threat to the ballet. It's only made it bigger and made it a thing. The fact that it went on TV made it bigger, that's why we do it every year, is because it went on TV in America. And so the fact that we have so many versions of it, what if By Dare could be like that, too? What if Swan Lake could be like that, too? What if we just let go a little bit and just reimagine some of these work, especially if there are racial problems in there, but just let go just a little bit, because we did that with Nutcracker and look how big it's become. So can we do that with other ballets, too? I mean, what if this inspires a renaissance of biadares and 20 different new productions all reimagined in different ways, like, great, awesome. And if that can also bring in money to support artists of color making new work as well, in complement to that, great. Even better. That's what I'm hopeful for.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:50:10]:
How about you, Doug?
Doug Fullington [00:50:12]:
I echo everything that Sarah and Phil said, also, just for the show itself. I hope it's beautiful, I hope it's fun for everyone. I hope it's entertaining. I hope it has that organic feel like you can believe it was meant to be this way or that the story was meant to be this way. And these steps fit this music so that that new context feels really like a great fit. And I think that will help accomplish the kind of things that Phil just spoke about. I'm looking forward so much to the teamwork. I know we're going to feel with the students and all the collaborators, with Sarah and everyone at IU. And yeah, I hope that we're doing all we can to suggest a model for working with canonical works to kind of open up more possibilities.
Phil Chan [00:51:02]:
Yeah.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:51:03]:
And do you guys have hopes for this production in the future, that maybe it could go on to have a life after March 2024?
Phil Chan [00:51:13]:
I think so. I think that'd be a very nice thing. We are just so blessed to have this opportunity to try this out at IU and really use it as a laboratory space. Just what an incredible privilege that we wouldn't get in a professional setting. So just really incredible for us to have this process, to have the space and the time to try it out and work out the kinks and get the music the way we want it to sound with a really incredible orchestra. Just all of those things. I think even just looking at our schedule, how many rehearsals do we have with the orchestra? Just because it's also a great experience for the students, as opposed to being like, well, no, you only get this much time because that's all we can afford. And that's just the reality in a professional setting. So, yeah, if companies in the future want to say, okay, we've seen you guys make this work, and we want to bring this to our company too, as sort of the now full Broadway run, we are game for that. And I think that also is so good for IU because it shows it as the leader and a launching pad for new, exciting, innovative art. We do have a few folks coming to the premiere, so if you see that weird New York to Atlanta flight or to Bloomington flight, you'd be like, oh, there's a lot of ballet people on that flight.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:52:45]:
It's not a direct yeah, I know it's not a direct flight. Well, thank you all for joining us today, and I really hope that we can circle back March 2024, and so that we get a view of the process now and then as we go through. It such an exciting project, and we hope that our listeners will fly out to Bloomington for the premiere. I want to be there.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:53:11]:
Yeah, you do. Sounds great. Thank you all for joining us today.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:53:16]:
Thank you so much.
Phil Chan [00:53:17]:
Thank you.
Doug Fullington [00:53:18]:
Thank you.
Phil Chan [00:53:23]:
Bye.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:53:25]:
Conversations on Dance is part of the Acast creator network. For more information, visit conversationsondancepod.com