Breaking barriers

The mystique of the ballerina

The New York Times
September 16, 2010
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Hark! They speak!

Ballerinas Take a New Approach: Talking

Those ethereal creatures at New York City Ballet, who communicate solely with physical grace and train their whole lives to perform in silence, are now talking to the audience from the stage.

This week, the opening of the company’s fall season, principal dancers have been stepping out to say a few words about themselves and the coming programs.

The unusual move is part of a broader effort by City Ballet to humanize dance, connect better with the audience and, ultimately, sell more tickets.

“Ballet has always had this stigma, this mystique, this standoffish art form that you couldn’t touch,” Peter Martins, the company’s ballet master in chief, said in an interview this week.

The new approach, he added, is “about breaking barriers.”

But more than just ballet’s mystique is on the table. Conversational dancers fit in to a larger endeavor at City Ballet, the result of a round of strategic planning that led to several changes meant to turn ballet into a less formal experience.

At Tuesday and Wednesday performances, for instance, the number of intermissions will generally drop from two to one and the shows will start a half-hour earlier.

The preshow talking goes against a subtle tradition. For generations the culture of ballet has involved hiding the pain of dancing, keeping personal lives behind the curtain and suppressing the mundane aspects of the art form so that when the baton goes down, audiences enter a world apart — one of beauty and form and pure movement.

Dancers are trained to land softly and keep any sounds inside them as they move with vigor around the stage. Even the stages are designed to suppress sound. And forget about Dale Carnegies in tutus: public speaking courses have no place at ballet schools.

So it is no surprise that the move has failed to catch on with some of City Ballet’s 24 principals. Mr. Martins said that he wanted to institute the practice for the whole four-week fall segment of the season, but could not muster enough enthusiasm. “A number said, ‘Please don’t make me,’ ” Mr. Martins recounted.

Sara Mearns, who danced on opening night Tuesday, was one. “I’m not good with huge crowds,” she said in an interview.

Mr. Martins left open the possibility that preperformance addresses could be extended past Sunday, the end of the first week, depending on how audiences, and the dancers, receive them.

He said the idea was based on audience research, which included focus groups, surveys and individual interviews. But even he had reservations.

“I’m of two minds, truthfully,” he said. “I grew up in a world where we were told: ‘You guys dance. Just dance, don’t talk.’ But on the other hand, we live in a different world. The public really wants to know people.”

That desire has not escaped other institutions. More and more, orchestra members are being asked to speak to audiences from the stage or mingle with them before and after concerts. Microphones are making new inroads in sports, finding their way into boxing corners, locker rooms, race cars and dugouts during events. Artists are increasingly aware of the need to explicate their work.

Making dancers more accessible to balletgoers can be a good step, said Charles L. Reinhart, director of the American Dance Festival, but risks reducing the critical faculties of the audience. “If you go too far, then it takes away from the art,” he said. “You’re kind of influenced a bit in looking at the work — ‘that’s my kid up there.’ ”

Dancers, of course, have been talking in public in various ways — at special fund-raising performances, educational events and children’s programs. Very occasionally, dancers are given lines to speak or sing, as in George Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and Jerome Robbins’s “West Side Story Suite.”

Less well-known is that dancers often talk to one another during performances — sotto voce or turned away from the audience. Sometimes it is a “sorry” for a wrong hand clasp or a reminder of an about-to-be-forgotten step or guidance for a last-minute substitute performer.

“You’re not supposed to know that,” said Ashley Bouder, a City Ballet principal who will be introducing Saturday night’s program. “I’ve been talked through some pas de deux before.” Ms. Bouder is also one of a growing number of dancers who regularly give insight into their lives on Facebook and Twitter.

But audiences rarely experienced what was on display Wednesday evening at the David H. Koch Theater, when Tyler Angle hopped out sideways from the curtain and addressed the 2,500 people in the house.

Charming and self-deprecating in black jeans, an Austrian-style short-waisted jacket and sockless wingtips, he apologized for his “rehearsal hair” and joked that with Fashion Week taking place in Lincoln Center, the dancers were feeling self-conscious. “We’re used to being the thinnest, most fashionable people” in the area, he said.

Mr. Angle called that evening’s program one of “interesting things, small gems and a slam-bang finish.” He dropped a little gossip — two principals that evening, Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, were engaged — made a comment about each work and hurried off to the wings.

Backstage, during the opening work, several colleagues, sweaty and panting after exits, congratulated him. “You were really good,” said Tiler Peck, who embraced him. Mr. Angle said he felt completely comfortable, helped by the proportions of the theater. “The audience doesn’t feel worlds away,” he said.

At intermission, several balletgoers praised his appearance. “It makes it a little less formal, and a little closer to the audience,” said Kathleen Leslie of Portland, Me.

The new strategy includes meet-the-dancer talks before performances the first week. On Wednesday Ms. Mearns and Joaquin De Luz answered questions in front of about 75 people in the first ring. These listeners learned that Ms. Mearns was shown little appreciation by her teachers at the School of American Ballet and that she has a puppy, and that Mr. De Luz studied bullfighting, paints and calls his mother before every performance.

A new marketing campaign was also set in motion that features portraits of the principals as people — not in costume or stage makeup. The photographs appear in advertisements, brochures and an exhibition on the theater promenade. Some are also projected on buildings around town. City Ballet has even created a mini-Web site, nycballet.com/dancers, dedicated to each principal.

Ms. Bouder said that she was a “little apprehensive” about speaking on Saturday. But, she added, “I really like our new campaign pushing our dancers out there and making us friendlier and more accessible.” She acknowledged that the loss of distance between viewer and dancer could potentially dampen the experience.

“But to be honest, in the time we are living in, with all the technology and how everything is accessible with so many outlets, we’ve fallen a little behind,” she said. But, she added, “there’s still mystique at the ballet.”

Personal comment: I hope that Peter Martins goes slowly with making his dancers available. It’s not clear at this point if he understands (though his “being of two minds” about it is a hopeful sign) that if dancers lose their mystique it would be a major problem. We are already seeing that celebrities are withdrawing from Twitter and other Social Media because of its intrusive nature. I’m not suggestion that a ballerina’s occasional pre-performance chat with ballet-goers before a performance is as personally invasive as Twitter can be, but familiarity really can breed contempt, or at least disinterest, and disinterest in a performer is deadly.