Stravinsky, Nijinsky, and the Origins of Priss

I'm digging deeply into Stravinsky right now. His big three ballets: Firebird, Petrushka, and (especially) The Rite of Spring were brazenly provocative, deemed little more than noise when first premiered (the latter incited a riot). But Igor won in the end. These three pieces have baked so deeply into Western art that they're like Stairway to Heaven - at this point, one needn't ever have heard a single Zeppelin tune to effortlessly follow along.

They're called "ballets", but that's just a proposal from the composer. Sort of like if I wrote a movie screenplay and typed "Blasé Tuesday: a Film by Jim Leff" on the cover. It's not a film, it's a piece of writing until some dude with a camera shows up. Luckily, Stravinsky had the whole package worked out from the get-go with a choreographer, the immortal Vaslav Nijinsky.

In a previous discussion of dance, I griped about how dancers and choreographers mostly follow a karaoke approach, layering terribly clever and difficult presentation atop music which serves as mere wallpaper. As a musician, it makes me roll my eyes.

I mentioned that Jerome Robbins strikes me as a full-fledged musician. He didn't erect visual presentations atop audio backdrop; he understood music with a musician's sensibility, and his choreography was as musical as the music itself. Pure magic!

You can add Nijinsky to the small group of true choreographers (find a dvd of "The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky" if you can; here's Roger Ebert's swell review). His original choreography for Rite of Spring was restored in the late 1980s by the Paris Opera Ballet and by the Joffrey Ballet, and it's great. Here's Marie-Claude Pietragalla of the Paris Opera Ballet terrifying the bejesus out of you:



Credit Nijinksy for genius choreography and Stravinsky for genius composition. But check out Pietragalla, revealing the raw soul of dance. 

This is wildness - pagan and primordial rites from the woods of ancient Russia. She's not depicting wildness - seeming wild - she is that. 

For contrast, here's the Joffrey Ballet performing the Nijinksy version in the same year, demonstrating why 1. they're great, but 2. dance is considered prissy affectation by most of the public (nobody would ever use such a word to describe Pietragalla's performance). I've cued it up to the same portion, and you can see the Joffrey's skillful and talented lead performing the movements with wonderful grace, but she's seeming wild, not being wild. A depiction of wildness ("this time it's me!"), not the real thing. 

She depicts Nijinsky’s depiction. A photocopy of a photocopy. Feh.

Naturally, snarky cognoscente are largely nonplussed by Pietragalla's performance. I contributed this comment beneath the YouTube video:

To all who think Pietragalla is less than awe-inspiring here: You're demonstrating the problem with dropping the acculturated trappings and manners of ballet to utterly inhabit the wildness of such a character (rather than skillfully and tastefully depicting that wildness, as seen in the Joffrey version): the dancers, critics, and audiences who inhabit the ecosystem of acculturation will icily insist that she's doing it wrong.

There is no trace, no whiff, of a wasp-waisted lady-in-leotard at the barre in Paris starchily plying dainty pliés with tight hair bun and haughty countenance. Gone. Wiped clean. Here, instead, is a pagan primordial presence from the ancient Russian woods. The actual thing.

And these f-ing people want their starchy French lady.

Rare Adult Artwork

I haven't done much artwork since childhood (though I do enjoy photography). This, my tribute to a niece, is an exception. It's got my trademark combination of primitive draftsmanship and high viscerality.

There's a quality ballerinas prize. They call it "lift"; a deliberately-created impression that gravity works the other way for you; that you're pulled up to the sky almost as much as you're pulled down to the ground.

Dancers achieve lift via an adjustment long known to yogis, called mula bandha in Sanksrit. As with almost all yogic stuff (e.g. karma yoga), don't try to do quick research; you'll just get colder and colder. Lots of people talk and write about this stuff, but shockingly few have any understanding.

I wasn't consciously trying to create the impression of "lift" in the little ballerina, but, years later, I see that it's palpable.

The Reed

The reed,

unendingly assaulted by violent wind,

never suffers.


It never occurred to the reed

that the wind was a separate, external thing.


Insofar as the reed thinks at all,

it thinks it's dancing.

Photograph by Paola Casali

The Infinite Potential of Slow Learners

Yesterday I described how painfully slow and stupid I am in areas like home decorating. It's not a question of ignorance; I could spend years hobnobbing with designers and learning everything there is to know about upholstery and track lighting, but the practical application will always feel like alien territory. I'm not a natural. I'm slow. Slow enough to drive you batshit crazy.

And yet, although it took three years of painstaking work to outfit a house a few years ago....

"in the end, the place had the magical power to make anyone stepping into it feel absolutely comfortable and relaxed. It didn't make much of a visual impression; there was no particular design "impact". But neither did it look sloppy or mismatched. What hit you was the Vibe. I'd nailed it!"

That's not my only weak spot. I'm also slow at learning physical moves. I've driven several yoga teachers to near breakdowns with my thick-headed sluggishness. "Do this," they'd instruct the class, and I'd stare in dumbfounded confusion while the others simply did the move. They'd talk slooooowly to me and raise their volume, assuming me to be an idiot. But my mind isn't the problem. It just takes a while for my body to absorb new instructions.

At this point, I've practiced yoga for 35 years, and can do some really hard poses. I'd "impress" those same teachers if they saw me! And because it took decades, rather than months, to, say, plant my palms on the floor in a forward bend, I've learned an awful lot. Every millimeter of progress produced a tiny jewel of insight. If you watch me bend forward, you'll feel like something's happening. That's not true of naturally bendy people. They just bend!

I've tried over the years to take Salsa dance classes, because I love the music so much. But dance teachers are the sort of people who learn dance moves quickly, so it's impossible for them to relate to a below-average student who needs to practice each step dozens of times. Once a step sinks in, I can perform it with good feel (maybe more so than "naturals" can!). But it's tough to find a teacher with sufficient patience.

These are areas where I learn slowly, and that's just how it is. They will not get faster. But the important thing is that my potential in these realms is as high as anyone's. In fact, maybe a tad higher, because in taking my time and pondering minutiae, I go deeper.

In other areas, I'm super fast. I think fast and talk fast. I can leap from thought to connected thought with ease. It comes naturally. But when I grew up, there were kids in my class labeled as "slow". These kids were inferior; you couldn't expect much of value to pop out of their minds, because they are, after all, "slow". I always took that as a euphemism. They were damaged goods with hard limits.

Boy, was I wrong. I went on to meet many people whose intellects absorb facts and ideas with syrupy slowness. If you tell them something new, they'll need to mull it over. But sometimes they'll digest it all into conclusions so novel, so rich, so damned brilliant that I'll realize that I, with my fast, jumpy mind, miss all sorts of intellectual goodness.

There are lots of consequences to all this. They could fill a book - a book that should be written, because this is all so little recognized. But here are a few points, in dense shorthand:

1. Slow learners are limited only in velocity, not in potential mastery.

2. Slow learning often yields richer results.

3. We're all slow learners in some realm.....but having been discouraged from using our slowest, richest faculties, those faculties usually remain stillborn, which is why many people never uncover their genius (everyone has genius).

4. The custom of leading with strengths and burying weaknesses creates great societal problems:

• 4a. Educational systems favor fast learners and discourage slow learners.
  Consider my dance and yoga teachers. Or, for that matter, school gym teachers who, being fast-learning jocks, give up on slow-learning kids. This has had huge impact on national health and obesity. Athletics aren't just for the naturally athletic!
• 4b. We lack empathy for slow learners in realms where we're fast.
  I've explored my slow areas, finding that slowness actually confers a certain edge. It's all been so destigmatized for me that I can relate to slow learners even in realms where I'm a natural. But most of us spend our lives recoiling from from our slow sides, which helps perpetuate the ignorantly condescending attitude I outgrew. Again: slow learners are limited only in velocity, not in potential mastery! Say it loud: I'm slow and I'm proud!
• 4c. We group people by their fortes.
  This makes sense; everyone offers society the cream of their ability. But to segregate by natural forte is to make the wrong distinction. If I'd followed that momentum, I'd have quit yoga, dance, and sports. Instead, those are the realms where I'm happiest (if this article reads well, I'll feel satisfied. But the ultimate success of that house gave me way more satisfaction than my writing - which comes easily - ever could!).

Dance Move Tutorials

His production values are unswank, and he may not be the most efficient teacher in the world, but this guy on YouTube has posted tons of great instructional videos explaining hip dance moves that are otherwise very difficult to learn about. He also teaches some really creative, unique steps he's figured out. And he's not promoting anything; it's all out of pure generosity.

"I'm not making these videos for fun...i am making for people to become sick dancers."

I find the sentiment really touching. And, most impressively, he hardly shows off at all. Each video consists almost entirely of his patiently slowing things down, breaking down steps to clearly explain them. For the most part, he declines to demonstrate the finished step for more than a couple of seconds. Just when one begins to question his expertise, he'll do a complete step full-out for the briefest of moments, clearly proving this dude really knows his stuff. Imagine that: a slick dancer patiently offering all his moves to all comers for free, without even looking for ego satisfaction.

Even if you're not someone who hangs out in dance clubs, the tutorial on how to airwalk and moonwalk will have you gliding around your living room.

Dancing "To" Music (plus A Brief History of Accompaniment)

I caught a performance this weekend of Morphoses, the joint British/American ballet company founded by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.

I occasionally check out dance performances, always hoping for the sort of inspiration I get from great music, art, writing, theater, and cooking. But I usually come away grumbling about what I call "Figure Skating Syndrome". It's a musician thing (I was a full-time trombone player once), but let me try to explain.

Figure skaters perform to music that serves as mere backdrop. The music may be acknowledged via a couple of arm waves and coquettish movements, but the skaters are front and center, and the music is mere sonic wallpaper. It's "accompaniment".

Most serious dance performances strike me as similar: talented people doing intricate and beautiful things with a backdrop of music. Or course, that's not fair; serious dance does have a deeper musical relationship than figure skating. But still not enough for my taste. No matter how acclaimed the choreographer, the dancers always appear to be dancing to music, rather than from it.


70 years ago, at the height of its power, the musician's union boldly called a strike on recording. For a very long two years, from 1940 to 1942, musicians recorded no new material. And it changed everything. Before the strike, instrumentalists were kings. Audiences actually listened, they idolized horn players and drummers. Bands were followed like baseball teams. Singers were mere adjuncts to musical performance: second class musical citizens. Props.

But the musicians' strike changed all of that...forever. Two factors contributed. First: the slack was picked up by a slew of vocal recordings, and the public developed an enduring taste for singers. Second, record companies, desperate to maintain revenue, started reissuing old recordings, including one of the Harry James band featuring an unknown singer named Frank Sinatra. The original recording hadn't even listed Sinatra's name, but the reissue hyped him to the hilt, and a sensation was created, which led quickly to screaming, swooning bobbysoxers. After Sinatra, an unbroken string of singers became huge stars. A publicity model was born...and musicians would forevermore be deemed accompanists.

That pecking order has affected the very fabric of music. Vocalists generally sing over the music rather than deeply inside it. Many barely listen to the musicians with whom they perform - whose job is to merely lay down a solid foundation. And that seems perfectly natural to post-1942 audiences, who focus exclusively on the singer. The chasm greatly widened with the advent of music videos, which made the music itself nearly beside the point. Invisible in a visual medium, music grew even less important than wallpaper, become nothing more than subconsciously registered sound stuff, subliminally enriching the lead melodic line.

There are singers who have a musician's ears and understanding, and who sing as an intrinsic part of the music rather than accompanied by it. I was lucky enough to perform with the legendary Joe Williams, and it was exactly like playing with a great instrumentalist. But that's rare. Most singers lack real musical training, have poor "ears", and simply do their thing. Audiences - who, since 1942 have pinned their eyes tightly on the singer - expect nothing else. The result is much like karoake.

And "Karaoke" is the Japanese word for "figure skating syndrome". It's about music serving as the vague backdrop for performances which happen more or less "to" the music.

I'm not suggesting that choreography must be musically literal: that each piccolo trill be matched with a corresponding fluttery dance movement. But dance ought to emanate from the very guts of the score. A dancer should be a musician. A choreographer should be a musician. Both the dance and its music should seem to spring from the same muse. Yet even the most acclaimed choreographers merely set beauty to a musical accompaniment. All would surely profess great respect for and commitment to the musical form, but that's not enough. They ought to have a musician's soul.

The only modern choreographer who has struck me as truly possessing a great musician's soul was Jerome Robbins. He choreographed Stravinsky's Les Noce, a lush, hyper-complex work I'd previously come to know very well, and his work offered me fresh, startling insights on the piece, which he understood far more deeply than I had. All movement derived profoundly, brilliantly, ingeniously, from Stravinsky's score. The dance truly completed the music.

The Morphoses performance was virtuosic and beautiful. But it completed nothing.