Felt 1
Historical Connections Essay Clubbing with Balanchine If George Balanchine and the club dancing genre lived in the same apartment building, Balanchine and his ballet repertoire would, quite literally, live in an ethereal penthouse suite and club dancing would occupy the pulsing basement. Throughout the semester, Professor Oppenheim used the analogy in Contemporary III and Dance Histories to discuss genre aesthetics and relationships within the dance community. I argue George Balanchine and Club Dancing, although distant neighbors, connect through owning a unique “look,” reputation for pushing boundaries and historical foundations. My analysis developed according to archives, lasting legacies, and lines of lineage connecting the topics under the same roof. Due to the broad scope of club dance, I narrowed my scope to the New York City scene because it developed alongside Balanchine’s career and influence in the dance world. My claims are supported by scholarly literature across fields and viewings of Paris is Burning, a documentary of New York City ballroom club culture and Balanchine’s Jewels restaged by the Paris Opera Ballet in 2006, as the basis of my observational research. The “Look” George Balanchine is an American ballet giant who moved to the United States from Russia in 1933 to establish the first American dance enterprise. Balanchine co-founded School of American Ballet, associate school to the New York City Ballet, with art connoisseur Lincoln Kirstein. His career had spanned world-class ballets, commercial dance, and Hollywood productions by the time he passed away in 1983 (Hardy, 16). In an image from the New York City Ballet Archives Ballet Society Collection, the Balanchine “look” is captured in what appears to be a rehearsal setting (see Image 1). My immediate observations include black and white composition, the power dynamic between teacher and student, gender divide, and unified
Felt 2
body type. The photograph is representative of a stereotypical ballet class environment, the teacher standing at the front to demonstrate while dancers take direction and adjust accordingly, a testament to Balanchine’s teaching style, reflectively of many other ballet masters. The second image is “2:53” (see Image 2), is an excerpt from the Manhattan Sunday by Richard Renaldi exhibited in the Benrubi Gallery. The image captures a large group of people in a smoky nightclub. Renaldi describes the composition as follows, “The faces are blissed out, maybe even a bit wan after eight or ten hours of clubbing. Black and white lend a coolness to the scenes, merging day with night, while several long exposures capture the euphoria of the club experience, but also its transience” (Manhattan Sunday). I would further add the influence of drugs and alcohol adding to the somatic experience captured in the photo. Although Balanchine and ballet were stylistically separated, both “looks” are notable in the field. Pushing Boundaries George Balanchine and club dancing have a reputation for pushing boundaries and occupying new contextual spaces. Phil Jackson discussed club culture in his article, “Inside Clubbing: Sensual Experiments in the Art of Being Human” published in Context. He wrote, “clubbing challenges this cultural codification of the flesh by taking us into the writhing, rhythmic and chemical realm of social encounters, virulent beats, and seductive desires, which create a sensual landscape that generates its own modes of knowledge” (2). I would also add club culture raises conversations about heteronormative gender roles and embodying newfound confidence on the dance floor. He continues, “people are able to 'let themselves go and reveal themselves in an alternative social form” (2). Thus, portraying club dancing as an escape, as discussed in Paris is Burning, since NYC clubs are historically known for supporting the
Felt 3
LGBTQ+ and African American communities pushing boundaries in social sub-genres such as ballroom, vogue, and drag. George Balanchine pushed the classical ballet world into new movement vocabularies and gender expectations. Jewels, a three-part ballet initially premiered in 1967, debuted flying limbs, liberated pelvises, and polycentric movements. The work aligns with his philosophy working with female dancers, “[Balanchine] treated girls as if they were athletic as their brothers. He has proved that they can be fiery hummingbirds rather than dying swans, with the capacity of channel swimmers” (Daly, 114). Without diving into Balanchine's problematic notion that the ballet genre is defined as female, “Rubies” debuted a tall and liberated female soloist challenging gender in the industry. The root of breaking boundaries separates the two topics because Balanchine had the privilege to take risks as a white man and club dancing historically doesn’t have much to lose. Again, returning to the elevated penthouse and underground basement analogy, dance scholar Sally Sommer said clubbing attracted a specific group of people looking “To rid themselves of the clichés associate with status incumbency and roleplaying and to enter into vital relations with other man in fact, or imagination” (72). Thus, emphasizing the nature of breaking boundaries in the genre. Historical Foundation George Balanchine and the club dance community should thank King Louis XIV for setting the foundation for clubbing and ballet masters. Ellen Welch, the author of “Fictions of the Courtly Self: French Ballet in the Age of Louis XIV,” said, “the aristocrats who performed alongside their king was charged with displaying the dignity and humility required by their station. But they performed this role in a variety of bodies — taller and shorter, stronger and
Felt 4
weaker, older and younger” (18). Additionally, Welch’s claims contribute to Jack Anderson's chapter on French Court in Ballet & Modern Dance. He wrote “...the audience was invited to join with the performers in a dance, and thus theatre going merged with party giving... the sight of everyone dancing together could be interpreted as an image of social harmony and stability” (49). Welsch and Anderson bring up two critical ingredients to clubbing, blurred lines in class systems and accepting multiple body types. Alternatively, Balanchine’s career connects to the French Court due to the Sun King’s short ballet career influencing the genre to later travel across the Atlantic into the United States. Supported by our class discussions on organizing thoughts both physically and conceptually, my analysis stems from archival research and important picture observations concerning these two topics. George Balanchine and Club Dancing run in two different social circles while operating within the same community. I think it’s safe to assume Balanchine wasn’t like the kind of guy to burn off steam in a sweaty dancehall, but his stylized “look,” reputation and lineage, links him to clubbing as a neighbor. If George Balanchine and present-day clubbing communities had an opportunity to talk about their contributions to the dance world, they could bond over establishing a strong brand and challenging expectations within dance practices. ### APPENDIX Image 1 (balanchine.org)
Felt 5
Image 2 (Manhattan Sunday)
Felt 6
Works Cited Anderson, Jack. Ballet and Modern Dance: a Concise History. 3rd ed., Princeton Book Daly, Ann. “The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers.” The Drama Review: TDR, vol. 31, no. 1, 1987, pp. 8–21. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1145763. Hardy, Camille. “Bringing Bourrées to Broadway: George Balanchine's Career in the Commercial Theater.” World Literature Today, vol. 80, no. 2, 2006, pp. 16–18. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40158865. Jackson, Phil. Inside Clubbing: Sensual Experiments in the Art of Being Human. Berg, 2005. “Jewels.” Choreographed by George Balanchine. Performed by Paris Oprah House Ballet, Telmondis. 2006. Livingston, Jennie, director. Paris Is Burning. 1990. “Manhattan Sunday.” Benrubi Gallery, 2016, www.benrubigallery.com/exhibition/474/manhattan-sunday. Sommer, Sally R. “‘C'mon to My House’: Underground-House Dancing.” Dance Research Journal, vol. 33, no. 2, 2001, p. 72., doi:10.2307/1477805. Welch, Ellen R. “Fictions of the Courtly Self: French Ballet in the Age of Louis XIV.” Early Modern French Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2017, pp. 17–30.,