NOTE: I originally posted this article on October 21, 2015. Due to needing to revise my blog posts since migrating them from Wordpress to Wix (as they came through incomplete), I have added some additional information and updated broken links.
The article linked above is an excellent piece on a dancer musing about the western centric premise that ballet is what dance is based on. Worth a read!
"For the past month and a half I have been living in a country where ballet and ballet-based genre classes barely exist. I don’t see pointed feet. Teachers don’t communicate in French terminology. Not in recreational dance classes, not in rehearsals for the National Company, not in the Dance Department’s studies at the University of Ghana. Here taking a technique class means training in Traditional Ghanaian dance. Here claiming to be a dancer means you are skilled at both Adowa and Azonto. Here Traditional Ghanaian dances are the foundation of dance exploration and studies. " - J LynThomas
It simply isn't true that Ballet is the first or best way to express movement and it reflects a serious lack of historical and cultural knowledge. (Ballet didn't start until somewhere around the 1500-1600's, with the pointe shoe aesthetic we all associate Ballet with today not coming in until the 1800's)
I have to agree with J Lyn, the author of the above article. It has occurred to me many times that there is a very strong bias towards certain styles in dance. It is so common for TV dance and talent shows such as 'So you think you can dance', to feature a belly dancer and/ or a few 'ethnic' dancers in their initial auditions teaser trailers. If the actual audition was shown on the show (which it rarely was), it would invariably get a patronising smile and a comment along the lines of 'very entertaining' ... NEXT!
As if to say - 'There! We endured that 'spectacle of lesser dance' to make the selection process seem diverse, now lets get to the proper dancers.'
Mary Murphy's guest judging on the Australian SYTYCD a number of years back, will be forever burned in my mind - "BOLLYWOOD!"' she shrieked, "What the hell is Bollywood?" (Ok, I am not sure if that was word perfect but it was something close to that).
I was shocked.
Even relatively conservative people in the regional area I live in, have heard of Bollywood movies and associate them with dance sequences. For a dance 'judge' on a show purportedly about choosing the best all round dancer, I found this admission quite horrifying.
Don't get me wrong - I loved watching SYTYCD (particularly the Aussie version) and have met and danced with choreographers and finalists on the show. I am glad the show was created. It has raised the profile of dancers and for that I am grateful.
Nor do I hate Ballet.
I have taught those with a Ballet background, I found them excellent with lines and turns but that they often struggled with hip and chest isolations. This doesn't mean Ballet is bad or Belly dance is bad. They offer a different aesthetic and style of movement. I just take the fairly radical view that I don't believe one is superior to the other.
A similar perspective is shared in this more detailed piece https://www.danceplug.com/article/why-ballet-is-not-the-foundation-of-all-dance-arts-and-culture
"Dance students are often not offered any kind of dance history until college, and many young dance students decide not to pursue dance in college, in favor of another field of study or do not attend college altogether. As a result, there is a lack of broad historical and cultural understanding that can be detrimental to dancers, choreographers, and audiences. Dance is so much more than shapes and movement through space. It is a collective physical manifestation of various cultures, histories, and ideas from all over the world. This is why broad statements like “Ballet is the foundation of dance” are wildly inaccurate and offer a shamefully limited understanding of the size and scope of the dance world. It is vitally important to instruct young dancers on the history and cultural origin of all the dance forms they choose to learn". -by Caitlin M Heflin • 14 Sep 2020
PS, I don't like the term 'ethnic' to describe non-European dances but used it here to make a point about the culturally perspective that prevails in Australia, Europe and the US. I also enjoyed this scholarly article and argument that Ballet could be considered 'ethnic' depending on ones perspective
(UPDATE: The Best of Habibi is sadly not available online any more but I found the piece featured by Joann Keali’inohomoku, Ph.D. here https://www.oberlinlibstaff.com/acceleratedmotion/primary_sources/texts/ecologiesofbeauty/anthro_ballet.pdf)
Found the original article I linked to using the wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20160623152016/http://thebestofhabibi.com/vol-18-no-3-march-2001/ballet-as-ethnic-dance/
"The experience of this intense rereading as an anthropologist rather than as a dancer, was both instructive and disturbing. The readings are rife with unsubstantiated deductive reasoning, poorly documented “proofs,” a plethora of half-truths, many out-and-out errors, and a pervasive ethnocentric bias. Where the writers championed nonwestern dance they were either apologists or patronistic. Most discouraging of all, these authors saw fit to change only the pictures and not the text when they reissued their books after as many as seventeen years later; they only updated the Euro-American dance scene." -by Joann Keali’inohomoku, Ph.D.
What are your thoughts? Do you like the articles I linked to?
Please comment below.
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