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Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet The centennial of the most notorious ballet premiere of the twentieth century provided the occasion for the Joffrey Ballet to tour its 1987 reconstruction of Nijinsky's choreography for Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and to remind us of several aspects of the unique difficulties of the transmission of performance arts. Ballet still does not have a universal system of notation and thus depends primarily upon transmission by living performers to remain in the repertoire. Nijinsky's masterpiece did not give rise to a tradition by which it might continue to live. The subtitle of the Sacre--Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Acts--suggests an explanation for its lack of longevity if viewed in the context of the history of ballet as told by Jennifer Homans. Although religion and nationalism are elements of the cultural context in which any art develops, the kind and degree of their prominence may be productive or destructive. Nijinsky's choreography failed to survive because it was too pagan and ultranationalist for the inherently hierarchical and cosmopolitan art of ballet. Homans's history of ballet from its origins as a ritual performance of physical and metaphysical order in the court of Louis XIV to the decades after the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet

Haviland, B.
Common Knowledge , Volume 20 (2) – Mar 20, 2014
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-2423043
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Abstract

The centennial of the most notorious ballet premiere of the twentieth century provided the occasion for the Joffrey Ballet to tour its 1987 reconstruction of Nijinsky's choreography for Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and to remind us of several aspects of the unique difficulties of the transmission of performance arts. Ballet still does not have a universal system of notation and thus depends primarily upon transmission by living performers to remain in the repertoire. Nijinsky's masterpiece did not give rise to a tradition by which it might continue to live. The subtitle of the Sacre--Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Acts--suggests an explanation for its lack of longevity if viewed in the context of the history of ballet as told by Jennifer Homans. Although religion and nationalism are elements of the cultural context in which any art develops, the kind and degree of their prominence may be productive or destructive. Nijinsky's choreography failed to survive because it was too pagan and ultranationalist for the inherently hierarchical and cosmopolitan art of ballet. Homans's history of ballet from its origins as a ritual performance of physical and metaphysical order in the court of Louis XIV to the decades after the

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Mar 20, 2014

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