a response to a paper by Simona Noja-Nebyla via Academia.edu

(contribution to discussion of the paper "Approaching Ballet Education Core in the 21st Century)


Dear Simona Noja-Nebyla,

Thank you very much for your generous invitation. As there are only 11 hours left for me to comment and just before I was about to go to sleep, my contributions will have to remain superficial, given with the aim to honor the invitation.

Indeed why and which aspects to preserve, maintain, keep developing? Several approaches from the same cultural zone have emerged, enriched the options.

I would invite us to treat whatever anyone of us prefer to think of as ballet as a set of related dance languages. These have evolved over time, like any other language, including English, changed considerably, reflecting social developments, sometimes galvanizing them.

The roots of what is considered ballet I would trace as much longer reaching historically than a mere 360 years, which in human terms is, more or less, one empire. As recent empires that have emanated from the European subcontinent are dissolving into something else (decolonization etc.) so comes the question of what will be maintained, by who, and for what purpose.

One comparable development may be that of Latin into the Romance languages, based on the popular, "vulgar", not the elite "classical" variance.

Today, many use the vocabulary, but often with very different substrates, underlying concepts. Just think of the epochal difference between Merce Cunningham's adaptation of what he learned as ballet-vocabulary into his own way of dancing, via the variation created by Martha Graham in the US of A, again very different from the aims of Alvin Ailey and Janet Collins. And we haven't even begun to look into related contemporary dance languages.

Status, power, imperial more than not, may very much be one of the drives, being recognized as Kings and Queens, top of the heap, having made it socio-economically, speaking the language of the Dominators. Decolonization on the one hand, Afro-/American/European/Asian dancers claiming to be just as proficient and recognized in this language as a current process on the other.

All that said, I deeply believe that every language, every dialect has their innate wisdom and usefulness, and so it is good if enough people dedicate their lives to studying a very specific language, others in sharing insights from this knowledge with others.

The many dance technical aspects of what has been derived from Classical European-formed ballet, has fortunately been challenged to the core, with what is now often referred to as Somatic Dance Techniques as an invaluable gift from the late 20th century.

Perhaps the mere kinds of mono-linear figures and forms & sequences could be interesting, comparably to the chromatic 12-tone system that has been formulated from the European cultural zone. (again in response to and dialogue with Persian, Indian, Chinese, Afro-American, and other musical developments)

For a contemporary society that has finally understood and internalized the necessity of organic connectedness, mycelial, dynamic, ever growing, creating single lines in time/space, as happens in ballet-related languages, can be a welcome option for expression.

Of the current human languages, as we enter what is currently felt to be decolonization, two, English and Spanish, followed on a further place by French stem very directly from the hybridization of Latin with various Gallo-Germanic tribes-languages and dialects.

Perhaps that is a more interesting note to end on.
I hope this was useful to read.

Best of luck!
Thomas Körtvélyessy,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
April 23, 2022