Arrested at the police station!  The drama and scandal; it’s as if Puccini wrote it himself.  Tosca for city commision!

So I don’t know about you guys, but I’m feeling really drained as the month of June dawns on us.  The last month or so has been really intense, between the political scandals and the systematic destruction of the gulf coastal ecosystem by corporate forces.  And I never got a chance to go see ‘South Pacific,’ regrettably, but I have it on good authority that there was in fact a single shirtless man, so any false advertising lawsuits can be put to rest.

Now that we’re all caught up, I have the bizarre fortune of telling you that there really isn’t anything going on this week; the Joe Jefferson’s and the Chickasaw Civic Theatre’s 2009-10 seasons are dunzo, and the Opera and the Symphony aren’t doing anything until like the week after next, so, uh… yeah.  How’s the weather?  [Whistles obviously as a breeze passes by.]  I guess we can discuss the Nodine case for lack of anything better going on.

I jest.  This downtime couldn’t have come at a better point, as this week we start our hilariously amateurish and ad-hoc ‘History of Ballet & Opera’ series for those new to the genres, so that they can feel more welcome in joining in the culture goings-on in the coming weeks and months.  And also because I think it’s pretty hilarious and entertains me, and that’s really the point of this column at the end of the day.  So shall we begin?  WE SHALL.

A (Really) Brief (And Poorly Explained) History of Ballet & Opera: Part I

We start this week with ballet, for no other reason than that it’s first alphabetically (opera will get its moment in the sun, calm down nerds).  In brief: ballet began in the 1400’s in Italy, expanded and was formalized in the other major European capitals (and bitter Russia) in the ensuing centuries, became an actual recognized art form in the 1700’s, and became a dominant cultural pursuit by the end of the 19th century, by which time it had evolved into what is now known as classical ballet (this is the old fashioned kind with big sets and angst-ridden storylines, a la ‘Swan Lake’).  In the 20th century two other variations of ballet became prominant, mostly due to the perverse need by Americans to alter and grotesquely make unrecognizeable the traditional ballet methods.  The first alteration, neoclassical ballet, is what happens when you remove almost all narrative and stage setting, and just let dancers dance, devoid of storyline (in modern terms this is the ‘Mad Men’ form of ballet, all mid-century modern and minimalist and totally revisionist).  The second variation, contemporary ballet, is basically some Martha Graham nonsense that’s spread all over the place, and which has infected every major ballet company in the world at some point.  As with all things high culture, every single detail in the previous paragraph is contentious and open for debate.  Which is also hilarious.

There weren’t really “stars” of ballet in the modern sense until the dawn of the 20th century, and that’s where we first get glimpses of characters like Vatslav Nijinsky, a major writer and performer of ballets in Russia in the earliest parts of the century.  He basically shook things up by creating mesmerizing and obtuse ballets that were completely against the accepted notions of the art form at the time.  A skilled dancer, he was also one of the only men in ballet to be able to perform en pointe, which is quite a big deal and very, very sex-say.  He was, additionally, an intensely burdened schizophrenic, and his diary is one of the single best accounts of self-described insanity that existed before the advent of modern psychology.  Totally insane, the poor guy spent a great part of his later life in and out of asylums.

It wasn’t until the mid-century that the West got its fair share of ballet stars, none more legendary than British post-war star Margot Fonteyn.  Fonteyn was an absolutely gifted ballerina on stage, and had one of the very longest careers in ballet history, but this is all beside the point because what she’s really great for is initiating a coup in Panama and nearly starting a war in Central and South America, so well done Margot.  Fonteyn was also noteable because just as her career seemed over in the early sixties, it was resurrected because of a partnership with another Russian dancer, Rudolph Nureyev.  Nureyev was a Soviet dancer who, while visiting Paris in 1961 and under the intense scrutiny of the Soviet secret service, fled to freedom at the airport and asked for asylum, which he was then given.  He spent the next couple decades being insane and flamboyant, an unrepentent homosexual and friend to socialites such as Lee Radziwill and her sister, former first lady Jackie Onassis.  (He liked the nightlife, he liked to boogie, he liked the disco at night; unrelated, surely, the Soviet Union had an order to assassinate Nureyev for the greater part of several decades.)  Oh, and if that didn’t make them cool enough, he and Fonteyn got arrested in the late sixties in San Francisco for being at a drug party.  When the police raided the apartment, the pair fled to the roof where they were found several hours later, Margot hiding underneath her full-length fur coat in the corner.  She was nearly fifty at the time.

Nureyev would grow to work with a number of important members of American ballet, such as Maria Tallchief.  America’s first actual prima ballerina, Tallchief was also of Native American descent, and her emergence as a star of ballet was of great impact to American minorities struggling for recognition within the art form.  Nureyev would also inspire everyone’s favorite seventies wunderkid, and fellow Soviet defector, Mikhail Baryshnikov.  I would talk about him, but I don’t care for him at all, so I won’t.  Them’s the breaks when one has his own column.  As is clearly evident, though, the world of ballet in the modern era is nothing if not diverse and intensely interesting.  Where most people see boring old dancing, the art world sees obscene scandal, sexual and cultural revolution, and a rise to prominance of people who would have, in almost any form of mainstream culture during their eras, been barred from any noteable celebrity.  How many openly gay actors existed in the sixties?  How many times did Marilyn Monroe try to illegally overthrow a government and work as an arms smuggler?

In our own contemporary era ballet continues to be one of the most diverse art forms in the world, and has continued to become more and more “modern” with each passing decade.  There are stars now such as Italian dancer Roberto Bolle (pictured above [and below]) and 16-year old Danish star Oscar Nilsson who are not merely famed dancers, but also international representatives of major couture labels (and prone to star in extremely creepy and post-modern fashion advertisements).  Likewise, Bolle is also a representative of the United Nations’ UNICEF organization, proving that the snobbery so often associated with great dancers and the artform of ballet is nothing more than a myth conjured by football fans who are jealous their own butts aren’t as cute in tights.

Obviously this isn’t a compendium of ballet stars.  It doesn’t even scratch the surface.  But it’s a good start for you to begin your own research, and to learn more about the world of ballet at your own leisure, and to become more affiliated with the how-what of its modern-day stars.  Now that you know some of the who’s of ballet, next week we’ll take a look at what I think are the “essential” ballets of the last 100 years for the beginner interested in ballet (and from there we’ll move on to opera).  Also, actual things are happening next week, thank the lord.  I am so excited I can barely contain it!  See you then, geeks.