Ruth Page Collection > SERIES I: Motion Picture Film of Performances, Rehearsals & Home Movies

Dance Stage with Ruth Page [1960s]

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Colquhont L Hart of � jest wasx We are now going to explore one of the least understood of the arts, but one of the most popular.

The art of the ballet.

When you go to the ballet, do you ever stop and wonder how such beautiful and exciting effects are achieved? It all looks so easy.

Every dancer seems to know precisely what he's doing.

Every effect seems so spontaneous.

Who is responsible for this? Who is the creator of all this order? It's the choreographer.

Since I'm a choreographer, I'm going to tell you what a choreographer is and does.

A choreographer is a composer of dances, but actually he is much more than that.

He is a sort of a catalyst who brings together all the various elements that go into the making of the ballet.

The story, the music, the scenery and costumes, the lighting and casting, all of almost equal importance as the ballet itself.

It is how to put them together that is the heart of the matter of creating a ballet.

The whole must be much greater than the sum of its parts.

No matter how well each individual artist does his work, it is whether the choreographer has put these parts perfectly together that is the final test.

You may like the music better than the dancing or vice versa, but even if you like everything equally well, we still have failed if the essential drama resulting from the combined work of all the contributing artists fails to move or excite us at the end of the performance.

When we do succeed, there is a sort of a magical communication between the artists on the stage and the people in the audience.

This is the important thing.

Even the greatest artists cannot explain their own creations.

Perhaps you know the story about the lady who bought a Picasso picture and she said to him, Mr.

Picasso, now that I own your picture, I wish you'd explain to me what this picture means exactly to you.

Picasso thought for a while and finally the best answer he could give was, it means to me exactly $50 ,000.

Actually, there is nothing one can say about dancing half as effective as the dancing itself.

Let me show you.

However, it is interesting to try and analyze an artwork after it's finished and at least something of its mechanics can be explained.

There are three main sources of material for dance movement.

The ballet or theater dance, modern or free dance, and folk or national dance.

Each has its own style.

In the ballet, there are probably not more than about 30 basic steps.

We learn these steps as children at the bar and when we leave the bar, the teacher puts these different steps together for us in various combinations called enchainements.

The names are all in French.

Here is an example.

Now this is a typical conventional ballet enchainement.

Now I want to introduce to you four of my dancers.

They are all soloists from the Chicago Lyric Opera.

Will you do it as an adagio? Barbara, do the same steps now tragically.

Now Chuck, take the same step and do it comically.

Composers sometimes use their themes upside down.

Would you like to try it upside down, Barbara? You see, the dancers must be able to try any crazy thing the choreographer asks of them because that is the only way we can arrive at something new.

Now Barbara, you and Chuck jazz this enchainement.

Chuck, you finished the enchainement.

This is not a jam session.

That last was a typical jitterbug lift.

Now we're going to show you how to develop a more classical lift.

It's in four stages.

Now do it with a turn.

Now jump into it.

Now do it without your hands.

What you've seen so far is not choreography.

It's just exercises both for the choreographer and the dancers.

Now the next dance you'll see is completely choreographed.

The music is by DeLibes from the ballet Sylvia.

The style is 19th century and shows the conventional mannerisms and steps of the old fashioned classical ballet.

In the full version of this little ballet, two cupids dance at this point, which gives the soloists a chance to catch their breath.

Almost every classical dance has a coda, which means a short brilliant finale.

The choreographer must always take into account the costumes that the dancers are going to wear, because the costumes often dictate the style of the movement.

For instance, in a Japanese kimono, the only way you can move is like this.

Even in a modern tight Dior dress, if you want to pick something up, you have to go like this.

So today, Etta Burrow will wear her costume for the next dance, because the skirt and even the headdress are part of the choreography.

You'll recognize certain basic ballet steps, but they are all used unconventionally.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

They are married, but not to each other.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

They are married, but not to each other.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

They are married, but not to each other.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

They are married, but not to each other.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

They are married, but not to each other.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

They are married, but not to each other.

An entirely different problem is the dance from the triumphal scene in Aida.

No one knows today how the Egyptians used to dance centuries ago, and there's no way of finding out.

Yet the choreographer must conjure up an Egyptian mood.

So this Aida dance is inspired by the acrobatic positions of the dancers on the Egyptian bas -reliefs, but no sense copies them.

Imagine the soloists surrounded by a large court of ballet, and they do movements like this.

The dancers have round flat golden disks on their hands, and they dance like this.

You might describe it as a kind of an operatic ballet style.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

The dance is about two lovers who are flirting outrageously in a moonlit garden.

Let's turn to a different problem.

Edda and Chuck will dance the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore.

Here again, no one knows how the Spanish gypsies danced in the 15th century, and even if we did, native dancers are rarely theatrical enough for the stage.

So you see in these movements the flavor of the Spanish gypsy dances, but they are not authentic.

We use the round hand movements that the Moors brought from Africa to Spain, and which have now become typical flamenco.

We use this position, which we call the Spanish S.

In classical ballet, the arms, when they're in fifth position, make a soft frame for the face.

But in gypsy dancing, the arms are back of the head, the head is down, the elbows are bent, and the wrists come together in a fierce style.

The dancing is very fierce, and the hands are in exotic positions, almost like flowers.

And the dancing is very staccato and rough.

Actually, this is another example of operatic ballet style, and you will see them costumed.

You have to imagine costumed in wild gypsy rags.

Some people ask me where ideas for ballets come from.

Of course the idea is important because the conception dictates the style.

In France, it is the custom for such great writers as Annouya and Giraudon, Camus and Sartre to write scenarios, or what they call their ballet livraies.

In fact, Giselle, the most famous of all the 19th century ballets, was written by the French poet, Talefield Gaultier, after a poem by Heine.

Most of the choreographers in this country invent their own ideas.

You might get an idea from listening to a piece of music, or maybe if you read a story that gives you an idea, then you can have the music especially written for the story.

Sometimes I base my ideas, my dances, on poems.

The poetry of E .E.

Cummings has such a wonderful rhythm to it that you can use it in place of music.

Anyone lived in a pretty hot town, with up so floating, many bells down.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, he sang his ditton, he danced his did.

Women and men, both little and small, cared for anyone, not at all.

They sewed their isn't, they reaped their sayings.

Sun, moon, stars, rain.

Another poem by E .E.

Cummings, which I think would make a wonderful ballet, and a very interesting one, is the Cambridge Ladies.

The Cambridge Ladies, who live in furnished souls, are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.

Also, with the Church's Protestant blessings, daughters, unscented, shapeless, spirited.

They believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead, are invariably interested in so many things.

At the present writing, one still finds delighted fingers knitting for the, is it poles? Perhaps.

While permanent faces, coyly bandy scandal of Mrs.

N and Professor D.

The Cambridge Ladies do not care above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky, lavender and cornelous, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.

Or if you want a comedy, the cow is in the hammock, the kitten is in the lake, the baby is in the garbage can.

What difference does it make? Sometimes one line suffices.

Tonight the moon by languorous memories obssessed, lies pensive and awake, a sleepless beauty.

This is a poem by Baudelaire from The Flowers of Evil and translated by George Dillon.

So you see how many ideas there are.

Many choreographers think that the simpler the idea, the better the ballet.

I personally challenge the idea of exciting and very complicated stories, but sometimes the Viennese Waltz is best.

The Viennese Waltz is a collection of seven steps of two.

That is, a classical dance performed by a man or a woman.

You'll see how from awkward beginnings we finally arrive at complicated choreographies in which the human body is completely idealized.

The Viennese Waltz

Identifier
F.2011-05-0157
Date Of Production
1960s
Abstract
This is an episode of the program "Dance Stage" hosted by Ruth Page for National Educational Television (NET, est. 1963; formerly National Educational Television and Radio Center from 1958). Part lecture, part demonstration, the episode showcases Page and her dancers in an effort to 'educate' the public about "the art of the ballet." It includes several pas de deux from various ballets.
Description
The film begins with the episode's opening titles superimposed over a series of couples performing pas de deux to piano music on a television studio set. As the music ends, Ruth Page enters and begins to explain that the catalyst behind an apparently effortless ballet is the choreographer; after continuing to explain the basics of dance, she concludes that it is best to simply show rather than tell. At this point, a male dancer enters the frame and performs a brief solo. Page then reenters and explains how ballet as a form is based on a fairly small cadre of steps which are then arranged into "enchainements;" she follows this with a demonstration of her own. Next, she introduces her dancers (all in practice clothes) and asks Barbara Steele to demonstrate a specific combination of steps in several different speeds and 'moods.' Chuck Schick then joins, offers a comedic take on the same, and teams up with Steele for a "jazzy" version. This serves as a transition into a demonstration of four types of lifts. Page then returns to introduce the next section, a pas de deux from the ballet "Sylvia," followed by a "coda" (finale) from the same ballet. Page then explains the effects of costumes and introduces a pas de deux in full costume. After this pas de deux is completed, Page introduces another, from Aida, to demonstrate a more stylistic ballet, in this case meant to elicit an ancient Egyptian 'mood.' She follows this by introducing a final "operatic" pas de deux: the Anvil Chorus from "Il Trovatore," with the dancers meant to be stylized as Spanish Gypsies. One this final pas de deux is complete, Page reenters to discuss the inspiration for choreographers' ballets: often a piece of music or poetry. She recites poems that she finds inspiring, by e.e. cummings and Charles Baudelaire. For the final scene of the program, Page brings forth her four dancers for a Viennese Waltz from her ballet "The Merry Widow." She promises that "next time" there will be a discussion of the pas de deux and exits. The episode concludes with ending credits juxtaposed over waltzes, as at the beginning. After "national Educational Television" flashes onscreen and is announced, the film goes blank until ending.
Run Time
0:30:49
Format
16mm
Extent
1,100 feet
Color
B&W
Sound
Optical
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Language Of Materials
English
Element
Print
Genre
Dance
Educational
Form
Television specials
Subject
Dance
Ballet
Related Collections
SERIES I: Motion Picture Film of Performances, Rehearsals & Home Movies

Sponsor/client
National Educational Television

Main Credits
Mansfield, Richard (is director)

Additional Credits
Kayan, Neal (music)
Manschot, William (is lighting director)

Participants And Performers
Page, Ruth (is host)
Steele, Barbara (is performer)
Buro, Etta (is performer)
Johnson, Kenneth (is performer)
Schick, Charles (is performer)

 
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