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Good morning!
No sooner had I drafted and scheduled last week's newsletter, here came another New York Times piece on gymnastics choreography and the artistic elements of the sport appeared. The headline: Female Gymnasts Have To Dance. What If The Sport Actually Valued It?
The writer, Laura Capelle, contributes frequently to dance publications like Pointe and Dance Magazine. She lives in France and was able to go see some of the Paris Olympic gymnastics events in person. Laura leads off by writing about her hopes for a less cursory dance quality in the routines-- especially since the official rules have changed to deduct for low quality or uninventive movement-- and by and large, she sees much improvement and even some joy in the gymnasts themselves, given the freedom to be expressive and, well, just move!
What I'm struck by, however, is that this is the flip side of a major issue and growing complaint in the ballet world: that IT is becoming too athletic. Too much emphasis, especially in ballet competitions (no surprise there, since how can artistry really be judged?) on "tricks," multiple pirouettes, extreme flexibility, and power jumps, all at the expense of nuance, precision (one of my favorite qualities in a dancer), and a admittedly difficult to quantify sense of genuine emotion-- not a plastered on smile or fake expression of angst.
Sort of interesting to consider that both gymnastics and ballet seem to be trending the same way. But are they really? Audiences in a sports arena and in a theater cheer most loudly at the moment of a stunning triple-quadruple-twisting-double-back something and also at the Black Swan's fouettés, but at the end of the performance or the competition, which artists or athletes do they go home thinking about? What part of the show they just saw really touched them?
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