6C IDENTIFYING LITERATURE
For me the hardest part of this course is the fact that I’m doing it on a ship, and I knew this would be the case from day one. More so with this module I find myself needing to use the internet a great deal and with every minute costing I find it such a struggle! For instance my general pattern seems to be as follows, logging onto the internet, copying and pasting everything I can, then logging off, writing up the tasks and then logging back on to literally throw everything back on the internet in as little time as possible.Oh the small joys of studying!
This is why for this task I was already a little happier as I knew that I had already come across pieces of literature that other students had suggested in previous tasks and I had cleverly stored them away for later reference! Sure enough when I saw this task I Knew I could use the sources that some of the other students had mentioned to me to help me with my lines of enquiry.
The first piece of literature was an article which was displayed on The Telegraph online. Its a very short article that Mina Niikura posted under one of the discussions on the middlesex page.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/8392840/Ballet-Girl-Kimberly-Jaraj-makes-weighty-pointes.html
In this article we read of Kimberly Jaraj who stars opposite Russell Brand in the forthcoming film The 10 Year Itch. She attended the Royal Ballet school at a young age and like I have mentioned before about the pressures on the ballerina in particular she speaks of the pressures at the Royal Ballet School, where pupils are regularly weighed.
I noticed just like myself she refers to the new film The black Swan, not only have I developed a discussion on this but whenever I seem to research the web or search in for anorexic pictures of ballerinas or other topics relating to my enquiry I find a lot referring to this new film in particular.
The actress quotes, "It really is the hardest profession," "Someone would cry every day." I later found that she attended the Royal Ballet school at the young age of 8 ! at such a young age I would have been in primary school, and from what I remember of that no one used to cry everyday, the royal Ballet school is the same but specializes in an art that you should supposedly love. So why the sadness, blatantly the pressure is intense and she shockingly admits this with the following,
"I never felt the pressure for being skinny, but other girls definitely did. They did weigh us frequently and they would say things to me like, 'Your mother's 5ft 6in and your father's 6ft, so why aren't you taller?”
As a dancer I see this as a form of bullying from the teachers at the school and I feel that whoever said this took it too far. In someways I agree for the teachers to warn us about our weights, to acknowledge and teach us that the world of dance is strict on image particularly before we start taking it as a career but with comments such as the above I feel that they are unnecessary and totally screw with the dancers mind leading to consequences and the themes of The black swan, anorexia, eating disorders, depression and total mental breakdown. Like the actress I share the same point in never really feeling the same pressures of being skinny unlike a lot of my other classmates but now working on a cruise ship I do have a show weight that I do have to keep and I am weighed every month. I have never had this before so I feel there is a lot more pressure on me as a dancer and when we have brought this up with guests who ask about how we keep fit they are shocked on the discovery that we are constantly weighed by our agency. As a dancer this is normal however I find myself stressing a lot more than I did in college where I would be doing 4- 5 classes a day working 9 till 6.30 five days a week.Now as a working professional aboard the Silver cloud I find myself doing an hours tech run and the hour show once every other day on average! A dramatic cut down to what I was doing last year in college.
Jaraj then goes onto saying the following:
"The smallest thing, like if you didn't have your little pink ribbon in your hair, you'd panic. They would tell you to sit out. You're in competition with your friends every day."
I totally can totally apply myself to this as well because when in class we always had to be in our black uniform, and even that was strict. All leotards couldn't have any fancy straps in the back as we were told this “ruins the line” and in our graduate year we all had to wear soft blocks in class. A few girls never wore these all the time and if they were spotted by the wrong teacher they were instantly put on the spot in front of the entire class and were asked why they were wearing the “wrong uniform”. Other small things like messy hair that wasn't scraped back almost with a fine tooth comb and not wearing any makeup for class was also looked upon as wrong. When I started the Hammond I never wore any makeup and now I feel naked and uncomfortable when I’m not wearing it, something that shows me how important our image was in college and how in one way it has almost scarred me. I know a lot of my old friends from school didn’t recognize me when I came home from my training in chester, it seemed I had gone away, developed my image and almost come out of myself.In school I was seen as the class geek, the ginger who was never into image and concentrated on exams and homework. Now I am some girl that can't walk out the house without makeup and gets male attention from the boys who used to bully me in school. I see this as good as dancing makes me feel good about myself and I had grown a lot more confident in myself but its also bad, sometimes I see myself a little sad and vein as the dancing has done this to me and I know sometimes my parents hate me wearing all this “slap” around the neighborhood. whats interesting is a quote that my mum always used to say to me when I came home from college was “your not in chester any more” and I found this quite upsetting that to her I had blatantly changed a lot due to the pressures and rules of my image in college!
For somebody to read this article outside the world of dance I think would find quite shocking and I think would maybe go away and think about the Royal Ballet or any particular dance school that trains and brings up the young dancer. The article ends with a Royal Ballet Spokesman saying the following,
"Students are elite athletes. The school is committed to ensuring that each student's fitness program enables them to perform at their best and includes maintaining a healthy weight. The school welcomes students from all backgrounds”
Really? I think this is interesting to end on as it really makes us wonder about the dancers training and how strict they are especially with our image, is there a secret world behind dancing that we don’t know about, one that isn't perhaps in the public eye as much as it should be?
This is what brought me smoothly onto my next article again which I saw in one of the links that was in fact displayed next the article above, again thanks to Mina I wouldn't have spotted this important piece of literature which is so important to my line of enquiry,
I found this article extremely interesting in general and would recommend it to any dancer to read, again it features the famous ballet school and like the above article it stresses how “life in the Royal Ballet is so competitive.”
In the article we meet Rupert Pennefather, a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet and he starts off my ideas by going back in time. What was ballet like back then and was the dances image as important as it is now?
“our outfits have all changed. Way back, tights were made of heavy woven material and weren't stretchy at all. You used to end up with terribly baggy knees. And I tried on a pair of ballet shoes from the olden days and they were really thick leather with a lot of material inside. When I pointed my foot, I thought, "My God, how did people dance in these?"'
Since then there has been a lot more focus on image and therefore a lot more money spent on dance equipment and clothes. For example do you think back then the dancers had the dance magazines such as dance direct with pages full of leotards,pretty tops and colorful leg warmers to choose from? Pineapple dance wear, do you think the dancers cared about what make there sweatpants were or the new craze of jazz trainer. Even now companies like Nike are getting involved and I know have a selection of dance attire and even trainer for the working dancer, Nike is a major sporting fashion icon and for them to create dance wear blatantly shows how much the dancer needs it and is buying it as its still out there becoming bigger as it is being featured in more of our everyday stores.Even more shockingly back then the ballet star didn't have the typical dancers breakfast that we hear about these days, most dancers probably consume a bowl of muesli,a piece of fruit or something considered healthy to sustain there ideal weight and physique again the article quotes me saying
“ I imagined a cup of green tea. A natural yogurt maybe. But he had actually stopped off at his local café for an 'R Pennefather' – two fried eggs, two hash browns, two rashers of bacon and a side of baked beans.” a total shock to what I would have imagined a top principle ballerina to be eating in class. This all makes me think was ballet more casual back then, was it more on if you could dance rather than your image, we know how image is a lot more important to everyone today even outside the dancing world we are surrounded by a vein world of fashion, media and cosmetic surgery !
We then go onto meeting Lauren Cuthbertson who is one of the principals that Pennefather has worked with.
“ With a BMI of 18.5, she doesn't take a lot of lifting. 'My body might be slender,' she says 'but it's not too slender. Not too sinewy. I'm not too too, which seems to be the fashion these days. Everything has gone way beyond what is normal.' There's no fat on her. She looks down at her flat chest.”
Whats interesting here is the word fashion, indeed it is the fashion today for every dancer to be slim and beautiful but not only in the world of dance but in our every day word, Pennefather says this word follows by these days almost as if it didn't exist in “his” day
“ The dancers are pretty and thin, or handsome and thin. And they all look so young. Dancers for the corps de ballet are most attractive to company directors in their late teens or early twenties. It's a life of pressure”
Mara Galeazzi married a Royal Ballet stage technician. 'He always says to me, "You have so many beautiful men around you all day, with perfect, toned bodies. Why do you choose me?" He is very big, and strong, but I say to him, "That's the beauty of it – I see so much perfection every day.'"
“As the ballerinas file into class, it's clear that a lot of perfection is down to genetics. You're either born with a small head, a long neck, a shortened torso – or you're not. Galeazzi, who has been one of the principals since 2003, was one of the lucky ones.”
From this I cant help question myself, the dancers image, well is it a game of luck, is it something your born with, they clearly state it above that if you have the right body type your accepted and if you don't have it your outcaste.
Perfection, beauty, handsome all words that stand out and appeal so much to my line of inquiry but what is the “ideal Ballerina” this article was fantastic and clearly stated the almost rules for how to look as a ballerina,
“The ideal ballerina has toes that point outwards. The 'turnout' is the cornerstone of classical ballet. It begins at the hip and moves down to the knee, the tibia, the ankle and the foot. But if the leg isn't turned out naturally, it can be done by stretching, which can take its toll. From the number of straps and supports, it's clear that every dancer nurses some sort of injury.”
The pressure to look the part as a dancer is so intense that we force our bodes unnaturally to look the part. I can comment on this myself with teachers poking and prodding me in lessons to turn out. I always knew I had very little turn out and sometimes felt a lot of pain the next day from serious strain that I had put my body through. And how far do we go ? is there a limit, well for some dancers who want it so badly no !
“Gelsey Kirkland actually felt compelled to go one stage further and had plastic surgery to improve her onstage 'line'. She had her earlobes trimmed and her nose reduced, and silicone implants in her lips and breasts. In her tell-all autobiography, Dancing on My Grave, Kirkland details her struggles with cocaine, eating disorders, and a choreographer who made her pop amphetamines while issuing dictates like 'must see the bones'. The dancer Heidi Guenther – who died in 1997 as a direct result of an eating disorder – was an exceptional case, yet to talk to young dancers working today, anorexia and bulimia are as much of a problem as they ever were.
It's all about creating 'perfection' at every level. It was even suggested that Cuthbertson change her name because it wasn't perfectly glamorous. She refused. 'They said, "Try using your brother's middle name." My brother is Aaron Matthew Cuthbertson and Lauren Matthews sounded like a magician's assistant. So they said, "Use your mum's maiden name." She's Lewis. My middle name is Louise so I would have been Lauren Louise Lewis. Too showbiz if I'm honest.'
This particular dancer went the whole way ! her body and even her name ! “The dancers spend the class studying every aspect and angle of themselves in the mirrors. 'It's a visual art,' Pennefather says”
For me this article was really interesting and made me explore lots of ideas that explored my line of enquiry. If anyone else can see any hidden areas for me to develop in this article please let me know as I would greatly receive all feedback. For my third and final piece of Literature I used another link that Mina posted to me on Wilkipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Saigon#Controversy
On this it talks of the controversy of The famous musical Miss Saigon.The article quotes the following,
“Miss Saigon has received criticism for what some have perceived as a racist or sexist overtone, including protests regarding its portrayal of Asian men, Asian women, or women in general.
Originally, Pryce and Burns, white actors playing Eurasian/Asian characters, wore eye prostheses and bronzing cream to make themselves look more Asian” I think that this is really interesting,in this scenario we are using actors instead of dancers and the same areas seem to be repeating themselves whereby the actors are taking dramatic measures in changing the skin tone to fit the part, but as we read on caused a lot of protest in this particular instance. But then you could argue its just costume, lots of dancers and actors change hair color and style with wigs and makeup, surely this is the same thing?
“Although there had been a large, well-publicized international search among Asian actresses to play Kim, there had been no equivalent search for Asian actors to play the major Asian male roles—specifically, Engineer (Pryce) and Thuy (Keith Burns).” This makes me go onto thinking maybe its not so much on image in this case, maybe they are looking more so for better actors that don't fit the particular image but can play it better than any one else! but if I can recognize the same thing of my inquiry from an acting angle, one thing is for certain... even they struggle to find the “perfect” and natural candidate to play the part.
If anyone has any comments or views on my literature that I found please do not hesitate in getting involved I would love to hear from you :)
