Dancing Intertexts...more

19

“The reality of interpretation is that readers enter at different points, select points of interest and, most usually, enter from an interpretative or evaluative stance. The reader then selects (chooses) those ‘facts’ which support that perspective. In this sense, the reader constructs the dance. Eco refers to this as the ‘continuous coming and going’ of interpretation (1979:5)”

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This choosing of facts works similarly to the comments section of the Guardian, or how people react to comments on Twitter. Maybe some of the commenters on the Guardian are looking for points that Luke Jennings makes that align with their own views/perceptions of the performance. An entry point could also be what is missing from the written piece. For me, my entry point was noticing that very little review space was given to Romeo & Juliet. I wanted to know why.

Every reader is coming into the piece from a different history or perspective:

Ballet is boring / Romeo & Juliet is my favorite / I’ve seen every ballet ever / I know all about ballet / I know nothing about ballet

Is it a critic’s job to think about all of those different points of entry? Is it a critic’s job to maximize the amount of perspectives that can enter a piece? By changing the form of how that piece is ‘written,’ how does the critic change the opportunity for new and old perspectives to interact with the piece?

In other words, how would a filmed review create more or different entry points than a written one?

I guess I could answer this question: A filmed review would allow for new points of entry because of how the information is being communicated. A written piece could explain what the dancers looked like on stage, down to the very last detail. With a filmed piece, you have to be more creative with how you address how dancers performed because simply filming the dancers doesn't give an idea of your opinion of their performance. You have to find ways to make visual comparisons, using other types of film — stock footage, vintage footage, footage you create yourself — and cutting techniques. While any dance critic/writer can write that the ballerina danced quickly and accurately, how in the world do you say that in an image? Suddenly, a world of visual metaphors has opened up to me. Maybe "quickly and accurately" looks like lightning striking a single post.

Also, a filmed review is a great opportunity to step away from description. And while it's been common for me to come across reviews with a lot of description and not much of an opinion, I think a filmed review of the ballet would be impossible to make if the opinion wasn't carried through straight from the beginning. Rather than describing what it looked liked, a film lets you skip the subtleties and say exactly why it did or didn't work.

Because I'm sourcing film from other contexts (movies, home videos, original footage I've made) it's a natural next step to review that ballet through different lenses than just what happened on-stage. Making a film allows me to think beyond the stage. I can't film the performance anyway, so I have to use the ballet as an opportunity to speak critically about something else within that performance.

Immediately after seeing Romeo & Juliet, I knew it didn't work, and I started thinking about how I could capture why it didn't work on film:

1. The dancers were so far away and tiny on the gigantic stage that the live nuances were impossible to catch — Perhaps I could blur the dancing?

2. The stage was so big that the half-jog/runs to catch up with the music were quite apparent — Maybe I could use footage of football players running up and down the field

3. The screens were giant and distracting, and they forced me to watch the ballet in high definition 2D. I couldn't look away — Could I use footage of bugs flying into light? A cat distracted by the television? A trainwreck you just have to watch?

And in this way I was actually describing. But I wasn't describing just what I saw, but how I saw it. And the how part of the description was what I saw as the opinion.

I was also thinking a lot about my conversation way back when with Jennifer Homans, who said I wouldn't have the opportunity to flip-flop on what worked and what didn't work. My film had to be one way or the other, or it would be confusing for the viewer. I agreed with her until I realized that there was one big part of the Romeo & Juliet performance that did work: the marketing. The marketing was the reason why critics called it a 'success.' You didn't have to have an opinion at all to see that the ballet had made big bucks: an arena was full of people, and in a way, it didn't matter whether or not the performance was a good one, because people had paid to be there and the seats were filled.

This was something I wanted to address in the film. And I thought that looking at what didn't work (the performance itself) and what did (what got people to the performance) was a perfect chance to use the review to do what I've been wanting: To use the performance as a way in to talk about something else. Yes, okay. I do talk about what happened on stage and why it didn't work, but then I give my big But! and say what did work. So for me, this filmed review is critical on a couple of different levels: I have an opinion about the on-stage performance and I also have an opinion on a different part of the performance: the marketing of it.