Shifting point of view - Starting Here - Editorial

Dance Magazine, May, 2002 by K.C. Patrick

IT'S BEEN YEARS SINCE I SAT ABOVE THE chandelier at a performance. Watching the dance from way up there gives you quite a different point of view.

We had arrived in Merida for our Mexican getaway from all work on what, it turned out, was a Yucatan state holiday with free performances all weekend. My companions decided they wanted to see a ballet!

Named for the poet, the Peon Contreras Theater is a jewel of an opera house, all red velvet and five tiers of boxes above the floor. Every seat was filled, this night with an enthusiastic audience of all ages. After some persuasion, an usher set noisy, ancient folding chairs for us just below the azure, domed ceiling, which was filled with the three Graces and cherubs and in full view of the Phantom of the Opera-style crystal chandelier. If we leaned forward slightly we could see the stage. And the choreography was quite fresh and interesting.

More than 2,000 years ago the Mayans used plumb bobs and chalk lines in building carved columns so finely that a row of hundreds of these would disappear behind the first one. That sensibility is still in the eye of the people here, but was not in this choreographer's. Of course, he never had my view from the top. In fact, I don't know any choreographer or ballet mistress who sets or cleans a dance for "the cheap seats." For that matter, the musicians in the pit don't hear the music as the dancers do, because they are below the stage. And reviewers who always sit in favored seats in those high-end theaters don't view the same shows that their ordinary audiences in the balconies read about. We see things differently because we are in different places.

Or in different times. In the 1940s and '50s, Antony Tudor--now usually called the great Antony Tudor--was abused for his nonparticipation in World War II and for his emphasis on subtle, choreographic characterization along Freudian lines (see page 30). And on page 33 you will find a changed Calendar format for this summer's performances. It looks altogether different, but it contains all the same correct information. Times change our points of view. While we perceive ballerina Joanna Berman as leaving dancing at the height of a long career with San Francisco Ballet (see page 26), she sees her other life as just beginning. It's all in your point of viewing.

Editor in Chief K.C. Patrick has worked for Dance Magazine, both in New York and California, since 1998. She was editor of Dance Teacher Now, a position she held for ten years, and was managing editor of Stage Directions.