Attitudes: recycled careers - classical dancers may opt to alter their styles to consider modern dance as they get older - Editorial - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, April, 1998 by Clive Barnes

The other day I was thinking about the difficulties of the older dancer in battling, mano a mano, both age and career. Of course, in man's (and woman's) search for life's level playing field, life itself is generally wickedly unfair. In terms of simple economics--of money paid for the same work done--men statistically earn more than women, whites earn more than blacks, frequently the young earn more than the old (although this advantage can be double-edged). The world, let alone its playing fields, is not an equal opportunity employer, nor are we equal opportunity employees. People are different--not just as statistics but as people. Some are more intelligent than others; some are more ambitious; some (applying the ruling aesthetic standards of the time) are better-looking; some--let's face it--are born luckier. Luck just of birth--if you want to enter the auto industry, it's no particular disadvantage to be the son of Henry Ford--and luck of what seems to be destiny--the apparent good fortune of being in the right place at the right time--can play their random parts. Don't let them tell you that life is fair. It ain't.

For dancers, anything that is routinely bad for Mr. and Ms. Statistic seems to be worse. Look at this issue of age and aging. Dancers are performing artists, and, like other performing artists, they need an instrument. Unfortunately, their instruments are their own bodies, prey to all those natural processes of decay that flesh is heir to, also exacerbated by the vastly enhanced possibilities of career-crippling injury. A pianist, a violinist, and certainly a conductor, are at thirty-five regarded as "young"; even an opera singer (who may face problems and hazards similar to a dancer's) is considered merely "middle-aged," as far as a career is concerned. A dancer at thirty-five, however, is starting to consider a nondancing future, possibly an alternative career outside dance altogether.

I have on more than one occasion compared a great dancer to a violinist who has been given a Stradivarius. As time goes by, the violinist's mastery of the instrument increases, as his or her maturity as an artist and a person develops. But also, virtually with every passing year, tiny flaws emerge in the Stradivarius. For a long time, the failings of the instrument are more than compensated for by the artist's increased mastery over it, but inevitably the losses start to overtake and eventually engulf the gains. A dancer may have a more consummate ability to express artistry than ever before--but give that dancer a broken ankle, or even a recalcitrant waistline, and all the artistry in the world flies blithely out the window like Peter Pan, leaving only a mocking shadow behind. The simple, natural process of aging is itself the last, the inexorable, the unconquerable enemy.

So what has prompted these night thoughts on a bright day? It was the sight of Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the legends of twentieth-century dance, moving out before his adoring New York City public in a solo recital at City Center just six days before his fiftieth birthday. He looks much the same. Intensity of concentration--the intensity of a chess player, or an athlete under the starting pistol--still furrows his brow, focuses his eyes. The body still moves with the economy and deliberation of a machine totally perfected in form and function, and every position, every gesture is picture-perfect.

Photograph Baryshnikov from any angle, and you have a sculpted image. And he still possesses to a remarkable degree something, perhaps personified by that lightly furrowed brow, that made him a great and unique dancer--the quality of gravity. As a kid his brilliance was partly demonstrated by those spellbinding leaps in seeming defiance of gravity. But always his true genius was contained in gravity of a different order. It was what in the Middle Ages was called gravitas--a seriousness of artistry and purpose, almost moral in its appeal to our sense of Platonic perfection. Even at fifty--particularly at fifty--that remains wonderfully intact.

During his long career Baryshnikov has had two great solos choreographed for him: Leonid Jacobson's Vestris, with which he first conquered London in 1970, and A Suite of Dances, set to Bach, created for him by Jerome Robbins only a few years ago. The present solos do not match up to those. However, these showed off, in an attractive, often quirky fashion, his quiet but still shimmering brilliance. Of course, we must remember that this solo recital was featuring the "new Baryshnikov." He has, for nearly a decade, reinvented himself, indeed recycled himself, as a nonclassic dancer. This smart move is perhaps disconcerting to audiences attracted by his reputation and expecting his earlier incarnation as a classic virtuoso, but at the same time this recital revealed the sheer mastery of the transmogrified, fascinating technique that he continues to display. The quality of his dancing into a golden sunset was totally apparent and, for connoisseur and mere consumer alike, totally rewarding.