Historical Dance Review Course. - video recording reviews

Because so few videocassettes have been devoted to dance forms of the past it was welcome news that Mikhail Berkut, an instructor at the Royal Ballet School, had created Historical Dance Video Course, six thirty-minute cassettes covering styles from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Great Britain and the United States have comparatively few specialists in the historic field, so any additional access to detailed information would be welcomed. The series, available from Berkut Dance International in London at $50 a cassette, uses illustrations and performances to recreate each dance form. The evolution of one from another is demonstrated by Berkut's own choreography in what he considers period style, performed by students from such leading institutions as the Royal Ballet School, the Doreen Bird College for the Performing Arts, and the Opera Ballet School in Rome.

Unfortunately, this series cannot be hailed as any breakthrough for historical dance. Anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the field knows that there is general agreement on the pattern and content of the steps of each period, yet almost all of these significant basic features are missing from Berkut's videos. His exercises bear little if any relation to known authentic dance steps; the early medieval exercises and steps, for example, are performed with full balletic turnout. Indeed, authentic steps have been so consistently balleticized throughout this course that it has little serious educational value. One cannot even trust its illustrations, which often represent a period or country unrelated to the material being discussed.

The presentation of the galliard is a glaring example of Berkut's flawed approach. He fails to use any of the many authentic galliard steps described in Thoinot Arbeau's classic reference work, Orchesography (1588), which anyone can read and study. Berkut speaks of the salient feature in the galliard, the cinq pas (from which name he mistakenly claims the word syncopation is derived), but he does not explain or use this typical galliard rhythm (so familiar because it is found in the opening lines of "God Save the King" or "America"). Arbeau provides many galliard variations, including the extended eleven-count phrase; each of his phrases ends with this dotted rhythm. Berkut ignores it.

Historically inaccurate steps are found throughout. His basic pavane steps are already a free interpretation, as are the steps of the minuet and other dances. Inaccuracies abound elsewhere. No student's musical education, for example, will be helped by Berkut's describing the accent as "being on the first upbeat" when clearly he is referring to the downbeat (the "first beat in the bar").

His treatment of the sarabande is typical. After showing an Egyptian wall painting of two female dancers clad only in headdresses, jewelry, and belts, Berkut surmises that the name of the dance derives from the "belt of Sarah" - that is saraband!

Understanding of the dance is further clouded by including a photo of Martha Graham performing her Saraband. Berkut also refers to Jose Limon's dancing a saraband, quite unaware, it would seem, that these artists were not concerned with any authentic historical form but were seeking to express the quality of a slow saraband in their own modern dance styles.

It is also confusing to have a group of students dance a mazurka just before a demonstration of basic galliard steps. An even more startling and misleading example is having a ballet dancer perform a pas de deux on pointe before basic minuet steps are presented. Steps are also performed to music from a much later period (e.g., Beethoven's Minuet in G). A page from Kellom Tomlinson's book used as an illustration bears no relationship to the steps that follow. The list is distressingly long.

Elegant, authentic choreography exists. There is no need for contemporary recreation in material intended for education. Throughout his Course, however, Berkut avoids using authentic dances in favor of his own work. The emphasis appears to be on self-promotion, rather than on serving the dance world through presenting well-researched, correctly performed material. One cannot help wondering whether Berkut understands what it means to research original sources. He appears to be a product of what passes for historical dance instruction in Russian ballet schools; there authentic steps were considered too technically demanding for children, and simplified versions, often based on classical choreography, were introduced instead.

No doubt Berkut's students in London and elsewhere derive some benefit from learning how to bow, how to work with a partner in stately or lively sequences, and how to master the many balletic steps, such as pas de bourrees or pas ballonnes. These students should be told, however, that not all dances end the phrase with pointe tendue efface, and that there is a great gulf between what Berkut teaches and what specialists in authentic historical dance have learned through years of devoted, detailed scrutiny of original sources. The overall impression given by these cassettes is that of a balletic point of view influenced by national dance steps.