6c Literature Review 2:

What every dancer needs to know to keep up with today's trend and win tomorrow's jobs.

This is an article I found while navigating through the University's databases. It's and extract of the journal Back Stage and has been written by Lisa Jo Sagolla. 

I valued its contents as interesting material of what has been written on self-management skills performers should acquire, in this particular case, for the dancing business. Although it's a peace that has been written a while ago, I believe it isn't far from what the business still requires to be prepared on nowadays.

Sagolla focuses the piece on what is needed nowadays, by a performer, in an audition situation. It's not a matter of 'not being right for the role' anymore but maybe it's a time where we should ask ourselves if we are up with the latest trends and trainings in dance. She explores different dance styles, from Broadway to contemporary, commercial video and ballet communities to discover what are the latest requirements. 

Firstly she explains how Broadway dance is not a typecast style anymore, but includes a wide range of movement approaches. It's not only ballet, jazz and tap previously seen in shows such as Chorus Line, but we are starting seeing athletic and challenging moves in Moving Out, romantic ballet for The Phantom of the Opera, or Fosse's style jazz routines for Chicago, just to mention few.

Choreographer Wayne Cilento, who has choreographed numbers such as Aida and Wicked, believes it's now up to the choreographer who wants to be original and interesting every time with new material, especially if it's a choreographer who works mainly for Broadway on many different shows.

So it's hard to tell what style you can get thrown at at an audition anymore, Cilento advises that being a solid dancer with secure classical technique is always a good start; even for more modern dance styles such as Hip Hop the technique is fundamental as acrobatics are incorporated within the discipline; so he firmly believes in being an all round dancer with a strong technicality, the key to be prepared to whatever style you are asked for in an audition.

The article further investigate how it's, instead, the scenario for a more commercial dance, especially the one used in music videos and in tours for backup dancers of famous pop singers or group.

The choreographer Dreya Weber shares her experience of how ariel work is always more and more in demand and it's sometimes necessary for a dancer to be able to do.

She explains how, for instance, in a tour for the pop singer Pink they couldn't really hire only ariel performers as they were also required to dance; therefore she stressed how she encountered complications as the dancers weren't used to the hard work of ariel and how she had to accomodate the routine and the dancers in order to make the choreography still exciting but not too complicated.

In another case, choreographing for one of Madonna's tour, the person hired to do ariel was a former Olympic gymnast and it came to be so much easier to teach her the routine as she had a wide range of acrobatic movement.

At more and more auditions you may get asked to do ariel work so she suggests that it's in the interest of the dancer to getting trained into that, it will only increase the chances of getting casted. 

For the dancers less into commercial and more into art, the article carries on talking about Contemporary dance. It's Vallejo Gantner, artistic director of Performance Space 122 (the contemporary studio most in vogue in Downtown Manhattan) that explains how who is interested in the lates contemporary style, should get used to the lates trends of experimental work.

This meaning that the focus of the dance is shifting from the performer's experience to the audience's one, giving more importance to the experience rather than the meaning of the piece.

Following the article, Kirk Peterson, artistic director of ABT Studio Company and established former ballet dancer, believes that to be a modern classical dancer you have to be able to acquire all kind of trainings. He states that "now the trend from many different ballet companies is to invite choreographers from many other disciplines to come and set works on their dancers"(2006), so the more versatile the dancer is the better.


He carries on suggesting what he thinks are the most useful dance styles a classical dancer should be trained in nowadays. Folk dance as a style that has unfortunately got lost in time in dance schools, "it taught dancers about rhythm and how to dance when not in point shoes" (2006); also tap, moder and jazz classes are good to take; tap dance teaches you how to be a living percussionist, developing a great understanding of rhythm and musicality within the dancer (Peterson,2006). He strongly advices for a good old-school jazz training, more loosen compared to the rigid ballet, but still in need of a good control. He personally advises against hip-hop as for a ballet dancer is not really a good technique style that can help, he prefers world dance forms such as the Spanish dance, closely related to ballet, classical India dance which emphasizes on isolation and Hula dance as another way to feel gravity and feeling weight, that also uses the arms to tell a story, closely related to the mime of classical ballet.
As a top up to for dancers who really want to keep up with the diverse demands on ballet today, Petterson feels they should try to incorporate some study of music and dance theory.


As an overall, these piece gives a good idea of how the new era for dance started to get shape in all different styles. The author here wants to get across a broad material of information for dancers on what nowadays is demanded by famous dance companies and at auditions situation.
As I said, even if this is an article dated to the end of 2006, it stills is a valuable piece of literature that explores how versatile and multitasking this business requires you to be in order to succeed as a professional dancer.
On a last note, "The more the better" is how I sum up this article and what it's all about.



Reference:


Sagolla, L., Oct 2006, Dance Evolution: What every dancer needs to know to keep in step with today's trend and win tomorrow's job, Back Stage [e-journal] 47 (41) p26. Available through: Proquest database, International Index of Performing Arts Full Text. [accessed 27 Dec 2011]