Steve-O does Ballet in Russia

Apr 08, 2008
Dance

Hopefully no dancers were harmed in the production of this video I like the flower part at the end. He really sells it.
And I never thought I’d see the recommended YouTube videos at the end of a video be a medley of Jackass and ballet.

Comments

Gwenny

Oh…ukky…here? Really?

Apr 08, 2008 @ 07:00

kristin sloan

sure! it’s good not to take things too seriously sometimes, and it’s also interesting to look at how other media (MTV2 in this case) choose to portray dance.

i’m sure this could be viewed in a number of different ways…
awful that it’s making fun of ballet? ok because its getting real dancers onto a popular tv channel?
bad because its reinforcing peoples preconceived notions about ballet? just plain funny?

what do you think about it?

Apr 08, 2008 @ 14:05

Jim Clyne

Kristin,

Congratulations on the overall quality of your blog.

As to the video–while it’s amusing, it is indeed a cliched commentary on classical ballet, which, of course, is in dire need of re-engineering.

As I see it, ballet needs to address the following:

1. puerile staging
2. lack of sensuousness–ie, dancers, even during an intimate pas de deux, fail to communicate erotic desire or longing; it’s as if they inhabit a “Matrix”-like existence where they can’t even smell each other
3. lack of collaboration with artists in other media
4. ridiculously outdated libretti–why doesn’t someone, eg, adapt Huysmans’ “A Rebord” for ballet?
5. less Stravinsky, more Nick Cave

Apr 08, 2008 @ 15:48

sasha

That was funny, Steve-O’s cartwheels aren’t bad!

with regards to the other comments about how this might be degrading to the art form, i feel that it’s not at all. and why did people come out to comment for this specifically? Was it the mass-media coverage of it?

i’ve seen tons of crazy “poking-a-bit-of-fun-at-ballet” movies on this site and they are all hilarious! it’s good to be silly sometimes!

Also, the show “Wild Boys” is more about humiliating the hosts of the show, and for this piece in particular you can see that Steve-O is totally uncoordinated, while the dancers look fabulous (they seem to be having a good time too BTW). It’s comedy, what’s the big deal?

Apr 08, 2008 @ 16:42

emma

hahaha i’m sorry but this was hilarious! def not something to be taken seriously, its all in good fun

Apr 08, 2008 @ 22:20

Rob

I thought it was funny. It’s all in good fun.

Apr 09, 2008 @ 00:36

Elizabeth

In response to Jim:

Yes, ballet sometimes lacks sensuousness. It’s unfortunate that many balletomanes often prefer their female dancers resemble adolescent girls rather than women. It doesn’t surprise me when people’s immediate image of ballet is little girls in puffy pink tutus. We need more Veronika Parts.

I don’t think the stories are outdated. The classic stuff is an easy sell.

I disagree most vehemently with your last comment. Don’t know who Nick Cave is, but Stravinsky stays.

Apr 09, 2008 @ 03:12

Jim Clyne

I’d like to kill the swan myself with a bow and arrow. These tableaux are pedestrian and tiresome.
re Stravinsky: my point is simply that his work is hackneyed; I recently saw a wonderful ballet choreographed by Ratmansky that featured a work by Schoenberg, and it was a breath of fresh air (not to mention Diana Vishneva’s dancing).

re Nick Cave: go to youtube and put the following intto its search engine: “Nick Cave Red Right Hand”; that’s the kind of atmosphere for dance I’m planning for a television show I’ve created and will executive produce.

Apr 09, 2008 @ 03:36

Elizabeth

It seems as though your focus is more on the story and music of ballets. While of utmost importance, these two elements still play a supporting or secondary role to the choreography. Was Ratmansky’s ballet a breath of fresh air because of the dancing or because the music was different? Would you find Odette pedestrian and tiresome when performed by Vishneva? If you do, then you have an under-appreciation of her gift as an artist. Part of what makes ballet ballet is revisiting those familiar roles and making them alive and new again. You get rid of the swans and Stravinsky (to me, that means Balanchine), you are alienating ballet’s core audiences. Why are the most prominent ballet companies performing repertoire that consists of Petipa and Balanchine if that’s what detracts people from the ballet? The ballets themselves are not the problem.

Apr 09, 2008 @ 04:09

Jim Clyne

Thanks for the feedback, and for the record I mistyped: I was alluding to Tchaikovsky, not Stravinsky, who is by far a more talented composer. Balanchine was brilliant, but in my opinion he is also overrated, his principal flaw being that many of his ballets are antiseptic. And there is no question that Balanchine’s inability to convey complex emotion has had a bad influence on City Ballet’s artistic POV. But the worst thing Balanchine did to City Ballet was designating Peter Martins’s questionable artistic IQ to be the prime mover of the company. In a letter, Martins is a C- (let’s hope he hires Ratmansky as resident choreographer).

Ratmansky’s ballet was a breath of fresh air because he was able to brilliantly marry his choreographic gifts with the splendid score by a brilliant, but underutilized composer, Schoenberg.

Listen, I love Petipa, but I’d still like to see dance makers utilize texts that would lend themselves to choreographic interpretation. Eg, a fine classically oriented ballet could be fashioned from Mary Shelley’s [full disclosure: the real author was Percy Shelley] “Frankenstein.”

Apr 10, 2008 @ 01:32