Romantic ballet is ageless

During the Romantic era of the 1800’s when literature and art were rapidly evolving, so was ballet. Before this time male dancers dominated the stage. However when dancer Marie Taglioni first appeared in Paris 1892 as Sylphide in "La Sylphide" Romantic ballet was born.
In Romantic ballet, female dancers took centre stage. Two male artists during this time, Jules Perrot and Arthur Saint-Leon, were both talented, but danced second to the female ballerinas. This new style emphasized softer arm movements and a tilting of the upper torso, providing an extra hint of elegance and femininity. Pointe shoes were also introduced which allowed for more intricate footwork. This was also more evident as the skirts were shortened.
To this day the standards of the Romantic ballet have been upheld by numerous companies performing "Sleeping Beauty", "Giselle" and "Swan Lake" and a host of others that have survived. These full-length story productions continue to provide audiences with a traditional and yet ageless style. But what about the modern male dancers? Is playing second fiddle still attractive for today’s super athletes?

Here are a couple of prejudices that seem to die hard: "Ballet is a woman" and her partners are just "men in tights"?
Bottaini: We work hard to make this change. The prejudice is still strong outside the cities. You learn from an early age: girls go to ballet, boys play football. Luckily, I grew up in a ballet school. But in regular school, kids were always making fun of me. I always had to fight. Trying to make people realize that being a dancer doesn’t mean you’re automatically gay.

Did you play football?
Bottaini: Of course. I started ballet when I was twelve and before that I did all kinds of sports. Just not ballet! Until you’re in the ballet world you don’t realize what hard work it is. Not at all "effeminate".
Liska: Good to hear the opinion of a new generation. I grew up in a generation where Béjart said: Ballet is man! And we witnessed the turn of the masculine desire: not to excel only in the head but to show their bodies. It’s everywhere now; look at fashion. Men wearing tight jeans etc. Apart from that I think it depends also on the country in which you ask this question. In Eastern Europe since there was all the state support for the arts ballet used to have a status like in Denmark or Sweden, France – if you’re a member of the opera ballet it means national heritage and pride. All those prejudices you mentioned probably are not as strong then. And since society develops and homosexuality is just another lifestyle here, we witness that to the spectators dance is still sublimation. And sometimes too much testosterone makes men unable to be sublime. If you are a sensitive person it doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is, all that matters is can you as a choreographer or dancer translate emotion to movement and show the world differently. That’s why we have the art of dance. So men in tights – wonderful! The audience just have to make up their minds to agree.

And you as a ballet director are responsible for the profile, you make decisions about what the male roles look like in your company ...
Liska: Well we proved that we didn’t have to perform "The Nutcracker" at Christmas, but that it could also be Forsythe’s "Limbs Theorem". That was a statement: We love you, audience, but this is where the dance is going. And the dancers were absolutely for the experience.

So are you saying that the mannerisms of 19th century story ballets are obsolete?
Liska: No, no. We have to do it. You can sing Händel in jeans but we cannot dance Petipa in sneakers. Of course you can revisit the classics like Mats Ek did. On the other hand the dancers are curious about their heritage just as the coloratura soprano is. The classical tradition isn’t some ridiculous people’s whimsy – what happens in the human body and how we express it was researched very thoroughly and for a long time.

Are you the same men when dancing 19th century classics as you are off stage or in a contemporary piece?
Bottaini: Of course the roles are completely different. But I don’t think so much about being this or that man, or any man for that matter, when I dance in "Giselle" or "Sleeping Beauty". I just interpret the specific role. Partly the costumes are to blame if people have difficulty seeing us as "men". That’s also maybe why Béjart made all these ballets to show that in fact we are men. Obviously modern and contemporary dance helped with our image, as well.
Liska: Are we the same when we drive a car, go to the ATM and later put on tights and go on stage? Yes. We are the same. It’s all about the feeling. How you dance it. Whether you dance the Ek version, or the Petipa version, it’s up to you how convincing it is to the audience. I always tell the company: Don’t rely on the convention. It’s so easy to reproduce what you’ve seen before. That’s also how you grow. But then when you step in front of the audience in 2009 you have to make them realize: this could be you. So Kylián, Petipa, or any other choreographer, it has to come from you and spontaneously. So the audience cannot avoid being interested.

You’re saying the human core hasn’t changed. Whatever is in there is constant. Whether you’re dancing on stage or in a club, what comes from the heart transcends time, style and fashion.
Liska: That’s right. The laws of life, the more I look at it.

Then it would be wrong to separate content and form, or put classical ballet and contemporary in different compartments?
Liska: Well, I see it on the dancers. They use their I-phones to download anatomic programmes to study their bodies. Yet they go into "Le Corsaire" and enjoy telling a story about pirates from 1858. They really love it. It’s not like I have to force them!

I saw some photographs in a magazine of you playing football. Or rather: partnering a football. What does it look like when you guys play football for real? Like dancers playing football?
Liska: No.
Bottaini: Yes!
Liska: It’s dangerous.
Bottaini: But we played some times. And we would be running after the ball and then kick it so high the toes almost touch your nose ... Liska: I’m always scared the company might get hurt. We play in the summer at the end of the season when everybody is already tired and injuries are more common. But that’s the only reason we don’t play more often.

Listening to you, you will probably say this next question isn’t put right; I was going to ask when does ballet get interesting for men? What historical period, choreographer, or role is interesting for a male dancer? Because there are ballets where the man merely stands behind the ballerina and lifts her about.
Bottaini: For me it’s always interesting, doesn’t matter if I’m behind a girl. It’s being on stage that matters. I even prefer to be on stage with a partner, because you have a connection with someone and can give so much more.

Even if you’re behind her and she gets all the credit?
Bottaini: Of course. But if you’re dancing behind her and she did something really well, I did a good job, too. Anyway the whole thing is not about who gets the credit. In "Swan Lake", which is all about her in some places, it’s my role to make her look good.

Very chivalrous. But you’re known very attentive towards your ballerinas. How common is that?
Liska: Well, on the other hand we get rehearsals where the duet looks like a fight. That’s why we have the rehearsal, to work this out before we go on stage. On stage the man maybe doesn’t dance so much, but he has to give her freedom, elevation, desire. And that’s precisely why he’s there, to make that possible. No doubt, they could do some kind of dance by themselves. But as long as you look for partners in life you have to want to know what’s happening with the woman. Why you are partnering her. It’s not only about what you feel. As Alen said. Then of course, for ballet in 1890 it would have been different, though. Those men were in their fifties. At that point all they could do was lift their partner.

You’re a great Béjart fan. Because of the interesting male material?
Liska: Yes, and also because he had the pathos of the era. The openness, the revolutionary ideas – right on the spot. Like Bill Forsythe today.

Who is the best choreographer for men today?
Liska: Impossible to say. What Limón did for men is fabulous. You danced it, Alen.
Bottaini: Yes, one piece is without music, so you have to rely totally on the music inside you. ... But Forsythe is probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. He opened endless possibilities to me who had been dancing predominantly classical material.

So to summarize, the subject I came with really isn’t so much of a subject for you?
Liska: Not for us. Maybe for outsiders. The ballet dancers are with both feet on the ground. Hans van Manen says this is the age of the visual arts, so your eyes are trained better and understand more readily and are maybe more tolerant towards change ...
Bottaini: But I come from a country where the Catholic church doesn’t allow gay people in. For men there’s just football and Formula One and television with bare-breasted women in the evening when the guys come home from work. Ballet is struggling. People just have other things to think about. Contrary to how it is in Russia, most people in Italy seem to still think ballet is for little girls. In Russia the cab driver wouldn’t have me pay the fare, because he thought artists shouldn’t pay.
Liska: Also, don’t forget how many roles dancers dance. It makes a big difference if you dance in a piece by Kylián on one night and the next you’re in "Kameliendame". For the dancers being a man on stage is a wide spectrum of possibilities. If you want to hang on to your prejudice, you have to not go to the theater in order not to see that. And as for the gay dancers ...
Bottaini: ... whom very often you cannot really tell apart from their straight colleagues ...
Liska: ... they have the right to represent who they are. It’s society that has to evolve a bit more.

Well, I guess part of your audience think that going to see a ballet for them will be a nostalgic experience where they will see a world still in order.
Liska: Yes, but I’ve known the audience here in Munich for thirty years. And they’re inquisitive. They follow and they show up for Forsythe at Christmas, they enjoy "Zugvögel" with all the new circumstances it asks from them, diving in the underground of the National Theatre and so on.. . They are waiting for what will come next. Of course that’s because we chose the right repertoire, ha! We choose what we think is important and sensational to see, what Munich needs, or what it gets used to.