January 27, 2006

Ann Reinking Wants Me to Take Ballet Classes

I was reading the profiles of great choreographers in photojournalist Rose Eichenbaum's "Masters of Movement." I found an interesting passage in her interview with Ann Reinking (bio, bio), who is considered the leading interpreter of the Fosse style:

I always beg my students to take ballet, because if you can master ballet you can master anything. Ballet inherently gives you elegance, strength, and coordination. It gives you a beautiful carriage. You need that in abundance to perform jazz because it requires all of you.

Photograph of Ann Reinking
by Rose Eichenbaum

Actually, I was planning to start taking ballet next week. I just like knowing that Ann Reinking thinks that if you take jazz classes you ought to take ballet. At first I was just going to stick with jazz for awhile. But ballet has such a strong influence that it doesn't make sense for me not to take ballet classes.

While I'm at it, Rose Eichenbaum asked Reinking, "Why do you think jazz dancing is so compelling to watch?":

Because it is sensual, provocative, and a little dangerous. It is rooted in the twentieth century and tells stories in a twentieth-century way. Ballet, for example, comes to us from the eighteenth century, with its emphasis on the celestial, the otherworldly. Jazz is of the earth, of the streets, of this world. It is an American art form, with its own syllabus and stylistic approach. When a jazz choreographer asks you to perform his steps, he's really asking you to express his point of view, his history, and his mood. Jazz employs an element of risk. There's a huge physical risk in ballet, too, but in ballet you hide the risk through its formal approach and refined nature. Jazz dancers are asked to fully reveal themselves and show their emotions and vulnerability. They are expected to show the risk taking and divulge the danger. That's what makes it so hypnotic and compelling to watch.

Read the reviews of "Masters of Movement" on Amazon. All five reviewers give this book five stars. I was given a signed copy as a present - it's a wonderful book of profiles and pictures:

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