Sunday, September 22, 2013

First Position is Last

First Position, the high profile ballet documentary by Bess Kargman, has been out long enough for me to see the trailer a few times on You-Tube and stare at the poster advertising the film taped to the door at our local ballet school.  So we finally bought the DVD.
But much of this film is not really about ballet--not ballet as I knew it watching Makarova, Kirkland, Gregory and Van Hamel back in the seventies.
In those days, too many dancers were cocaine addicts or anorectic or both.  Or married to people with drug problems. 
Nowadays, the problems differ--to a degree.  What First Position reveals is a generation of dancers shaped by brutal overwork--children dancing roles created for mature dancers.   The results of this excessive training--which often starts as early as age three and continues seven days a week--is, for instance, the twelve-year-old Miko Fogarty dancing Kitri from Don Quixote:  Ms. Fogarty, technically driven and musical, has gone on, now that she is sixteen, to greater glories.
But does she menstruate?  Has she ever developed breasts?  At twelve, the bones in her chest were prominent.
Will her feet function when she is twenty-five?  Pointe work should begin around age eleven.  But Fogarty was already dancing Kitri at age twelve, so she must have started pointe around age six.
Will her hips disintegrate before she is twenty-five?
Will she still be able to dance at all at that age?
What kind of strength will this prodigy have after all the hours of excessive, damaging stretching? 
It's one thing to have hip-replacement surgery in your sixties.  Or even your fifties.  But for a dancer to have it in her twenties--that's a bad, bad, sign of the times.
Highly evident from this exceedingly disturbing film--all the more disturbing since so many regard it as an uplifting tribute to dedicated young dancers--is the destruction of ballet as an art.  What is ballet today if not a mix of contortion and acrobatics? Ballet today is hypermobility, or extreme stretching of joints.  It's thrilling to see a leg extend way above the ear, and a degree of hypermobility has always been a part of ballet training.  But First Position shows a turbo-charged, stepped-up training, in which young limbs are stretched daily, young, developing feet go into toe shoes prematurely, and God knows what happens to the mature dancer.
No twelve-year-old was meant to dance a role as technically and emotionally demanding as Kitri, a girl in love.  The role of Kitri requires feisty independence and sexy-know-how--joyfully as Ms. Fogarty danced, she does not have the experience--at least we hope not--to make this role what it should be.The hypersexualizing of children that beauty pageants promote is now evident in ballet competitions.
Miko's mother burst into tears talking about her son quitting ballet.  I have to admire this little boy--thrust, at age ten, into dancing the role of the Swan Prince--having the guts to say no to the mother who is filmed, in a classroom scene, forcing his leg into a stretch that does nothing but destroy the strength he might have had as a mature dancer, should he have chosen to continue his training.  It's not thrilling to see a ten-year-old boy doing tours en l'air (and here's what they are:
  No ten-year-old can do these turns well, and even if an exceptionally coordinated, strong boy manages to do so, the risk of injury or permanent damage is great.  What would his and Miko's stage mother do if her daughter quit?  One of the most chilling moments of First Position occurred when Fogarty described the feelings of a character she was dancing:  "Like a bird struggling to get out of a cage."  Is ballet a cage for her--one that she does not acknowledge?  Is her mother's longing for stardom the fuel keeping the talented daughter going?  Audiences are thrilled to see highly trained children doing tricks on stage.  But this film is about child abuse:  forcing children out of childhood into a version of adulthood that ensures they'll never reach the real thing.  Their emotional life must remain stunted and physically they'll be wreaks.   
Portraits of parents run the gamut from stage mother to supportive.  Or one of these under the guise of the other.  Miko Fogarty's mother pushes, tells her to smile, seems entirely obsessed with the idea of her daughter as a ballerina.  Other parents seem astonished that their son wants to dance, but do all in their power to find him the best teacher available.  Still others see dance as a road out of poverty.
The boys in ballet have it easier than they did a generation ago.  Ballet is filled with masculine, heterosexual boys:  it is no longer exclusively the refuge of gay men who have landed there because they have few other places to be themselves.   But ballet teachers seem, in this film, to live through their students vicariously, to place young students in dangerously demanding roles in order to satisfy their own desires for fame.
The boy from the military family profiled in this film struck me as a victim of a childishly sadistic, possibly pedophilic personality in his teacher:  footage showed the teacher chain-smoking, making bizarre, grinning faces, and slapping his prodigy on the belly and elsewhere whenever he felt like reminding him to pull in his stomach or turn out his thigh.
There are better ways to correct students.
The film showed two very different personalities who had in common their difficult beginnings and their longing to excel in order to remove financial burdens from their families, or even support them:  Michaela de Prince and Joan Sebastian Zamora come from impoverished backgrounds--she was orphaned as a young child in Sierre Leone and adopted by an American couple; he is supporting his family back in Colombia.  These dancers struck me as the most artistically developed of the personalities portrayed in the film--she is a radiant powerhouse, a sort of African-American Melissa Hayden, and he is a gorgeously lyrical, strong dancer whose style lends itself to the Royal Ballet--and he's won a scholarship to their school.  Ms. De Prince has had serious injuries--and no wonder, she is very hyperextended and routinely stretches her legs to what I would consider extremes.  
The brutality of contemporary training--the rush to build muscle and start pointe work young, the grotesque stretching--is one that I will make sure my daughter, a young dance student, avoids.  We'll stick to the basics:  a schedule that includes rest (never, never, seven days a week) and I'm not letting her put her feet in pointe shoes before she's eleven--and probably twelve.

25 comments:

  1. Get a grip! Paedophiles and hypersexualising....were you watching the right fil or did you stumble across a different film on youtube!

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  2. I did indeed watch the DVD several times. Yes, pedophile: take a long look at the scenes with the talented American boy from the military family and the teacher in the Italian school. Thumping the kid in the gut. Hugging him weirdly and kissing the top of his head. Rolling his eyes in an unappealing, Dracula-esque way. Ugh. And the role of Kitri is not meant for any twelve-year-old girl, no matter how extraordinary her training. Why don't you take another look at that DVD?

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    1. I agree with you ! And Miko isn't a star at all. She flys around the country dancing roles for Asian ballet companies. The Birmingham Royal Ballet only kept her for a year. Apparently they didn't like her or she didn't like being in the corp de ballet. Maybe it was her Mom who doesn't like her dancing in the corp. I don't think she could make it at NYCB or ABT or SFB because you have to start at the bottom and work up. Miko doesn't want to do that . She and/or her Mother want fame now. But I think you are right . She started too young . She doesn't have the passion to protray the mature roles. She's too sheltered and she's not that good anyway.

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    2. Agreed. And what about her technique? How is her body holding up now that she's reached an age in which huge demands are routinely made on a ballerina's body? Do write back.

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  3. I'm sorry but I dont think you'll ever understand the classical ballet industry unless you're in it. These methods are all normal. There is nothing wrong with hitting someone into position. It doesnt actually hurt and it is definitely the best way to correct. I dont think you understand that these children want to be this way and they will do what it takes to achieve their dream. There is nothing wrong doing pointe work early as long as you have a good teacher that supervises you. Have you seen Russian ballerinas? You can only become that strong by doing this everyday. Ballerinas are athletes and every competitive athlete knows that you have to practice everyday.

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    1. PapillonBisous: This is an old post, but on an off chance you read it... I think you have a misconception about Russian ballerinas because of a few videos from some private studios, especially one of Kuramshin. This isn't typical of Russian ballet. Russian ballerinas graduate from Russian state academies like, for example, Vaganova or Bolshoi. These academies accept kids at 10-11 based entirely on their natural gifts - body, feet, jump, turnout potential, etc. - even if these days most of them have taken classes elsewhere. But the academies don't require prior training, and only ask girls to dance polka and boys - march (which they'd teach right there if someone doesn't know how only to check their coordination and musicality. They put students en pointe during the second half of the first year by which time most of them are 11, some might be 12. They also start slowly, if you look at most of their end-of-the-year concerts, 1st years are not en pointe in those. Sure, you may see an occasional an 11-year old "little Masha" which is usually a girl who had been en pointe before school. Also, "little Masha" in the Nutcracker is hardly the same as an adult variation.

      I suggest you watch a preparatory class' (pre-entry, class 0) classical dance exam in the Vaganova academy. The girls is the video (from May) are 10-11 year olds who started this course at 9-10. You'll see that not a single one of them is en pointe. I suggest you also watch their school concert videos. You'll see mostly specific choreography for their abilities, not kids dancing adult variations. The end-of-the year first year exam would have some exercises en pointe, but only a few simple ones. There are videos of these exams on YT.

      Russian state academies are NOT competition schools, and they don't even spend time teaching kids adult variations. They are all about overall technique and preparing for theater work.

      There is a video, in Russian, of a little Russian girl who lives in the US coming to a Russian talent show and dancing an adult variation. The girl apparently has participated in some competitions, maybe even won them. The rector of the Vaganova academy, Tsiskaridze, who is among the judges tells the girl to stop dancing adult variations, audition for a professional academy, and start at the beginning. He tells her, it's tough, but there is no other way. There is also a Bolshoi principal in the audience who wants to say nice things to the girl and tells her how at her age (9) she didn't even think of becoming a ballet dancer, much less being en pointe, and that this is in spite of her parents being ballet dancers. To this, Tsiskaridze replied "your parents would've never allowed you en pointe at 9."

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  4. Hmmmm. . . . the kid who was hit in the film mentioned several time how much it hurt. In fact, he said, "it really hurts." This is the child who has been invited to join "every ballet school on the planet," according to his Mom, and one look at him dancing and you believe it. It may look to you as though there's nothing wrong with doing pointe young . . . and it may not feel wrong until the bunions (that's the very least of it) develop before you're twenty. Take a look at this: http://www.iadms.org/
    You might change your mind. Practicing every day is not the same as training in a manner that destroys the joints and feet.

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  5. And I'd like to point out that starting pointe before age eleven or twelve can really damage the bones--the kid who looks "strong enough" or "ready for it" at six or seven or nine may be crippled when she ought to be in her prime. And speaking of Russian ballerinas . . . they don't tend to age well. Look at their feet and their bodies by the time they hit thirty.

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    1. You are so right. The Royal Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet are much better examples of dancers who are not only superb and top of their field, but who age better and have longer careers. And a lot of them receive more responsible training. The Russian dancers often look a bit shaky and peaked if you look closely. The trained eye can detect the signs of degenerative training and it negatively impacts their dancing.

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    2. Bianca J -- I've posted above. Russian state academies accept 10-11 year olds, they do not require prior training, and they do NOT put kids en pointe until the second part of the first year by which time most of them are 11, and a few might be 12. As to "shaky and peaky", watch Vasganova academy exam videos. Oh, and Vishneva looks pretty good in her 40s.

      Russian kids you see en pointe are from private studios (e.g. Kuramshin's) and they are pretty controversial in Russia.

      Why don't you watch Vaganova academy exam videos and their concert videos.

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  6. To the person who wrote: "I'm sorry but I don't think you'll ever understand the classical ballet industry unless you're in it. These methods are all normal." I think you are not giving those of us who are dance professionals fighting to move the system forward enough credit. I say this as a ballet teacher. You are clearly not aware that the best teachers do NOT teach that way. In fact, the instructors who do this often generate students who have brief, flash-in-the-pan careers before injuring out and retiring early. The best teacher I have ever encountered (Christina Noel Adcock out of Denver) does NOT use antiquated and barbaric approaches. She uses an understanding of anatomy and psychology and has produced professional dancers (including the principal for the Kansas City Ballet) who are psychologically sound and have a very low incidences of injury. (She was also the instructor who conducted a diagnostic on a very famous ballerina's left turn problems, but I will respect the privacy that was asked for.) There are teachers like her, Eric Franklin, Finis Jhung and more who are moving ballet forward. Misty Copeland started ballet at 13. You don't have to break and abuse children to create a professional dancer. I just returned from Germany and I cannot tell you how many of the professional working ballet dancers, who have long, successful careers, I met who started ballet later in their childhood or adolescences. There is a work ethic and a mental fortitude required to be a great dancer and abuse is not necessary to create that.

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    1. Absolutely. And I'm a member of the generation that remembers Maggie Black and David Howard--they helped dancers who'd been over-trained, nearly destroyed by harsh training, people like Gelsey Kirkland. I took my first ballet classes with Finis Jhung.

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    2. And Good Grief: Miko Fogarty just quit ballet! https://www.pointemagazine.com/miko-fogarty-2596545660.html
      I'm not surprised. Too much, way too much, too soon--that mother plotting to make her a dancer when she was three. Oy.

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  7. Just saw the post, PapillonBisous, but I wasn't referring to the Bolshoi or Kirov--just what was presented in the film. But it's also the case that these great dance academies have their failures--one Western observer of that was Gelsey Kirkland in her first memoir, Dancing on My Grave. When a child has the turnout, there's no problem, but when it's forced--as it sometimes is, then there are problems. But the ballet teachers who put a seven year old on pointe--no matter what school of technique--are making enormous mistakes.

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  8. BTW - I am not sure you are replying to me, I am not PapillonBiscous. I was actually trying to correct his misconception about Russian training, specifically that they do NOT put 7 year olds en pointe. Private studios may do it, but not state academies where kids are around 11-12 at the time they are starting pointe. Some kids may have had training before, but they aren't given any special treatment, they are put into class according to their age and general school year. Occasionally, someone with prior training who is old enough, finished the appropriate general school year and is ready may be put into a higher grade, occasionally someone needs to repeat a general school year.

    Kids' have birthdays on different months, the admission rule is 10-11 on September 1st, usually 10.5-11 as they have to have finished the elementary school first. By the time they start pointe, most of the kids are 11, a few may be 12. They only do a little bit of it during the first year. Only exercises for a small part of a lesson, although if someone had been en pointe before and is comfortable, she may get to dance "Little Masha" (Clara) in the school's Nutcracker performance.

    They do not accept kids with bad turnout.

    They have failures, obviously. They expel kids every year, and less than half of those accepted get to graduate. Most of those who graduate get jobs, though in various theaters both in Russia an abroad. Not all of those who graduate have been in the academies from the start, some get early training elsewhere and then audition for the higher grade, but it's more difficult as there are limited number of spots.

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    1. Yes, I see---I know the state academies don't put kids on point. But in the outtakes of the First Position film, there was a seven-year-old Russian child bourréing--Giselle-style--in pointe shoes--across the stage. Dreadful. With turnout, with bodies: I know there's a science to that, and I know the Russians are extremely careful. I don't know whether the observations made by Kirkland back in the seventies--when she stole a peek at a high-level class of the academy's failures. And I know that no matter how carefully anyone checks the feet of a ten-year-old, those feet can change, can develop, in good and bad ways. Thanks for your observations.

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    2. Sorry, meant to write: I don't now whether the kind of thing Kirkland observed is still a problem today: she snuck a peek at a class of the academy's failures, and they all needed back braces and were in obvious pain. But plugging away.

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  9. Miko Fogarty is no longer dancing professionally, she's now studying at UC Berkeley, intending on pursuing a career in medicine. She was in Birmingham Ballet but realised she doesn't want ballet as a career. She now teaches ballet but being a student and getting to medical school is her number 1 priority.

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  10. Yes, I'd heard that--but this fits with what I've observed, at a distance--that ballet seems to have been initially her mother's ambition for her, that her desire to please her mother figured more than her own wishes. If she's now figuring out what she really wants to do--wonderful.

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  11. I have noticed that Miko has stopped dancing and is now attending university after claiming that dancing would be her life. I hope her mom didn't have a heart attack; I just got a vibe from her. I understand supporting your children but this looked more like her dream than her children's. Her husband's money allowed her to achieve this through her daughter because her son put his foot down. Then even her daughter realized that this was not her dream and she also had body issues. If you notice, her mom also had comments about weight and food, so I think her mom may have messed her up somehow. Just my opinion.

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  12. When I watched the film years ago, the mother remembered nursing baby Miko while watching the tennis open and imagining the baby would be a tennis star. Then, claimed the mom, Mike was energetic or restless at age three, and dance class calmed her. Speaking as a mother, I know what it is to want the best for your children and to push them--but choice of an artistic life in ballet or any other area should come from the heart, not from anyone else's ambitions.

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  13. Miko revealed she had eating disorders that began after winning Moscow International Ballet Competition. It only went downhill from there, she realised how dangerous the disorder was when she was at Birmingham. She also realised that she wasn't feeling satisified performing on stage. She left professional ballet, went to community college and eventually to UC Berkeley. She expressed dance has given her discipline in her university career. Moreover as a pre-med student and former pro dancer, she has a greater appreciation of her body. I'm so glad that she's now doing what she enjoys.

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  14. It's a sad story. I saw her Ted Talk and didn't have the feeling she had a strong sense of herself. Always had the feeling the mother is trying to live through her daughter and the daughter couldn't kick that weird symbiosis.

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    1. I don't know what's going on in her private life or internally, but I do hope she's finding freedom.

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