Arts
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 — 13
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The first time I understood
George Balanchine was watching
“The Nutcracker.” More precisely,
it was while watching a recording
of Act 2’s “Waltz of the Flowers”
on YouTube, with New York
City Ballet’s Ashley Bouder as
the leading Dewdrop. The six-
minute dance is the culmination
of
the
Christmastime
ballet’s
divertissements and the music
builds with undulating waves of
grandeur. Tchaikovsky sure knew
how to write a good crescendo, but
Balanchine knew how to dance it.
In the video, Bouder does not
jump, bounce or even float. She
flies. Her movements, explosive
and luxurious, stretch past the
edges of her limbs. Her dancing
leaves sparkles in the air — the kind
that feel so pleasing to the eye that
one might start to believe they are
literally seeing the music in front of
them.
I grew up away from Balanchine,
raised in dance studios that
emphasized classical European
ballet
technique.
Everything
was
square,
everything
was
measured, everything was perfect.
This system has its benefits and
its beauty, but this moment on
YouTube taught me (much like
Balanchine taught the world)
that sometimes those rules are
overrated.
When ballet first came to life long
ago in the French courts of Louis
XIV, it was a tool for control; court
members showed dominance over
their body’s motion to assert power.
Balanchine’s immigration to New
York City in 1933 reversed course on
that centuries-long rule. Suddenly,
hips didn’t need to be square
and shoulders weren’t always
straight. Fingers were splayed,
knees could bend, and the need
for restrained power came second
to the need to match the music’s
speed. The change was radical, but
American concert dance loved it.
Balanchine co-founded the New
York City Ballet and its attached
School of American Ballet with
philanthropist Lincoln Kerstein.
He choreographed 465 ballets in
his lifetime and agitated the very
existence of ballet in America. San
Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest
Ballet, Utah’s Ballet West, Miami
City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet,
Boston Ballet and Dance Theatre of
Harlem were all created by artists
touched by George Balanchine.
By the time of his death in 1983,
the world seemed to have already
decided: He was a genius, and not
in the hyperbolic sense of the word.
This is all true. He is, by all
accounts of the word, an icon.
But there is inherent danger in
words like these — in simple lables
slapped onto complex people. Such
categorizations encourage us to
forget that Balanchine was a man,
as flawed as the rest of us, living
and working in the imperfect, non-
genius structures and systems of
the 20th century.
“Ballet is woman,” he said — but
what kind? His muses were young,
often still teenagers. They were
skinny with small breasts and no
butts, and their success created
the silhouette of a dancer’s body
that still wreaks havoc on women
today. Floating beneath the surface
of Balanchine’s legacy are eating
disorders, body dysmorphia and
an industry that makes casting
decisions based on costume fittings
rather than actual talent.
Also
beneath
the
surface
rests ballets like “Le Chant du
Rossignol,” an early Balanchine
work that told the story of a sick
Chinese emperor and relied heavily
on destructive Orientalist tropes
from its 1925 origins. When Ballet
West revived the work in 2019, Final
Bow for Yellowface co-founder Phil
Chan spent the better part of his
year facing off against historians
who seemed to be too invested in
respecting Balanchine’s genius to
recognize the need to respect their
Asian American peers.
But perhaps the most notable,
yet overlooked, factor complicating
Balanchine’s legacy is Balanchine’s
use of Black dance in his formation
of American ballet, a point for which
scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild
deserves immense credit. The
opened chest, bent knees, increased
speed and syncopated rhythms did
not come from the singular mind
of a European immigrant — they
came from the street and social
dances of Black Americans across
the country. And yet, the master
narrative of Balanchine’s memory
often frames him as the inventor of
such techniques. To this day, Black
dance remains marginalized and
belittled by the same white concert
audiences that praise Balanchine’s
innovation. In a 1996 book, Dixon
Gottschild explains this under the
title “Stripping the Emperor,” a
phrase indicative of such erasure.
The
A love letter to Mr. Phoenix
The world has a thing for
martyrs. People treat it like a rite
of passage if you make it into the 27
Club with Jimi Hendrix and Kurt
Cobain. But River Phoenix never
even got to see his 27th year.
Phoenix died from a drug
overdose on Halloween when he
was only 23. His death was, and
remains to be, so sensationalized
that you can even watch the
guys at Buzzfeed Unsolved try to
contact his ghost. National news
stations aired the 911 call that his
brother Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker,”
“Her”) made from the Viper
Room, the club owned by Johnny
Depp (“Pirates of the Caribbean,”
“Edward Scissorhands”) where
River had collapsed. Long before
social media, River’s life and
death were treated like a sideshow
attraction between commercials.
River was a reluctant icon. He
hated his own celebrity (and the
idea of celebrity at all), but he used
it as a platform for his activism that
could only be compared to the likes
of Jane Fonda (“Klute,” “Grace
and Frankie”) or Marlon Brando
(“Streetcar Named Desire,” “The
Godfather”). He spoke openly and
passionately about animal rights
and environmentalism in a time
before there was a vegan option on
every menu. Maybe he knew that
PETA booked him because of his
name as the precocious 17-year-
old nominated for an Oscar, but he
swallowed his pride because it was
what he believed in.
Humility isn’t always included
in
definitions
of
masculinity.
River could have performed the
hypermasculinity of contemporary
stars like Arnold Schwarzenneger,
Sylvester Stallone, Patrick Swayze
or Tom Cruise, but he didn’t.
This isn’t to say that he wasn’t
masculine; he could play a young
Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade” with all the
heroism we knew from the action
star, but with this added fragility
that’s difficult to achieve in a
short, ten-minute cameo. River
brought an intense, overwhelming
amount
of
vulnerability
that
would underscore, rather than
negate, his strength in each and
every one of his roles. He made
male tenderness iconic.
“Stand by Me,” based on the
Stephen King novella “The Body,”
is meant to be an ensemble film,
but River’s performance as a
tough but well-meaning kid from a
dysfunctional family lit him up on
everyone’s radar. The story started
the “You wanna see a dead body?”
trope as a group of middle school
boys search for a local boy’s corpse
in 1959. River may not be what
most people remember most about
the movie; it’s more recognizable
as a clear influence of friendship-
centered adventures like “The
Sandlot” or “Stranger Things,” and
as a parallel to other adjacent films
like “The Goonies” or (of course,
because of its source material)
“IT.” Director Rob Reiner (“When
Harry Met Sally”) captures the
playfulness and devastation of
childhood through the image of
some boys walking down railroad
tracks together with the dramatic
irony of their knowledge that it
was a train that killed the boy
they’re looking for.
At its core, “Stand by Me” is
about love. And while the other
cast members did an amazing
job, there’s just nothing that you
can compare to River’s delivery
of the line: “I just wish I could go
someplace where nobody knows
me.” He admitted to using fake
tears in the scene (he was only 15
years old and it was his first major
role in a feature film), but you
believe it when he says it. Maybe it’s
that boyishness that had everyone
magnetized to the screen. He was
a kid in 1986 pretending he was
in 1959, and you wonder if he was
thinking of himself as his father,
if this spoke to that feeling when
you first see your father cry, when
death stares you in the face, when,
for the first time, you really, truly
understand empathy.
I can’t help but wonder if
“Stand by Me” was River’s way
of reckoning with his childhood
in the same way it is for everyone
who watches the film. River was
born to hippies who joined the
Children of God cult when he
was three. The cult was known
for its interpretation of God’s love
through sex, and particularly
shared
sex
partners;
cult
members were coerced to sleep
with recruits in order to convert
them. Many cases of childhood
sexual abuse have been reported
by
ex-members.
It’s
reported
by Vanity Fair and supported
by “Stand by Me” co-star Corey
Feldman (“The Goonies”) that
River was a victim of child sexual
abuse. Joaquin Phoenix has since
insisted that River’s confession to
Details magazine was a joke made
“because he was so tired of being
asked ridiculous questions by the
press.”
We can’t know if River was
a victim of abuse. It is a fact,
though, that as the firstborn son
of a family of seven, he often took
his early acting jobs in order to
provide for his family. It is a fact
that the Children of God was a
cult that attracted sex offenders,
and even if River didn’t experience
it firsthand, it’s not unlikely that
he may have witnessed some of
it. When his family left the cult,
they left their given surname of
the Arlyns behind and renamed
themselves after the phoenix.
In interviews, both River and
Joaquin have looked fondly on
their family life, describing a late-
’60s openness and an early-’70s
closeness that kept them together
after whatever may have happened
while they were in the cult.
That openness is most apparent
in “My Own Private Idaho.” Based
loosely on Shakespeare’s “Henry
IV” and “Henry V,” River plays
Mike, a narcoleptic male prostitute
hopelessly in love with his best
friend Scott (Keanu Reeves, “John
Wick”). Directed by Gus Van
Sant (“Good Will Hunting”), it
quickly became a cult classic and
was inducted into the New Queer
Cinema movement of the 1990s.
River completely holds his own
acting toe-to-toe with arguably
the biggest action star of the ’90s.
It’s like seeing fireworks for the
first time: the thump hitting deep
in your chest, the colors lighting
up an otherwise dark night, and
then that strange feeling when
the show ends and you’re left with
silence.
And
that’s
without
the
knowledge that River himself
wrote the iconic campfire scene
where Mike confesses his love to
Scott. Mike tries to talk about their
friendship, asks what he means
to Scott; Scott is confused, and
maybe a bit put off.
“I only have sex with a guy for
money. And two guys can’t love
each other,” Scott says.
Mike
stutters
out
a
noncommittal
response,
eventually admitting, “I love you
and you don’t pay me. I really
wanna kiss you, man.”
Scott doesn’t say anything.
Mike curls in on himself, hugging
his knees until Scott holds him and
a wolf howls in the distance.
It’s complete, utter, unguarded
love. It frames the film in a
completely different light than the
original script.
MARY ELIZABETH JOHNSON
For The Daily
FLICKR
Thinking of female film
directors as famous icons
From the screen of a dark movie
theater, a white horse stared at me,
and I stared right back. At the time,
I was 20, “LA dreaming,” working
in California for the summer while
taking classes at night, watching
“Fish Tank” (2009) by Andrea
Arnold in UCLA’s Mendelson
theater. I sat with my arms
wrapped tightly around my legs,
pulling them into my chest so that
my chin was imprinted red from
being stuck between my knees. All
my weight rested in my dirty-white
Reeboks — they left a mark of muck
on the leather seat beneath me.
A bit later, the white horse died.
It got shot on the day Mia (the main
character) turned 16. It was the
same day her dreams of becoming
a dancer died, because a promising
audition turned out to be a
seductive scheme. It was the same
day her mom’s friendly boyfriend
turned out to be sexually deceitful
towards Mia, with her birth control
tossed aside when she needed it
most. “Fish Tank” came to a close
with Mia, her mother and her sister
in the living room, mirroring each
other, as they danced to Nas’ “Life’s
a bitch.”
The blood vessel in my left eye
popped — I forgot to blink. With my
eye bloodied up, the lights turned
bright and I felt my blood rush back
into my feet, with red imprints on
my chin and legs and cheeks from
holding on too tightly. I sat squarely
in the dirt my Reeboks left on the
chair.
I felt gritty and wrecked. I felt
like Mia’s white horse was still
there, with all her dreams and
vulnerabilities staring at me. It felt
like Arnold had changed the way
my blood was flowing.
When I turned to my left to face
my best friend Kemo, whom I’d
met at the beginning of summer, I
knew he felt this bloodied, tender
rush too: He was looking at me
with the smallest of smirks, which
fell quickly into a more serious,
contemplative look.
I wanted to dance, I wanted to
call my mom and I really wanted
to take the birth control pills I had
missed for the past three days.
***
Andrea
Arnold
—
director
of “Fish Tank” and “American
Honey” (2019) — captures fleeting
beauty and the essence of young
women who are tightly stuck in
the whirlpools of poverty they find
themselves in, who bear the full
brunt of babies and children and
lost dreams and sexualization. She
does this with delicacies: turtles let
free in the ocean, white horses, flies
and wasps stuck to honey — I fell
utterly in love with Arnold’s work
that summer. She wove herself into
the helix of my DNA.
After watching “Fish Tank” in
UCLA’s theatre alongside Kemo,
we plowed through Arnold’s films
“American Honey” and “Wasp”
that same week. He and I would
meet in the Common Room of our
dorm to make those two bean bag
chairs and that tiny TV our bitches.
The vending machine always
came first: I’d get two strawberry
Nutri-Grain bars and he’d get fruit
snacks. When other students would
open the door to try and study,
they’d usually see us throwing our
favorite fruit snack flavors at each
other, talking shit, with our eyes
peeled on the screen. They would
know they were intruding, and
then they’d promptly leave.
In
that
over-air-conditioned
common room we talked about our
dreams, mostly. Who we wanted to
be, what we wanted to create and
be a part of. And maybe that’s why
my love of Arnold is so strong: she
makes films about what it means
for young girls to have dreams, and
she scares you just enough about
what those dreams are susceptible
to.
She’s an icon to me, but
definitely not an icon to others,
let alone known by others. And
I find it extremely hard to distill
my isolated idolization of Andrea
Arnold down to a matter of
“personal taste,” when not a single
female is listed when you google
“famous directors,” or when my
friends can’t name a single female
movie director.
SAMANTHA CANTIE
Daily Music Editor
A24
NYC BALLET
Balanchine: the forgotten
parts of his complex legacy
ZOE PHILLIPS
Senior Arts Editor
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
The blood
vessel in
my left eye
popped — I
forgot to
blink.
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
Read more online at
michigandaily.com