Introduction.

Ballet on a Small Planet: Widening Our Horizons

Author(s): Joellen A. Meglin and Lynn Matluck Brooks
Source: Dance Chronicle, Vol. 31, No. 3, Ballet in a Global World (2008), pp. 319-323
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25598173
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Dance Chronicle, 31:319-323, 2008 |"% pn| if Ip^^ip
Copyright ? 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC | *f JU UCUy C
ISSN: 0147-2526 print / 1532-4257 online ? X Taylor & Francis Group
DOI: 10.1080/01472520802402382

INTRODUCTION
BALLET ON A SMALL PLANET: WIDENING OUR HORIZONS

With this third issue of volume 31 of Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance

and the Related Arts, we introduce our first special theme, "Ballet in
a Global World." In our call for papers, we noted that, while ballet
has been studied as a monarchic, state, national, regional, and pan
European phenomenon, little attention has been paid to ballet in
Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. On the other
hand, ballet's history in Europe and North America has, since its
inception, been one of international exchange and varied cultural
perspectives. We were particularly curious about what we suspected
were an array of unusual fusions, innovations, genre collisions, and
cross-cultural flows of personnel on a global stage.
We posed a series of questions related to the emergent dis
course of globalization in other fields: "What exactly is globaliza
tion in terms of ballet and how has ballet manifested (or not man
ifested) this phenomenon in the past and the present? What new
directions, goals, and/or collaborations have arisen from interna
tional flows of information and personnel associated with ballet
in a global world? What part have local art forms or traditions (in
dance and the related arts of music, visual design, and literature)
played in renovating the classical ballet? What new syntheses have
emerged in ballet technique, training, and/or educational systems
as a result of international influences? How have international
markets, media representations, and/or the Internet influenced
the pragmatics and/or semiotics of ballet production? How have
ballet companies negotiated international and national identities
and navigated political complexity? How have artists forged their
individual identities in the pool of postmodern identities deriving
from city, region, nation, and international status, as well as ethnic,
gender, class, and sexual identities?"
We hope that the series of essays published here, as well as
those on this theme to be published in future issues, will begin

319

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 320 Dance Chronicle

to address how finely woven webs of communications, markets,

and migrations of people, producing greater proximity than ever
before in the world's history, have had crucial impacts on the
field of dance. Leading off this issue is Theodore Bale's "Danc
ing Out of the Whole Earth: Modalities of Globalization in The Rite
of Spring" which convinces us that, if ever there was a quintessen
tial global ballet, the manifold renditions that comprise the pro
duction history of this ballet worldwide make it the likely candi
date. Steeped in contemporary globalization theory, the author
argues that, far from leading toward homogenized conceptions
and cultural products, the global spread of Rite has seen a wealth
and diversity of interpretations of Stravinsky's score. Meanwhile,
the original theme of earthly regeneration likely reflected the
fact that the processes of globalization (and with it the com
pression of time and distance) were already taking place in the
very first choreography, the Nijinsky version. Bale's canny ap
plication of specific constructs, such as "glocalization," "transna
tionality," and the "universal product" (intended for mass con
sumption), to particular working choreographers, like Emanuel
Gat, Shen Wei, and Trey Mclntyre, not only illuminates their
work, but also argues for a more sophisticated and "world-wise"
criticism.
From Israel and France, China and New York, and Seattle, Jill
Nunes Jensen takes us to San Francisco, where Alonzo King has
been forging a unique identity for his company?one based in
intercultural dialogue, exchange, and enrichment. In "OutLINES
for a Global Ballet Aesthetic, "Jensen poses a different sort of ques
tion from the one Bale does, although, like his, it is oriented to
ward dance critics and theorists: What might a global vision or
aesthetic be in ballet, and how does the Alonzo King LINES Ballet
embody just that? It is clear that King is doing something different,
and that he takes postmodernism, with its well-known radical jux
tapositions and cross-over sensibilities, one step further, toward
global parameters. But how does his work escape the trouble
some category of cultural appropriation? Jensen makes a strong
case that, whether collaborating with Barthelemy Etoumba and
Nzamba Lela, of Aka heritage, in The People of the Forest, or with
monks from the Shaolin Temple in Long River, High Sky; whether
connecting with the Japanese musical instrument that gives the bal
let Koto its name or historical recordings of precursors to the blues

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 Ballet on a Small Planet: Widening Our Horizons 321

in Before the Blues, the LINES community of artists creates space for
experimentation and learning between peoples and traditions.
We close this section of research articles with Kim Kyunghee
and Kim Hyunjung's "Representing the Historical Memory of War
in Lim Sung-nam's Prince Hodong," a work whose choreographer
might have taken the revised motto for his own, "Think locally, act
globally," as he fused Korean folklore, music, dance, and decora
tive arts with traditional Western ballet. Kim and Kim analyze the
meanings of this ballet in relation to the original folk tale upon
which it was based, the choreographer's and composer's inten
tions, and the ballet's structure of narrative and spectacle when it
premiered at the 1988 Seoul International Dance Festival in con
junction with the Olympic Games. Drawing upon Korean studies
scholar Moon Seungsook, the authors note that this was a period
of consolidation of postcolonial national identity, in which mili
tary dictatorships sponsored a culture that celebrated economic
growth and national security in the name of unified community
consciousness (placing the collective over the individual) and fil
ial piety. Within this context, they unpack the gendered notions of
the ballet: men are the legitimate subjects of history; women and
illegitimate children lie outside of the power structure and lack
agency. They also appeal for a new kind of dance criticism, in this
case, one in which the debate about the future directions of the
Korean ballet is informed by women's voices.
Indeed, with the new possibilities of globalization?new prod
ucts and markets, shared knowledge, eye-opening worldviews, vir
tual and voluntary communities?come some of the downsides:
culture as commodity, the hegemony of global corporations, the
spread of viruses and infections in human bodies and cyberspace,
environmental degradation, and global webs of patriarchy, among
others. As a discipline we should be watchful and critical, as well as
celebratory, of what new constellations may arise. Bringing ballet
into the discourse of globalization offers our field new theoret
ical models and new clout as we enter the twenty-first century.
Obviously, ballet has not stolen into every corner of the world,
but certainly it has surfaced in enough places to convince us of
its significance as a global (intercultural, though not universal)
phenomenon.
Still, globalization is only one of many theoretical matrices that
might impel dance studies forward. One notable point, as we look

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 322 Dance Chronicle

over the articles we have published in 2008, is that very few women
appear as the subjects of scholarly inquiry. The articles published
this year have discussed Antony Tudor, Les Ballets Trockadero,
Matthew Bourne, hypermasculinity in Egypt, Iran, and Uzbekistan,
Mark Morris, Trey Mclntyre, Emanuel Gat, Shen Wei, Alonzo King,
and Lim Sung-nam. Only one article featured some lesser-known
British women choreographers, Pauline Grant, Lydia Kyasht, and
Mona Inglesby. We have plans to remedy this disproportion with
two special thematic issues in the future, "On Martha: Twenty-First
Century Perspectives on Graham" and "Ballet Is Woman: So Where
Are the Women Choreographers?" Please watch for these calls for
papers.
As ever, we invite you to send us research manuscripts on any
topic related to dance history for publication consideration. We
will continue to publish such articles alongside those generated
by specific themes proposed in our calls for papers. In this issue
of Dance Chronicle, for example, we publish Kalliopi Panopoulou's
"The Panegyri and Formation of Vlach Cultural Identity," which
probes themes of migration, cultural continuity, and evolving iden
tities in Macedonia as expressed in the history of a dance-rich com
munity religious festival. Interestingly, the folk dances of these cel
ebrations, like the ballets discussed in the theme-related articles,
allow the reader to appreciate the fusions, distinctions, and evo
lutions that dancing undergoes as it passes through history and
across geographies.
We invite your responses to our calls for papers and your own
selection of research topics, as well as urge you to propose book
reviews, to signal your interest in serving as a peer reviewer of
research, and to write letters to the editor in response to the ar
ticles, thematic issues, and book reviews you read in these pages.
As is clear from your past input, Dance Chronicles readers want
well-documented research, carefully considered ideas, and lucidly
written prose, not to mention aesthetically pleasing visual images.
The dance community worldwide is relatively small, and a journal
flourishes only in a climate of active participation of readers and
writers, so we invite you to contribute to Dance Chronicle in whatever
way suggests itself to you.
We wish to thank the Office of the Dean of the Esther Boyer
College of Music and Dance of Temple University for generously
funding doctoral students as editorial assistants and the Office

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 Ballet on a Small Planet: Widening Our Horizons 323

of the Provost of Franklin & Marshall College for additional sup

port. We would also like to thank Ruth Abrahams for proofreading
this entire issue. Finally, we would like to thank Jessica Thorn at
Taylor & Francis for her excellent editorial stewardship of Dance
Chronicle.

Joellen A. Meglin
Lynn Matluck Brooks

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