Modern and Contemporary Dance: 2012-13

Moving on for a time from the short dance, let's consider the ambitions of a few teams this season who, with the assistance of dance choreographers, tackled one of the less readily-adaptable genres of movement: modern dance and its offshoots.

Ice dance is more than familiar with Carmen. The dance realm has also tackled the composition with regularity, with one noteworthy version, featuring prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, scored by husband and composer Rodion Shchedrin's 1967 percussion-focused rearrangement of Bizet's suite -- the arrangement utilized in, among others, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir's take on the story. Despite this musical borrowing, the Plisetskaya ballet bears little kinship to Virtue and Moir's free dance. Roland Petit's sensual 1949 version, however, offers up perhaps the best-known modern ballet take, and it's worth a view:


(As an aside, note the sequence beginning at 4:04, and this lift from Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte's own interpretation of Shchedrin's Carmen.)

But Virtue and Moir tackled not modern ballet, but modern dance -- a different beast, to be sure (and one the team has previously visited), even as skating's restrictions lend themselves to a sometimes more balletic approach. Modern dance is typically defined more by what it is not than what it is, with an emphasis on its freedom of spirit and movement, but a slightly more technical analysis is useful, as is this documentary clip which is rather technically vague but offers a bit of background and footage.

Carmen was the product of collaboration with choreographer and teacher Jennifer Swan, and like both a traditional dance work and a critically judged program, it underwent numerous revisions and tweaks over the season's course, though remained rooted in its modern aims. The program's final performance is a good starting point for an overview of the general grounded aesthetic, including the low center of gravity movement emphasized in the opening sequence and the conclusion of the twizzles, but take particular note of the two side-by-side passages beginning at 4:33, which showcase the most typically modern of all gestures in the piece, as well as Virtue's lift positions; the curve lift at 2:20, rotational at 5:30, and choreographic lift at 5:41 showcase more wild, free movement -- modern -- while the control exerted in the first half of the combination at 4:09 provides for a startling moment, one more reminiscent of the modern ballet concept.


It's helpful also to revisit an earlier conception of the program, here in its first outing at Skate Canada International. Notice the original spin, primarily its exit at 2:17. Movement is rooted as much as feasible in modern vernacular, but even truer to the spirit, it's never wasted; every motion matters, and every motion is tightly bound to the music.

While Carmen was the year's only top-level modern program, two elite teams tackled a related style -- contemporary -- with input from traditional choreographers. Contemporary dance, discussed in detail here, draws from many of the principles underlying modern, but incorporates more of ballet's emphasis on the leg, as well as borrowing some movement from non-Western dance.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje worked with dancer and choreographer Allison Holker, of So You Think You Can Dance fame, to create the initial draft of their "statue and sculptor" free dance, as discussed in these two articles. And while Weaver and Poje's program follows its own path, a good point of direct style comparison might be this So You Think You Can Dance contemporary routine choreographed by Travis Wall -- the opening pose certainly stands out:


The restructured version the team presented at Worlds loses the direct comparison offered by that moment, but retains, if not enhances, its contemporary attributes. Both partners, but Weaver especially, use great line and extension in the lifts, moving fluidly with a free sense of flow. The original version of the dance includes a mostly out-of-hold sequence from 2:12-2:25 which suggests the sort of side-by-side movement common in partnered contemporary and lyrical; the revised program, as posted below, loses this particular sequence but does offer a multi-level transitional moment from 2:47-2:54 as well as a more complex, rhythmic transition between the first two sets of twizzles at 2:35. The second program is, more than a general contemporary piece, a lyrical take on a wordless composition: catch the percussive heartbeat sequence beginning at 3:11 and the gradual, slight stiffening of Weaver's posture and movement as the music and narrative draw to their conclusion.


Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt's Adele-scored contemporary free dance did not originate with an off-ice conceit, but was revised late in the summer with input from choreographer Stacey Tookey, who was responsible for a So You Think You Can Dance contemporary number with a connection to the team's program:


Kriengkrairut and Giulietti-Schmitt's program deviates from the other two in another significant way as a kind of hybrid piece, with the second half, set to "Rumour Has It," based somewhat more in jazz movement. But the first half certainly draws from contemporary inspiration, particularly in its emphasis on extended movement -- watch her leg at 1:22, and watch the free legs of both partners during the step sequence beginning at 1:28. The opening movement from 0:39-0:55 is also notable for the immediate dynamism and flow it provides the program -- important given the slower, relatively heavy nature of the musical selection.


As a sidenote, when outside the confines of the rulebook, Kriengkrairut and Giullietti-Schmitt have had the chance to tackle more floor-inspired contemporary movement, as shown here in this selection from 2012's Young Artists Showcase, choreographed by Robert Mauti. But of course, freedom from rules makes a free-flowing genre more possibly even granted ice's own impositions; it's interpreting that style within competition's confines that makes the true accomplishment.

6. French Dance

Among the less direct approaches taken to this season's Yankee Polka is the Gallic route: the polka lends itself rather intriguingly to French style. And for more than one established team this season, the polka recommended itself to the can-can.

The can-can itself descends directly from the appropriately 2/4-timed galop, a popular nineteenth-century European country dance which itself would later give rise to the...polka. After a spell as a social dance, the can-can's flashier aspects would lend itself to its development as a performative style, a good demonstration of which is offered in this vintage clip:


Notice the splits, please, as well as Offenbach's "Infernal Galop," the musical selection so synonymous with all things can-can that it's referred to by the dance's name more often than not.

While this video gives us the most classic of classical can-can, of note was the social, coupled nature of its earliest incarnation, with men and women performing the dance's assorted splashy movements in concert. While video of this take on the floor dance is difficult to locate, the general idea, one might guess, lives on rather well in Kharis Ralph and Asher Hill's take on the style, which is preceded by an appropriately bubbly take on Gigi. From 1:54 onward, Hill's movements, from high kicks to even more, match Ralph's to an almost startling degree:


Of course, the traditional French can-can is the centerpiece of Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat's "Moulin Rouge" dance (performed here for the Parisian Trophee Eric Bompard audience), wherein the partnered aspect is less about a shared performance and more about a patron's flirtations with a music hall dancer. Traditional skirt choreography, little utilized in Ralph and Hill's more couple-oriented piece, is a major above-the-blade component of this can-can:


As a sidenote, the slowed-down rendition of Offenbach's piece accompanying Pechalat and Bourzat's Yankee Polka sequences is indeed but a slowed-down rendition of the "Infernal Galop." But at least it isn't this.

The audience-grabbing appeal of the can-can notwithstanding, however, another couple demonstrates that there's more than one way to de-Yankeefy the Polka.

The bal-musette might be the main source of inspiration for any French-themed program that tackles a social rhythm like waltz or polka and aesthetically calls back to the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century. This was the angle taken by a team like Delobel and Schoenfelder in their 2010 Olympics original dance, an interesting little bridge piece between the waltzes and the can-cans. And if the genre reached its peak popularity in the 1940s and '50s, then Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam's Edith Piaf-scored waltz/polka might be considered the ultimate heydey of bal-musette kind of program -- even if Piaf isn't often associated with social dance.


One irony is the fact that Piaf's waltz "La Foule," which kicks off Paul and Islam's SD, is actually a cover of Peruvian vals "Que nadie sepa mi sufrir." Piaf's rendition, though, adjusts the pacing and substitutes in more traditional bal-musette instrumentation, transforming a South American tango cousin into essentially a sprightlier version of French musical waltz (compare with "Padam Padam" or Madison Chock and Greg Zuerlein's 2010-11 use of such).

What makes for a sprightly French waltz song, however, is a little different from what typically may accompany a French valse dance. YouTube's pickings are slim, but a few moments with the valse musette or the folk waltz are reasonably instructive:


Here we come again to the interesting quandary of competitive skate versus traditional floor dance, and the valse musette as demonstrated in Jazz Age-era clips is possibly even less compatible with the demands of an ice dance program. The rotations at 0:56-0:58 and 1:42-1:43 in Paul and Islam's program above might be the closest approximations to valse musette movement, with allowance made for physics and a slightly more laidback tempo. Certainly, the greater part of a short dance is concerned with the inclusion of required elements; while a country-western program, for example, can borrow from that style's vernacular in a variety of ways, the valse musette is, as can be seen, a fairly repetitive dance. Paul and Islam's program holds together tightly -- and is probably a stronger waltz, with its emphasis on closed holds and close skating, than many others calling upon that rhythm -- but its style may be less traditional French dance and more idea of French dance. It's not at all a choreographic parent, but there's a certain theatrical stylistic sensibility just a little reminiscent of, say, a French-set musical.