When Ballet Became French: Modern Ballet and the Cultural Politics of France, 1909–1939 by Ilyana Karthas (review)
- When Ballet Became French: Modern Ballet and the Cultural Politics of France, 1909–1939 by Ilyana Karthas
Ilyana Karthas's new study points a wide-angle lens at ballet, which reveals it as an historical practice, an ideology of the body, and a 'cultural medium' through which to view early twentieth-century French nationalism. The author argues that, between the world wars, 'many of the cultural transformations occurring in France […] were expressed and shaped within critical debates that surrounded ballet' (pp. 7–8). The argument rests on two key periods in ballet history: when it fell from grace; and when it rose from the ashes. [End Page 597] By the mid-nineteenth century, Karthas argues, French ballet, now some two hundred years old, showed signs of ageing badly. Banishing male dancers, choreographers over-sexualized women en pointe and, by the end of the century, scouted for the erotic bodies of the corps among the poor. Edgar Degas's homely young dancer (Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans, 1881) becomes Karthas's metaphor for the aesthetic poverty of the art and the weariness of France at the fin de siècle. Enter the Ballets russes, which brought modernism to Paris with Michel Fokine's 'whole body' choreography (p. 167) and the lithe, feral movement of Vaslav Nijinski's L'Après-midi d'un faune (1911) and Le Sacre du printemps (1913). Russian modernism, Karthas argues, showed the next generation a way to raise French ballet out of its decadence and into the twentieth century. Through the testimony of newly professionalized, visionary dance critics and choreographers, especially André Levinson and Serge Lifar, we learn how the rebellious staging for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets russes inspired France to reclaim and re-imagine ballet for a modern democracy. Levinson, France's first professional critic, offered the radical theory that dance could be art for art's sake if it returned to the virtuosity of classical technique. Lifar embodied that idea in choreography: blending classical steps with a new politics of the body, he gave ballet the same 'aesthetic autonomy' (p. 194) as music and gave dancers athletic appeal that cut across genders. These arguments unfold steadily over seven chapters, five of which are designed to reveal the cultural politics of French ballet through a series of lenses: the role of nineteenth-century aesthetics in the decline of classical dance; the influence of Russian creativity and high modernism; the politics of art in the inter-war period; the rise of the male dancer; and the redemption of the female body. A distinct advantage of Karthas's design is that the book unpacks the spectacle of ballet so we can see it dancing with politics and philosophy over time. A less desirable effect of this choice is the frequent repetition, through each cultural lens, of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century ballet history, the contributions made by key players (especially Levinson and Lifar), and the book's central argument. Seasoned and novice cultural historians alike will learn from the way Karthas weaves the writing of dance critics and choreographers into the story of French nationalism and gender studies. Teachers and students may well appreciate the repetition across chapters, which allows individual chapters to be read independently without losing the book's central claims.
