Margaret Fuhrer:

Hi dance friends, and welcome to The Dance Edit podcast. I’m Margaret Fuhrer.

Lydia Murray:

I’m Lydia Murray.

Amy Brandt:

And I’m Amy Brandt.

Margaret Fuhrer:

We have three out of four of us here this week, which is such a delight. Hi guys.

Welcome to our fourth mailbag episode, fourth in an ongoing series. And what is a mailbag episode exactly? Well, we asked you all to send in your suggestions for discussion topics, dance-world ideas and issues that you’d like us to get into. And today we will be pulling two of those topics from our digital grab bag for discussion. So this episode’s winners are, first, the professional dance world’s inroads into TikTok, and the upsides and downsides of that development. And second, the value of older bodies in dance, of seeing them in professional dance environments, and in making room for them in all dance environments.

If your topic didn’t make it into this episode, don’t worry. As I mentioned, we will definitely be doing more mailbag rounds in the not so distant future, so please keep the ideas coming. The easiest way to share those ideas is on social media, so make sure you’re following the Dance Edit @the.dance.edit on Instagram and @dance_edit on Twitter. And then please feel free to leave us a comment or slide on into our DMs.

All right. So, let’s get right into our first topic, professional dancers and dance companies on TikTok, which is a trend that was slow to gain steam in the earlier days of the app, but that is now very much in full swing. This is an idea that several of you wrote in about, including Minnie Lane and Bobby Briscoe, so thank you to Minnie and Bobby in particular. It’s not yet universally expected that a dancer or company will be on TikTok the way pretty much everyone is required to be on Instagram, but a number of professionals, and at least a couple of companies, now have very large followings on TikTok. They’ve finally gotten a handle on the app’s sensibility. So, what are the positive and negative aspects of that trend, and what does it reveal about what it means to present yourself as a serious artist today?

Lydia Murray:

I think some of the positive aspects are that it’s easier to reach audiences who might not ordinarily know or really care that much about dance, especially concert dance—because commercial dance, obviously, it’s designed to be in the mainstream. And I think they can offer a way around certain long standing beliefs that are held in the dance world that might be due for a change. I’ve seen some TikTok videos where people are thinking about how to take class and what class means and how to teach in a way that serves different kinds of dancers. And there have also been certain conversations about the origins of things like ballet and maybe certain elements that might not have been taught in school or taught in ballet classes.

Of course, sometimes that can maybe lead to a darker place too, if there’s not enough of a balance. It doesn’t have to be all about how terrible certain things in dance are or how great they all are. Having a little bit more balanced information about both I think, can be one of the positive sides of TikTok, even though it’s not unique to TikTok.

But I think part of it is just that that’s the direction that a lot of conversations in dance have been going in for the past few years and that just happened to coincide with the rise of TikTok.

Margaret Fuhrer:

It does feel nice to unstuff-ify concert dance generally, but professional ballet in particular—to see dancers as people, which is very much the TikTok ethos. It has been interesting to watch the shape and the feel of TikTok evolve over time, or at least, I guess, over the couple of years that I’ve been on the platform. The fact that professional dancers and companies are gaining traction as the TikTok dance challenge is losing traction, that feels significant to me, that one type of interaction with dance giving way to another type of interaction with dance. And you do now see a lot more of the type of typical Instagram-y stuff, dance stuff, making headway on TikTok. There are viral pirouette videos on TikTok now. That’s a thing. It definitely didn’t use to be.

Lydia Murray:

Right. I think the challenge era coincided with the pandemic when people needed things to do and they needed ways to feel connected. And now that that’s ending, there’s a little bit more of a shift back toward people doing things that are beyond the capability of most people. And I think also just generally the trend of professional concert dancers and dance companies on TikTok is largely just a newer example of concert dance in media. And I think this conversation is just a new iteration of those longstanding debates about the role of concert dance in media and pop culture.

And part of what seems to be happening is that TikTok hasn’t been fully embraced yet. It’s still new enough that people who tend to be late adopters to new technology have not yet fully adopted it. So, it can seem like a phenomenon or an option when really it likely isn’t.

But getting back to that idea of relatability versus basically excellence, I guess, something that I’ve noticed about TikTok culture is that it seems to value what I call the “casually extraordinary” for public figures. It’s a place where your skill and your talent and your more normal human qualities can coexist, and it can really give a glimpse of what it’s like to be that sort of person. Like ABTs TikTok feed, where there’s that series where the dancers talk about their least favorite ballet step and then they explain the step and then they demonstrate it.

Margaret Fuhrer:

And everyone says gargouillade. [laughter]

Lydia Murray:

Yeah, that example shows the human side and it also educates, and it also can help bring ballet to new audiences.

Amy Brandt:

Yeah. I think there is an expectation especially in today’s younger generations, that that relatability factor—because they’ve grown up with social media, that’s kind of expected now, I think from public figures. Where if you think of the ballet stars of the past, I can’t imagine Suzanne Farrell or Baryshnikov just kind of jamming into some sort of dance on TikTok or anything like that.

Lydia Murray:

I can totally see Baryshnikov off doing that, but go on. [laughter]

Margaret Fuhrer:

I was just gonna say—actually, I think Baryshnikov might! [laughter]

Amy Brandt:

Yeah, no. But I think that’s kind of been kind of cultivated in our culture today, and we’re used to seeing that now from, whether it’s movie stars or dance stars.

And I think it is kind of serious business for a lot of professional dancers. I mean, I just interviewed Jonathan Batista, the new principal dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and he was saying he devotes an hour of his time every night to content creation and personal branding on social media. And I think a lot of dancers do, and it’s part of the business side of it. I mean, it’s fun too, but it’s also part of the job, not for everybody, but for a lot of dancers.

I think it’s awesome for really engaging new audiences, younger audiences. I think some older generations may be a little bewildered, because sometimes it can come across as goofy or silly, but I think it does… I mean, dancers are often young. So it kind of really emphasizes that to me sometimes when I look at some of these videos.

Lydia Murray:

I think for older generations, I think when social media kind of emerged at first, there was a lot of emphasis on the social part of that. And now there’s more emphasis on the media part. And I think sometimes bridging that gap can be a challenge.

Margaret Fuhrer:

And I think that’s exactly the balance that some of these accounts are trying to strike. Some more successfully than others. Actually, one thing, I don’t mean to talk too much about the ABT account, it’s just extraordinary, because you wouldn’t necessarily expect ABT to be a TikTok pioneer, and they invested in that very aggressively and very deliberately. But one thing that they do particularly well is the combining of the focus on expertise with the lighter-touch sort of silliness of TikTok that Lydia was talking about.

One of their most recent viral videos is Skylar Brandt, who herself has totally mastered the TikTok sensibility, doing, I don’t know, 50 pirouettes while holding her phone in her hand. So first you see the 50 pirouettes and then you see the phone’s perspective, and it’s this weirdly hilarious close up of her aggressive spotting, which is kind of exactly the balance that accounts like that have found as their sweet spot. Yes, we are extraordinary artists. We are also people. I think there’s some value in that, without losing too much of the gravitas of the form, or too much of the mystique that can be part of the appeal with ballet too.

Lydia Murray:

Yeah, I agree. I think coming out of the Instagram era where everyone was so, or I shouldn’t say everyone, but there was so much pressure to make yourself look as perfect as possible, and I think that led to a lot of problems in terms of self-esteem or just almost impossibly high standards. And now just generally even outside the dance world, TikTok is sort of an answer to that, or the culture that’s formed on TikTok, where people want to see people being a little bit more real. And I think that that’s interesting.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Well, TikTok thinkpieces abound these days. So in the show notes, we have a few different articles that do a good job breaking down how TikTok is shaping dance and vice versa.

Okay, so next up out of the mail bag is a topic submitted by Maria Urruita on Instagram. Thanks, Maria. She asked us to discuss the value of older bodies in the dance world. Because dance has, at least in recent decades, or really recent centuries, been fixated on very young bodies. So in a lot of professional dance, ageism isn’t seen as a discriminatory practice. It’s seen as an acknowledgement of some inescapable reality: Dancers’ careers are often over by age 40.

But that doesn’t have to be the case, and there should certainly be a place for older dancers in training environments. So, let’s talk about all of it.

Amy Brandt:

Yeah, I think when it comes to professional dance, in some instances that word retired isn’t just like, “I am retired.” It is, “You have been retired,” as in dancers are forced to stop dancing at a certain age because of their contracts or whatnot. I know at the Paris Opera, I think at age 40 or something, or 42, you’re contractually no longer part of the company. And there’s obviously no denying that the body changes and you simply can’t do the same things that you used to be able to do. I know my back was certainly always on the stiffer side, even as a younger dancer, although I was able to work with it, but now it just simply doesn’t go. And then injuries build up, and there’s a thing called arthritis.

And I think too, the way dance technique, at least in certain styles has developed over the years has given more and more focus on elasticity, flexibility, things that younger bodies are just kind of more suited for, I guess, or things that are just easier on a younger body.

But Alonzo King said something recently in an interview that I thought made a lot of sense. He said, “Sometimes when things are starting to fall apart physically dancers become more profound artistically.” And I really do think that there is something to that, when you look at how professional dancers progress in their careers, and how they build that artistic side of themselves through the years. That will always continue to grow, and that doesn’t really leave you, that part of dancing.

And I think, honestly, one of the most memorable performances I think I’ve ever seen was by Steve Paxton, the Judson Church modern dancer. It was a solo he did called “The Beast” at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, I think it was in 2010. But he was, I think in his early seventies. It was very spare music, drips of water or something, and he was very dimly lit, and he just sort slowly moved his body in this very idiosyncratic fashion—I remember his neck especially. I mean, it was just these really subtle, slow movements, and he totally did embody a creature or a beast. I thought it was incredibly mesmerizing and something only he could pull off. I just think that artistry, I mean, I think you have to cultivate it, but I do think that stays with you as you age and grows.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Do you guys remember the dance company Paradigm that Gus Solomons jr founded back in the nineties?

Amy Brandt:

I don’t.

Margaret Fuhrer:

It was specifically for older dancers, and the first three dancers were Gus, Carmen de Lavallade and Dudley Williams—which, just imagine, right? The first performance that I ever had to review as a 19-year-old was a Paradigm performance where Gus, Carmen, Sarah Rudner and Martin Van Hamel were the four performers. And I was a 19-year-old bunhead who was obsessed with pyrotechnical dancing! But even then, I was completely overwhelmed by the collective wisdom in these bodies that was so immediately apparent as soon as they were on stage. It almost didn’t matter what they were doing. It was just the force of that collective experience was so beautiful.

Also, as we were doing research for this episode—this was such a wonderful one to do research for, because every story is full of quotes from older dancers who just have incredibly wise things to say about all of this. There was a Dance Magazine story from a few years back where Gus Solomons jr was talking about “playing the instrument that you have.” And I love that so much, just the sense that now our bodies make different sounds, maybe they have a different tone. How can you use that as a source of inspiration?

Amy Brandt:

Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I take adult ballet class now, and I retired almost 10 years ago now, and of course it feels different, but I love tapping into that wisdom and that artistic… That part of me is still there, that joy and self-expression and projecting and just that spark that I spent my whole dance career kind of cultivating. I love kind of finding it again. It’s very easy to find again, I find, even if my grands battements are tight. But also just to have that expectation no longer on me, the physical part—I mean, I still obviously want to dance my best and all that—but to no longer have that kind of stress and pressure and expectation to be able to do certain things, brings on a lot of nice freedom.

And honestly, my ultimate dream job, and I’m so jealous of the very small group of people that get to do this with their lives, but I just think the most amazing job in the world is principal character artist, because they get to explore that side of themselves without having that physical pressure that was there when they were younger.

Lydia Murray:

Since you mentioned adult ballet class, that did make me think about how in training environments, there’s this idea, I think that because older dancers’ bodies might have more challenges meeting the demands of a traditional dance company, that they’re less important, and that’s not the case. As you’re saying, there’s so much that you can get out of ballet, so much that you can contribute to ballet artistically. So much in the way you move and the way you perform can come from a place of, I guess more mature…I feel like maturity is such a weirdly loaded word, but there’s more to dance, including ballet than just all the pyrotechnics. And I like that there’ve been more adult ballet classes and workshops and that kinds of thing. But yeah, I think that’s another area. Especially if you’re just looking to get into dancing for the first time as an adult, it can be difficult, I think, to know where to start and what classes will be welcoming, what classes will sufficiently challenge you if that’s what you’re looking for. But yeah, there’s just so much value to dance beyond just training and performance at the professional level.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Yeah, I think we talked about that a little bit in a previous mail bag episode, where we did a segment on recreational dance students. We just have to release this idea that only professional track dance students “matter.” That’s a larger cultural issue we have to kind of unpack throughout dance.

Amy Brandt:

The adult students that I take class with are fiercely loyal. I mean, they are there every week. They love their ballet class. Also, just sidebar, I’m performing in a Nutcracker this year.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Aww, yay!

Amy Brandt:

I have graduated to Party Scene parent. I’m in the Party Scene parent phase of my life! But it’s at the local school that I’ve been working with, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be fun.

Lydia Murray:

Sounds exciting.

Margaret Fuhrer:

That’s so great. Oh, there’s so much more to say and think about here. We’ve linked several stories in the show notes that expand further on all of those ideas.

All right. That concludes the special mailbag episode. Thanks everyone for joining. We’ll be back soon with more discussion of the news that’s moving the dance world. Keep learning, keep advocating, and keep dancing.

Amy Brandt:

Thanks everybody.

Lydia Murray:

Bye everyone.