Ballet Companies and Modern Dance Companies Share Repertoire

Back in the day ballet dancers and modern dancers worked separately.  They each took to their own corners of the dance world... ballet keeping to its traditional vocabulary to re-stage or create works, and modern dance exploring new ways to express the human condition through movement.  The times are changing.  Like ballet companies, modern dance companies now spend similar efforts to maintain and re-stage their signature classic works.  Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Revelations comes to mind as just one of the many companies passing on the tradition of their legacy.  And, like modern dance companies, ballet companies, are back to investing in new classical works.  Christopher Wheeldon is a current day classically trained dancer who has become an international resident and guest choreographer who is recreating old ballets for new audiences. 

Increasingly, both ballet and modern dance companies are expanding their training to include other disciplines, adding repertoire from other genres, and thus increasing their audiences.  One classical company on the leading edge is Nederlans Dans taking on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, as well as other ballets such as Giselle, and Pacific Northwest Ballet taking on Twyla Tharp's new choreography.

Since 1979, the Dancing Arts Center anticipated this fusion of two dance worlds and has trained its students to be equally proficient and employable in both.  Right out of the creative movement program, students begin PreBallet and PreModern classes at age six or seven.  They continue into the main division to further their study in classical ballet and modern dance in a complimentary schedule.  Until the advanced level when students take the traditional foundations of modern dance and push its boundaries, students learn the fundamentals of the Horton technique over the course of several years, then over a couple more years, they add the Limon technique to their experiences, and at the intermediate level study the Graham technique.  In their ballet lineage, Dancing Arts Center students begin their studies learning about three Tchaikovsky ballets in one year of their PreBallet program and learn about three Minkus ballets in the other.  From there, the slow careful training to turn out and be on balance as a beginner, leads to crossing and raising the legs for adagio and allegro patterns in advanced beginner classes, then elevation, beats, pirouettes and more at the upper levels.  Eventually, the vocabulary of ballet becomes repertoire in variations and pas de deux classes.

At the Dancing Arts Center, equal respect and devotion is dedicated to both modern and ballet in separate classes, and over the years students blend the two for choreography, company auditions, and ultimate employment.  There are many students who have gone on to professional careers in performance, teaching, company direction, journalism, costuming, even motor development and massage therapy.  While the study of ballet is crucial to all other forms of dance and provides its greatest benefit when studied early in life, students learn, dance is dance.  One genre is valuable to the next, but not more important than the next.

Only the timing of what to study when is important.  Creative Movement ought to be integral throughout a dancers training.  Being able to think on your feet, find and build you own inner voice, and move dance toward fresh new ideas gives a dancer artistic skills beyond technique.  At the risk of minimizing its value by describing its contribution in one sentence, classical ballet introduced in elementary school, shapes a dancers body and universal lines of movement from which all dance genres benefit.  Modern dance broadens the scope and depth on the use of weight, force, emotion and vocabulary to express any human condition.  Tap instills dexterity and musical syncopation.  Hip hop, developed on the streets (not in the studio), is finding a home in many studios giving dancers an urban expression.  Folk dancing builds more collaboration, unity, and a sense of group formation.

At the company level, it is new for ballet and modern companies to cross territories. The Dancing Arts Center has been doing it for decades.  Join!