by Carmen Chihaia
Carmen Chihaia: Contemporary dancing seems to be winning over classical ballet. Maestro, considering your comprehensive view of the current directions, which school/tendency do you think will be able to impose itself, to bring "something else" that both audiences and artists want?Oleg Danovski: No school is created suddenly, overnight. In my opinion, a school is created by development. By assimilation and development. As it happened to the contemporary dance – that was originally a Germanic school, and its students developed the initial impulse in America. Today, there are various branches in the contemporary ballet. There is a style "without toe-dancing, barefoot." It requires a different technique. CC: And how would you define the art of dancing today, under the avalanche of so many changes?OD: That extraordinary achievement of man in moving his body not only in a gracious manner, but also to express ideas. Apart from the ideas, the basis is still the physical performance, of course. This ongoing fight against gravitation requires special efforts to become art. First, we're talking about gymnastics. What about dancing? It's much more than gymnastics, no matter how high the performance of gymnastics goes. The best gymnast there is, the world champion could not perform the dancer's "number" without being trained the way the dancer is. CC: The dancer s additionally trained in the "technique" of making the gesture spiritual?OD: Exactly. To experience the dramatic and musical moment at the same time. Dancing or ballet training are nothing but a special kind of gymnastics, so the artist's movement can be liberating. It trains him, liberating him from the burden of gravity, of the effort, of everything that could curtail the expression. A dancer performs vaults, twists, and weight lifting at the same time. Like a weight lifter, he has to lift a ballerina weighing 50-plus kilograms in one hand. Namely, apart from force, he has to have inspiration, style, fantasy. It's far from easy. When effort becomes a person's second nature, the artist-dancer breaks the chains of these "burdens," and he can create! CC: How do they achieve the passage from performer to creator?OD: Let's say that by having the ability of the… snake. It gets out of its skin, and enters into another, all the time. By evoking past experiences, or anticipating future ones. CC: How great is a dancer's actual freedom of creation? How far would you let him depart from your own vision, your own "suggestions"?OD: His creative art begins with an as personal as possible performance of the given theme. Regardless of its style. Of course, the modern school, and most of all the contemporary one, request a development of his upper body: hands, neck, head, expression, and so on. Because they dance barefoot, and that doesn't allow them to twist, like in traditional dancing. That would burn his sole. So the technique is somewhat different. All the greatest contemporary dancers say it's necessary to get trained in classic gymnastics. My opinion is that in order to achieve great things in contemporary dancing, one must master the classical language perfectly. Everything gets a wider scope today. It's complicated. We are not in such a great shape in contemporary dancing. It hasn't been our fault. That was the history of ballet in Constanţa. Maybe the beginning will not be very rich. And I'm thinking about tours abroad. But I think we'll do it in the future. Especially if we can attract foreign teachers to the future ballet academies – a dream I'm very fond of. That should make it a very thorough contemporary dance school. In fact, ballet schools have introduces training for contemporary ballet in their curricula. Which is great. But in this profession as well we need training in a faculty, we need higher education, which will educate ballerinas, dancers at a much higher level. CC: You had the initiative to organize a Romanian first: a national ballet competition in Constanţa. What would you like it to be? What was the purpose of it?OD: It's for two age categories: 14-16 and 16-19. So, it's for young people, the future of the Romanian ballet. And this is also a step toward a future dream: the ballet academy. Something like a dress rehearsal for a grand international ballet competition. If we have both a ballet academy and a contemporary dance one, if it functions, it will also support such competitions very strongly. Because such an academy always has open doors internationally: it receives students from all over the world, who are willing to learn from us. So, these competitions get intertwined, somehow. In turn, they can offer ballet and contemporary dance festivals with foreign participation, which would mean a great step forward, a great development of the choreographic art in our country. A ballet dancer must be as well educated as an actor, a singer, or a musician. They must get complete training, not only for ballet, but also for dancing, so the ballet institute must be developed both ways. That is my wish. After high-school, which should end at the age of 16 for operetta, opera, entertainment, folk, even artistic gymnastic dancers, and skaters (these two also need special training). CC: When should the future professional dancer start training?OD: Normally, they should start at 6. Namely everything must be done fast. Because dancing is the art of youth. Of course, in order to master the art, the graduate of a ballet high-school should continue to train, assimilating a superior theater culture, assimilating world literature and drama – mostly Shakespeare – and much more. La dame aux camellias, as well. It's a very wide range here currently. In fact, a ballet theater should be able to do anything. In that case, an artist with greater expression means goes beyond performance. He can go on: there is King Lear, Hamlet's father, the teacher in Swan Lake, and so on. So, either man or woman, a dancer can prolong his or her theater career, and, if they have the necessary talent, they can become teachers, choreographers. CC: Or, as it happens sometimes at the opera, they can join the chorus?OD: No way! Chorus members must be young. By all means. And the roles, for example in Miss Nastasia – a Romanian ballet which was unfortunately lost, but which used to be part of our repertoire – there is Vulpaşin. Isn't he? A dramatic personality, who no longer needs to have a thin, gracious figure. CC: Going back to the ballet theater in Constanţa, which you have founded: what makes it unique?OD: Your question is very important for the Romanian ballet. The birth of this theater, after the Revolution, meant the emergence of the first Romanian independent theater. Before that, ballet existed rather as an appendix to the opera. The opera ballet ensemble was forced to provide opera entertainment. Because you see – this matter is extremely important – opera needs ballet in its entertainment shows. Like in Faust, Aida, and so on. To say nothing of operetta. But ballet doesn't need opera. It doesn't need singers or actors. Unless it wants something totally original, and then it cooperates with actors and singers. For example in Constanţa I worked with the prose theater, and I created a show, which I believe creates a relationship between the actor and the ballet artist for the first time. CC: I think you're referring to Oedipus?OD: Exactly. There, the ballet replaced the ancient chorus. And it seemed to be a success. CC: But I understand your aesthetic shows seek to make ballet completely independent?OD: I don't believe anyone can think differently today. Yes, ballet must be independent! It can't cumulate things anymore, lumping opera entertainment and ballet shows per se together. It must deal in ballet only! CC: What about the opera?OD: There has to be a ballet corps at the opera, indeed, to meet the entertainment requirements there. Because the art of dancing must become mature by all means, and I mean by all means! In other words, it has to have strong feet. Not be directed, supported by another art form. The birth of this ballet theater in Constanţa has proven that: that I was right for the most part. Namely the ballet theater must be independent. Deal with all the professional matters, in order to develop more robustly, more vigorously, rather than being the appendix of another genre. CC: How expensive is this independence?OD: Yes, unfortunately, we have difficult problems, and not only financial ones. We don't have the exceptional conditions of a Bucharest theater, not by a long shot. We are not the American Ballet, with great, powerful sponsors behind us. Constanţa is the country's second largest city, having one of the most important harbors in Europe, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, and other things, and it should be open to culture, but even today, the Lyrical Theater, the Dramatic Theater, and the Philharmonic share the same building. And that is too small, even for one show business institution. This can't continue! A city with approximately 500,000 people should have a different building for each theater. CC: As for your theater, your fate is even worse…OD: Yes, that's true. In fact we are the first ballet theater in this country without a theater. Without our own stage. We perform wherever we can. We have a hall at the central city bath (which the hygiene authorities have closed down). The bath doesn't exist anymore, but they didn't even give us the entire building. We only have the hall on top of the former city bath. So we still have this problem, that we don't have our own building. And I'm surprised that those who manage this building don't understand this, they are people from Constanţa as well, and the city needs this ensemble, it needs culture. So we have to stage our shows at the Labor Unions' Culture House, where there is a bigger stage. It's kind of cold there in winter. We had the Revolution because we wanted heating, right? There was a revolution, wasn't it? I guess now, three years later, there isn't enough fuel to heat a cultural building. published in Teatrul azi (Theater Today), 1992
by Carmen Chihaia
by Carmen Chihaia