Have you participated in the time-honored ritual of the spring ballet recital? This past Saturday marked our granddaughter’s first foray into the world of sequined tutus, hair-sprayed topknots, and stage make-up. Overall, her little band of four-year olds did pretty well. But the recital left me sad.
Not because it wasn’t well executed. The whole thing was tremendously well organized. We particularly appreciated the concept of breaking the recital into four short programs. This meant no adults had to endure more than an hour of unabated cuteness.
So why was I sad? The granddaughter loved the excitement; her little brother presented her with flowers; and we took lots of lovely pictures. What was not to like?
It was the music. Or, rather, the lack of music.
Her dance school has elected to do what, I suspect, many local dance schools now do, namely, eliminate beautiful, traditional dance music from the program. Instead, number by number, the little dancers performed to insipid, homogeneously boring, back-beat driven pop. In addition, some of the songs had questionable lyrics and all of it blared too loudly.
Blessedly, our granddaughter danced to a non-offensive arrangement of How Much is that Doggie in the Window, which happens to be one of my favorite songs. But her song marked the high point, musically.
Traditionally people have enrolled children in ballet to elevate the child above the routine of daily life and the surrounding culture. The music of the ballet served to support that goal. By wiping that music away, a grand opportunity to inspire both the dancers and the audience is squandered.
Granted, once again I swim upstream against the prevailing trends. But must we be condemned to a world where our little ballerinas are asked to plié to graceless, hapless pop? To jeté to music no better than the noisy rock piped into the bays at gas stations?
If I took this up with the dance school’s teachers or administration, I’d be told that they are simply providing what people want: music everyone can “relate” to.
But that is a foil. These teachers and administration have lost confidence in the beauty of their own art form. They no longer believe that the gorgeous music of classical ballet can captivate and elevate.
And that’s the real source of my sadness. Once again, something traditionally beautiful, structured, and rewarding has been reduced to a soppy, forgettable mess. And a generation of youngsters (and their parents) will not even know what they have lost.
So I’m sad. And I’ll search a bit more carefully for next year’s dance school.
I agree with every word! While there is a time and place for modern music – even in dance – if that becomes our only repertoire, we cut ourselves off from beauty.