Coppélia, AI and the Question of When a Comedic Ballet May Not In Fact Be a Comedy After All!
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Leta Biasucci and James Kirby Rogers in Coppélia, choreographed by Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. PNB presents Coppélia onstage at Seattle Center's McCaw Hall May 31 - June 9, 2024 (and streaming June 13 - 17.) For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
On the positive side, it seems as though humanity is getting closer and closer to speaking to whales and other animals and finding that their communication is as complex and elaborate as our own. The latest studies are showing that those killer whales and dolphins that have been attacking rich sailors in the Mediterranean are probably just teenage sea-mammals having fun—no different than human punk kids on a Saturday night! But I bet you're wondering, what does any of this have to do with the Ballet? To which I respond as I always do, just hold on—I'm getting there!
As those of you that follow my articles know by now, I have often said that we have moved out of the post-modern into something else—a new era—and that I have been saying this for at least the last ten years. I have also stated that, for some reason that I can’t fathom, that we have been too timid to claim this and to move into the future. One important aspect, marker—or what have you—that separates this new era from the last is our relationship to other thinking systems. Whether that be learning to decipher the migration and mating patterns of bees, setting up elaborate systems to communicate with our pets, recent events in which animals have been coming to humans for help, and especially the wildly weird interactions we are having with AI systems—some of which have been haunting and even threatening!
Whether any, or all of these interactions are mere mimicry, misunderstandings or just plain hopefulness, it seems to me, at least, that humans are interacting more and more with other forms of intelligence and that this is both new, and very likely bound to change the way that we see, think, interact with and move through our world. But is this a good thing or a bad? What message should we take from this era?
Before I get to Coppélia, this month’s Ballet from PNB and how this connects, I wanted to address something that comes up quite often in my conversations—especially throughout this last year. That is the issue of AI and what it means to the arts. A lot of artists, are especially concerned with AI and how it can very clearly be seen as a danger, to originality, to our livelihoods, to essentially everything. My position is perhaps a little different, a little more nuanced than most, since I am a conceptual artist, a performance artist as well, and a writer. I wear my art over my bones. I am, so to speak, my art. AI would likely have to kill me in order to steal my work. That said, I understand and feel very strongly that AI needs to be respectful of the artists that it steals from—one of which, at least in my writing—could very well be me. The stealing must stop.
I believe we must first change the laws that govern AI. We must stop the corporations that gain from their greed and gain control over those who steal with impunity to make their wares. We must enforce regulation in the same way that samples in music are regulated. But, within AI, I believe, and this may just be hopefulness on my part, that we may end up with something as artists, and as humans that is a useful tool and that we may have something to learn from AI.
I actually believe that human artists will come away from this with the upper hand. I believe that in general, that AI art is terrible, that it is a fad, that for the most part it all looks the same, and that by its very nature, it is unoriginal—but that, ultimately, what we will be left with will be another tool in the artists’ arsenal and that soon, we will learn, each of us, in our own, original ways how to best utilize, ignore or destroy its presence in our lives. But, also, that, at least for now, it is not likely going away anytime soon. So, each of us must learn to deal with it—through lawsuits, through watermarks, through whatever means each of us has at their disposal
Now, onto Coppélia!
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers James Yoichi Moore as Dr. Coppelius, and Leta Biasucci as Swanilda (masquerading as the doll Coppélia), in Coppélia, choreographed by Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. PNB presents Coppélia onstage at Seattle Center's McCaw Hall May 31 - June 9, 2024 (and streaming June 13 - 17.) For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
George Balanchine’s Coppélia, at the Pacific Northwest Ballet from May 31st-June 9th can seem to be an odd little ballet to modern sensibilities. But it is very hard to ignore its place in history—especially Leo Delibes score, which can seem a bit tepid to us, but, was in fact the first score that attempted to work with the choreography and story of a ballet. This was a huge step forward for the ballet form, as before this, music for the ballet was merely background—often, whatever music was popular at the time. Delibes was a huge influence on both ballet and especially of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—who you might know, a bit more so than Leo Delibes.
As I was saying, Coppélia is a comedy and can appear to us as very silly at times, it rests uncomfortably somewhere between a whacky 60's comedy and either a teenage slasher film or one of those Vincent Price Hammer Horror films, and yet, despite this it appears to be a critique of Ballet's greatest cliche's, a message and a warning!
Coppélia is a pastiche put together by many hands and minds over a hundred years. The version we have before us is the 1974 version by George Balanchine and ballerina Alexandra Danilova, who was beloved for playing the lead Swanilda and which owes much to the earlier version by Marius Petipa. The variation that reaches us is more of a one-act story with two additional bookends that consist more of a series of divertissements—the third act of which Balanchine changed the most.
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Leta Biasucci as Swanilda, in Coppélia, choreographed by Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. PNB presents Coppélia onstage at Seattle Center's McCaw Hall May 31 - June 9, 2024 (and streaming June 13 - 17.) For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
It is easy to think of Copelia as merely a light, silly ballet, and clearly it has its flaws, but it is definitely deconstructive of the 1970's world that Balanchine was working in, in which post-modernism was clearly coming into direct conflict with Balanchine's more romantic, classically influenced outlook toward ballet. At the time of Coppélia’s premiere of July 17, 1974, ballet would definitely have been a space of many differing voices, filled with modern dance and many of the fledgling movements that have given birth to the multivalent ballet world that we have now. There are those that believe that Balanchine chose Coppélia as a critique of the new modes of expression which were coming into conflict with the traditions of the form.
Within the story of Coppélia, based ultimately on E.T.A. Hoffman’s Der Sandman, Coppélia is definitely meant to be taken as a fairy tale and all fairy tales are meant to be seen as a warning—as an important message. In Coppélia, we are presented with an idyllic Galician village, wherein two lovers, unlikeable youths—who seem intent on making each other jealous one last time before their impending nuptials the next day are met with a mix of magic and science in the form of the mystical scientist Dr. Coppelius. What follows, in cartoonish Scooby Doo fashion is a classic Breaking and Entering that almost gets the couple killed or arrested, but this is a comedy—after all.
It is here that Coppélia tips its hand, but before this, I want to say that both Leta Biasucci and James Kirby Rogers, who were Swanilda and Franz on opening night were wonderful and presented us with delightfully comedic presentations of the leads, full of broad acting and each danced their hearts out! As I was saying it is here that we see the danger of Dr. Coppelius’ magic infused alchemy and how it infects the town, nearly breaking up our lovers and introducing horror and magic to their village. Things were definitely better before the doctor and his robotic daughter came to town. What we are meant to imagine would have happened had Coppelius been able to bring his automatons to life? What would happen if modern dance were to infect the ballet? What happens if AI takes over every aspect of our existence? Here is where I believe that Coppélia actually has a message for us today.
Today, and in the future, it is likely that Coppélia's internalized war between the natural and the robotic will likely become more and more important to us—more salient and immediate, but at present, we can rest assured that everything is still fine, that Coppélia’s message is still far enough away. Balanchine's version with its one-time revolutionary score, still seems tame, sweet, ridiculously nostalgic and does not call to mind too much the period in which we live. It does not yet stir in us the fear of technology, of speaking to the intelligences on this planet—and perhaps those alien voices beyond. That, I believe will come in time, there is a definite ghost in this machine, a golem waiting to come out! The lines between, nature, the gods, magic and science are all out of balance again and it is only a short time before new warnings are told that that will soon become too hard to ignore. Perhaps Coppélia is not a comedy after all!
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