Sean Lake - Sean Laughead's Spring 2021 Independent Project and Qualifying Process Research

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To Do
Abstract - Pending
2nd Meeting - 5:00pm, Wednesday, February 23
Proposal - Due Friday, February 25
Active Viewing Videos - Soon!
Next Meeting - TBD
​Showings - TBD
Final Submission - Due Friday, April 30

​Initial Points of Research

  • Abstract
  • Swan Lake
  • The Dying Swan
  • Derivative Works
  • Music​
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(in progress) Abstract

In my second-semester qualifying project, I plan to investigate the notions of "celebrity" imbued-upon and thread-into ballet - specifically using Swan Lake's Odette as a centering element.  Utilizing experience in the studio and on stage, I want to breakdown questions revolving around what it means to be a #dancer, what ballet might inherently push in its own form, and the connection between enthusiast and performer.  Using the character of Odette (alongside canon counterpart Odile and the tangentially-related Dying Swan), I hope to find and creatively engage with the idolization of the White ballet dancer/Swan. Looking into historical and contemporary studies of the intersections of dance, pop culture, and celebrity, I aim to devise a work that addresses the top-down effects of culture-making, specifically troubling its role in propagating narratives and as an instigator of cultural politics. In this likely video-based work, I will use original music based on Pyotr Ilyich Tschaikovsky and Camille Saint-Saëns's scores that will be performed and composed in collaboration with long-time partner Dr. Andy Thierauf.

​Swan Lake
1877 / 1895 / 2002
Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov, Choreography
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky​, Music
Svetlana Zakharova, Case Study Performer
with fellow UIowa alumnus Sarah Zuber

The Dying Swan
1905
Mikhail Fokine, Choreography
Camille Saint-Saëns, Music 
Anna Pavlova, Original Performer
The Dying Swan
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I.
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.

II.
Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

III.
The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd
Thro' the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.

Source:
The Works Of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Copyright 1893
London: Macmillan And Co.
Toronto: The Copp Clark Co. Limited.

from Litscape.com
Anna and bff Jack
it me.

Derivative Works (in Cinema)

​Black Swan

​Perfect Blue

​Satoshi Kon

Musical Inspiration

Swan (Odette's) Theme

of Swan Lake fame
​Tchaikovsky

​The Dying Swan

​Saint-Saëns

Dancin' Poodles

​Kimbo Children's Music

(This track feels silly, but important, especially looking at ballet as a point of entry.  It's about poodles, but perhaps poodles are the ornamental equivalent to generic dog breeds (swan::bird))

Solo Studies... Videos are (for the most part) not organized yet!

​Active Viewings (Improvisations Whilst Watching)

- Swan Lake
- The Dying Swan
- Black Swan
- Perfect Blue

Swan Action

- Interpretive Dancing
- Port de Bras
- Nesting/Chilling
​- Dying (!)

Primping, Pruning, Preening

- Skincare
- Tweezing
- Shaving/Trimming
- Nails

Starlet Reenactment

- Public/Private Space
- Dress-up
- Nesting/Chilling
- Dying (!)
"Anything that's being done right now in the kind of like imminent threat of death, especially as it gets into something that could be optional... is interesting.  Because it makes you think, "Well, this is how much they thought about death, and they decided that it was worth the risk. And that in and of itself is a philosophical sort of fascinating thing.  So to me, the tradition of ballet - just insisting that they must do this thing, even if some people get sick and die... I'm like, "That seems accurate." So, seeing them in the masks also kind of gives this nod to a sense of pressing on no matter what, and that certainly is a big narrative in ballet."
- Jack Ferver, "Dance and Stuff" Podcast Episode 191, February 12, 2021

Selected Works Cited (slash.. ones that I'm looking into)

Burt, Ramsay. The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities. Routledge, 2007. 

Carter, Alexandra, and Janet O'Shea. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader. Routledge, 2010. 

Cohen, Selma Jeanne. Next Week, Swan Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances. Wesleyan University Press, 1986. 

Fairfax, Edmund. The Styles of Eighteenth-Century Ballet. Scarecrow, 2003. 

Garafola, Lynn. Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet. Wesleyan University, 1997. 

Homans, Jennifer. Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. Granta, 2011. 

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CELEBRITY STUDIES. ROUTLEDGE, 2020. 

Scholl, Tim. From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernisation of Ballet. Routledge, 2014. 

Siegel, Marcia B. Mirrors and Scrims The Life and Afterlife of Ballet. Wesleyan University Press, 2010. 

Stoneley, Peter. A Queer History of Ballet. Routledge, 2007. 

Volynskiĭ A. L., and Stanley J. Rabinowitz. Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925. Yale University Press, 2010. 
​
Wiley, Roland John. The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov Choreographer of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. Clarendon Press, 1997. 

PDFs on Google Drive

Further Research and Alternate Trajectories

  • Woman as Colored Birds
  • The Sylvie Vartan
  • Idoldom as Corps de Cygnus
  • Traditions of Japonisme
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Women as Colored Birds 

Black Swan

obvi

Red Sparrow​

​Canary Fairy

kind of sort of a bird

Bluebird / Princess Florina

technically not a bird, but if it quacks like a duck...

​Firebird

Sylvie Vartan

​Vogue.com: Meet Sylvie Vartan, the Most Famous French Woman You Don’t Know—Yet
Cherchez l'idole
"During my fieldwork in Tokyo, a record company employee told me that the creation of idol-pop as a commercial genre in Japan was influenced by a 1963 French movie called Cherchez L’idole, which dramatized a couple’s search for a stolen diamond. In the story, a young man steals a diamond for his girlfriend and places it in an electric guitar as he enters a music shop while running from the police. He and his girlfriend are subsequently drawn into frustrating interactions with clerks and acquaintances as they return to the shop and try to regain the diamond. It turns out that there are five identical guitars, and they are reserved for popular bands. The story takes a complicated turn. This movie featured French pop stars of that time including Silvie Vartan, Charles Aznavour, and Johnny Hallyday, and there are scenes in which these personalities appear on stage and sing their songs. When the movie was released in Japan, its title was translated as Aidoru o sagase, or “In Search of an Idol.” The movie was a hit, and one of the featured teen idols, Silvie Vartan, was invited to Japan and became a celebrity. According to my informant, an employee of a record company that handled the release of Vartan’s song in Japan, this led a producer to create “idol-pop” as a new genre of pop music in Japan." (Aoyagi, 4-5)

Idols as Corps de Cygnets
孤独なバレリーナ
SKE48 performs Kodoku na Ballerina (soloist: Akari Suda)
lyrics
very superficial, biased, heavy-handed mini-documentary

Traditions of Japonisme

Sylvie Vartan's Irrésistiblement
​AKB48's Labrador Retriever
cover by The Eccentric Opera
cover by Goose house

STBDancing

Sean Thomas Boyt's collection of choreographic, artistic, and collaborative work.