Phil Chan: My name is Phil Chan, I'm a choreographer, director, advocate, author, and I'm one of the Co-directors for Star on the Rise here at Indiana University.
Aaron Cain: The ballet in question is a remake of sorts. It's an update, its interpretation of La Bayadère—or “The Temple Dancer,” I guess, is the translation of that. What was that ballet and what will it be now?
Phil Chan: Sure. So, just going back to what was happening in the world at the time. The Prince of Wales was doing a sort of high-profile tour of India. So India was all over the newspapers. And so Marius Petipa—who's a French-born choreographer working in the Imperial Theater in Russia at the time—saw that in the paper and was, like, “oh, this would make a great story.” Aida, Verdi’s Aida, had just premiered, so there was a lot of that sort of exotic flavor. And so Petipa created La Bayadère, it premiered in 1877, and it's sort of a melodramatic love triangle that takes place in this sort of exotic India. There's Nikiya, who's the young temple dancer, who's in love with Solor, who is the sort of most noble warrior in the land. But Solor is betrothed to Gamzatti, the haughty Princess. And so, the melodrama unfolds, and we have some really beautiful classical ballet. A lot of character steps. It just really is a well-documented and really great example of ballet from that period. And, of course, Marius Petipa, for many of your listeners might know him from Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty. So this is sort of one of those, you know, big ballets. The problem is, it was choreographed at a time when we didn't have too much information about India. We were really taking sort of an outsider’s perspective. So, the sort of Hindu Buddhist symbolism that's used in the ballet is a little bit off. They sort of depict Hindus as people crawling around on the floor like cavemen. And there's just a lot of unsavory bits to the ballet that are really unnecessary for a 21st-century audience in order to appreciate the beautiful dancing and the beautiful music. And so, we're really thinking about how do we make this ballet bigger, and not just for Europeans, you know, 150 years ago, but how do we make it for contemporary Americans today? What we loved about it was the beautiful dancing and the beautiful music. And so, we wanted to try and find a congruent setting that would fit the dances. And we're familiar with this. For folks who like Shakespeare, or who like opera, we see these sort of reimaginings where you're keeping the original Shakespeare's words, but you might be setting in a different time, or a different place. And the reason we do that is to give us, as contemporary people, a little bit more resonance with the work or say, “aha, well, I don't know about that particular war that you're referencing, but I do know about the war that's happening right here in our backyard.” So, just trying to get those feelings to feel a little bit more immediate and urgent. And that's really what our process was. And so we were thinking about, “how do we make this ballet, instead of it being about them, those exotic people over there, how do we make it about us? How do we make the joke on us?” And so we've reset the action to take place in the 1930s, sort of the golden age of the Hollywood movie musical. And we've recast this melodrama. Nikiya becomes Nikki, who's our star on the rise. She's a young chorus gal who's really trying to make a name for herself. She's in love with Saul, who's the sort of Brad Pitt, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire leading man of the day. But, of course, to fulfill his contract, he's got to make movies with Pamela Zotti, who's the sort of reigning queen of the silver screen, who's threatened by Nikki and Saul's romance, and realizes that it'll be hard for her career if the two of them come out as a couple. And so, all of these beautiful dances—and they were originally dances for slaves, and Hindus, and all sorts of weird, exotic people. We've now recast them to be sheriffs, and falconers and cowboys. And so, it's a way to keep the spirit of the original—this colorful, exotic fantasy—but instead the exotic fantasy is about us as Americans now.
Aaron Cain: It sounds as if instead of trying to change it into something else, you've tried to change it into more itself.
Phil Chan: Yeah. And many choreographers—say, for example, The Nutcracker—you might say, “oh, well, I'm going to choreograph my own version of The Nutcracker with my steps, my style, my personal artistry.” And that's great. That's okay. That's not what we're doing here. We're actually going back to the notation that was available at the turn of the 20th century—so, round 1900—to recapture the steps. So it's actually quite a conservative process. Most productions of La Bayadère that we see today in stages around the world are descended from a production in the 1940s, tampered with by Soviets. And so we're really actually going back to what it originally was. So, if there's people who are saying, “well, the original supposed to be Indians, how are you making them cowboys?” Well, actually the version you're seeing that you think is the original, it's actually not the original. We're actually going back to what it originally was, but we're making it more applicable to us.
Aaron Cain: Now, you are a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, which is committed to eliminating stereotypes of Asians in ballet, and La Bayadère is by no means the only example of awkward to downright harmful stereotypes that show up in some of the most venerated works of ballet. So, what other work have you done to try to address that?
Phil Chan: I think the biggest one with Final Bow for Yellowface is, of course, The Nutcracker. And The Nutcracker is the biggest moneymaker for a lot of ballet companies. For some companies, up to 60% of their annual revenue comes from Nutcracker sales. I remember when I was a dancer, I could do six weeks of Nutcracker performances and make, like, four months of my rent. It's also a work that introduces a lot of young people to ballet as an art form. I mean, it's for children. A lot of kids—people bring their families and come to see this ballet. And so, what happens when we're saying, on one side of our mouth, “yes, diversity, equity inclusion. We want non-European folks to come into this art form, including white Americans. White Americans: we are not Europeans. And we want you to come into this art form and feel included, and feel seen. But here's a caricature or stereotype of your culture that someone from Europe thought was funny a hundred, two hundred years ago. And, sorry, we're not willing to change it because it's tradition. Now, enjoy the show and buy another ticket and become a donor.” That's not quite how the world works. And so, I like to describe my work as the opposite of cancel culture, because I'm not advocating for us to not do these works anymore, but instead to find a better way to do these works. So, around The Nutcracker specifically, for folks who have maybe never seen The Nutcracker, the protagonist, her name’s Clara—or Marie in some productions—in the second Act, she goes into the Kingdom of the Sweets, and she meets different candies that are representative of different nationalities around the world. So it's sort of like an “It's a Small World” confectionery fantasy.
Aaron Cain: [laughter]
Phil Chan: So you have Spanish chocolate, and Arabian coffee, and Chinese tea, and French marzipan. And they also take on the mannerisms or characteristics of that culture. And so, the problem is, we know that the Russian and the Spanish dances were a little bit more culturally authentic because those were closer to Europe. They were part of European culture. Whereas Arabian and Chinese, gosh, most people never even been to those places, or met anyone from those cultures, or seen anything. They might have had paintings, or vases, or objects from these cultures. Or maybe accounts for missionaries, but not actual close cultural contact. So those dances are either pure fantasy, and have nothing to do with those cultures—which is what La Bayadère is. It's not an Indian story at all, no Indian music, not an Indian story, no Indian characters, nothing Indian about it—or caricature, like when you see The Nutcracker, which is, like, usually, performers coming on stage with white makeup, their eyes painted out to their ears, a Foo Manchu mustache, they're bobbing their head, they're shuffling their feet, they're wagging their little fingers in the air. That's neither Chinese dance nor Chinese people. It's sort of a cheap shot. And we can't mean it when we say we want everyone to be included in this art form and still do that. And so, what we're trying to say is, “how do we keep the choreography? How do we keep the music? How do we not cancel them but instead make it a reflection of actual Chinese culture, something that is authentic, something that is something we can celebrate?”
Aaron Cain: I'd love you to talk a bit about what it's been like working with the students in preparing this production, and how they're responding to this reimagining.
Phil Chan: You know, these are all folks who are just starting out in their careers, and IU is a place that they can hopefully use the training here to launch them into professional success. And they're hungry for experiences, and they want to try things, and they're game for anything. And that's what's been so nice working with these students, because they aren't jaded or they don't have this sense of, “well, this is what it has to be.” They're just saying, “well, this looks like fun, let's try it!” We'll give them something, I’ll say, “try that,” and they'll just try it. It's been really great that they are so well supported by the faculty. They have a live orchestra that they get to perform with, they have an amazing set and costume design shop. I mean, these students are so lucky to have all of these resources and get to be a part of this professional experience while they're still in school. It's just been a delight. I just have really fallen in love with all of these students, and, just, their willingness to try new things, and to be playful ,and to just break tradition a little bit while being deeply committed to this dance heritage that we share, which is a work like La Bayadère. So, they're great. They're so funny. And they're so fun. And they're so talented. And I really hope folks come out to see them, because this is not like any other ballet you've seen before. It's more like a musical comedy. You know, like a Broadway show. I dare say it's even fun. You might laugh out loud a lot. I know I am, and I've seen it multiple times and I'm still laughing every time. And that just speaks to the strength of how great these students are.
Aaron Cain: Well, Phil Chan, thank you so much for coming to Bloomington and working with these students, and toi, toi, toi, and thank you so much for speaking with me today.
Phil Chan: My absolute pleasure. Have a great day.
Aaron Cain: Phil Chan. Choreographer, author, and one of the two stagers of the IU Jacobs School of Music Ballet Theater's production, Star on the Rise - La Bayadère reimagined! The first performance is Friday night at 7:30 at the Musical Arts Center, with two more performances Saturday at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM. More information at operaballet.indiana.edu for WFIU Arts, I'm Aaron Cain.
