It has been said that great ballet partnerships are, like marriages, made in heaven. Certainly, although many dancers appear on stage together, few seem the have that mysterious chemistry that turns a dance for two into the magic of a pas de deux when danced by truly great ballet partnerships.
The 20th century’s greatest duos started with Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky, and must include Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin, Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, Alexandra Danilova and Frederick Franklin, Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn, Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell, Kathleen Gorham and Garth Welch, and Marilyn Rowe and Kelvin Coe.
Of course, many other dancers have performed together but there is much more to a partnership than two people meeting on stage and dancing and behaving with courtesy toward one another. There is a special magic that makes the partnership somehow greater than the contribution of the individuals.
Partnering is a very difficult technique to learn. It is also inconceivable for a man to be a great premier danseur without being a great partner. Consider, just as an example, the way in which Steven Heathcote - who like the other males in The Australian Ballet does not have a regular partner - actually transforms his entire stage persona to absorb, reflect, and present to best effect his ballerina. The Heathcote who dances with Madeleine Eastoe is subtly different from the Heathcote who dances with Lynette Wills. To dance convincingly, the dancers have to be able to adjust to one another, both physically and emotionally.
Partnering has changed technically a great deal over the years. During the Romantic era, in ballets such as La Sylphide, the pas de deux presented the male and female dancer in a true and equal partnership, not just as a vehicle for a star and an attendant cavalier, which it became in ballets such as Swan Lake. In Danish choreographer August Bournonville’s ballets, the man and woman dance side by side, the man given as many occasions, and perhaps even more, for displaying his technical skills as the woman. The supremacy of the ballerina in the 19th century meant that the male dancers’ chief task was to show off his ballerina with the maximum skill to her adoring public. He was given the demeaning title of porteur, and little opportunity to dance. He became of such little interest to the audience that they regarded him merely as a piece of scenery on which the ballerina could lean.
In France, some ballerinas, like Fanny Elssler who was frequently partnered by her sister Thérèse, managed to abolish the male dancer entirely. So much so, that when Coppelia was originally performed, the principal male role of Franz was taken by a female dancer dressed as a man. A strange practice that can still be seen in English Pantomimes where the principal boy is always a girl en travesti. However, in ballet it was only a brief experiment because without clearly defined roles for males and females neither one are shown to their best.
In Russia Marius Petipa continued to use both men and women in his pas de deux, though the ballerina always had the dominant role. He is credited with inventing the Grand Pas de Deux. The dancers start with an adagio in which the ballerina is promenaded, lifted and displayed to the best advantage by her cavalier. Then each are given a solo variation, and finally they both return in a coda to show off their virtuosity with a series of fast and brilliant steps. This approach to pas de deux can still be seen in some ballets choreographed today, but ever since Michel Fokine choreographed Le Spectre de la Rose for the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, most choreographers have given the sexes equal partnership in ballets.
In the 1950s Soviet ballet companies first performed in the West and they brought with them a new, more acrobatic style of partnering. Before their arrival, lifting a ballerina over the head, particularly in one-arm lifts was looked upon as being vulgar and best left to circuses. Today it is normal custom in all ballet companies. Choreographers now demand the most sensational pas de deux movements of their dancers.
The technique of partnering is very complex. The dancers develop a unique rapport during rehearsals that allows the man to sense when his ballerina needs to leave a balance, or needs to be steadied and he will be there to offer his support. For her part the ballerina will use her own elevation to aid the man to lift her into the air. He uses her momentum to begin the rise into the air and his muscles to slow her descent to the stage.
The virtuosity of contemporary choreography has placed increasing demands on both male and female dancers. John Cranko watched ice skaters for inspiration and produced in his Onegin, pas de deux with a wonderful flow of movement that disguises their difficulty. Australian choreographer, Stanton Welch has pushed the boundaries even further in Divergence, with death-defying aerial twists and turns for the ballerina as her partner manipulates her. And William Forsythe in In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, has produced pas de deux in which the male and female dancer no longer have a danced conversation, but instead compete with each other.
Perhaps the best description of how a pas de deux should be performed was written in 1830 by a critic describing two of the Romantic era’s greatest dancers, Marie Taglioni and Jules Perrot. He wrote: “Each responded to the other. They moved together as though swayed by the same breath of wind; they sunk and rose as if moved by a common impulse … together they plunged into pale mists; they rose, one with her ineffable voluptuousness, the other with his temerity and audacity, both in the most melodious harmony.”
