In remembering Arthur Mitchell, who died this week, I've been rereading Suzanne Farrell's memoir "Holding on to the Air." Here she is discussing her preparations for the ballet Bugaku, the center of which is "a long, intimate and stunning pas de deux in which the male dancer molds and shapes his partner into physical positions of the most extreme nature":
I consider sex in ballets a very delicate subject. It was also one of Balanchine's primary touchstones–the profundity of physical connections was, after all, the subject of his craft, and he was a specialist–and part of his genius was undoubtedly his ability to treat something so personal, so intimate, and so universal with such raw and yet spiritual implication.
If a step or movement is played only for its sexual suggestiveness, it immediately becomes something other than itself, and the result is a limitation. If, on the other hand, the step or movement is given its full musical and physical value without the trappings of a specific intention, sexual or otherwise, its power can be limitless–it will suggest to some, it will comfort others, and while it may provoke one person, it may be a beautiful image to another. I have never believed in foreshortening any movement's options by imposing one's own experience on it. If there is eroticism in the music and the movement, it will speak for itself; if the dancer chooses to emphasize this aspect, it is the beginning of vulgarity.
This strikes me as a distinction between art and pornography. Thoughts?
— sdl