The Dancer's Body, a coproduction between BBC Science and BBC Classical Music, begins tonight (Saturday 21st) on BBC2 at 8.15 pm. The BBC has commissioned a special website to accompany the series. After the broadcast, Deborah Bull, the presenter, will host an online chat. Questions should be sent to musiconline@bbc.co.uk and the subject box should read 'Deborah Bull Live Chat'

©BBC

When Jana Bennett, now Director of BBC Television, was the Corporation’s Head of Science, she gave this advice to her producers: “Aim High. Aim Right. And do not hesitate to look ‘drop dead expensive’”. The Dancer’s Body is the quintessence of Bennett’s approach to television. It is very much ‘Tiffany TV’, with high production values and it will be eminently saleable outside the UK. It is good science and dance audiences will also find a great deal to engage them.

The presenter, Deborah Bull, is a producer’s dream, with an enviable ability to improvise a piece to camera (PTC), be it from the Busby Berkeley swimming pool routine that marks Programme 1’s opening sequence, to her simultaneous Swan Queen solo and accompanying PTC in programme 2.

Programme 1 explores, very fluently, the physiology of performance, while programme 2 examines the dancer’s brain. Dance footage buttresses the argument at every point; in programme 1 the Corsaire male solo, a duet between Bull and Edward Watson from Symbionts, the Bluebird solo from Sleeping Beauty, a sequence from Balanchine’s Apollo and the closing pas-de-deux from Don Quixote.

©BBC

The conversation between art and science, on which the programme depends, is deftly done. The role of genetic inheritance is explored, as is that of nurture. The programme’s case histories do not draw on dancers alone. A gymnast illustrates the role of muscle fibres; a wirewalker that of balance; and a speed-cyclist that of the difficulties of intense short-term spurts of energy.

Nilas Martins of New York City Ballet illustrates the wear and tear endured by male dancers in late career. Roles such as Balanchine’s Apollo, in which he is seen briefly, are particularly punishing; when landing, pressure on the knee and ankle joints is enormous and they regularly absorb forces fifteen times the dancer’s body weight. The cameras follow him into the operating theatre, where surgeons remove two bone spurs that had grown on his ankle. This is definitely not for the squeamish.

A telling sequence shows Ivan Putrov in the Bluebird solo from Sleeping Beauty. Male ballet solos of such intensity only last a minute or two. It is not a matter of the choreographer’s creativity or the dancer’s tiredness; the limiting factor is the build up of lactic acid in the muscles. An illustrative comparison is made with speed cycling. Victoria Pendleton explains that she can manage only short spurts of maximum effort, twelve seconds at most. Bull mounts a bike and cycles around a velodrome. After one minute she is visibly palling.

It is difficult for a programme like this to maintain a focused thread of argument and it is inevitably episodic. A film sequence of Jonathan Cope explaining how he partners Marianella Nunez, leads to a discussion of ‘spotting’ and a laboratory experiment in which Bull is swivelled in a chair until she becomes dizzy herself. There is a demonstration of how spotting neutralises dizziness.

One of programme 1’s more extraordinary sequences features Bill Shannon, who has malformed hip joints and who cannot walk without crutches. He learnt to dance on the hip-hop scene and he is filmed in a scarifying skateboard dance on the streets of New York. He distributes his weight across his arms and legs and crutches in a style unique to his body. Shannon gives the lie to any preconception that there is an archetypal dancing body. To underscore the point, Bull ends the programme with a sequence from a ballet, Slice of Paradise, choreographed by the French ensemble Monalvo/Hervieu, in which she herself dances alongside break dancers, contemporary dancers and one extraordinary African dancer who compels attention.

The Dancer’s Brain

The meat of the series is reached in the second programme in which Bull investigates the complex issues of learning and memory. Again, Bull reaches outside dance for some of her most telling case histories, notably that of Ian Waterman, who had lost all sense of proprioception – in simple language, the loss of sense that his limbs would act on the instructions of his brain. Such assurance children develop slowly; that is, in part why we move more fluently as adults than as children.

That sense is crucial to dancers who move hundreds of muscles in highly specific sequences in order to produce performance. In a charming sequence, Bull revisits her first ballet teacher and her first dance school overhead chip shops and amusement arcades in Skegness. A neurologist explains how children learn proprioception and the Kathak performer, Akram Khan illustrates complexity of moving limbs in independent sequence. The brain resists such movements initially. The body copes by developing mini-networks of muscle memory. Dancers command them, Bull explains, as “a package deal.”

A highly impressive laboratory experiment demonstrates what happens in dancers’ brains when they dance. Bull has her brain scanned, first when watching an orchestral version of the Shostakovich score to Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto, which she had been rehearsing, and then when watching a danced performance. A neuroscientist measured the contrasts in brain activity. Bull’s brain was uniquely activated in the premotor cortex part of her brain; this was also the case when she was asked to imagine the movement without aid of an actual video. It was powerful supporting evidence for the role of ‘imaging’, of imagining steps before performing them. It strengthens ‘neural pathways’ and reinforces the case for a brain as well as a body warm-up before performance.

Particular resonant for a ballet audience is that part of programme 2 in which Anthony Dowell teaches Jonathan Cope the role in Four Schumann Pieces, created for him in 1970 by Hans Van Manen, which he last danced 20 years ago. The original Benesh notator, Jacqui Hollander, watches as he attempts to remember the choreography:

Dowell “I think I had to wait here with the hands clasped and the lifts went behind me and on a certain note I had to listen and look – here I did something like this.

Hollander You’re turning the wrong way! The way it was done, Anthony, was for you to turn left!”

It is fascinating to watch Dowell as his memory is teased into life, while Henry Roche plays the piano score. The music clearly stimulates him. He blanks. “Double tours – no longer I’ve blocked that out!” In this case there is a video as well as a notated record. What is evident is that the outline remains, but that “the little things go.”.

Deborah Bull in 'Burlesque' by Alita Collins
©BBC

Programme 2 finishes with a solo for Bull by the choreographer Alita Collins. Set to Aaron Copland’s Burlesque, it is ‘big and sassy’; and danced in high heels, rather than Bull’s accustomed pointe shoes. Bull explains that ballet steps are to her second nature; a piece such as this taxes nerve cells in different ways, built as it it from other styles and the choreographer’s own inventions. She explains how she fumbles as her brain works out how to handle the choreography; apparently it takes 180 repetitions for a new muscle memory to stick in the brain.

Burlesque
©BBC

The production team

Although the executive producers are Bob Lockyer and Ross MacGibbon, both of whom are highly experienced in making dance programmes for TV, the production team that made The Dancer's Body was led by Robert Eagle and comes from a science background. BBC Science has been one of the most consistently innovative BBC production departments, and one which has been consistently successful both in receiving channel commissions and in forging co-production alliances outside the UK. A series such The Dancer's Body is born of the present Director General's wish for multi-genre programmes, that is to say, productions which owe their origins to several different BBC programme traditions at once. It is a creative success - popular science with strong entertainment values, which nonetheless will appeal to a serious dance audience.

The programme's website is a considerable success in its own right. It has many video clips from the series, but, crucially, it enlarges on the science behind the programmes and enlarges it in a way in which the broadcast script could not reasonably do so.

Also worth looking at is the website of the post-production house, Rushes responsible for some of the extraordinary effects which are so crucial to the series. To find it, follow this link. Deborah Bull was also a guest on last Wednesday's Midweek. The broadcast is still available at Midweek's website. Move the realplayer cursor to 26:00.

This is from the second page of the web site that I looked at:

A dancer may never do the 32 fuetes in Swan Lake

If that's aiming high and right, aiming low and wrong doesn't bear thinking about.

That said, I'm sure the production team would wish to make a correction. Please can you let me have the appropriate URL, as I have so far not found it? I will pass it on.

Here on the other hand you have a major TV series from a major TV company with a web page written by someone who has obviously never heard of one of the most common ballet technical terms and cannot be bothered to look up the correct spelling of it.

It is this sort of slap-happy attitude that has resulted in the downgrading of the BBC from a major TV power to an also ran. Shame on them!

(Rants on for several hours.)

The URL is http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/dancersbody/body/spinning.shtml

OK - I did misuse the word 'literal' (technical foul - OK, yes, fair point). But we are talking here about what is essentially a television programme, which you have not seen yet, which is built on pictures and the spoken word. Yet you damn one of the BBC's finest dance-related productions for years on the basis of the spelling of 'fouette' on an associated website.

That is grossly disproportionate and - yes - ungenerous. I'm sure the spelling will be corrected quickly.

Whoever was responsible for putting that page online should get a severe smack on the wrist.

Deborah Bull was one of Libby Purves's guests on BBC Radio 4's Midweek last Wednesday.

Libby Purves: Deborah Bull’s new project is called The Dancer’s Body. It is a three part series on BBC2, which starts on Saturday. The first programme zooms in on the physical details of how dancers work. What fascinated me is that there is a genetic component, particularly in flexibility. I think you say that 85% of bendiness is inherited and you can only get the other 15% by exercise.

Deborah Bull: It is dependent on the shape of your joints, the architecture, whether your legs or your thigh actually moves that far. If bone hits bone, there is nothing you can do about it. The architecture of the joint accounts for 85% of your flexibility and that is not what most people think. They think it’s about the ability to extend the muscles or the tendon. While that is fifteen percent that you can improve, if your joints don’t go there, you’re a non-starter.

So if a child, like you were, wants to go to the Royal Ballet School at 11, they take a pretty good look at how far back the leg bends?

When I was auditioning, which was in 1973, I remember this procedure where they stripped you down to your leotards. We’ve all seen it in Billy Elliott. It’s a bit like that but the panel was much nicer, I have to say. They lift your leg very gently, just to see what the range of movement is. You can acquire the strength to keep your leg at height, but if your leg doesn’t go there in the first place, then you’re not going to be able to do the repertoire.

One of the intriguing things in this first programmes, is when you met other disciplines, synchronised swimmers and gymnasts., a cyclist was able to explain things to you about how dancers jump?

The cyclist, we were talking to about anaerobic restoration, the ability to burst out and to keep going for a limited amount of time. What has always intrigued me is why are ballet solos, especially the jumpy ones, so short. Is that a kind of choice? Is it because the audience gets bored? Well absolutely not – it is because that is how long you can operate at that amount of power. If you turn the power down, you can keep going forever, but if you are going to operate at full power, you have a very limited amount of time. This cyclist, her bursts were about seven or eight seconds. She would come out at full speed and spend it all at once.

There’s a straightforward biological reason for this, isn’t there?

Professor Steve Jones: There are lots of biological reasons, not all of which are straightforward. Have you come across the ACE gene? It has to do with the ability to work at long hard tasks and is very important in the world of sport. Nobody, who has not got a certain variant of the gene, has climbed more than twenty thousand feet. Everybody who has climbed Everest has had the other variant. You cannot do long tough exercises, unless you have this appropriate variant. It is actually very important in medicine, because, if you are severely injured, it says a lot about whether you will survive an injury or not.

Deborah Bull: The interesting thing about dancing is that it requires this range of skills. You have to be a weightlifter and a sprinter and a marathon runner and a gymnast, and it requires all those skills. So actually, you are better off having a slightly above average level at all those skills, rather than being exceptionally good at one. If you are exceptionally good at one, then you are probably not so good at one of the others.

What was interesting was that in quite a few things, you step into the frame as yourself, Deborah Bull, and you demonstrate a movement or whatever. But when it came to the tightrope walker, in which you were illustrating the tiny movements of the feet, that you use to balance, you were pretty hopeless, weren’t you, at first?

Oh – terrible, terrible! The wire was about five or six feet above the ground, so I wasn’t going to kill myself, if I fell off. But the actual act of fear, of actually stepping on to the wire, I could not do it. I would step and I would go back. This went on for about two hours. I could not get on the wire.

Is this because a dancer, culturally, has an enormous fear of injury, because one sprained ankle…

No. We all have fear of a wire the size of a pencil suspended six feet above the ground! What I learnt is that balance is not a static state. It is a constantly moving state and normally for a ballet dancer, that movement is all in the ankles. There are tiny movements you never see across the orchestra pit. For a wirewalker, you see they wave a fan around and that is how they are regulating their balance. For me I have to shift the regulation of my balance to another part of my body and that is what took the time. But when I did it, what was fantastic was that the thing that cracked the fear for me was that Molly, the tightrope dancer, got on with me and held my hand as she walked backwards, and I walked forwards. The first time I crossed it, was holding Molly’s hand. and she was going backwards. And she was regulating my balance. As I wobbled, she would bend over, almost parallel with the ground, to keep me on balance. It was the most selfless act. It was the most touching thing. I got on and I had tears in my ears. I did do it. But it took four hours.

It is interesting this business of the emotion of dance. The next programmes move away from the purely physical. You go into the mental thing, the business of remembering dance steps. Apparently there is a very amusing bit where Anthony Dowell tries to remember a dance he hasn’t done for 25 years. But then there is also the cultural thing, the business of the beauty of the dance. Were you, when you were performing full time, someone who thought your way through the dance and acted your way through the dance?

It would always depend on the role. People like to think that dancers and actors immerse themselves so totally in the emotion that it becomes real. But I am not sure that can be the case. I think there are physical consequences of emotion, which would preclude dancing. If you were really to feel the grief of Juliet discovering Romeo’s dead body, for instance, grief is a debilitating thing; you would not be able to dance around on pointe. I’m not actually sure. I was always conscious, when I was dancing, that I was working. That was my job. My job was not to feel such tremendous emotion that it was my best ever day; my job was to ensure that it was your best ever experience.

Why do you think we are moved to tears sometimes by dance or movement; that thing at the end of a Torville and Dean ice-dance, for instance, where you find tears behind your eyes; why is this?

That’s the fascinating question. That is what we try to look at in the third programme. Why does the human brain respond to dance? We know it is an age-old form of communication, going way back beyond when we had spoken language. We certainly have areas of our brain that are tuned to read biological motion. There are certainly bits there that are there to recognise predator, prey or mate. And they will leap into action the minute that they see motion. There are also bits of our brain, which adore symmetry, and there are bits that adore the unexpected; there are bits that are stimulated and challenged. When movement is unpredictable or unexpected, when it seems to be ‘unhuman’ movement, our brains are very very stimulated----

It’s human beings transcending the human form really, isn’t it – it’s almost impossible and yet it is beautiful and that’s what we’re talking about – what makes us different, what makes us human beyond biology.

Steve Jones: Again I’m not sure what biology has to say about this. There are plenty of creatures that dance in a more extraordinary way than any human can do. What I find odd about dance is the unimportance of the face – all faces are basically the same but they all look different. So maybe it’s the transference of information from the face to the body…

Deborah Bull: I think it depends how you’re watching dance. If you’re watching dance in a big 2000 seat theatre, you can’t really see the face. I remember Michael Coleman, who was a principal when I was in the company, he used to say about makeup: “Put two black circles around your eyes and a bit of red on your lips because they can’t see it from out front.” And I think that’s absolutely true - they can’t!

One other thing I found odd and meant to log on to ask about but got distracted after the programme. The surgeon who operated on Nilas Martins (have I got that name right?) talked about Martins' particular style of jumping that used a deep plie. Now, would someone like to tell me how to get a big jump WITHOUT a deep plie? (phone rang in the middle of the jumping bit unfortunately - is it all down to muscle type or something, so that some people's muscles can store enough energy w/o the plie, or something vaguely similar? Is it worth my storing a qun for next week?)

On the spelling front I'm always amazed by how a few typos can upset and condemn work when so many pages here are a testament to the typo (or whatever it is that is wrong with them in a characters following characters, trying to express ideas, kind of way!). Odd lapses in presentation may jar a little but its ideas that really matter in life.

Some of the collateral around the Dancers Body may struggle a little - but I would only worry if I thought errors did dance a serious disservice... and is anybody going to see a few typos (or whatever) and write dance and ballet off forever on that basis? I'm much more interested in the content and how good a job that does for us and those on the edge of dance - indeed those who have never been to a dance performance at all. Sometimes I think we are all a bit too precious about what we know and love and forget about the bigger scheme of things - we should be celebrating all this and what Bull, Lockyer and MacGibbon have put on and the splendid clips available on-line etc - this is terrifc progress.

Not that impressed by the quality of some of the dancing eg Bluebird, Don Q.

Did we need to hear the panting in Symbionts?

I'd read this report so went out to make the coffee then...

>Not that impressed by the quality
>of some of the dancing
>eg Bluebird, Don Q.

I thought Don Q was rather ropey...Cope and Nunez ill-matched. Bluebird I thought OK but I don't really think it's Putrov's thing, I think of it as the quintessential Sleep or Kumakawa role (small dancers).

>
>Did we need to hear the
>panting in Symbionts?

Yes, that was the point!!!