"Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits"
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Each generation behaves like an editor rather than an archivist. It keeps what sparkles, trims what feels stale, and believes it is refining the past by extracting its highlights. The seductive logic is that progress comes from distilling excellence. Yet what is preserved as the best is often visible because of a scaffolding that is easy to ignore: the routines, disciplines, and unfashionable practices that made the marvels possible.
Ninette de Valois understood this dynamic from the engine room of ballet. As the founder of Britains Royal Ballet, she inherited the classical tradition, absorbed the rigor of the Cecchetti method, and curated a repertory that balanced Petipas inherited masterpieces with new works by Ashton and, later, MacMillan. She exemplified selective inheritance: embrace the treasures, yes, but build the institutions and training that keep them alive. Her remark reads as both observation and warning. Young artists are drawn to the fireworks of virtuosity and the genius of signature ballets, but those pieces rest on daily class, corps de ballet discipline, musicality, mime traditions, and rehearsal culture. Strip away the unglamorous infrastructure and the best bits lose their conditions of possibility.
The pattern extends beyond the arts. Political movements keep slogans and discard the hard compromises that once gave those slogans force. Technology users celebrate sleek interfaces while forgetting the messy protocols and maintenance that keep networks functioning. Even families pass down stories of triumph more readily than the long labor behind them. Selective inheritance can be a healthy pruning, clearing room for new growth. It can also be cultural amnesia, mistaking excerpts for essence. De Valois proposes a measured modernity: let each generation choose, but choose with knowledge of what supports its choices. The future is built not only by collecting moments of brilliance, but by sustaining the habits, structures, and craft that make brilliance repeatable.
Ninette de Valois understood this dynamic from the engine room of ballet. As the founder of Britains Royal Ballet, she inherited the classical tradition, absorbed the rigor of the Cecchetti method, and curated a repertory that balanced Petipas inherited masterpieces with new works by Ashton and, later, MacMillan. She exemplified selective inheritance: embrace the treasures, yes, but build the institutions and training that keep them alive. Her remark reads as both observation and warning. Young artists are drawn to the fireworks of virtuosity and the genius of signature ballets, but those pieces rest on daily class, corps de ballet discipline, musicality, mime traditions, and rehearsal culture. Strip away the unglamorous infrastructure and the best bits lose their conditions of possibility.
The pattern extends beyond the arts. Political movements keep slogans and discard the hard compromises that once gave those slogans force. Technology users celebrate sleek interfaces while forgetting the messy protocols and maintenance that keep networks functioning. Even families pass down stories of triumph more readily than the long labor behind them. Selective inheritance can be a healthy pruning, clearing room for new growth. It can also be cultural amnesia, mistaking excerpts for essence. De Valois proposes a measured modernity: let each generation choose, but choose with knowledge of what supports its choices. The future is built not only by collecting moments of brilliance, but by sustaining the habits, structures, and craft that make brilliance repeatable.
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| Topic | Embrace Change |
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