Suzanne’s Blog for 1/9/2023

 

 

Blog – Ballet Class

 

The summer intensives began, and my brain would go into tunnel vision. The focus is powerful in ballet. The discipline much like being in the military. One does what is asked … without question. We trust that the teacher knows what the student needs more than the student. The teachers are the keepers of nuance and instruct us how to move from the gross to the sublime and back.

Ballet is endless repetition. Teacher are not trying to be mean. Teachers do this to teach the body to have its own automatic memory. The body memory and instantaneous recall of a movement is necessary in rehearsals.
Class is to train the body, mind, and spirit to be in sync to such a profound level that the body and mind have confidence in the muscle memory that most things become automatic, expected, normal, and easy.

That does not mean it is easy. Quite the contrary.

The lessons of dance are all about being prepared.

People wonder at my ability to keep on time. But most dancers are naturally this way because it is never acceptable to be late to a performance.
The theater will not hold the curtain for one dancer.

Well, it would for someone like Rudolf Nureyev!

But not for most dancers.

Each dancer knows that ballet requires everyone to be early, warmed up, stretched out, hair and makeup done, shoes darned and sewed to the specifications of the individual, and ready to go once the teacher walks in the door.

Ballet requires a delicate balance between flexibility and strength. People love to see the beautiful developpes where the leg is perfectly drawing a straight line up the supporting leg, and effortlessly extended to an open position in the air. Seemingly held there defying gravity and expressing the expansion of the emotion within the body moving gracefully far beyond the extended toe.

There are games we play in ballet. Games of the mind that teach us how to expand our energies beyond our body. We are told that the body is a well-trained tool for allowing the extensions in ballet to catch the breath of an audience, as the energy inside … moves beyond the physical into the spiritual.

Ballet is about taking an audience for a ride. A ride into the magical worlds of sylphs, fairies, Willi’s, kingdoms, smokey bars from the 1920’s, doll makers studios, and any number of other worlds.
Teachers tell us to feel our energy extend beyond the toes of our feet, beyond our fingertips. We are taught to let our heart lead as we leap into the air, only to hold the position as long as possible so the eyes can imagine and feel the suspended feelings of flight.
Our head was trained to float effortless above the body, suspended by a powerful string that shows the neck elongating and extending the head up into the heavens.

We are (after all) to be beautiful swans, graceful princesses, enticing courtesans, and arrogant witches.
To become the embodiment of the vast assortment of characters, the levels of personal control and command over the body is essential.

That is why there are classes and why we repeat things in specific order.

Most ballet classes have a regimen of steps from the beginning of the class to the end.

We start with various forms of plies, port de bras, tendus, dégagés, rond de jambe, frappes, round de jambe en l’air, and grand battements, before we move into the center. These steps are designed to get us on top of our legs and our feet, hips, and back, clearly prepared for the harder things to come.

Then we put the ballet bars to the side and come into the center, where we do things to warm up our body to the angles of the positions of the body to the audience.
After all, it is all about how the audience sees what we are doing from their position sitting in front of us. That is why ballet studios always have mirrors on one side.

We learn to stand on one foot and do adagio’s, or slow movements exhibiting extreme control and strength, then pirouettes (or spins), small jumps and finally big jumps.
Every dancer understands such sequences though many may not at first understand why all classes have similar structure. Such things are designed to prepare the body in all ways to surrender into the flows and forces that dance will require.

Because real dance is not about trying, thinking, analyzing, or figuring things out. That is what classes are for. To figure out the energetic patterns through the body and to master those flows so things become effortless in the moments of performance when skill moves into surrender and trust.

Real dance is about surrender. We learn that we must surrender and trust that the body/mind and muscle memory are perfectly entwined and working harmoniously together.
That allows the spirit and feeling within the body to radiate out from the person and into the audience.
There is a feeling when the movement and expression of the dancer captures the breath and energy of an audience.
We are trained to captivate, enthrall, mesmerize and entice the audience into our world.

There is nothing like the moment when (as a dancer) you can feel the audience … feeling you.
It is a feeling that is intoxicating and once felt and tasted, we seek that elusive fruit for the rest of our lives.
When the character you are showing them, and the feelings you are expressing, open the audience, show them their own heart and hurt, remind them that they are perfectly human, and that the simple joy of such a gift is precious and powerful. That is a feeling of subtle power that is very hard to replicate through any other means.
Ballet empowers the expressions of deeply held emotional states of being that most cultures teach us to keep tight inside.

Ballet is the permission to feel, to love, to hate, to hurt, to long for, to grieve, and to inspire.

We are there to take the audience for a ride into the complex emotional nature of dreams, fantasies, and other worlds.

We show the freedom and abandon that most long to feel.
And in witnessing us … they taste those forbidden fruits of love and emotional turmoil. Share in our glory and failures, swim in the wonder of being fully alive, and fly with us into other realms.
We learn how the most subtle of movements must clearly define for an audience our understanding between love and trust, integrity and impeccability, truth and manipulation.

We learn the powerful feelings of embodying evil or good. And we embrace each fully and without reservation or thought.
Dance is a doorway to the humility of humanity.

It is the titan of turmoil, and the caress of kindness.

Dance taught me how beautiful it is to be broken and torn apart. It taught me how to love and still walk away … whole and without reservation. It taught me to listen with my whole being and to watch to see whether a person’s movements were congruent with their words.

It showed me how others hide behind facades of feigned confidence.

It showed me how to not convince others that my position was the only valid way.

The flexibility of the body teaches the mind how to give and let go.

What is clear in ballet is that rigidity of the mind will break the body. Rigidity of the body will restrict the mind from finding answers and knowing truth.
And that powerful flexibility must be balanced with inner strength.

The strength of a dancer comes from knowing and the repeating of things again and again. When you know the body is capable of doing things … then the confidence comes in. From those places of trusting oneself, we learn that all things are possible with enough effort and the willingness to never stop trying, never stop growing, never stop learning, and never stop reaching past this form and body.

We understand that this body is a magical container of a vast and powerful energy that is limitless and eternal. And that energy can reach out of the body and touch others in ways that they are forever changed.

~Suzanne Wagner~