The Joys of Watching Eva Evdokimova – The Moment When I Realized That Comparing Will Get Me Nowhere

 

Ballet dancers are always looking in the mirror. We look at the lines and angles of how something looks to an audience. We seek to create a perfect line with the body, a beautiful flow, and a powerful presence. This process of constantly staring at yourself and others in the mirror … can distort in the mind.
From that place of distortion, it becomes easy for the brain to decide that the qualities, movements, turnout, extensions, facial and body expressions of others is vastly superior to our own.

Over time that can begin to whittle away at our confidence and tear down our faith and belief in ourselves.
While it is very … very helpful to see other dancers with superior skills that seem to be impossible to us. There are moments when another person has a unique and particular quality that we don’t naturally carry or understand how to generate. That leads to us needing to discover our own unique qualities and find ways to express them.

The challenge is that everyone has special qualities that seem to flow organically out of their pores.
For some, it is how they look. They can just stand there, and they look statuesque and beautiful.
Others show their virtuosity in their ability to turn or jump in outrageous ways.

And there are others that have that ability to be a character actor and their face and body expressions seems startling and amazing.
I have never had enough ego to compete with those that were obviously so much better than myself.

In Berlin, the principal dancers were so much better than me. It was clear that only a deranged mind and arrogant ego would have the ability to distort the truth to such an extent that I would even dream of competing with them.

And one of the things that I did love about ballet is the generosity of those amazingly talented dancers for those coming up the ranks and struggling with confidence and strength.
Most of the principal dancers I knew were deeply compassionate, and generous in nature.

They got to the top by working very hard and sacrificing much. They understand what it takes, and ballet is a forever humbling artform.
Even the best dancers have terrible moments when they have taken a terrible fall onstage or got terribly injured and had to come back from long cycles of rehabilitation and physical therapy.

I found most principal dancers to be authentically vulnerable and sincere.
(Choreographers are another kettle of fish and we will discuss that at a later moment.)

If I could have modeled myself after any one dancer I admired, it would have been Eva Evdokimova, in the Berlin Ballet.

She was understated, soft-spoken, and a smile that could put the Mona Lisa to shame.

She had no pretense. She walked into the studio with no makeup on and her hair was put up simply just to get it out of the way. She wore hand-knitted leg warmers that were fraying at the ends and often had holes in them.

The top arches in her feet had clearly been broken from all the effort to point them into the unique arch that was a trademark when she danced.

She even had to have special boots made for her to accommodate her unusual arches.
She was never loud or obnoxious, I rarely saw her lose her temper, and she was always willing to work very hard.

She danced like her temperament. She was not a show-off. Her approach was one that showed the softness, lightness, and delicate bounce of a very strong and powerful understated dancer. The gentleness of her arms when she jumped was soft like a feather. She was the epitome of a Sylph, a Willi, or a Swan.

Video in our day was not great but there are some amazing videos out there with her and anyone really wanting to understand the complex subtlety that fabulous Russian coaching can demonstrate, she is the perfect model to watch.

Watching her was a lesson in style, grace, softness, personal expression and the joy of dance. She was quite tall for a ballerina. Not as tall as myself but probably about 5 ft 7 inches. But she could make the things that the small women could do … seem effortless. Even with her height she stood out no because of her size but because of her finesse in her quality of movement. Every detail was attended to. Her fingers were perfectly placed, feminine and soft, but her core strength was beyond solid.

In Giselle, Second Act, she would do super-fast Chaînés (or a chain of turns) and then pique into an arabesque and just stop on a dime. Then hold that position effortlessly like a pause … so one could wonder at if she was alive, dead, the mist, or a figment of one’s imagination.
She was easy going in class and solidly professional in rehearsal. Nothing was impossible, all things any choreographer could come up with was on her personal list of skills and abilities.
She could do all the styles, Russian, Danish, Royal, Balanchine, you name it. And she could switch styles without thinking too much about it.

She was elegant, and soft-spoken. She was kind and encouraging. She was without guile and never tried to impress. She battled herself internally but did not see competition outside herself.

It was not that there were none out there that might have the audacity to compete with her, but it never seemed to matter to her. She danced for herself and the gift of precision and subtlety that she wanted to illuminate was possible.

She was magic and wanted to show that magic did live inside each of us. It must have taken so much for her to live from such a place, but I never saw her seem to strain against the forces within her heart.

The whispers were that she had a very challenging and dominating mother that she had to clearly step away from. And when I met her, that break had already occurred.

She was her own self. Highly responsible and accountable. The personifaction of what to reach for on many levels. I know every dancer in Berlin highly respected her and we all marveled at her skills and gentle spirit.

I think I was attracted to Eva because I understood that desire to compete against oneself and not other dancers.
At the age of about 13 years old, I found myself competing with another dancer in my school. She was short, cute, perfect feet and a button nose. She was completely opposite me.

At that time, I was growing too fast. I was 5 ft 10 inches by 9^th grade. And so I was gangly, awkward. Trying to not look like a young colt whose legs were too long for their body.

At SAB, they called me the “little giraffe”.

This was a take-off on Suzanne Farrell. Amazingly she and I shared the same birthdate, August 16^th. Different years of course.
She was called the “giraffe”. I know that the teachers at the school saw the similarity that was there … though I never got to her level professionally either.
She was a Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet for many years.
And I felt like a baby giraffe. Legs too long for my body. I felt all over the place and was lumbering rather than galloping.
But at age 13, I was making myself miserable in trying to fit into a small box because I envied this other dancer.

I was making myself depressed because I could not be what she was.

That is when the breakthrough happened!

I realized that all women are beautiful. Each one is a unique combination of the feminine. And One is not better than another.

I saw in an instant that woman are all flowers in the garden and not one flower is more beautiful than another. And all the flowers are needed in the garden.

I could see how my jealousy and envy were like a sickness that ended up attacking me and that I could not live that way and succeed and survive.

It was like a glass breaking inside. And what spilled out was my more authentic self.

Suddenly I was able to appreciate the beauty in every dancer, in every person, and I could allow them to be special in their way, but that did not mean I was not special in my own way. Acknowledging another woman’s beauty did not need to take anything away from myself.
It was a profound shift that has lasted all these years.

I never tried to compare myself to another.

Like Eva Evdokimova, I competed with myself. And that was enough.

It was enough to do my very best in each performance. Even if I made mistakes (And I made some real doozies!) I know that I put my whole heart and soul into it.
And regardless of if I did not attain the goals that I had for myself. I was still beautiful, graceful, and how my lifeforce energy moved through me … was enough to inspire, uplift, and show a pathway though the complicated pathways of life.
I learned that the fears, challenges, and patterns that I had to deal with in this life were enough for me.
I did not need to fit into a box that molded another. I had my own work cut out for me and that was where I should place my attention and focus.

The lesson was to focus on what were my gifts and cultivate them into forms of excellence, subtlety and grace.
My limitations were mine to uncover and discover. But they were not there to stop me but to show me that much can be overcome with a clear head, a willing heart, a bit of talent, a pinch of luck, and a personal determination to believe in myself.
So much can be overcome with the proper focus and effort.

I learned to tenderly hold my fears with great love in my heart.
I learned that I fear mostly my own success and the cost of that success.
I learned that I do not need to be like anyone else. And I learned that my powers of observation were key to me finding the pathways through my own karmic patterns in this life.
And I learned that when we love all of who we are, our fears, our hurts, our anger, our sadness, and our magic that we become an unstoppable force of good in the world.
~Suzanne Wagner~