The SAB Walk – The Mastery of Reda Sheta

 

There is so much to love about New York City. At 15, the speed, excitement, art, clothing, shops, theaters, taxis, skyscrapers, bagels, etc. are just astounding.

At that time … attitude was everything.
How each SAB dancer walked to the theater clearly indicated that they were something special and that they were like long lanky fillies, easy to spot, something to admire, and beautiful to look at.

One thing about being a dancer is that one learns to be quickly observant.
What I noticed were the ways that the dancers walked to the school.

They walked in that exaggerated turned out position, with their heel almost leading with each step. The pelvis was a bit forward to push that heel in front while the toes pointed to the outside, and the head held high.
It gave the illusion of the gait of a horse. It gave a type of bounce in the spine.

The effect was made more pronounced by our large ballet bags, filled with legwarmers, point shoes, regular ballet shoes, sewing kits to sew the ribbons and elastics on, skirts, leotards, tights, and emergency supplies such as extra pins for hair, makeup, and goodies for energy. I always had honey in my bag with a spoon.

I learned this trick from Bill Atkinson when I was at school with Etgen-Atkinson School of Ballet.

I was so thin that even when I was constantly eating, I would get hypoglycemic and sort of crash.
Bill was the one to suggest the honey and it worked. A spoonful of honey and I picked up almost instantly. And it is full of B-vitamins.

People used to ask my mother, “Do you feed your child!”
And my mother’s response was, “Constantly!”
The bag is usually huge for dancers because it has to be to carry everything.
To this day I still prefer large purses!

And as the walk had a type of loping gait to it, then the bag on your shoulder would bounce and exaggerate that motion.

The trick was to make all this seem normal, natural, and easy. I could see that this was a type of practice for walking on stage in a performance.

You may have noticed that dancers never really just unconsciously walk on stage. Every movement must be beautiful, elongated, graceful, confident, and as if they are announcing their presence.

I watched many walk in my life. It served me well later when I became a massage therapist.

The walk becomes your signature, your entrance, and the way you announce that now something special has arrived.
I clearly … at 15 … needed to work on my walk.

As I went to the school, I would be behind other dancers and try to mimic or match their stride, their strut, and their mannerisms.

Regardless of how any dancer felt that day, they needed to project confidence, authority over one’s body and surroundings, and attract attention.
The attract attention part is very … very important. And I will talk more in detail about that at a later chapter.

As Rudolf Nureyev later told me in the Berlin Ballet, “If you want to stay in the corps de ballet your whole life, then stay in line! If you want to be a principal dancer, you have to make all eyes want to look at you. You have to stand apart. You must appear at all times as if you are a God walking amongst mere mortals! You must stand apart and command the energy of a space.”
Each dancer has that particular walk that has become their signature. For most it is an unconscious habit. For others, it has been carefully crafted and choreographed to express the emotional intention that they intend to show.

One of the best (besides Rudi) that I ever saw was Reda Sheta, from the Berlin Ballet. He was Egyptian and carried himself in a way that seemed to me … to be a cross of a Pharoah and a black panther.
His weight was low in his pelvis and his walk had the feeling of heaviness. You could almost hear the low “thump” with each step. Much like a lion, walking in the Serengeti, with his great weight, shaggy mane, powerful muscles, and confidence in each step.
Reda’s chin was often low and his eyes seemed to look out from their inky blackness with an almost hooded expression. He came across as slinky, sexual, alluring, intense, deep, complicated, very masculine, and the expression of someone committed to each challenge … determined to win because … he had never failed.
I can still see him dancing the ballet, “Five Tangos” in Berlin. He was perfect for this role. It was … as if it was made for him. His walk throughout this ballet was something carefully crafted but innately natural, elegant, inviting, and enticing all at the same time.

His walk on stage had a casual confidence and an air of distain.
When he would walk into the studio in Berlin to come warm up for class, those eyes had a playful boyish twinkle, a mischievous smile, and a playful bounce. In the studio, he was engaging, fun, irresistible, and very relaxed.

His walk would change for each role that he was in. And that is what made him great.
But he never lost the power to make you look at him. It was not a request for you to look at him.
It was a demand from a God to a mere moral. And he knew that no mere mortal could possibly refuse his request.
He was an animal that one wanted to watch from a distance. But you knew that danger was afoot and to tread carefully.

 

So, in New York, I began to see that as a student, one carried themselves in one way. As a professional dancer, another. And as a principal dancer, there was another way … still … to walk and respond.

 

Movement is a study of intent, energy and how it is contained within the body and where that energy is contained.

Emotions that lurk in the soul of a person move and direct that energy through the body, out the feet, out the eyes, out the hands, and through the chest.
That energy (at times) needs to explode outward or curl inward.
But even hidden … that energy must be able to be read out into the audience.
The intention must be clear.
The emotion and the movement must work together, flow in unison, and move as one.

The power of the mind … inspires the movement. But it is the force of the emotions that attract, repel, magnetize, and mesmerize the audiences.
As a performer watching another performer … if you cannot take me on a ride with your emotions, your passions, your heart, your soul, and your fears, I don’t care how technically beautiful you are, the performance is flat and lacking depth. And technique alone is … Boring!

If a dancer can let go and allow the emotions to explode out of them in wild abandon. And those emotions take over their soul and then the soul of the audience … then that … is very exciting and enticing.

I have seen dancers do such a thing on stage and even slip and fall. Instead of it interrupting their flow they move with it like an Aikido master. They move animal like from the ground and back into the flow of the dance gracefully and without a hiccup. There is no interruption of the character and no feeling of the audience being startled. Their moment seems perfectly planned and choreographed.

In such moments, I can see that the dancer has become a channel for something transcendent that is “dance” itself.
And that is where the magic live and breathes.
That is the place all dancers want to touch and taste. That is the elixir of life and the reason we do what we do.
In that moment, we are completely one with life. And life courses through us, directing us, pulsing life through us. And we remember the spirit that we are deep inside that is the pure energy of all life.

In those moments we are not separate from our humanness.
We are the highest energy that this human form can contain, in one burst of magic, body, and heart.

~Suzanne Wagner~