About the Author: Suzanne Wagner
The Magic Between Choreographer and Dancer
In ballets, the choreographer teaches the dancers certain qualities of movement and blends and bends the dancers to those sounds, and vibrations. They are his or her tools to make light visible through their passion and art.
A great dancer then takes those ideas and emotional impressions and then has the power to teach something back to the choreographer and the audience.
Dancers take what is given and offers it up with expanded and hopefully, insightful instructions.
A great dancer is always reaching for more.
A great dancer can inspire a choreographer to grow into a new style.
That is the gift in the relationship between the dancer and the choreographer.
But from the dancer’s perspective, that gift does require the choreographer to embrace that fresh movement and learn to bring this combined reflection into their works so it can continue to grow and inspire other dancers to dive deeply within their own psyche. It is an artistic suggestion that requires no response because to a dancer the gift is in the doing, expressing, and being in that artistic moment. No dancer has the agenda to inspire the choreographer. It is an offering without any attachments.
Some choreographers received that gift from dancers. Baryshnikov’s virtuosity combined with his thoughtful mind, uplifting heart, and smooth style that was reaching for a new flow of modesty, literally inspired Twyla Tharp into the style that we know and love about her work. He was great and he taught her how to also be great. Now, they are both legends because of their combined growth through working with each other.
We think ballet is always telling a story but because dance is always impressionistically abstract, it is really more of a conversation between the dancers that (as an audience) you are allowed to listen to.
All dance points to the behaviors and interactions between other dancers. All dance shows the constant give and take between the performers on the stage and the playful engagement with the orchestra.
The power of ballet and dance is in the depth of its emotional and spiritual connection that exists in fleeting moments to the audience.
All dance is the story and conversation that is happening between the dancers through their looks, body language, how they respect and trust each other, and in their willingness to play off each other.
The flow from a dancer (in a performance) is always some sort of expression of confidence in their skill that they carry within the body … as it playfully shows off in a powerful and happy way. There is a sweetness in the care and subtle concern from dancers to other dancers as the movement flows within a dance.
There is a type of tenderness that seems (too often) lost in the harshness of the real world.
Ballet especially inspires a type of romance that reflects the longing of the human heart.
Watching and dancing Balanchine, gave me a type of moral clarity and refined purity of movement that most modern choreographers never seemed to be able to replicate.
Balanchine knew intuitively how to fill the music out more through utilizing the complex expressions within the body in new and unusual ways. He used a playful whimsy and bounce to add depth to his ballets by creating movement that gave permission to the dancers to find their own temperamental fluid abstraction within and express it.
The dancers of my generation gave new life to old choreography. Each generation of dancers continues that tradition. That is why each generation of dancers knows that while all performing arts are not permanent, they also reflect the movement qualities of the emotions that their generation is seeking to express and fill out.
All dancers will be forever lingering in the ethers. They are angels given earthly power to remind humanity that love and passion … can coexist in this time and space.
Dancers hover in the air and that gives life … to hope. Dance holds the connections between heaven and earth with the embodiment of the tensions of a love that will forever … long for more.
Dance is a celebration of humanities yearning and eternal search for the meaning and understanding of this moment and this life.
~Suzanne Wagner~
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