The Pas de Deux – The Dance from Profound to Profane

All dance is sensual and a joyous indulgence in physicality.
We dance to celebrate moments.
We dance to express our feelings.
We dance to feel alive.
We dance because we must.
I remember the moment when my father asked me to dance.

It was the perfect moment. I must have been seven years old. My father took us on a trip to Florida and the Bahamas for Christmas. We were staying at the Contemporary Resort in Walt Disney World in Florida. There was a bar/lounge/restaurant at the top that had the whole disco ball thing going on and a huge dance floor.

I was in awe! I had never seen such a place or experienced such a moment. And it overlooked the Disney resort with all its lights and castles.
Everything felt totally magical through the eyes of my child.

My father stands up and comes around to my side of the table as I am gazing at the wonder and splendor of it all. Then he takes my hand and asks me if he could have the honor of this dance with me!

I was completely star-struck! At that moment, my father was my Prince Charming, and everything was right in the world. I was in love with my father, and he was perfect in every way.

I stood up, excited as could be, and he took me to the dance floor. There is no one else dancing at that point, and I felt like the whole scene and setting was exclusively for me!

He spun me around on the dance floor and I was a princess. I fell in love with the gallantry of my father. The strength in his hands. The confidence in his movement. And his heart that seemed available to be touched in that moment. I was in love with the magic of the moment. In love with the fact that it felt as if time stopped, and it was only him and me. In love with the smile on his face that was genuine and warm. In love with myself because I felt beautiful. And in love with an energy that was flowing fully, wildly, and sensuously through my body.
That is the magic that is the embodiment of a Pas de Deux in ballet.

As two come together, something is energetically shared between the two that is deeply personal, intimate, and the manifestation of a higher form of love, passion, art, poetry, magic, music, merging, and heart-felt expression.
When two souls fully merge and become one, it is as powerful of a force that this dimension can handle.
When two dance, something special and secret is revealed …
If one gets the pleasure of watching at that moment. One sees an honest vulnerability as the man learns to follow the wild and chaotic flow of the feminine.
The masculine watches intently what the feminine is doing and makes constant adjustments to the spontaneous expressions that flow out of the ballerina’s soul, into her body, and then out into the audience.
The masculine is the stabilizer, the support, the grounded energy that she can push and pull against.
The conduct of a Pas de Deux is so classically about the authentic masculine and feminine energetic exchange. (Notice I did not say, male or female)
The masculine is the power of center, the pivot point around which the feminine spins, dances, and throws herself into her feelings.
After all, he is the frame for the picture she is painting.
The masculine is the permission for the expression, and he directs that flow of feminine energy, channels it, allows it to build up, and explode out into the world as something magical and wonderful.
The masculine in ballet is the container for the wildness of the feminine. She is the raw emotional expression. It is the masculine’s job to shift the space and energy in accordance with the passions at hand and the expressions that seek release through the feminine.
The masculine partner in ballet was too often historically overlooked in its own importance and power.
Certain powerful souls came along and showed us that the male dancers are more than a prop for a ballerina’s beauty, softness, and exquisite control.
And we are forever grateful to those amazing men who set the “barre”, higher and higher, until we became mesmerized by the superb talent that they too carried.
I love looking at the legs of male ballet dancers because they have so much strength and grounding in their legs. Their powerful jumps create beautifully shaped muscles in the legs and hips that make men look like tree trunks.
Whereas ballerinas have long, sinewy muscles that are strong but also so delicate as the use of different muscles are required to stand constantly on point.
In ballet, women are equally strong but in a different way than men.
The men in ballet are much more like gymnasts as they are required to “stick the landing”, after a series of jumps and turns. Balance is important but it is often done with more flash and confidence.

When women move in ballet, they are constantly extending the movement of their arms, hands, legs and feet. The moments from the feminine are intended to suspend the audience with their breath and timing.
While the women can be flashy (especially in certain ballets like Stars and Stripes), the focus is more often to express through the body a mood, an emotion, a feeling, a flow, a longing, a desire, suffering, passion, and despair.
In a Pas de Deux, the man is addressing the tools and techniques to follow and make the ballerina look amazing. All while looking perfectly elegant, attentive, fully present, grounded, certain, solid, and concerned for her well-being.
Partners are chosen for a Pas de Deux carefully because there must be that magical chemistry to make a spark on the stage and in the minds and hearts of an audience.
A lack of chemistry makes one not believe the illusion being created in the fantasy world of ballet.
A fabulous chemistry allows the audience to go for a ride with the dancers as their merging and union activates the merging and coming together of each individual’s own masculine and feminine.
A Pas de Deux feels like sex. It feels like the plays of passion between two people. And watching it on stage makes an audience the voyeurs and witnesses to something so precious, personal, and intimate that it can crack open hearts, heal broken souls, bring hope and light into our own darkness, and illuminate the paths not yet traveled.
A Pas de Deux is the highest expression of two souls (Or opposite expressions of life), who have learned to come together, move as one, yet move independently … and still come together, and then figure out how to come together to merge and become more than they were individually.
This dance shows that while masculine and feminine are two opposite sides of a pole that they can learn to work together … when there is love present … and when that love is expressed as watching, listening, responding to, and the willingness to become one with … another.
Since a Pas de Deux is as sensual as it can also be sexual, it is the feeling of hands reaching and finding the “others” hands. It is about parts of one body becoming one with the flow and body parts of another. It is about making music through the breath, sounds, music, and movement that is life.
A Grande Pas de Deux is a mature love, one that has learned to listen to the other. One that accommodates the moods, manners, temperament, and expressions of another. It shows not only permission but the space to reach higher and for something that embodies the highest values of human perfection.
In a performance on stage, ballet and a Pas de Deux is not the love expressed by fumbling hands, anxious glances, and the insecurities of youth. It is the power that comes when we confidently and unapologetically express the deepest feelings and emotions that are running through our being. And then having the courage to share that passionate moment with an audience.
As a dancer, there is nothing like the sensation of when I would come out of a turn and swing one leg around into an arabesque and then feel the man’s body completely up against my own.
There is nothing like the feeling that the emotional fury that is inside me be expressed fully but it cannot pull my partner off his center and he is so solid that my emotional fury can finally melt into surrender.
A Pas des Deux is the acknowledgement that passion is the art of pulling and pushing against another in spontaneous and artful ways that allow for something deeper to be glimpsed inside.
That moment might only be a flicker in the flow as what was so practiced becomes something so much bigger.
Great dancers take the power of two (the Pas de Deux) and, for brief moments, make something so precious and rare that it cannot last in this reality for long.
It is a light that can be shared and glimpsed by an audience. But it also has the power to forever change those whose eyes, hearts, souls, and being were awakened and aware enough to receive that gift.
Time ticks on, but such moments expressed … are suspended in a space beyond time. They leave a pinprick and an opening between this reality and a place that exists eternally.
A dance between two people creates totally new elements that are like a flavor on the tongue to be savored and remembered.
A dance between two people generates a sound, a song, a harmony, and a frequency that is food for the angels.
A Pas de Deux shows that even in this world of duality that magic can happen when two become one because it opens the portals of hope and the knowing and certainty that eventually humanity can move past all the conflict and learn to listen, flow, and work together for the transcendence of our essence into something wonderful.
Dance is the reminder that …

We are the water that is trying to turn into wine.
To do that, we have to be allowed to mature.
Occasionally we have to be filtered through the expressions in this life to keep the sweetness, but we also need to remember that a bit of a tang is also delicious. And the oaky quality of the flavor gives that wine a grounded and earthy base that will allow all the other notes and flavors to be expressed in beautiful and unique ways.
Ballet taught me that we are all being made into wine. And the containers we choose … flavor that wine.
The experiences we have in all the lifetimes add sweetness and depth.
And through the challenges that we learn to filter out … we need to know will still leave a hint of something that will inspire others to new levels of their own greatness.
The question is if one has the courage to show what one feels. Not about others but about oneself and one’s own experiences.
After all, wine is to be shared. If we are willing to fully share from an open heart … joy and wonder will follow.

If we share from our passions and purpose, directions become inspired, and doors explode open.
When we share from the deepest places of our own vulnerability and essence, we can become a frequency and sound that can call to those listening in other dimensions and times.
We can be the inspiration of the greatness that they might have within. We become the muse that shows the path. And we become the light that can guide them through the darkness back to the light inside them that is longing to get out.

~Suzanne Wagner~