On Ballet, Art and Life

Oh, to be back in London...

2011-07-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

I grew up in London, England and I often pang with the desire to be back, mostly when there are cool ballet events happening in the city. Firstly, NATALIA OSIPOVA and Ivan Vasiliev, recently engaged to each other, are performing Ashton's Romeo and Juliet together in London. AMAZING. Read this article in the Daily Telegraph for details.

SECONDLY, Sylvie Guillem's new work entitled Sylvie Guillem: 6000 Miles Away is premiering. I cannot believe that this age-defying prima is still dancing such challenging pieces. Read this article about her in The Telegraph.

I have only seen Guillem dance once, when she was with the Royal. I had the insane fortune of seeing her and Darcey Bussell, my favourite dancer of all time, dancing together at the Rioyal Opera House a few years ago, but I've never seen Osipova. HOPEFULLY, this will change soon. The Bolshoi is coming to Canada next year to perform Don Quixote, Osipova's specialty, in Ottawa, and she BETTER be dancing Kitri, or I'll die.

Potential Lockout for Joffrey Ballet

2011-07-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Tribune has reported today that there could be a potential lockout for Joffrey Ballet dancers, after the company failed to reach an agreement on new contract terms with the American Guild of Musical Artists.

Executive director Christopher Clinton Conway sent a letter out on Friday to the Joffrey dancers informing them that the beginning of the 2011-2012 season will be cancelled, and that dancers would have to remove all possessions from the Joffrey Tower and turn in their building passes.

The Tribune article mentions that a proposed increase in the number of rehearsal hours to 30 from 25 per week may have contributed to the current impasse. Thoughts on this?

Hopefully the dancers can get back to work as soon as possible. The Joffrey is a world-class company, and it would be a terrible shame to see the company's new season cut.

Mariinsky's La Bayadère in Ottawa

2011-03-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

No, there is no end to my obsession with this company. In fact, in February, I fell in love with them all over again. I'm so sorry that this news is so overdue but...

I performed as a super with the company in their Ottawa run of La Bayadère. It was an amazing, amazing experience. I cried on my way home from the theatre after the last peformance. I'll go into more detail about being backstage with the Mariinsky in a later post. For now, here are a couple of photographs from the week!

Ulyana Lopatkina signing autographs! She is so tall and stately and elegant. I utterly adored her, although Diana Vishneva was my favourite Nikiya by far. Diana was really, really nice, perhaps because she spoke more English than the rest of the dancers in the company (I did learn some basic Russian phrases in a vague attempt to be polite and respectful!!). I got a photograph with her and she signed me a massive autograph! I cried like an infant after meeting her: the whole thing was just so surreal.

I chatted for a bit with English-born dancer Xander Parish, formerly of the Royal Ballet, who came on tour more for his language capabilities than anything else, as he is currently suffering from bad tendonitis in both his knees (we bonded over our dreadful joints). He is an extremely accomplished dancer, and the first ever British hire to the Mariinsky Theatre. He mentioned to me that Alina Somova, still a relative debutante but one of my favourite dancers in the world right now, wasn't able to make it to North America because she dislocated her shoulder performing an en dedans turn in Swan Lake back in St. Petersburg.

So, to Alina (not that she would ever read my blog): I was so thrilled thinking I would have the chance to see you perform Swan Lake (Alina, at only 18, was one of the youngest dancers to ever tackle the roles of Odette/Odile in the history of the Mariinsky) here in Canada, and was absolutely devastated to learn of your injury. I wish you all the best, and hope you have a fast recovery.

Mariinsky Ballet in Canada

2011-01-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

PROBLEM SOLVED. The Mariinsky is performing in Ottawa BEFORE they are performing in Toronto, and they are performing La Bayadère, which I have never seen in my life. So, I will be seeing them on opening night in Ottawa, and will exchange my Toronto Swan Lake ticket for one that's on the weekend so that I'll be able to make it. I am so thrilled. I talked to a friend who remembers when the Kirov came to Ottawa in 1989. Apparently, they're like an army trudging the streets with their massive orchestra, backstage crew and touring company. Many updates will ensue, I promise.

Step Up

2010-12-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm an idiot and decided to watch this campy film a while ago. I will not give the film the satisfaction of eliciting more than one word out of me, so here goes:

BARF

Tamara Rojo

2010-12-05T12:46:00.000-08:00

My heart soars and breaks all at once while reading this article about Royal Ballet prima Tamara Rojo.

'The Company' and Ballet Dancers in Pop Culture

2010-12-05T11:25:00.000-08:00

I watched the film 'The Company' yesterday evening. The film has a quiet, "day in the life of" tone that is free of the usual, pop-culture-friendly, ballet stereotypes (we all know the awful, numbing stereotypes in which all the men are gay and all the women are anorexic). It also features some magnificent dancing by the incredible Joffrey Ballet of Chicago.

I'd seen the film a couple of times before, but there was one part that made me laugh out loud yesterday, and it wasn't Malcolm McDowell announcing, "practise safe sex, babies!" I have nothing negative to say about Neve Campbell, who stars in the film, because she is an actul ballet dancer who is incredibly gifted (she graduated from Canada's prestigious National Ballet School). She by far outshines other horrid portrayals of dancers such as Julia Stiles' performance in the film, 'Save the Last Dance' (that film makes me so angry). So the low point of the film was clearly due to a poor directorial choice.

The hilarity occurs when Neve Campbell's character returns home from a performance. She peels off a small plaster to reveal (gasp!) a blister on her big toe joint! She then proceeds to massage her obviously terribly sore, aching feet. THE PERFORMANCE WAS IN SOFT SHOES. IT WASN'T EVEN ON POINTE. Her feet look perfectly fine except for that one blister which we, the audience, are clearly supposed to cry in sympathetic shock over. God, I laughed so hard. My mother's feet look worse than that after walking in high heels for an hour.

How insulting that a film otherwise so realistic and unpretentious should expect me to fawn over the dancer who, after performing a dance in soft shoes, has one bloody blister (pun intended) on her foot. Please, my feet are missing toenails! If my little sister, who's a rower, had been with me, she would have laughed at least equally as hard. Her palms are as rubbed raw as my toes. I would have had to fight to retain her respect for ballet dancers. To all artists who wish to portray the difficult lives of ballerinas: we do not show you our feet because you do not want to see them. Please save us from disgust at your wimpy attempts at portraying the hardship of our toes.

In other news, 'The Black Swan' starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis is being released in cinemas soon. I suppose I shall have to see it, because it's a ballet movie, but also because I love Natalie Portman. I have heard, however, that the film is rich with those dreaded ballet stereotypes and that, while her attempt is commendable, Natalie Portman's dancing makes it very hard to really believe that her character is a prima with NYCB. Oh, disappointment...

Oh Land

2010-12-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

Nanna Øland Fabricius, a native of Denmark, was forced to leave the Royal Swedish Ballet School after a back injury ended a promising start to her career. The daughter of an opera singer and a composer, she channeled her intense understanding of music and the pain of giving up ballet into singing, and produced her own debut album, entitled 'Fauna', under the name 'Oh Land'.

The album has a beautiful, light, ecletic, electro-pop sound, and Nanna has a stunning, delicate voice. She now lives in Williamsburg, New York, and her second self-titled album is scheduled to be released in early 2011. As any dancer who has struggled with a serious injury knows, stopping because your body is telling you to is so difficult and emotionally painful when your heart tells you you can't give up yet. Oh Land, then, has lots to write about.

I remember struggling through my first slew of knee dislocations when I was younger.

One day, sitting in the emergency waiting room at the hospital, I wrote in a notebook:

Once striving for perfection,

I am faulty.

Once yearning to be beautiful,

I am ugly.

I am broken.

Alvin Ailey's New Season Opens

2010-12-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

Read the New York Times review here.

I have two comments:
1) The dancers in the photograph atop the article look so perfect and statuesque. The dancer in the foreground looks like a figure my grandad has sculpted (he's an amazing, talented sculptor and I'm so lucky and humbled to be related to him). The lighting covers him in subtle colouring, so he almost looks as though his chest has been spray-painted.
2) The article mentions the Ailey Midtown Manhattan headquarters. Ever been there? The facility is STUNNING.

Slob

2010-11-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

I am always cold. Especially as winter approaches, I inevitably end up starting every class wearing tights, leg warmers and shorts underneath sweat pants. My hips have also been incredibly stiff these days, so I try to keep them as warm as possible.

Svetlana Zhakarova's Amazingness

2010-11-24T20:28:00.000-08:00

"What's up, Svetlana Zakharova?"

"Oh, not much, balletomane. Just throwing out a couple of rond de jambe sautés from The Sleeping Beauty...

actually I'm just marking it because I have a migraine from kicking myself in the head in dress rehearsal yesterday."

.............

"We will never be friends."

Why is Alistair Macaulay so eloquent?

2010-11-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

I just read another review in the New York Times by him, and he expresses so well a quality that I so admire and try to embody every day in my dancing.

"...here and elsewhere," he writes, "the Farrell dancers are unsurpassed at arriving with (actually, a hair’s breadth ahead of) the beat, so that they reveal the music by embodying it rather than following it."

This sort of explains a point I tried to make in a previous post: Ballet and the Whole Self. I said that a dancer must have such an intense understanding and relationship with their music that it must seem that they themselves are creating the music as an illustration to their dancing. Macaulay puts it so much better by saying that the dancers of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet reveal rather than follow the music.

I wish I was as fantastic as he is, and I suppose, as musically gifted as Suzanne Farrell's dancers are.

Frederick Ashton's Cinderella

2010-11-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

Read this review of the Royal Ballet's production of Cinderella, which begain its run on Saturday evening. I love Marianela Nuñez so much (she danced in the title role), as well as soloist Yuhui Choe, who got an honourable mention in the article too! I'm so proud of Choe- she is adorable and a magnificent dancer.

OUCH

2010-11-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

No, not my feet. OK, those too, but I refer chiefly to this review by Alistair Macaulay for the New York Times, (whose criticism I adore, for the record).

Ballet BC: Back from Bankruptcy

2010-11-16T12:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/theatre/back-from-the-brink-ballet-bc-rebrands-itself-as-contemporary/article1799838/

I wish I were in Paris...

2010-11-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

For more reasons than the Paris Opera Ballet, but here's a review of their magnificent season opener.

Personal Update

2010-11-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

I have three performances coming up, which I'm rather excited about. The first is an informal performance of the Dance of the Mirlitons from the Nutcracker ballet for a local arts showcase. The second two will be duets with Ryan, whom I've posted about earlier. One will be our own choreography, and the last has been choreographed by an extremely talented and creative modern dancer/singer/actor/director/choreographer whom Ryan met recently at an audition. The dance he's choreographed on us is about the isolation that's felt in a relationship when one of the pair is struggling with depression, and it is set to the music in the video above.

The song is a cover of Robyn's 'Dancing on My Own' and is quite beautiful.

PANIC ATTACK

2010-11-14T20:25:00.000-08:00

I have been offered a very exciting job in a city quite far from Toronto that starts in January 2011. I have already accepted the offer, since it's going to be a really fantastic opportunity for me. As excited as I am, taking this job has caused a MAJOR DILEMMA.

Obviously, I am seeing the Mariinksy's performance of Swan Lake in Toronto on opening night. There really is no other option in my books. However, opening night is on a Tuesday, and there is no way I'll be able to make it without missing work. The ticket is not refundable or exchangeable. The way I see it, I have two options: sell my ticket to someone who'd like to go and buy a weekend ticket instead, or... impress people at my new job lots so they like me and allow me to take that Tuesday off.

The thought of the first option kills me. I was super excited to go on opening night. Somehow, the other performances seem inferior to that one. I know it's stupid, but I am a balletomane to the core. Thus, the first option will be my back-up plan!

Shen Yun Performing Arts

2010-11-11T19:32:00.000-08:00

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Beatrice Hull, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906

This holds true for my stance on the spiritual group, Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa). I have read Zhuan Falun by the group's founder, Li Hongzhi, and have spoken with and befriended a few practitioners. I am not a practitioner nor will I ever be, but their continued brutal persecution by the Chinese Communist Party is a deep concern of mine.

I apologise to readers who don't want to read about politics, and I apologise to any readers from mainland China who, by virtue of my opening paragraph, will probably soon be blocked from viewing this blog. For those of you who have never heard of Falun Gong, research it, please. Read Falun Gong publications, but please also read statements about the group from the Chinese government. Falun Gong is a spiritual group that is based on three vital principles: truth, compassion and forbearance. Practitioners manifest these values in their everyday lives and also through a series of set physical exercises that empower body and mind, not unlike yoga. Most of the poses in these exercise sets have spiritual meaning.

I could write a separate essay on my views about Falun Gong and why it is such a target of hatred by the Chinese government. Suffice it to say that the group has been banned in China; practitioners are constantly imprisoned, tortured, put into labour camps, or killed. Remember truth, one of the founding principles of Falun Gong? Members adhere strictly to the virtue of truth. So when they are told in prison that the torture will stop when they denounce Falun Gong, they don't lie; they endure further abuse instead. The group is super peaceful, and my friends who are practitioners are some of the kindest, purest, hardest working and most compassionate people I know. Falun Gong benefits them on a daily basis and they love the values that they live by. Whether you agree with specific practices and beliefs or not, you should be aware of the human rights abuses against the group if you care about freedom of opinion.

Anyway, this post is related to dance, I promise!! I recently met an unbelievably amazing girl who I go to school with. She takes half of every year off to go on tour with the Shen Yun Performing Arts company- she is a Chinese classical dancer. Shen Yun has been performing all over the world at its most prestigious theatres. The troupe was created by Falun Gong practitioners who wanted to celebrate China's 5,000 year history of elaborate music and dance. Not only is their spirituality outlawed in their home country, China's ancient artistic traditions have also been suppressed since Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.

They have three different touring groups who tour the world every winter, so if you have the chance, attend a performance! I have never seen Chinese classical dance before, but apparently it is very similar to ballet in that it is an extremely demanding and precise, yet beautiful and expressive art form. I plan to attend my very first Shen Yun show in early 2011 and I can't wait (though I'm admittedly still more excited for the Mariinsky!).

National Ballet of Canada 2010/2011 Souvenir Book

2010-11-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

For all NBoC fans: order the National Ballet's 2010/2011 season souvenir book here, featuring beautiful photographs of Canada's most talented ballet dancers. The book costs $15, including shipping and tax!

Current Events

2010-11-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Tulsa Ballet

Dance Theater of Harlem

Gaynor Mindens

2010-10-31T18:24:00.000-07:00

I am trying out Gaynor Mindens for the first time to see if I like them. They have a higher vamp than Suffolk Solos, so they sickle with my foot nicely, but I'm not sure if I like the feel of them yet.

What I am sure of is that they are a pain in the BUTT to sew ribbons on. I now have needle stab marks on my right hand fourth finger.

Ring by Tiffany & Co. War wounds by Gaynor Minden.

Icarus by Ballet Jörgen

2010-10-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

A quick note: I just saw Ballet Jörgen perform a contemporary ballet work called 'Icarus', choreographed by Malgorzata Nowacka. If you EVER have the chance to see them perform this, do not turn it down. The ballet is based on the well-known myth, but is a depiction of how Icarus might have responded to the forces of nature around him throughout his life. Nowacka's choreography is powerful and deeply visceral. The ballet is a show of masculine dominance asserting itself as the personification of nature (all the men represent nature while all the women represent Icarus). The female dancers, however, are also aggressive, constantly attempting to challenge the 'natural forces' around them. They physically push the men, but can never move far away from them, and often indicate the challenge of the sun's brightness by holding up a flexed hand between their faces and the stage spotlights.

Tonight was the first time I've seen Ballet Jörgen perform in about four years, and it was a great pleasure to see their dancers again. There were a lot of new faces, one of them being Danielle Rosengren, who is a gorgeous dancer, and very beautiful in general. I look forward to seeing her dance again in the future!

Partnering

2010-10-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

Opening confession: I have never done any partnering work before. I've danced with boys, but never any pas de deux per se. That is, until very recently. I've choreographed a short ballet piece which tells the story of two lovers separated by war. A friend of mine and I are performing it for the first time in about two weeks. Needless to say, I am extremely nervous about this, but I've been having lots of fun partnering with Ryan. He's been teaching me all sorts of scary lifts.

Any readers who are experienced dancers will probably roll their eyes and say, "Duh!" to this post. I am only just learning how challenging and rewarding partnering work is, and many of you might already know all about it.

Obviously, there is so much trust required. I have to trust that Ryan can hold and lift me, just as he trusts that I am pulling up and not relying on him too much. However, I have never in my life felt so honest with someone outside my nuclear family. Ryan knows all my physical faults. He knows when I'm not balancing properly, and he feels when my frustrating left hip is tight. Despite feeling self-conscious about the revealing of all my flaws, I have no choice but to depend on him physically, otherwise our movements together don't work. This leaves me feeling very vulnerable, but that vulnerability is what makes our dancing beautiful, and helps to evoke the story of love I am trying to portray.

There are moments in our piece when me relying on Ryan more makes a certain suspension easier for him to hold. Pushing myself increasingly off-balance and trusting that he can balance me is a big 'leap of faith', as it were, but each time we pull off a balance well, our partnership is further solidified. The more we use each other, the better our ballet dancing is as a team.

I realise that I am not making any ground-breaking revelations here. Good teamwork is all about relying on each other to overcome individual shortcomings and perform well collectively. I've never been part of a team, though, that required such honesty and vulnerability on the part of the individual. Strangely, that vulnerability and dependence on someone else ultimately creates a very satisfying experience, and the satisfaction is selfless.

Partnering has enriched my dancing because it motivates me to work harder and pay more attention to my core muscles. It has also given me insight into how serious friendships and relationships really work. I have always been too afraid to depend on anyone outside my family. Now I share my most personal love, ballet, with a great friend who, despite knowing all my flaws, catches me literally and metaphorically as I fall.

Ballet and The Whole Self

2010-10-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to talk about how complete ballet is; a wholly satisfying and fulfilling endeavour if there ever was one. Ballet in particular requires so much of the dancer that, more than any other form of dance, it is a constant, intensive exercise in self-examination.

I posted a video a while ago of Aria Alekzander of the Houston Ballet. "What do I feel like when I dance?" she asks. "I feel alive. I feel like the most of me gets to be exposed to the rest of the world. I feel like everything I feel and am on the inside I get to share with people in the most honest way." This is actually an amazing way of expressing why so many dancers have a deep love affair with ballet.

Ballet requires literally all of you; everything you have and more. Ballet dancers use their entire bodies to express themselves, to tell their own, or another person's, story. The movement inherent in ballet pushes the body to many physical extremes. Ballet is a magnificent display of extreme flexibility, strength and agility. And physicality is not all that is required. A dancer must be musically educated: they must understand music's technicality, sometimes studying entire scores. Dancers need to understand dynamics and tempo. Every single movement they make must be a response to the timing and variations in the sound of the music they are dancing to. Dancing is so necessarily intertwined with music: it must seem like the dancer is somehow creating the music as an illustration of the story they are portraying.

A skill that aligns with musicality is that of acting and performance. Dancers are actors- they play roles. As stage actors know, however, engaging an audience can prove challenging. Good acting does not a good performer make. Dancers must engage the audience with their face and eyes. While thinking about the technicality of the movement, their dancing must seem to create a magnetic aura around them. Every single movement must be infused with energy and with meaning. A dancer acts with their entire body.

Don't for a second think that once a dancer learns their steps, they can focus on acting and immerse themselves in their character. Ballet technique is an ongoing struggle that requires a lot of brain power. Take, for instance, the simplest action in ballet: the plié. Here's a piece of advice. Don't ever ask a dancer what they are thinking about when they perform a plié. Simplest action in ballet? Yes. Simple? No. Proper turnout requires immense upper leg strength. Correct posture literally takes years to learn (I still don't have it and I've been dancing for upwards of thirteen years), as does proper carriage of the arms. Ankles must be supported so that the feet don't roll forwards. Exhausted already? You haven't even started the plié. Studies have been done on the ridiculous amount of activity that takes place in the brain while a human being stands on one leg. Now imagine the brain activity of a dancer standing en pointe on one leg, with their other leg lifted as high as possible behind themselves. No wonder so many dancers become intellectuals.

There is clearly a lot to think about. For an exercise in brain power, try working against yourself. We've all done the tummy rubbing, head patting thing to prove we can isolate different parts of our body. This isolation is something dancers are particularly good at. While their legs might be working harder than they've ever worked yet in their lives, no tension is shown in the upper body. Arm movements are not jerky and forceful, they are smooth, delicate and flowing. No matter how hard a dancer's bottom half may be working, the fluidity and ease of the upper body makes it look as though they are relaxed and floating on water. That's part of what makes ballet so beautiful.

The fact that this post is so long and hasn't ended yet illustrates my point. The next skill I will point out is spatial awareness. A dancer must be completely aware of the numerous intricacies of their own body. They must know what a beautiful, long line feels like, since they cannot always be checking themselves in the mirror. However, on stage and in class, a dancer must also be constantly aware of their surroundings. Using the space that is available to its full potential helps to engage an audience's interest, and adds animation and depth to the dancing. When performing a ballet, the dancers' spacing on stage has been planned with the utmost detail. Making a movement as large and grandiose as possible doesn't matter when you are dancing in a corps de ballet and must stay in one exact position.

Staying in that exact position may not matter so much when a dancer beside you is about to kick you in the face. Whatever must be sacrificed to make a ballet look beautiful must be sacrificed, even if it is proper technique, or missing a step to move slightly out of the way. If a corps dancer in front of you has musical timing that is slightly off, you follow him or her exactly. A line of dancers all slightly off from one another looks terrible. The same goes for a dancer in front of you whose spacing may be slightly off. If you're supposed to stand exactly behind her, you stand exactly behind her, no matter the cost.

Let's recap: physicality that relentlessly pursues perfection, an awareness of your body's aesthetics, emotions, response to the music, spatial awareness, focus, memory of entire company repertoires, and attention-capturing energy. In my opinion, there is no other pursuit in life, except perhaps figure skating, that requires every facet and facility that you posess. And that is why ballet is so endlessly satisfying. Every time I dance, I spend myself, my whole self, every part of my self on this one goal. All my experiences, all my emotions-- past and present-- go into making my dancing expressive and beautiful.

My respect, gratitude and admiration goes out to every dancer who gives themselves over, completely, to ballet every single day.