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Tag: dance

  • Unreasonable Diets

    Dancers, especially ballet dancers, have to be strong, flexible and (typically, for the aesthetic norms of the form) lean. Extra weight also provides added stress on joints (especially during jumps and on pointe) and can impede partnered lifts. For many dancers, particular during adolescent body changes due to hormones, this need to have low body…

  • The Joy of the Unexpected

    Dances are planned from beginning to end but they often end up somewhere unexpected. One can’t predict all the stumbling blocks, such as a misplaced stage light or a broken shoe strap, that lead to necessary workarounds. There are also unanticipated moments of surprise and joy, such as being able to hold a balance pose…

  • Dancing in Music

    Dancing in music is an immersion experience. It’s not reducible to either conforming dance movements to beats of time or a layering a visual component on top of an audible score, although of course it can be both of these things. Dancing in music is like swimming in a way that makes use of, or…

  • Children Dance

    Have you ever danced with a child at a wedding? Children who dance are wonderfully free in their movements and intuitive. They can mimic most non-complicated movements and they can feel rhythm. When my daughter was a baby on my lap, she would flap her arms when she was happy or excited and when there…

  • The Security of Standards

    Ballet lets you know when you’ve gotten it right. Within the various styles of ballet, such as classical, neoclassical, Cecchetti, and Vaganova, there are clear aesthetic standards for technical achievement. A penché should look exactly like two hands of a clock at six o’clock, for example – one straight line from the tip of your…

  • What Would It Have Been Like?

    I never got to be the Dying Swan in Swan Lake. What would that have been like? To be able perform the role for an audience. But also, to be a ballet dancer who was that good. What would it have been like to have realized this life-long dream in my own, actual (and not…

  • The Dying Swan Lives

    I went to see Swan Lake for the umpteenth time this past weekend in New York City. I went to see the two-act version choreographed by Peter Martins after Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and George Balanchine. It was performed by The New York City Ballet, with Mira Nadon in the lead role as Odette/Odile. There…

  • The Sweat That Makes You Free

    At night I used to walk down 55th Street (in high school my after-school classes were at Ballet Arts at City Center) in the cold with my hair slicked back to the sides of my sweaty head. The feeling of the wind slapping against the side of my head, knowing I should be wearing a…

  • When You Are the Best Dancer

    I dream that I am dancing in an audition. I lift my knee in passé, extend and unfold my leg so my foot reaches upwards into développé, and my pointed toe arcs high above my head. I jump and cross my legs quickly in an entrechat and my legs cross high and clean so there…

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