A little clip of the rehearsal process for Dawn solo from Coppelia (video starts at 45 seconds)
As I embark on this first stage of 2023 I am busy in a number of areas. Currently rehearsing for Coppelia and preparing to dance The Dawn and Prayer solos. Allowing myself to become emersed in this concept of dawn and how that translates to balletic performance. The feeling of new light, new beginning, awakening and illumination. It feels enriching.
Yet as I seek to embody these concepts through movement, I am simultaneously challenged by the ethical considerations of a ballet environment. Pointe work for example involves some degree of unavoidable pain. How do we convey this to young people as they begin to dance, how is it ethically right to be doing ballet in the first place?
Considering this notion of the ethereal woman which ballet has evolved from. Am I wrong to be part of this system when there are so many aspects I disagree with? These are just some of the questions floating around in my head at the moment. I have always wanted to use ballet to help people but I am part of a system which one cannot deny can be sacrificial and destructive.
Olga pointed this out in relation to Anna Pavlova on one of my previous posts.
Is it possible to achieve an ethically sound environment in classical ballet, if no one danced through pain then there would be no cast most nights! It is a very difficult one to navigate. Sometimes I am trying to articulate to my students this notion of good and bad pain and feel like a fraud as the line is so grey. For me I would say that for example any pain on the skin such as a corn, blister etc would come under the pain threshold that has to be dealt with but you can hardly call this good pain, yet I can't ask for time off because of a blister. Yet a blister can be agony if you dance on pointe. The psyche that a dancer must develop to dance through pain could be problematic for other areas of their lives. If they learn that they must endure pain or trauma, they may ignore signs of serious illness or injury.
Sometimes I wake up and wonder what it all means, what was all this for? This calling that I feel so deeply to dance. Is it to be listened to. Is it the spiritual calling, has it been placed there by someone else in my childhood? How do I know the difference. Lea was talking about these notions of different brains which really resonated with me. Currently I seem to be at a place in my life where I am trying to understand these different brains. Are they really different? As an embodied being, is it possible to truly feel whole or will I always feel a certain amount of fragmentation? I have been returning to earliest memories of dancing in my childhood and I remember the joy of the music and the feeling of wanting to share that joy with those around me. Somehow when I danced, everything felt OK. I felt interconnected to the world in a special way.
I have always sought to use dance to reach people in an authentic way. There are times when I feel I achieve this and times when I don't, but recently more than ever I feel a need to strive for new avenues. I feel a new chapter surfacing in me. Sometimes it scares me... yet another unknown but I also remember that with every unknown comes possibility, new light and new awakenings and there I have come full circle back to my Dwan solo!
Perhaps this post encapsulates the idea of embodiment and indicates just how interconnected our lives, work and research really are.
This is so interesting Ann. This is true, how ethical are we in our practice. Sometimes in a show or in a workshop, someone will cry. I guess I led them to open up something up.. and I believe that having in mind that the students, artists, practicioners who join our practice, join our practice because they trust it or us, is essential. Does the tacit agreement of 'I will follow you' make the pain or the emotional discomfort, acceptable, ethical? And you are right.. are there different brain. Aren't they just two parts, area. I believe in the unity of it all, thus I also believe sometimes there is a dislocation - like sometimes our body does not do what 'we' want 'it' to do. I say 'my hand' but 'am I my hand'? Oh dear - I don't know I guess... Yes, everything is so interconnected, yet sometimes, I feel they are not. Ah! :) x
ReplyDeleteThis feels so rich Ann! What are we complicit in through our work? What story is being told and to what extent are we submitting or contributing to that narrative? And I guess also which is worse - to submit or to contribute? It is also interesting within our current ethics process - if we agree that minors cannot give informed consent how does that inform our responsibility for what the young dancers body is put through?
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting as I begin exploring potential areas of research. The idea of power both in the rehearsal and the teaching process. As artistic athletes, dancers, and most famously, ballet dancers yield to pain and discomfort as part of their daily practice. Does that pain or physical pushing through, affect our performance? How does that embodiment of pain interpreted through the mind and body connect during performance, even on a subconscious level? As teaching practitioners, what license do we have to formalize discomfort during the class and so forth? For me, these are interesting areas to work through.
ReplyDeleteIt is really beautiful to watch you dancing, Ann. There is so much tenderness in your movements. As any practice/phenomenon, professional ballet has many sides, some of them are contradictory. How can you be so tender and so strong to tolerate the pain at the same time? I still wonder how it is possible.
ReplyDeleteThe classical dance itself is not intentionally evil or bad. But it was developed within a particular social, economical and political structure. There is an avoidable hierarchy in ballet troupes which affects the education from very first steps of a young dancer. One can not join because he/she likes it. One has to be selected. And every semester one has to demonstrate her/his skills in front of the examination board and be selected again to proceed with the education. Then one has to be casted according to rather implicit requirements. To survive in this system, the dancer learns how to adapt to it, sometimes sacrificing his/her mental and physical health. Probably, when ballet dancers can become more independent from the ballet theater/ companies economically and politically, many dark sides of ballet practice will disappear...
Looking again at everyone's comments here. As I am having to take a little step back from my work at present to recalibrate and give my body and mind a chance to heal, I look at my connection to ballet and try to see if there is a way I can balance my health whilst simultaneously working in this career. It is a daily challenge at the moment, but one which I am willing to fight for. Olga I quite agree that if dancers can become more independent these darker sides can disappear. My biggest challenge is to understand that I can work for others whilst still maintaining my own leadership. I believe this is a huge factor affecting both my health and practice.
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