I went and saw American Ballet Theater II on Wednesday. It was a beautiful performance.From the website we read this about the company:
ABT II is a small classical company of fourteenth young dancers of outstanding potential. In its fourteenth season, ABT II prepares these dancers to enter American Ballet Theatre and provides opportunities for the emergence of new and established choreographers and composers. Through national performances, lecture-demonstrations and academic residencies, ABT II brings the excitement of close contact with a professional company into communities around the country. The dancers (ages 16-20) are handpicked from around the world by the artistic staff of American Ballet Theatre. ABT II dancers will train in the program before joining American Ballet Theatre’s main Company or other leading national and international professional companies.
One of the dancers trained at Washington School of Ballet. It's strange to think she's taken classes from my same teachers. She went to Kirov for awhile and now she's with ABT II (but remember she's only 18).
I haven't been to a professional ballet performance in a long time. I think this is due to the fact that every since not dancing anymore, watching other dancers gives me high anxiety. My body would tense up completely for the entire performance as I know exactly the exertion that their bodies are undergoing. I also think I felt a certain amount of depression, because I was so involved in that world and I'm sad that I don't feel the art and beauty that dance brings anymore and probably also sad because I know my body physically won't do what I had trained it to do anymore.
However, the bottom line was and is this: I was good, but I wasn't that good, and I also am happy to have the gospel in my life, which is almost an impossible thing to have in "that world." After stopping right before my senior year I went into full depression mode -- not knowing how to deal with the weight I was putting on. Freshman year at BYU I sprained one ankle to be followed a week later by the other (one ankle was in a ballet class, and the other was just outside - I probably didn't know how to deal with this new body I had which was much heavier, and the time off had made my ankles weak). I started dancing more (gradually) and BYU allowed me to take classes with the company without technically being in the company. Even after my mission I returned to occasionally take classes with the company and was actually really skinny at the time. And now here we are in 2008, and I haven't taken a class since probably early 2004. I work out all the time, and I know that my muscles could do a lot of what they used to, but will I eventually lose all of the ballet training I've had? I'm hoping not, because wouldn't that mean it was all a waste? Ballet is wonderful and beautiful, but also stressful and somewhat debilitating as you are never good enough. I think I missed out on a lot of my childhood because of it. Did all my parents' money go to waste?
2 comments:
Meredith, I enjoyed reading this post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about dance. I was never as talented or as dedicated with ballet as you were, but it was a big part of my life too up until high school, and I have also looked back and wondered whether the time, money, and the physical toll was worth it. I think it was. I learned how to move and control my body in ways I never would have otherwise, and when I watch ballet I have so much more appreciation for it. Ballet was invented, I think, to create a kind of transcendent and extra-ordinary beauty. A lot of ballet is highly structured and not the natural way the body would look or move; it pushes the limits of the human body. So, yes, I think your years of ballet were definitely worth it!
I totally agree that it is "transcendent" to make your body move in such abnormal ways and have such control of it. Seriously, I feel it's almost like meditation for those performing and those watching. It reminds me or the fact that beauty is something we should constantly be striving to have in our lives.
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