I have never understood what made ballet interesting, not until I watched ballet videos for a hundred days.
It is generally conceived that preparing for the arts start at the ripe age of seven years old. Prodigies with rich talent are pursued by the professional world and are crafted from head to toe with perfect technique and skill.
I once developed a habit from straying away from the classics, especially ballet. Rigorous training, dietary restriction, and flawless bone structure led me to believe that ballet was a painful pairing between athletic build up and artistic devotion. But through my rapid interest in western classical literature, eventually the Youtube advertisements spiraled me into a realm of pointe shoes. In this refreshed memory of dance, I decided to dedicate a hundred days in cultivating personal analysis on ballet movies, variations, and clips. Here’s what I learned:
Similar to classical music, there are a number of renowned performances that ballet dancers aim to replicate such as Don Quixote and Giselle. For my introduction to ballet, I chose to focus solely on the notorious pieces but I failed to realize how much reading I had to do. Ballet performances are most often adapted from classic literature. For instance, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was widely reconstructed in the ballet stage and the long infamous pas de deux scene from it. But the main motive to use Shakespeare was due to the fact it simply offered choreographers many characters and situations to work with.
The dramatic plots are all reflected clearly in gestures and movement in the acts themselves. Ballet dancers maximize their bodies to retell the story which explains why when we watch ballet; it refrains us to be able to produce it in words. Although we have a vague idea of the storyline, the limitations of speaking have forced the audience to only be able to capture the moment in real time.
The absence of words also allows music to replace them in the acts and to further push the dancers into conveying the plot. In Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the score was insane during its time. Tchaikovsky consumingly created moments of captivating orchestration with the repeated use of different tonalities that represent the characters. It amplified the choreography and created a new genre of musical narratives. In fact, it’s noticeable that the music plays a heartfelt role in every of his works like The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.
Into the last remaining days, I observed daily lives of ballerinas and began to question if conveying movement properly is what comprises a good ballet dancer. It turns out it’s only a portion of it. So far, I’ve talked about how ballet is a genre of dance developed from other sources. It is clear that the dancers reflect other classic artists as well, the way they obsessively push themselves to be the greatest versions of themselves and in need of struggles to obtain roles. It’s similar to the stifling competition that is heated in both the classical music industry.
All in all, ballet is just like any performing art; It’s a marriage between all of the classics and is a more familiar form of expression than how many think it is.