Четыре выдающиеся балерины, покидающие сцену, говорят о том, как изменился балет в наше время высоких технологий
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carla-esc … 09688.html
Wendy Whelan left Louisville, Kentucky, as a teenager to attend the School of American Ballet then spent her entire career at New York City Ballet. "... [A]n ideally modern woman, dancing with men as if part of a team, together on equal terms," says The New York Times of her qualities as a ballerina. This modern woman acknowledges:
I'm from a very different generation. There were the giant choreographers - Martha Graham, George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown - who were creating huge volumes of work... I came in at the tail end of the Balanchine [era], surrounded by his dancers.
Dancers today are not so bound by the idea of a patriarch like Balanchine. Maybe that's a good thing. They're more open to other influences... But something gets a little bit lost, watered down. Now a New York City Ballet dancer is not surrounded by Balanchine's dancers - it's a huge change for a company that represents his work. We're now floating a little more than the previous generation was. Dancers have more freedom today in how to dance Balanchine - and more opportunity to dance other artists' work. While New York City Ballet no longer has one strong, profound resident choreographer, they do have an amazing young one in the ranks [Justin Peck].
Mr. B grew his company like a garden. It's harder to find a company built around one choreographer's work these days; it makes dancing in a company very different. It's up to each dancer to choose one [environment] over the other: whatever makes you a better dancer.
Brazilian-born Carla Körbes also trained at SAB and started her career at New York City Ballet, but spent the last decade at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. Her interpretive power astonishes, from the delicate airiness of her partnership with Karel Cruz in the central slow movement of Alexei Ratmansky's Concerto DSCH to her haunting, feverish Sleepwalker in George Balanchine's La Sonnambula. Though only 33, she has witnessed a sea change in the dance world:
Thanks to technology, dancers today have a much wider view of the dance world than when I first moved to New York. At age 14, coming to the U.S., all I knew was American Ballet Theatre, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and some of the European companies. I barely knew anything about Balanchine. Today, dancers have so much more information, and are much more mobile. Kids are traveling everywhere to go to summer programs, funding themselves with Kickstarter - putting their dreams on the Internet and seeing if they will pan out.
There are positives to moving around, and changing companies: you put things in perspective, you can compare living and working conditions. Living in one city, you tend to take things for granted, your view is much more narrow. In Europe, a dancer can leave for a year and still keep her original contract. You get to explore and grow as a person and as a dancer. A legacy like Wendy's of 30 years in one company is so rare today.
Technology can be amazing: for example, last year at Vail [the Vail International Dance Festival], I had been working with [choreographer] Brian Brooks. I had to leave, but he said "No problem. If we need more time, we can work via Skype."
In 1996, when I first arrived in New York, Skype was not an option!
Then again, sometimes too much information is confusing. Sometimes knowing less, having fewer options is good. Dancers haven't really changed as much [as some people believe] - even with new training and all the information we get about diet and physical therapy. Dancers will still push too hard, will still get injured. We get clashing advice from nutritionists. We're always trying to learn from the experts. But, eventually, we go back to our instincts. I've learned, after 18 years of gathering information, to eat then check in with my body - how do I feel? I've learned to eat whatever makes my body feel good. As a teenager, I was just so confused, overwhelmed by all the information.
Paloma Herrera
Even the most jaded ballet-goers rhapsodize over the luxurious unfolding of her leg in développé out of a supported pirouette, and in the articulation of her gloriously arched feet. While her passion onstage has hardly dimmed, she concedes:
It's a new generation now, especially with the new media. I've danced with the most incredible partners, including Angel Corella, Jose Manuel Carreño, and Vladimir Malakhov - I loved that time, it was a golden era.
Now I want to watch ballet from the audience, to join the people who take the time to go to the theatre, to experience live theatre. I don't feel connected with this generation anymore. People don't seem to have the time anymore, to meet, to have coffee, to have a conversation over dinner. They walk around but they don't see things, don't see the city they live in.
I took chances when I was very young. I was offered a contract with the most wonderful company in the world. I didn't think too hard about it, made a very quick decision. My parents back in Argentina were incredibly supportive. They gave me so much freedom - that security, knowing you had their love no matter what. But I could never advise anyone else to live their life like I've lived mine: 100% in the moment, with no plans for the future, ever. I never thought about what was coming next - I still don't. Of course I worked really hard and gave my life to dance. You also have to be lucky. Some people have all the talent, but not the passion, or the luck. Some work so hard but simply don't have the talent. You have to look at your own gift, and your own limitations.
And you need humility. Because ballet is about going back into class every single day, rehearsing everyday, fixing everything - it's about the working process, not about being a superstar. Some dancers today want to be celebrities. But that is not why I dance. I'm not on Twitter and Facebook, I live in the theatre, on the stage. That's where the excitement is. No two performances are the same. Even in the same role in the same ballet, night after night, every performance is unique: some are great, some disastrous.
One of my most thrilling experiences was performing at the International Ballet Festival of Havana. Ballet in Cuba is like soccer in Argentina - such a commotion! Naturally it was televised. And the audience knows the choreography by heart - you don't dare change a step!
Xiomara Reyes
She bids farewell to American Ballet Theatre after 14 years, before which she spent seven years with the Royal Ballet of Flanders. She, too, notes with ambivalence the rise of social media and its impact on the dance world:
With Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other media, dancers have new opportunities to be noticed and, while I think these are wonderful outlets that give more people the opportunity to follow dancers whom they might never see perform live, I also believe it may be overwhelming for a young dancer who is trying to find her own voice. Social media can become a rat race. Dance is not only an external endeavor but also an internal search... Our need for exposure, this thirst for communication and public recognition, has a tendency to push us outward before we work inward.
To a young dancer I would say: be aware of that trap. Take the time to find out what dancing really means to you, how it shapes you as a human being. Nourish yourself with the art you create - explore what that means. And then: dance, live, share!
