To me those two readings complete each other. One focuses on
learning about ourselves directly from ourselves and/or our surroundings whereas the other one
discusses learning with others within a professional community.
In a professional ballet company and especially in the corps
de ballet those aspects are very significant.
There’s much to be learnt from working as a team. Dancing in
the corps is about being absolutely together and still being able to keep some
individual identity.
Dancing soloist roles can be quite nerve wrecking,
predominantly because once on stage, one feels very aware of being on one’s own
in the spotlight.
It is easy to lose conscience of what the show is about.
That is when the professional community has a huge role to play. Ideally
Soloists and Corps de Ballets, by working together, turn the show into one big story built from everyone’s
mini stories.
My first classical soloist role with the company was the
Peasant Pas de Deux in Giselle. I was so nervous I could barely breathe. Before
going on stage, having my colleagues saying ‘Chookas’ to me or giving me
chocolate, made me realise that I wasn’t going to be on my own out there.
Interacting with people on stage and
build my stories with the corps de ballet around me made me feel stronger. To
me, that really is an example of how positive the cooperation of the
professional community is.
There is also all the learning that happens off the stage.
Although to me it is the same principle, as I usually treat class as some kind
of performance : performing for the people around me, my colleagues, the ballet
master.
Besides dancing, there is also professional networking. I saw
some people around me succumbing to the distraction of professional networking
forgetting about some technical aspects or their craft. It needs to be balanced
to really work because life is not just about being able to promote ourselves,
it is also about knowing that we can back it up. One’s career should be
succes
As an artist and as a person, I self reflect a lot whether
it’s on the way I danced last night or on how I spoke badly to my mother the
day before. At work, I would use active experimentation by practicing steps
more than a hundred times if I have to, until secure. I also use abstract
conceptualisation on stage a lot with the way I react to a narrative, I like to
play with that and find new ideas, new actions and reactions. I would use reflective
observation for some technical aspects, but in my opinion everyone has a
different body and we are all our own artist so observing other people in that
respect can be inspiring but also tempting to become a copy cat. Concerning just basic practice learning (just
doing something and learn from it) it is something that is harder for me as I
like to plan each second of what my body is going to do on a particular show, I
try not leave room for any mistake but sometimes ‘just doing it’ makes the movement
more fluid and more in the moment, it is something I need to learn to trust.
Since I have been in the professional world, it seems that I
have been more inspired by individual connections with individual artists.
Indeed, I find it difficult to be part of a professional community in general
because, as a person, I do not feel part of any community (or I’d like to think
that). I have many one to one connections, on stage and off stage, and I learn
a lot from them.
Although I do admire the unconsciousness and force of a
group energy, I find it hard to have a similar opinion or vision as my peers.
My vision of the world gets distorted in a group setting, I feel everyone
becoming more and more invincible and myself becoming more and more vulnerable.
