New Yellow Pages.Com Video Ad

Size Doesn't Matter

I'm sure you've all heard about the ballerina from the New York City Ballet who was slammed by the New York Times dance critic for eating one too many sugar plums.  I really thought we were pass this.  I saw the video.  I was willing to let the critic be right but no he has got to be kidding.  

Most of you know I spent my dance career underweight.  I'm short but I also have a more womanly shape that I kept at 100 to 105 lbs when my ideal weight should have been 115 to 125.  They put the weight you were expected to maintain right in your contract. Although the modern dance companies only weighed a dancer when they thought there may be a contract violation, I do know that until recently most major ballet companies did a weekly weigh in.  Most have stopped.  Although I never did anything stupid to maintain my weight, I don't miss meal after meal of yogurt, chicken and vegetables.  Healthy yes but not so when measured by quarters of a cup.  Boring when not a sauce or carbohydrate is ever added.  Breakfast was coffee.

You see so many different shapes and body types in dance now even in the major ballet companies.  So much so that the comment from this critic shocked me.  By the way this is the same critic who praised Miami City Ballet for its womanly shaped ballerinas and how beautiful the Balanchine (NYCB) repertoire looks on this company.  This is the same critic who heaps praises on ABT's rising star  Misty Copeland who has a very voluptuous shape.

I will never critique any of my student's shape or weight.  That has little to do with striving for excellence in technique and artistry.  If a student comes to me and wants to be a professional dancer I will speak candidly with them with a parent present if I need to.  So far my students have had enough self esteem to truly judge their abilities. No student who has wanted a dance career has ever needed anything said about weight.  They were just fine as they were.  So I never bring it up and never will.

Let's hope this guy was just having a bad day and let ballet continue as it has been in the last decade: accepting of any body type that has the talent to do the choreography.

Ballet Is Not a Dirty Word

I know that things aren't what they use to be.  The word ballet doesn't always bring up images of beauty and magic.  It brings up images of nasty, pinched faced dance teachers dressed in black using a cane to make corrections for an art form that belongs in grandma's days.  It's worse than old school.  It goes back to old world.

Here is a truth.  I am going to let you in on a secret.  When we were in another location, a well known artist came to rehearse at our studio.  It was very late, no one around.  She drove up in a limo.  It's that big a name.  That's not the important part.  Before rehearsal she and her dancers had the assistant choreographer warm them up with a ballet barre.  That's right.  Before all the hip hop and pop dance, they did a ballet barre.  These girls were not only fabulous commercial dancers they also did a really good ballet barre.  In fact when most of them were waiting around to rehearse they were busy doing the adagio or jump combination they had learned in their last ballet class.

The best dancers in the world are great at ballet.  If anyone tells you differently, they have never danced professionally and really have no idea what is expected of a professional dancer these days.

Our dancers get more ballet than any other form of training.  When they win their trophies, it is for jazz and lyrical.  Ballet is the basic of every form of dance. 

Picking Costumes

Picking out costumes for our shows is not easy.  For Cinderella this year's crop of tutus was small and prices on ballet costumes has really, really gone up.  I used almost every tutu I could find that was reasonably priced and would look good on every body type and size that I have.  I know budget's are tight so I did a lot of sales shopping.

Costume shopping is time consuming but I do it with two things in mind at all times:  the parent's pocket book and the dancer's shape and size.  When I do that, everything seems to go right.  My customers are happy and my student's all feel like the star of the show. 

As a dance studio owner, I am so happy when I see the parents and students looking through the book with their costumes and all I hear is how beautiful they all are.  That is satisfaction for me.

Doing What You Love Makes All the Difference

I've had an odd day today.  Stomach is a little queasy.  I'm feeling overwhelmed.  Problems with the facility.  But, I can't wait to get in and start creating.  That's the thing.  There is nothing I would rather do today than choreograph Cinderella, teach a pointe class and then choreograph the ballet company.  It is the only work I have ever done that I would do for free if I could.

So I'll take something for my tummy, take one step towards completing my to do list and plan for any problems that may arise after the holidays.  Take a deep breathe and be thankful that I will at least get to finish the day doing what I love.

Trying Something New

It's always a little scary to try something new.  I don't like doing the same thing twice.  Doing Nutcracker every year with the same choreography, at least as a dance studio production, is not my cup of tea.  After last year's homeless Nutcracker, I was pretty much out of any new spins to put on this classic.  It was time to try something new.

This year's Cinderella is a real departure for us.  I picked one of the simpler ballets to test the waters.  I picked the Bolshoi version figuring if I follow the best excellence will follow.

I've had quite a few "what have I gotten myself into" moments.  I have awakened at 4:00 in the morning with visions of Cinderella dancing in my head and spent more time in the shower than I had meant to thinking about about it.  

We finally had our first full run through of Act One on Sunday.  The little dancers who were watching the older girls were all smiles and giggles watching the wicked step mother and the very spoiled step sisters torment sweet Cinderella and each other.  Even the older girls who can sometimes be a little jaded thought it was all fun and entertaining.

It looks like we might just pull it off.  I don't know why I worry.  The dancers always come through.

Random Acts of Creativity

I guess this is my karma for all the random acts of creativity I did as a very young dance student before I got the boundary between my time to create and my time to be part of another's creativity.  That's something most professional dancers have had to learn along the way.  We're full of creativity that is just bursting to get out but as a dancer we express that creativity while we are being directed by a choreographer.  We eventually learn to harness our creative energy and use it to service the choreography that we are given. 

The best dancers are almost always the most creative so until the time comes when the lesson about how to use all that creative energy sticks you have a dancer who fluctuates between attentive student and one who just all of a sudden gets the itch to create and here comes that random act of creativity.

When I want to lose my temper because the entire room seems to be filled with nothing but random acts of creativity, I take a deep breathe and tell myself it's just karma.  Then handle it all as calmly as possible and we're back to work.  In the past I've had one or two students into random acts of creativity but karma has got up to me and I have one group that just seems to thrive on them.  That they are the most expressive group on stage and have by far the best stage presence is the take the good with the bad part.

I just take those deep breathes and get us back on track and try not to get too emotional when I see my choreography expressed with more emotion and presence than I ever would have expected from such young dancers.