Tuesday, October 04, 2016
Celebrate World Ballet Day Live with 5 First-Class Dance Companies
The Creators Project: Ever wonder what a day in the life of a professional ballet company is like? Well, wait no longer—today, five iconic ballet companies around the world will open their doors through a live video feed in celebration of World Ballet Day. This year, the participating companies are The Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and San Francisco Ballet.
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3 comments:
Ballet is an art form that constantly amazing me. It has been around and practiced forever, and is truly beautiful. The big thing that this article got me questioning is, is ballet as timeless as we think it might be. Yes it has been around for forever, but with the rise of more urban music are we going to see a decrease of classic ballet? Personally I do not hope that this happens because I really love the old traditional choreography. However, at the same time I would not be surprised if this beautiful art form began to have less and less productions. I think it also is important to note that ballet did continue to thrive once modern dance was introduced. Knowing this gives audience members like myself hope that it will continue to be successful in the future.
I adore ballet. I remember days when I was young and every Christmas my mother would put me in a beautiful felt dress with shiny shoes and we would go to a nice dinner and then sit and watch the Nutcracker. It was a day I could look forward to every year and the day I felt like a beautiful adult princess. There is something about ballet that does that. It makes you feel elegant and graceful even if you are not the one on stage. That kind of artistry is hard to create when arduously standing on your toes for hours in harsh light and tight corsets while putting your leg over your head. I have the uttermost respect for those artists not only because of their daring feats but also the way they have always made me feel- so connected to the art and movement even though the possibility of me doing it is non-existent. In the future I do hope to see this traditional quality of ballet to continue but also for ballet to grow and expand as culture and music forge a new path in the 21st century. By completing both of these tasks, ballet can see no ends when it comes to it's success and advancement.
I feel like one of the reasons ballet is such a sheltered and mysterious art form is because there is this pervasive belief that audiences and the public should not be able to see how hard a ballerina works, how strenuous performing ballet actually is, and the toll it truly takes on a dancers body, in order to preserve the lightness and delicacy of the form as presented onstage. Allowing an audience to see and understand the grueling ballet rehearsal process would have the potential to disenchant them, and to ruin the illusion.
That said, I am glad the rigid and traditionalistic institution of ballet is relaxing and adapting to more modern audience desires. The companies that opened their doors are truly some key cornerstone companies, and they truly have the ability to "rewrite" tradition and set new precedent. I personally find that knowing how difficult it is to produce ballet makes what occurs onstage that much more valuable.
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