"...artistry is about how you feel, about getting the music in your body and just enjoying that. I want to reach the audience with my expression, to take them through the story with me, so that people say, "She really touched me." I want to make people happy by doing what I love to do" "New year, new you: 9 dancers share their goals for 2009." Dance Magazine Jan. 2009: 70+. Infotrac Collection of Full Text E-Journals. Web. 1 Nov. 2011.
I feel this quote from Nadia Mara, former ballet dancer in the Atlanta Ballet company, embodies my approach to class today. My body was feeling heavy and I was finding it a great struggle technically, especially in the adage sequence, with its seemingly painfully slow lifts and extensions which my legs just could not excecute as well as they could, i decided to trun my focus to another element of dance technique. Being able to communicate and be open and honest with an audience is a skill some dancers are born with however, some of us have to practice in class this truthfullness so that when it comes to performance we become less intimated and willing towards an audience.
We are priveledged in class to work with a live pianist who provides us with an emotive backdrop to class, Mara speaks of allowing the music into your body so in future classes I aim to focus on this integration between body and music. When in class, especially in longer sequences, I have a tendancy to blank the a majority of the music out of my head and focus on the driving rhythm usually in the bass as opposed to the flouishes around it. I used to work with recorded music a lot in the past and I feel since working with percussion almost everyday that I have lost a sense of this quality. However, it is the flourishes in the scores that can really connect the music to the body so by listening to more emotive music ranging from classical pieces to ambient electronic styles I hope to overcome this obstacle. In my opinion you cannot gain a sense of emotion from the drums and I feel that musicality and emotion can go hand in hand, even if the choreography is supposed to be emotionless surely I need to discover the contrast in my own body? I will experiment with some sequences learnt in class to varying styles of music and see what difference I can see.
I can feel in class that my movement has seemingly become monotone as I cannot create an emotional connection through my body. The music used in classical ballet performance is very emotive and representative of the story taking place onstage; with famous scores such as "The Nutcracker" and "Swan lake" both by Tchaikovsky, elevating ballets to become some of the most well known and popular dance pieces of all time recognised by those in and out of the dance industry, it is crucial to be able to connect and empathise with the music to effectively and emotional portray classical choreography on stage.
To help myself improve in my emotive and expressive quality in class today I focused on self presentation to an audience, the posistioning of the head, chest and eyeline in ballet is what differenciates performance from class work. I have found that lifting the eyeline, making a concious effort not to stare into the studio mirrors, to the upper edges of the room and visualising looking out beyond the room helps me to feel like I am performing to an audience as I can imagine myself doing so. I find this then has a chain reaction on the rest of my body as the eyes lead my head to a focal point in the room which changes as my chest and shoulders becomes more mobile and fluid connecting more to the movement happening in the legs. Visualising an audience helps bring the adrenaline that drives us to push ourselves, my body suddenly snaps into gear and becomes one working unit as opposed to numerous operating limbs, especially in ballet where I feel the least confident I find visualisation helps me become and give the impression that it is my most confident technique.
