The quality of ballet and how it advanced

By Gwen HERAT

Form barre

A lyrical quality in the most technically difficult is always preferred by many dancers of virtuosity and many male dancers fall into this category especially Russian dancers like Rudolf Nureyev. A lyrical dancer is a joy to the eye and brings poetic feeling to each and every movement with a look of spontaneity when she dances. One of the peculiarities of ballet is that the dancer who excels in feats of virtuosity is rarely endowed with a keen musicality.

A naturally inclined dancer can transcend her ability into something more than sheer jumps and steps, be basically beautiful to watch. All this comes from years and years of hard training and determination to reach the top. It might seem very obvious to say that one of the most important requisites of the dancer is the ability to dance. There is no doubt the incorrect training can ruin a dancer's line for life. Line sometimes depends on physique, either natural which means, she was born that way or obtained as a result of particular training. So ballet is all about the dancer and how she can translate everyone's contribution, on stage, that of the choreographer, costume designer, make-up artist, notator, music director etc. There is a whole heap she/he has to carry to the stage, not letting down all those whose dedication, sweat and tears made her/his possible to dance. It is a responsibility they have to discharge to perfection. Never let down the team. The dancer then is an instrument of boundless styles and energy, capable of limitations and through her dancing surface the real essence of ballet to the audiences around the world.

Ballet can be described as drama without words and we know that ballet is opposed to avant-garde dance. It tells a story or put across an incident by dance alone without words. It can express feeling but cannot speak. With such restrictions placed on dancing, ballet is so powerful that it can even 'speak' up to Shakespeare's dialogue or other classics.

It is surprising the amount of confusion that exist outside the dance profession as to the functioning of choreography. The choreographer is the sculptor of movement and he has the liberty to sculpt movements from her body for which she had years and years of training. He will use her body the same way a sculptor would use clay and he will keep trying until he achieves what he has in mind. For months the dancer will have to submit herself in order to achieve excellence. It would be less hazardous to a veteran dancer. In fact she/he will further enhance a choreographer's expectation.

To the stage

With centuries of ballet's presence, none have evolved any other method of dance creativity.

The quality development in ballet never came easy. It was the dancer/choreographer who brought ballet to what it is today from merely elegant walking to the ethereal beauty that our great dancers have displayed around the world. To assist this quality, a syllabus came into being which is common to every country. Be it Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Russia or Britain. All students will be dancing the same steps and preparing for the same examinations that will take them to the top.

Musicality is another that the dancer should possess. It was very difficult for the earlier dancers to cope up on the basis that it took hundreds of years before a successful system of recording music was found and it took another 500 years of the conductors' scores to reach the present state of development. By comparison the dance notator is the youngest contributor to this art, a fact I learned hardly four months ago when I visited The Royal Ballet for the first time. Today's dancer is so fortunate. Thanks to her colleague of centuries gone by... for her efforts... her dedication... her passion etc. under trying conditions.