Saturday night lasagna

I love to cook.  It both relaxes and excites me at the same time.  I don’t have a lot of time to experiment during the week, so the weekends generally become my time to experiment and try new things.  Since I believe food is meant to be shared I often invite a few friends over to try my newest recipe. 

This last weekend I tried lasagna for the first time.  It is not the most elaborate of dishes, but I had never done it before.  I invited my two good friends over, Stephen Jacobsen and Erin Crall.  I appreciate that both of them are willing to come over and try something that may or may not be edible.  They are both brave and very sweet when it comes to trying my food.

When we get together our conversations usually turn to ballet.  I can’t decide if this is rather embarrassing because we are bun heads and can’t find anything else to talk about, or if we are just really passionate about our work.  I honestly think it is because we are passionate.  We discuss technique, choreography, music, acting, motivation, and art.  It may make me kind of lame to spend my Saturday night discussing what I like about my job, but I think I wouldn’t be able to go into the studio everyday if I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing.

It’s easy for me to get frustrated when I’m rehearsing.  I’m constantly trying to perfect my technique, a perfection that can never be fully reached.  It’s easy to get frustrated when you are reaching for a goal that can never be fully achieved.  Talking with Erin and Stephen though reminds me why I enjoy dancing so much.  It is my art form; it is my way of expressing myself.  That is why I am so passionate about what I do.  Pouring our heart and soul into something is addicting and sometimes you just can’t leave it at the studio, it spills into your Saturday night dinner.  I am thankful that I have been given the opportunity to spend my days doing something that I can’t stop even talking about and friends who are just as passionate.

Peter and the Wolf

This last week my fellow dancers and I have been rehearsing Peter and the Wolf.  Peter and the Wolf is an unusual ballet for a few reasons.  For one thing it fits a full story into just 22 minutes.  It also includes narration to help guide the choreography and give the audience member a better idea of what is going on.  What I find makes Peter and the Wolf interesting is Sergei Prokofiev’s music.  He wrote the music to tell a story.  A different instrument of the orchestra represents each character and the music is used to tell the story.  Many ballets use different themes in the music to reflect what is going on, but Peter and the Wolf is very specific in terms of what is happening.  I believe that Prokofiev did a wonderful job encompassing each animal’s personality through the instrumentation and score.  I can’t imagine any other way that a duck or bird would sound. 

Just as the instruments represent different characters the dancers must as well.  Our Peter and the Wolf isn’t technically hard but requires a much different kind of discipline.  Each dancer has to encompass the animal or character that they are supposed to be.  The bird and the duck might be both from the same animal family, but they must both be represented very differently.  It has been an interesting process to try and determine how a bird would act, how a duck would act, and how a wolf and cat would act.  It’s more than just trying to act different emotions, there is an art to taking on the mannerisms of a specific animal.

We have already performed this once with The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and will be performing it a couple times this spring.  It is a whimsical fun show with a happy ending.  

New Years Mission

It is the start of a new year and the start of my new blog. Over this last year I have begun to question, “What is art?” What makes something art? What makes someone an artist? I can’t answer these questions and I may never be able to. I think it is because the answer is different for every single person and that may be in fact the definition of art itself: something that has meaning to the individual.

I consider myself an artist. My medium is through ballet. I have sadly come to discover that it is a very under appreciated and misunderstood art form. Many people I have spoken with reveal to me that they have never seen a ballet and have no desire to go. It saddens me that my medium of expression is so inaccessible.

Through many months of discussion and pondering I have come to the conclusion that the reason people don’t want to see ballet is because they don’t know anything about it.

It is much easier for us to relate to lyrics in a song or paint brushes on a canvas. Not only are we taught much more about these mediums in school and life, but we understand words and we understand visuals. I think that art is most powerful when the viewer can relate it back to him or herself. We understand and appreciate what we know. Sadly, I feel that many cannot relate to the dancers pouring their beings out on stage simple because they don’t understand anything about it.

I want to set out to fix this gap between dancer and audience. With just my meager little blog I want to unmask the mystery behind the ballet world. I want to explain what it takes to become a professional ballet dancer, what a dancer does in his or her day-to-day life, what it takes to put on a production, and how one prepares for a performance, both mentally and physically.

It’s a new year and this may be considered a resolution, but I would like to think of it more as my mission. I want to change the way people think about ballet. I have so much passion for this art form and I want to share it with the world.