El Verano Empieza en Madrid.

The summer begins in Madrid. Well, for me at least. I have planned out for myself a grand European summer vacation, with arrangements that will take me from Madrid to Toledo, Paris, and Barcelona. It is, without a doubt, the most adventurous solitary endeavor I have ever embarked on, and I'm thrilled to say that I will be on this terrific adventure through the first of August. I thought I'd make a few reports here and there as they pertain to OBT and my life as a traveling dancer.

So, with introductions aside, greetings from Madrid! I arrived here at four in the afternoon today, thus capping off exactly twenty-four hours of travel. I'm not nearly as jetlagged as I expected, but then again, I did arrive just in time for siesta. I'm staying with a friend near the Centro del Sol in the very heart of downtown Madrid; earlier this evening I had a chance to stroll around my new neighborhood and enjoy my new scenery, my new ambiance, and quite easily the best horchata I've ever had in my life. It's currently twenty past nine pm here, meaning that dinner is in an hour or two, and, in the true madrilena spirit (there should be a tilde over the n but I'm not sure how to type that) I don't anticipate being in bed before two am. I have no idea how Spanish ballet dancers could function on that sleeping schedule, but then again, they might wonder the same about us.

I had a very interesting conversation with the man seated next to me on my flight from Portland to Amsterdam (ten hours, in case you were wondering). He was on his way from a conference in Hawaii to Ghana, where he was working for improving democratic elections and relations. From there he would follow his job assignments to London, Rome, Bologna, and Barcelona; all in all he was looking at many months of traveling. He was passionate about his job, happily embroiled in politics and people so much so that he didn't seem to mind not having a concrete home. When he found out what I did for a living he sat back in his seat, seemingly impressed.

"You know," he told me, "I've always been very scared of artists. You are very intimidating people. You have the power to create things, every single day, and that isn't daunting or scary to you. You are creators where most of us are just doers. If I was on stage I would fall apart, it would be a disaster."

I was flattered, and I'd never really thought of myself as a creator, so to speak. I told him that I thought of choreographers as the real creators in the dance world, literally giving birth to new steps, sequences, dances that we simply perform. "I just take what I'm given," I explained, "and do my best to run with it. Whatever a choreographer hands me, I add myself to it and put it onstage. That's the fun part; taking someone's creation and making it your own, adding your own personality and identity to it."

"That would be creating as well," he said, "because you're creating this interesting and new version of yourself every single night for people to see. You're very exposed and you're sharing and you're something new that the audience has never seen before. I could never do that, and I don't think anybody can really do that except real artists. It's very wonderful."

I'm always so heartwarmed by the response that people have when learning I'm a professional ballet dancer, but for some reason his comments really stuck. Perhaps it was because it was coming from another professional whose labor I so admired, who traveled the world to educate and help and lead. Here was someone who was going into the heart of Africa to lend his knowledge and services to a dire situation, and he was praising me for what I do. I would have taken his comments for sarcasm if his sincerity weren't so assuredly plausible.

He ended that conversation by simply stating, "You make a lot of people very happy." I don't think I could have asked for a better start to my Grand European Vacation (yes, it's a title), for really, what's better than knowing that after a month of new discoveries, adventures and inspirations, I get to return to a job that makes me, and others, so very happy?

My Turn in the Studio

Although I've been in the studio quite a bit over the past few weeks teaching classes, today I put on my other hat and took class for the first time, almost exactly four months after ankle surgery. I'd tested the waters already by doing an experimental barre a few times by myself (at first in my kitchen, holding onto the countertop, and then in an empty studio after class had finished) and felt ready to be in the company of others and follow someone else's direction. How's it feeling? So far, so good. I even put pointe shoes on and went up and down a few times. I'm sure this will change, but for now the most painful thing is my toenails.

I've got two months to get fully back up to speed in time to start rehearsals in September. That's not really very much time. Eight weeks will go by quickly, and I'm still at the very beginning of this next phase of recovery. I'm not sure if it's the last phase or not, but it IS amazing to think back on all the milestones that I've taken note of so far. The one that sticks in my mind the most is the first time I walked outside without a cast, boot, or crutch-- in two normal shoes. That was back in late April sometime, I think. The sensation of freedom was overwhelming--- I felt so unencumbered and free!

So here we go, back at the old familiar barre, doing the old familiar exercises. Except they don't feel quite as familiar as they did once before!

The REAL beginning of summer.

For the last 7 years of my life it has never really felt like summer until my first day at a summer intensive. After 2 summers at San Francisco Ballet School, a summer at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and a summer at the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre, it just doesn't feel the same without taking class with a bunch of new faces and the sun shining outside.

Since joining the company I've always taken at least the technique classes, sometimes jazz, and sometimes taken or taught the men's class at OBT's Summer Intensive. However, those are just a fraction of the classes offered. The level 4 students take: Ballet, Pointe, Choreography, Jazz, Modern, Yoga, Flamenco, Character, Seminar (things like how to eat well, make-up, costuming, lighting, dance history, etc.), Men's Technique, Partnering, and Weight Training. A typical day goes from 10-6 with a lunch break and a couple smaller breaks in between classes, and you do this 5 times a week (there is just a Technique Class on saturdays), for 5 weeks. So, as you can guess, it's extremely exhausting, but it's also the time when I saw the most improvement both in myself, and in those around me. When all you do all day is focus on ballet, for 5 weeks, how could you not improve?

In other news, my summer is going very well so far. I took most of the Adult Intensive last week, which was a nice way to sort of ease back into shape. A friend of Adrian's and mine came to visit for a long weekend; We all met 5 years ago at the PNB summer intensive and have been friends ever since. Other than that I've just been cleaning my apartment, after a month or so of neglect it was in pretty rough shape, and enjoying the weather. I don't start teaching until next week, so I've got 6 more days to relax before I have to do any sort of work again.

I'll leave you with a couple pictures from the SOBT Summer Intensive:

Level 3A students doing a turning combination.

Principal Dancer Anne Mueller teaching Pointe/ Variations to the level 4 women.

Hope you're all enjoying your summers!
Steven

Gaining Perspective

Today we wrapped up the last class of the Adult Intensive for 2008. I was thrilled with the classes this year-- the attitude and commitment of the students is always gratifying, but this year I felt an especially strong and high level of determination to learn in the studio, along with an unusually high amount of skill and aptitude. I think we had fun (I know I did), and I do believe we all connected as individuals working by ourselves yet in a group, pursuing common goals that are also solitary and unique.

In speaking with another of our regular adult students, John Thoren, I realized something else that's valuable and remarkable about the experience of taking ballet classes as an adult, which is the opportunity to appreciate a performance with an artist's perspective. He told me a bit about how he came to start taking classes in the first place:

"In January 2001, James Canfield taught a one-off absolute beginning ballet class for adults. While there had long been various adult classes offered by OBT, this was the first I knew of that allowed people to learn from ground zero. Having long been an avid ballet performance viewer, I realized how little I understood or even noticed of what I saw. A friend who'd been taking ballet classes for years suggested that knowing a bit about doing ballet would make watching performnaces much more enjoyable-- how correct they were.
It's now been seven years, and as any dancer realizes, the opportunity to learn in ballet is infinite. I guess that's one of the main attractions for me."

John expanded on how his new perspective of ballet changed his experience of viewing performances:

"Even after the first few months of class, the insights from ballet class gave me a quantum leap in enjoyument when I watched performances. There really is no comparison to what I see and enjoy in performances and performers now, as compared to pre-ballet class."

Yay! Now I have first-hand proof of what I've always suspected-- the more you know about something that at first seems intruiging but remote or for which you have no real frame of reference, the more fascinating it will become. And there are even more benefits than just gaining a personal connection and association to what happens onstage at the ballet:

"First, what I love about doing ballet is the mixture of music and demanding physical work, which is very satisfying to me. Ballet is complex enough to demand my attention at almost every level. There is physical coordination, strength, timing, and a development of very acute self-awareness. I am constantly required to move, then evaluate how close that move came to what it was supposed to be and consider how to adjust my mind, attitude, body and awareness to improve it the next time. At the same time, there is the classical piano music. Working with the music to tune the movement adds a cerebral and expressive component, so there is never dull moment. The class environment is a bit of an escape (from "real life") for me, a place where I can concentrate on many things I love-- movement, music, coordination.

Having been physically active all my life, I had never thought of myself as uncoordinated, but ballet class has brought me to a completely different level of coordination. Now, when I do the other things (other physical activities in my life), I have far more awareness of the difference between what I'm trying to achieve and what I manage to do. With that awareness comes the means to adjust and improve in ways previously not possible to me."

It's true what John says about the time spent in class as an "escape from real life". For that hour and a half every day almost everything else in our lives and the world outside gets put on the back burner, if only because of the intense concentration that we fall into as soon as that first plie happens. I've often thought class was almost like a meditation. The mind is so busy with the dozens of minute physical adjustments and corrections that are being made every moment, that the outside world can seem very far away and almost startling to come back into. In the studio, we class-takers become like a little team, bonded by individually executing all the same the class exercises, by ourselves, yet together.
In any case, I'm wonderfully glad that others can experience that "escape" and feel in their own bodies and minds the satisfaction that comes from working on something so unattainable!
Thank you, David and John, for your insight and perspective.

The Other Corps de Ballet

With the company on layoff and the school out of session, a new segment of the OBT population has taken its place in the studios this week. The annual Adult Intensive, a two-week series of daily classes for beginning and intermediate adult students, is underway. I believe this is my fourth year teaching classes for the Adult Intensive, and every time I learn more and more about the students, the process, the results, and the satisfaction that comes out of it for all of us. I adore teaching the adult classes, and although I teach one or two of them during the season as a substitute, this opportunity for an unbroken series of classes with dedicated adult students is especially fun for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, as the name implies, this is a chance for the adult students to actually study intensively. During the regular school year and company season, adult ballet classes are only offered three times a week due to the shortage of studio space (the entire School of Oregon Ballet Theatre and the company share only two studios--- I still don't know how this is managed). For these two weeks each year while the school and company are off, there are two large studios just wanting to be danced in, so the adult students can immerse themselves in the satisfaction of taking class every day. For me as a teacher, it's wonderful to be able to plan an entire series of classes around some goals for what I think it would be good to achieve for this dedicated group of people, and to actually see the results of ongoing work.

I've always had a huge amount of admiration and respect for these students. They come from all walks of life and have varying degrees of experience with ballet and dance. Some have decided to take up ballet study as an adult or come back to it after a signifcant amount of time away, perhaps having studied as a child or teenager but given it up to pursue other things, some are trained in other forms of dance but never tried ballet, and there are always several people who just love watching ballet and want to feel that way of moving in their own bodies. Since I (and most every other professional dancer I know of) started training when I was very young and never stopped, the way I learned about ballet steps and positions was mostly by watching and imitating the teacher. Children have instinctive impulses to move that ballet teachers capitalize on when teaching them how to turn and jump, as well as very pliable young bodies that are relatively easy to form into balletic positions. Adults, on the other hand... we all know how much more everything hurts as you get older! And how much harder it is to summon the energy to move and stretch (watching those little kids bounce off the walls and tear down the street makes me sigh for the days when I had that kind of nuclear energy). So to see so many people make this commitment to learning a new form of movement (and one that is full of unnatural, extreme physical requirements), putting aside other things in their lives to study an art that is not creative but has very specific restrictions, is humbling to me, who has taken for granted all my life how to do these steps and movements.

I spoke with one of our most devoted, focused, and passionate adult students about why he is so drawn to this pursuit. I've been seeing David Brown in the adult open classes since the day I arrived at OBT and was quickly won over by his graciousness, kind consideration for the teachers and other students, incredible dedication to the classes and to ballet in general, and especially by his wonderful attitude about it all. Here's what he had to say:

"I had studied ballet all through middle and high school, adding jazz in the last couple of years. After a couple of years away from dance, I took more jazz and a little more ballet through much of my twenties, too. I started taking classes through OBT's adult program five years ago, at the end of James Canfield's last season. Linda Besant, who I knew from the Brown Bag lunches that OBT used to host, saw me looking at a brouchure one evening and dared me to join her in class the next day. So I did, and I've been hooked ever since. The atmosphere of a professional school is part of why I like it at OBT: the teachers are excellent, and we get lots of opportunities to take class from OBT company members, the regular school students are talented and inspiring... there are lots of great things about studying at OBT!

Ballet classes give me an artistic outlet for whatever emotion I may be feeling on a particular day, a chance to be expressive in a way that the world outside the studio doesn't really offer. I enjoy the ambiance of a ballet school, which really isn't like any other place. It's also very gratifying to watch dedicated teachers and students strive together to improve, and to get to know other people who understand how dance could be so important to me for so long. As for the rest of my life, I've arranged my work and personal schedules to accomodate four or five classes a week. It takes a little effort, but the physical and psychological benefits are really tangible.

There's certainly a "corps" of long-timers and regular class-takers with a lot of shared experience, and I always enjoy seeing them. I also try to be really welcoming of new students, introducing myself before class, chatting with them after class, encouraging them to come back. The adult students, the teachers, regular school students and company members who drop in... everyone loves the program and wants it to thrive, and you can feel that in every class."

There are many others like David that I've become happy to see on a regular basis at the studio, taking class, stretching out afterwards, peeking in at company class and rehearsals. I love teaching people who are coming in to class with that kind of impulse and attitude--- regardless of their background or specific reasons for being there, there is a common sensibility of fun with purpose, drive, and commitment to achieve something. We talk a lot about aspects of ballet technique that are harder to explain verbally than they are to do instinctively, which is fabulous for my own understanding of this art form, and I find myself analyzing why things are the way they are a lot more than I do when I'm taking class myself. So it ends up feeling like a learning experience not just for the students, but for my own growth as a teacher and a dancer as well. Next week: Intermediate Adult Intensive 2008!

(Elise Legere teaching an adult class, with David in the center in black):

Pilobolus at Wolf Trap

Hello from D.C. ... Still! As I mentioned (I think) I'm staying here with my family until Friday to see the sights of Washington D.C. a little more thoroughly and to relax after a long and successful season. One of my favorite things to do, which I don't get to do too often during the season, is see other companies perform. I feel like it makes me more educated as a dancer both technically (how the steps are executed) and presentationally (the way in which the steps are performed by the dancer).

Pilobolus is a group that began in 1971 in a college dance class and has evolved from there into a company that tours both nationally and internationally. What is so unique about them is that they aren't based in any specific dance technique. Their pieces mostly come out of a creative process involving a couple days of sort of playing around and improvising with each other while the choreographer(s) sit in the front of the room and take notes on what they see. Later, they piece the actions together into a sequence and fit it to the music. The dancers involved in the creation process are even given credit in the program as collaborators for that specific piece.

On with the show:

*"B'ZYRK", created in 2007, was a good opener, but felt like it dragged on a little bit long towards the end. What began as entertaining clowning around failed to develop into anything more. It was sort of like watching rodeo clowns for 20 minutes... Still, the acrobatics were extremely impressive.

*"Pseudopodia", created in 1973, was more along the lines of what I was hoping to see from the company. It was a solo in which the dancer rolled, tumbled, and fell around the stage like an amoeba, never stopping so much as suspending before continuing to ebb and flow around the stage. It was really incredible and I can't even imagine trying to make my body do that.

*"Gnomen" was by far my favorite. The piece was made in 1997 for 4 men and was so incredible because they got to be so versatile. Aside from the expected, but still incredible, "manly" rough-housing the final section was a slow movement where 3 of the men lifted and manipulated the fourth man who seems to be asleep or in a trance the entire time. What was so breath-taking is that all of them were so strong, but so gentle at the same time. There was such a sense of comradery, but not in the traditionally masculine way.

*"Symbiosis" is a pas de deux from 2001 which was the exactly what the title means, "interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, especially to the advantage of both"(oxford english dictionary). You can really see they have such a clear understanding of physics and how it relates to body mechanics. Truly amazing.

*"Megawatt" was the final piece, and my least favorite. It was made in 2004 to music by Radiohead, Primus, and Squarepusher. In this piece it was most evident they don't have a specific movement vocabulary, and the ballet dancer in me wished they did. It sort of just felt like a choreographed "mosh pit", the energy was great, but the movements felt repetitive and somewhat spastic in a way that was impressive at first, but became sort of assaulting in the end.

All in all, it was a wonderful performance in a wonderful venue!

Steven

Day Six...and Seven: HOME!

After a very successful engagement, it was time to go home. Here's a photo montage of the process it took to get there.


2:45 PM--Alison Roper and company wait in the lobby of our hotel, the State Plaza, for our shuttle to make a 5:45 PM flight. We play Scrabble, talk, run to the neighboring grocery store to stock up on some snacks for the long flight back to Portland. Estimated arrival time in Portland: 11 PM


6:30 PM--Here, Ilir, Brennan and Yuka wait for our tentative flight. Upon checking in, we learn that our flight has already been delayed due to mechanical problems. As we wait at the gate, the Scrabble games continue, phone calls ensue, and we spend many hours trying to come up with things that will pass the time. Here's one thing to pass the time:

In this photo: Lucas styles Anne's hair. Desperate times call for desperate activities.


9:00 PM--We learn in half-hour increments that our flight is slowly fading away. Here we learn that the flight has now been delayed until 11:00 PM. Naps ensue.



1:30 AM--Here Ronnie, Artur, Anne, Grace, Ansa, and Brennan sport their disheveled looks. It's 1:30 and we're in Chicago, waiting for our shuttle to shuttle us to the Sleep Inn. We are expected to report back to the airport for our flight from Chicago to Portland later that morning at about 6:00 AM.

1:50 AM-- Anne checks us into the Sleep Inn. And all we want to do is sleep in...

2:00 AM--Hunger strikes. And though we know we will probably feel worse after a visit to McDonald's, we need some remnant of food in our bellies to get us through the night/morning. And we were car-less, so we walked through the drive through. Yuka gently knocked on the window and startled the woman working the drive through. We told her that we'd been on a plane all day and were in need to food, but we didn't have a car. She kindly complied with our request for food.

2:10 AM--ordering through the window...


The next morning at 6:00 AM, we all piled into the shuttle again and made our way back to the airport. I thought it kind not to shoot any photos at such and hour. We made our connection, about twelve hours late, but at least we made it!

When we saw Mount Rainier, we knew we were on the right side of the country. Finally!

In other news regarding our fantastic week, the reviews are in!

The Washington Post review:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/15/AR2008061501932.html

The New York Times review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/arts/dance/17amer.html?_r=1&ref=dance&oref=slogin

It's great to be so well received. Thanks for traveling on with us on our first (of hopefully many) tour to the Kennedy Center.