Blog 17, about The White Crow and a fresh start

Happy to be back! Vacation is over, lessons have started again.

In the vacation period, I went to the movie “ The White Crow,” with Lyda and fellow student Marion.

The movie pictures the early years of Rudolph Nureyev. It sketches his past life via flashbacks of his childhood and early manhood. As a young student in Leningrad, he is portrayed as a tempestuous person, and a significant part of the movie is about the period prior to the escape to the west in 1961 in Paris. He was 23 when he defected. 

I expected a lot more dance scenes and was a bit disappointed. Yet I learned a lot more about his early life. It also confronted me with his outspoken personality, a genius on the one hand, but a difficult person to deal or live with. 

Last Monday Marion loaned me a few books about Nureyev, among them the biography made by Julie Kavanagh. The movie is based on the first five chapters of her biography of Nureyev. 

It gives me a sense of excitement to read the book of Julie Kavanagh. But I must confess that I often feel excited on my journey into the world of ballet. It is such an adventure, this miraculous world of art and gifted dancers. It enriches my life. And of course, I am aware that there is a downside: the jealousy, the competition, and the gossip, scandals and so on. 

My aim is not to copy the lifestyle of the happy few, but to learn from their extraordinary craft and performance. I enjoy leading my own life. 

So now back to my basics. 

I felt stiff in the Monday lesson, but already on Tuesday, my body felt suppler than the day before. Just picking up the routine helps to feel good again.

As I wrote earlier, Lyda introduced the developpé a few weeks ago. Now she made a fresh start after this short vacation with the enveloppé. This step or movement can be considered the opposite of développé.

When you perform an enveloppé, you start with the working leg stretched to either the front (devant), side (à la seconde) or back (derrière).  The leg is then brought into either cou-de-pied or passé and then closed to the fifth position.

And of course, all in adagio! 

Because by performing these exercises in adagio you build up more strength than in allegro. Other words, that’s sweating. I hope that one-day things become a bit easier to do. 

Thanks for reading my blog. See you next week! 

Please feel free to give a comment on my blog. Or contact me on e-mail address: bert.jonker@movetoballet.com if you have a particular issue you want to share with me in my (or your!) adventurous journey into the world of classical ballet.