Blog 32

A week off at Bayadère, the children enjoy a vacation. This amounts to three weeks without ballet lessons. I’m glad things start up again next week.

It’s autumn in the Netherlands. Leaves, once green, turn trees into majestic colored symbols of the circle of life. Poetic, isn’t it? This magnificent climax of life, preparing for hibernation and a new start in spring. The colored leaves fall from the trees as the wind blows, they color the ground, leaving trees barren. Trees are monuments of an undefeated will to live, deeply rooted in the earth, touching (kissing) the blue sky. And in doing so, they transcend their struggle for existence in intrinsic beauty and embody fullness of life.

This expression of Mother Nature brings me to the poetry of dance and ballet in particular.

My ultimate goal and I am prepared to spend years of training to achieve this, is to be able to use my body as an expressive instrument. As an expression of my soul!

I’m struggling to master the movements and techniques to make sure that my body does not prevent my soul from expressing itself. And that’s the journey you read about in my blog. Some times romantic, most of the time realistic, and now and then pessimistic.

People marvel at the beauty of a classically trained dancer, so do I. But it’s not the technique that moves me, it’s the embodiment of that whisper of the soul that I seek.

I’ll finish this time with a short piece of poetry from D. H. Lawrence, a famous writer.

When the white feet of dancers beat across the stage

the sound is like the wings of birds at dawn, fluttering,

and when the feathery light bodies rise en pointe, spinning

like the wind across a lake, the sight is romance, uttering.