Shattering of Dance Theories and Frameworks

My beautiful and brilliant dancer Mariana Solano, 

an unlikely ballerina dancing Dying Swan

I was formed in a strict ballet tradition of classical dance.  The first years of my dance formation were a rigid education in which my mind formed inflexible frameworks of how a dancer must look, measure, weigh. etc.  I learnt dance theory of Cechetti, Vaganova, Cuban Ballet School, Royal Academy of Dance and other great classical ballet schools, dance theory and  classical traditions.  I was taught correct forms and shapes of dance passed on to me as technique and theory.

As a ballerina with Latin American heritage I constantly received the message that I would most certainly be received in the professional dance world, I would be welcome if I did not develop into a woman looking like a Latina.  If I were to look European with long legs and thin hips, I would have the possibility of becoming a dancer.  The specifics did not stop there, I would have to have certain physical conditions that would be the framework of my dancing technique.  I would have to have extraordinary rotation from my hips.  I needed flexible and supple feet to fill pointe shoes one day.  I had to be flexible and strong...I had to look like a ballerina even before the beginning of my serious ballet education.

I was always hanging by a thread.  My body was very responsive to training, I worked the hardest, harder than most dance students.  I felt that at any point when dancers would be cut, I would be too for what the dance world deemed "lack of conditions".  The concept of "weeding out" ballerinas during the education process was very common as I was growing up.  The idea was that as students were developing incorrectly they were removed from the dance school, like bad weeds growing up in a beautiful garden filled of otherwise beautiful flowers.  The less typical dancers with divergent body types and bodies with less favourable conditions were ruining the dance landscape and were waiting to eventually get cut.  

And yet we danced...and somehow we learnt to develop our bodies despite the conditions we lacked.  Perhaps our physical beauty was different from the standard European ideal, and yet we were beautiful in our exotic forms and colours.

At thirteen I remember sitting on the floor at a dance audition at a very prestigious dance school, and while I was being checked for my body conditions, I was told that my feet were not good enough.  I agreed and embarked on a lifelong battle to develop the best ballerina feet my body would permit.  I improved more than my imagination had conceived.  

I remember a year later speaking with a dance teacher of mine who really disliked me as a dancer, she believed I did not have a future as a ballerina and did not want me in the dance school.  I was only fourteen, a vulnerable age -but dancers are strong.  I remember during my yearly evaluation she asked me why I trained so much.  I did not know what to say, because I loved dancing...because I loved taking adult classes with Eric Hampton.  He was an extraordinary choreographer who thought I was a beautiful dancer despite my "imperfections" and unique look.  I trained a lot because I wanted to become a dancer, the answer seemed obvious to me!  I remained quiet.  My dance teacher told me, "I just wanted to make sure why you trained so much, because if it is to become a dancer, that will never happen.  Your feet will not improve more, they just will not.  You are older too, you will turn fifteen this year."

My frameworks shattered.  Although I was young and impressionable and I believed everything my teachers said because I was a disciplined ballerina who followed authority and did as I was told.  Yet, not this time, and I knew she was wrong.  She had no scientific basis to determine if my feet could develop more or not.  None.  My frameworks shattered, the people I was entrusting with my dance education were basing their conclusions on myth and tradition.  There was no Dance Science Education behind this, but ignorance and discrimination.  A dance teacher playing God and claiming she could see the future.

Six months later I would be dancing in a new dance school, a bigger and more famous school: The Washington School of Ballet.  During my audition a famous ballerina was teaching: Lupe Serrano.  She was Latin, short, with tiny stiff feet, she was like me.  She was a retired, beautiful dancer who had danced on the best world stages and had been partnered by Rudolph Nureyev.  

At fifteen, when I had been told previously that I would be too old to develop into a ballerina, I was dancing with the Washington Ballet for the first time.  I danced in the Corps de Ballet of the Waltz of Flowers Opening Night at Warner Theatre in Washington DC.  I wore a pink romantic tutu and flowers in my hair.  I still remember the feeling of awe and gratitude as the curtain opened for the first time and my heart being full of happiness.

I wish I could say that my dance teacher was completely wrong, she was not.  Her idea of the European-looking ballerina with ideal physical conditions is still the norm in dance today.  Dance technique is developed for this idealised dance form.  Students around the world are still being turned away from dance schools and rejected from auditions.   Where my understanding has changed is in the development of dance students and the role of the teacher.  The development of dance educational theory based on the potential of the dance student and not on their limitations.

Although I do evaluate my students with the same severity with which they evaluated me as a young dancer, I do  so not to define why my student would fail in her quest for dance technique proficiency, but rather to develop a personalised approach to dance education seeking to strengthen areas of deficiency and weakness, and exploit student´s natural talent, uniqueness and strength.

Within my frameworks of understanding the dance body as an idealised embodiment of the Classical Technique standard, is the duality of dance education and training theory that through systematic observation one can discover that the human body is highly adaptable.  Through rigorous training improved rotation, supple feet and conformation to dance lines and technique become possible even for those dancers with high limitations when their dance education began.

The strength of character, the undying discipline and a dancer´s aesthetic intuition may in the long term be greater indicators of a ballerina´s success than her predetermined bodily characteristics.  I theorise that the dance student can face physical challenges if willing to put in the extra training hours and face the challenges with courage and intelligence.

As we face new educational theory in the classroom, in the ballet classroom we must also walk away from the educational methodologies that treat dancers as products in the assembly line.  Ballerinas need to learn to think on their own.  They need to be problem solvers and learn to dance beyond the limitations of dance educators around them.  We need to form dancers that are their own teachers, critical thinkers that can pave the way of their own careers and training methodologies according to their needs and artistic vision.  After all, dance teachers train with yesterday´s knowledge and we are ignorant of the evolution of the new dance world that our students will face in the future.  

If our students face a dance world that is not welcoming them as artists, then it is their mission to transform the dance world into the inclusive and diverse world stage they wish to dance upon.  

Education is not the learning of facts,

but the training of the mind to think. 

-Albert Einstein

1879-1955