On the Transformative Process of Becoming a Ballerina

Costa Rican Ballerina, Valeria Arias in our first 

Choreographic and Artistic Collaboration together, 

Teatro de La Danza, War Survivors. Body Motion.

Oftentimes as a dancer teacher I have felt that my students come to dance class seeking a profound transformation to become ballerinas.  The students seek the proverbial transformation from ugly duckling into the dancing swan. The artistic metamorphosis to become the butterfly.  They want to become the dancer.

Yet however this approach to dance training and education is conceptually and philosophically flawed: 

The student dancer does not dance to become a ballerina.

Rather, the student dancer dances to discover 

the Ballerina that she is.

We do not dance to become dancers.

We dance because we are dancers.

Moreover, we do not dance to become beautiful,

we dance because we are beautiful.

We dance as an expression of our unique beauty. 

Dance by imitation is not true art. It is in transformative dance that we find our unique voice and pure aesthetics.  We find our voice.  The becoming of the dancer is through self-discovery, through a raw struggle of the self - of honesty and the persistent refinement of physical movement through the eternal balancing of self-critique and self-acceptance and the unravelling and revealing of the vulnerable soul.

To dance is not a metamorphosis but a revelation, a transformative process to become oneself.  In the grandeur, imperfections and vulnerability of the unique dancer: in the discovery of personal and unrepeatable beauty and the manifestation of art in movement.

Reach: A Pedagogy for Transformative Dance -Dr. Gaynell Sherrod