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My first association with ballet and the conventions that surround it are beauty. In this way, focussing on beauty and what I think is beautiful is a good way to begin. It is a subjective notion in pop culture, however in ballet there seems to a universally agreed upon notion of what makes for a beautiful dancer and what doesn't. I want to explore why that is, how can such a subjective notion such as beauty, be moulded and shaped into a form that can be distinguished as beautiful or not?
In thinking about beauty, in nature, people and art, symmetry is a key aspect of defining certain qualities. Think of the snowflake for example, typically seen in our culture as dainty and beautiful. There is symmetry to each frond, all which naturally occurs.
In the same vein, beauty in humans can also be accredited to symmetry in the face. Historically there are proportions which have attributed to 'beauty'; Plato attempted to define this idea by claiming beauty is achieved when certain proportions are met. However, in more recent history beauty in the human face has been attributed to the similarity of the left and right side of the face.
While there is visual beauty there are also a number of other forms which are considered beautiful. Colour, which can be represented in performance in clothing, lighting, skin, eyes, make-up, and more can create a tone and a sense of beauty. In a way, colour is representative of our cultural codes. White has is associated with virginity, black with death, and red with love or anger. The colours obviously stem from natural occurrences, but they are also pushed further by our society to hold a tangible meaning. Pastels are pretty, dainty, soft, whereas full colour is harsh, vibrant, and bold. Colour affects your mood and how you see something or someone, have a look at this article, it explains how colour affects your mood more succinctly than I will.
Then there is music, but I think that is a whole other sense in itself as it is audible not visual, so maybe for a later blog post.
Applying beauty through symmetry, through colour, through conventions in a way helps me decode why ballet has the definition of beauty for a dancer. NOTE: beauty in this sense is not as in the dancer's face, but rather their movements and performances.
In my opinion, the way ballet defines this beautiful aesthetic, is how symmetrical and linear a dancer can become. When I was younger in ballet class I was told to elongate my fingers, to imagine my fingers would go on forever and they started from my shoulder and extended all the way down through my arm and out of my hand in a nice curve. In this way it forced my younger self to think about creating a smooth and pleasing line all the way down through my arm to end ends of my fingers. As I looked at the other girls in the class I could define who had achieved this and who hadn't, if even one finger was slightly too bent or too straight the whole illusion of the line would be broken. This all had to be replicated on the other arm too don't forget. In a way I guess we were trying to achieve symmetry and geometry on ourselves. We were trying to replicate the beauty of nature, which I guess is instinctually and universally considered beautiful.
It's no wonder it takes years and years of endless work to achieve a half decent arabesque. If your finger can break the illusion of bras bas then adding complicated moves, and creating a line with your entire body forces the ballerina to think about muscles most people never knew existed - oh and you're standing on one leg one pointe!
When my ballet teacher critiqued my arabesque, the comments I would get when I began some more advanced levels were lift your eye-line, tilt your pelvis forward a slight bit more, lift your pinky finger and focus on that, move your side arm in a little bit more, extend your neck, extend behind your knee....These small shifts in my body would have drastic effects on how my arabesque looked to an audience. It seems silly and unimportant but it made such a difference, it changed my look from ugly to beautiful in balletic conventions.
I can't quite explain the magnitude of effort and years of practice it took to even be able to get to the point where I understood what those corrections even meant practically. What I want to convey however is that the arabesque I just described above was one movement, one step, one position in a repertoire that hold hundreds and hundreds of them, each movement or position which is scrutinised to oblivion.
I guess that's what it takes to be beautiful right?
