Someone recently wrote to say that ballet is NOT a sport.
Hang on, I can't let that stand!
Yes, ballet is first and foremost an art form and belongs to the performing arts. It combines expression, aesthetics, musicality, dramaturgy and a centuries-old tradition. Classical dance is therefore still an essential basis for many areas of professional stage dance.
So when I talk about athleticism in dance, I am primarily referring to the physical demands, the training effort, the length and cost of training, as well as a highly intense life experience characterised by resilience, hardship and regular crossing of boundaries that this artistic existence and profession entails over years, usually decades.
I myself come from a sporting background. In my youth, I spent almost every day of the week in a sports hall or training centre and countless weekends competing in gymnastics and volleyball tournaments.
When I switched to dance and gradually discovered the art form behind it, and at the latest when I started my training as a classical dancer, it was clear to me that this was not going to be a walk in the park and that this career choice would have to be approached with a lot of passion and heart and soul, as the training effort was similarly immense and extremely demanding. The same was true for contemporary dance.
The difference? The definition!
Sport is a range of human activities that usually, but not exclusively, involve physical and mental activity. They are often playful and competitive in nature, and the achievement of goals is usually fundamental. Winners and losers are chosen, points are scored or distances, heights and times are measured and compared.
It doesn't sound like art, stage or even ballet.
But the intensity, training and time required to produce competitive athletes or 'stage-ready' dancers is the same in both disciplines.
There are two points I want to make very clear:
Firstly, I'm always annoyed - or rather surprised - when people ask me or my colleagues what we do during the day after a dance performance. This may sound absurd to some of you, but it has happened more times than I have fingers on my hands and toes on my feet. The daily training, the constant and continuous fine-tuning of the body as an instrument, the elaborate rehearsal processes, the constant repetition of movement sequences until they become second nature, so that everything looks effortless and expression and personal interpretation can develop from it, can be equated without hesitation with the effort and intensity of high-performance sport.
On the other hand, I find it arrogant when people from the field of classical dance want to put ballet above sport as a noble art. I've been to enough dance competitions, taken part in them, judged them and looked at them from different angles. For example, the Dance Olympics in Berlin or the world-renowned Prix de Lausanne are competitions for medals, honours and prizes. They are highly competitive. They are about guidelines, rules and judging criteria, and the artistic impression made by the dancer is just as subjective as in sports such as figure skating, artistic gymnastics or rhythmic gymnastics. Ambition, competition and the desire to win are just as present as in sport.
In the end, it's all about your personal attitude. And here I agree with the statement: DANCE/ballet is not necessarily the same as SPORT, but they have a lot in common.
For me, it's about expressing myself, an artistic exploration of themes, feelings, situations and images that I want to convey to the audience and touch them in the process. Through my physical presence, through the way I move and articulate myself. So there is a dialogue that is not really measurable and very fluctuating. Using my body as an instrument to push its articulation to the limit.
Keep training and challenge your instrument.
See you soon and goodbye!
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