I just wrote to the Finnish ballet - maybe you would like to read it
too:
"I have watched a video of the Swedish Royal Ballet dancing Swan Lake.
I enjoy watching it but at the same time I wonder: what is that
feeling of stiffness, weakness of spirit that I often have noticed as
a part of the atmosphere of ballet when watching it in TV or
otherwise, even in the movements of those whose hobby ballet is.
Having read many times the Taoist classic Tao-Te-Ching which tells
about masterful skill, I notice that the problem may be the one
described in that book: One forms oneself a predetermined idea of what
the dance movements, beauty and love are like and so in fact stays in
contact only with one's memory and the level of thoughts instead of
with the lively ground for these goal like things, the ground which
makes them forever new and enthralling and dazzling in the eyes of
others. This ground is the true naturality of all intentions: free
life completely according to the emotions and to the wishes of each
moment, of each part of a second, it is life at the level of the
senses, at the level where you flow (instead of being a fixed thought
structure "this one is in love") lingering for a moment in one things,
aiming for something else the next moment, where you do not form
yourself fixed rules of behaviour "I am now in a situation demanding
behaviour like this." But where the action rises from the needs of the
situation in a completely natural way, where you use your whole
capacity to the fullest without being enclosed inside some borders
defining the situation - where your love for dance and for the things
that in your eyes connect to it, is what makes you perform the
movements at all - while your mind wanders freely to whatever yourt
herart wishes and that love for those things and the love for life
born from that enjoyment of those things is expressed also in your
dance. Well, this is very far of what I ever could myself do - I have
never danced ballet, not as a child - but this is one thing what
masterful skill is about. So maybe it is your task to try, to see the
idea between my lines and to try it into your lives... "
|
