Home » Enjoyment of movement in ballet

Comments

Enjoyment of movement in ballet — 9 Comments

  1. Neo, I know you are a fan of Ballet. But last night I watched a video of Ellenor Powell doing a dance which was wonderful. “Pinball” dance

  2. Thanks for more joyous ballet examples. Fracci indeed seems to be enjoying herself, even doing a counter-clockwise turn rather than the more usual (80%? 90%?) clockwise turns. I love spinning myself, and watching a bit of spinning in dances.
    The Russian academy vid from a few days ago provides good contrast, and seems more fun. Especially for the men, who seem to always move in masculine ways, unlike the three fine male dancers in Dances at a Gathering.
    When males are mirroring the lovely, graceful moves of a ballerina, there’s something effeminate about it that bothers me. Somehow Woetzel avoids this, while the other males in Stars and Stripes don’t. And their marching was cringeworthy, from a guy who remembers actually marching daily to meals for my two years at the Naval Academy.

    I liked the ballroom dance course I took at USNA, and was quite hot for the instructor, who agreed to go with me to the big annual graduation dance, tho I can’t remember her name. At Stanford, I took more ballroom dance courses, as well as: modern dance, folk dance, tap dance, and jitterbug, with lots more women in all except the latter, where only pairs could sign up. Modern dance was kind of pre-ballet, and was fun but … not masculine* enough for me to be comfortable. One of my smartest ideas was to invite my future wife to take a ballroom dance course with me in Slovakia, where I was able to practice & learn to dance well with her.

    As a single guy in the 80s, I was able and willing to go Dancing By Myself (with a record selection and a mirror’s reflection, or just a TV on a wall with old cartoons). One time, just before slam dancing became popular, I was so wild that I bumped another person’s head with my face, breaking my nose and bleeding all over.

    Tho picking up hot babes was also a theoretical goal, it was mostly for me to move to the music. I was really glad that high impact aerobics classes had a good number of guys in them, to complement my running and ultimate frisbee playing. Not at all the case in Slovakia, so I stopped going to aerobics.

    Now recovering from a torn Achilles tendon (from indoor frisbee), my dance loving wife and I missed another ball season, so I’m dancing deprived. It’s good Slovak culture has some space for folk dance as well as a formal graduation prom dance where the guys have mostly all gone thru an optional but almost culturally required dance course. And there’s a formal dance course graduation dance, too.

    In folk dance one Hungarian boot dance was similar to parts of the Russian dance, slapping boots, thighs, hands with stomping, also done in Slovakia.
    Like sports, I prefer playing and dancing (with abandon! No more), to watching. But with Neo doing the editing so I can just see highlights, it’s occasionally very nice. A bit like the spinning ballerina who can be seen as spinning either direction, from many years ago.

    *I know that gays dominate in dance in the US, but I think much less so in Europe. Without knowing sex orientations, there’s never the less feelings of masculinity, strength & pride, that are different than feminine virtues like flowing grace & beauty. Woetzel had a masculine grace where the leading male soldier seemed more to mirror a feminine grace.
    I was strongly turned off by this in modern dance, as well. I suspect many American boys are also aware of, and turned off of dance because of so many gays in dance. I missed break dancing–fear of nose bleed type problems. Glad it’s now popular.

  3. Here’s a pop example of a guy dancing in a way I could have done, and still like, tho I’d be a bit wilder. Interesting but not pretty, with a very interesting physical appearance. Post Malone:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzPQ_jA00bk&list=PLDIoUOhQQPlWt8OpaGG43OjNYuJ2q9jEN&index=72

    I’ll prolly sing this song in karaoke, as my leg gets good enough to let me go out and enjoy croaking in public, usually with wife.

    Thanks, Super Tuck for great Little Swans!
    Lots of good footwork, good example of lovely women doing the usually more masculine boot dance with far more feminine grace.
    Ain’t got ‘nough stompin’ tho.

  4. I’m glad you enjoyed it, Tom Grey!

    I forgot to say – in case anyone is wondering – what is this big gathering at which the Dance of the Little Swans was performed:
    “A fragment of a gala evening dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the birth and 50th anniversary of the creative activity of the head of the State Academic Folk Dance Ensemble of the USSR Igor Moiseev.”
    (Moiseev is a local Soviet greatness.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>