The Knowledge Gap

As a ballet beginner who isn't exactly a balletomane, there's a lot that I don't know. So, I hit the library after class one Saturday and I've been trying to get caught up. There are so many rules and bits and whatnot. I mentioned watching a couple of documentaries and right now, I feel…. like I'm learning another language.

Yes, dancing feels like learning another language. Like language, ballet teems with rules and subtle cultural cues, misunderstandings take place, and a deep culture with a varied and even stormy history bubbling under the prim and proper surface. Did you know that the ballet as we know it is fairly modern. The idea of people dancing to classical compositions was a scandal, and the small head, long legs, super skinny, super YOUNG ballerina ideal didn't even exist until the 20th century. 

Knowing that is like learning idioms in another language. It's like conjugating verbs whenever I connect a movement to it's name and put it correctly in a combination. I feel like I'm differentiating between phonetic spelling and spellings based historically when a neat little piece of ballet history puts a dance movement or position into context - like recalling the dancers were corseted once and my stance should mimic that considering what I'm doing.


It's been very interesting. I went to class very recently (one a little too advanced for me, but challenges are welcome anytime), and learning to turn was like going into an immersion course without having studied.  The language of dance is a trip. Would dance be a language of love? Dance, the language of love. A legend. Legendary language of love.

Well, here's a clip of Legend of Love I found on YouTube: