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Article: Ballet with "T" - by Ana Claudia Scheurer Antunes |
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Chi Kung, a Millenary Art, is an Ancient Chinese form of gathering
energy. I believe that Ballet, a recent Art in comparison with the
Martial Arts, for it was created in the middle of the seventeenth
century, was invented somehow based upon the Chinese principles. If you compare the first position of the arms in Ballet with the position to concentrate energy in the Dan Tian (one of the major centers of energy in the subtle body) you see that they are quite the same. Some similarities are also found in the second position of legs, and even more amazing are the Mudras (position of hands) as much as Ballet has the same hand stand position, as the index finger points out and the thumb concentrates into the pad created between the ring and the middle finger. Chi Kung Masters consider that this way they can establish a connection with the heart's meridian (a point of energy in the body) and also avoid wasting out the energy from the fingers. The fifth position in Ballet, when the arms reach up to the sky above the head, forming a crown, it serves in Chi Kung Meditation as to redirect the cosmic energy to the crown of the head, and I wonder if King Louis XIV didn’t take any class or watch some Chinese practitioner before he decided to concentrate his energy on establishing this noble Art. Ballet like many Arts increases your energy and motivates your vitality improving your health. I wonder if that is not so much so for the physical exercises that it demands (although sometimes Ballet can be quite static and not so electrifying) but rather for it leaves such a delicate and gentle breeze in each dancing soul, and it creates such a peaceful aura and concentrates energy instead of the “no pain, no gain” dilemma from some other ways of physical exertions. Henceforth, my method is directed to gather energy and avoid stress, it revitalizes one's body with breathing exercises while improving the overall health. The flowing movements and relaxing music softens the sense and release the soul. This way my students not only enjoy moving their bodies with ease, but they also have the satisfaction of knowing that they can benefit from this Art for as long as they shall live (that I presume will be much longer than the expected if they continue on their routine of practicing my Ballet with “QI”) As a performer and Ballet Master, I recently had the opportunity to teach a ten-session Ballet class and I discovered that adult beginners find that my method really makes people of any age or background (even those who never saw a Ballet class in their entire lives) come alive, and dance with enthusiasm. I started choreographing and teaching for women over fifty. Four of the middle-aged women who took a once-a-week session during the two months contract with the art center, which hired me, performed the famous “Pas-de-Quatre” also called "The Little Swans" from the Ballet Swan Lake. And I recently choreographed an entire piece of a Ballet to be presented by them at the theatre. With my technique they could continue to dance for ten, twenty or more years if they wish. I also realized that Ballet improves both health and vitality and gives one a sense of worth. I will keep teaching, healing and dancing until I reach my nineties! I studied in the official school of Ballet in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where thousands of children apply every year for a chance to enter to its major company. Only ten or less are accepted per year, at the discretion of the judges. I had flat feet, and they noticed it. My great-grandmother then bought to me a special type of shoes to correct this deficiency, against my mother's critical eye that insisted that I didn't need them. For three anxious years I continually applied, and I was finally accepted. My success was probably because of my newly adopted orthotics. They became my favorite shoes. I continued to use them until my feet grew so large that I tore them apart (the Orthopedics, not my feet. My feet would be torn later on, anyway, by my point shoes...) But against all the odds I made it. I became a ballerina. And I can still perform. After eight months of having an abdominal surgery I was back on my point shoes, taking and giving lessons, rehearsing and performing. And less than a year after that serious operation I was already on stage, feeling the unique atmosphere upon which all theatres are impregnated. Currently at “The Nutcracker” to cheer up children’s faces. It was a complete delight! Ballet seems to miraculously save my body from the physical pain and my soul from strenuous grieving more than once in my life. But the most amazing thing about being a teacher is to acknowledge the fact that teaching and learning come together hand in hand. For as much as I give to all of my students, and I see their difficulties, I always learn a new way to correct my own method and discipline and make them break through their deficiencies as well. For I know that anyone can learn if they are taught in the right way. The love that I feel for the Art, I see that same love reflected in their faces, in class or when they are also performing. It is a matter of giving and taking. But in the end you realize that you received so much more than you could possibly give or ever dreamed of gathering. When people watch me dancing, they frequently ask me to teach them how to dance in five minutes, as if it was possible to become a ballet master in one day. They cannot see that it took me more than ten years dancing, four hours per day practicing it, to be able to dance smoothly, for Ballet to become a second nature and be as natural as talking to a friend. When I first learned how to dance? Or rather, when I first learned how to get rejected, laughed about it and moved on? Well, that is a good question. But first shouldn’t you rather ask me when I first learned how to draw, and then write? Because those two aptitudes came much earlier when I was only two or three years old, and they were already being part of my essence since I raised my consciousness. Just then I was able to start to walk well and dance. My father taught me the first steps. He said: “Put your right foot over my left foot, and your left on my right foot, and hold my hands.” It was so hard to balance this way. But then when he started to bounce from one side to another, stepping around the floor with one foot at the ground and then the other, it was so much easier to get the balance, to get the feeling of the flowing notes by the waltz of Strauss that we so much adored and I felt so naturally inclined to dance…Then, my mother took me to the Ballet School when I was eight. They had auditions for beginners every year. The first attempt to enter that major Ballet Institute was vain…and in vain. I looked at everything there and it all looked so sumptuous, so big, so formal, and so adult…and the girls there had a very snobbish flair... I was so scared of the whole atmosphere that I didn’t take my hands off my mother’s skirt. I didn’t enter there. The second attempt and my eyes were so full of tears that I couldn't see a palm in front of my face, and I should mention that I didn’t even take the test. Two girls were so nice to me there that they took me inside the dressing room, they washed my face and they returned me to my mother’s arms. The third attempt, I was so scared of people in there, all girls running on the hall, that I was about to finish the test when I decided to go back to my mother. Now I was nine years old and I was still fascinated and yet scared in the middle of those angels there, who seemed to float by the impulse of their long necks, running gracefully towards the “novices” as they called us. One of them, passing through us, in the middle of the huge line we made on the hall (that I still remember my number: 1447, meaning there were just some more 1446 girls on the way), pointed some saying: “Good Luck, good luck, good luck!” I observed her as if she was not made of flesh and blood, as she stretched her neck more and more to reach out to each one of us like a swan. She looked towards my direction and said "Good Luck". Instead of saying, “Thank you!” I just thought to myself, “Amem!” I started to appreciate and understand more about the métier and then I even got some ideas to do in my audition. I observed how they dressed, how they talked, how they walked and ran. I was definitely ready. I was doing so well, that I could see the faces of the examiners in their old fashioned wooden table, looking at me and smiling, while stretching their necks to observe my dancing, tiptoeing in a flat shoe, as soon as they allowed the competitors to create. I was irradiant, so thrilled and fulfilled! Came to my mother with a smile: “I am sure this time I made it, mom! I am going to become a ballerina.” I yet had to overcome many phases, many tests, much of my crying over rejections and fearfulness, to really be able to discern that I was on my right track, I mean, on my writing task. My father came once, after more than four years living away from home, and asked my mother: “Did Ana stop dancing?” Then he completed: “Why?” Well, I never really stopped dancing, Daddy. Look, I am dancing right now, writing to you, while I flip flop with the top of my fingertips over my laptop's keyboard. See, I actually will never stop dancing as long as my heart gives me the rhythm and allows me to go with the beating of its motion with so much emotion! After I came back from the hospital, so much heavier, my teacher remarked for the whole class to hear: “Oh, Ana, you are so much worse…” Worse than when? I should have replied to my so demanding Ballet instructor looking right through her Japanese eyes. But you know what?? I didn’t care at all, because I had already won. I won my life back. At the audition in the end of the year I did not do quite as well as the previous year, when the examiners had their mouth wide open when it was my first year with point shoes and I did more than thirty-two fouettes with my left leg. But I smiled all the way and I passed the exam. Never really became a prima ballerina, because I realized that that was never indeed my ultimate goal. My dream was to become a writer, a healer using the touch of my words, to be able to reach many hearts, by also being a multimedia performer, using all the possibilities of expressing my own soul. And that is what I really intend to do with the rest of my life. |
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Ana Claudia Scheurer Antunes, dancer from the Ballet of Sao
Paulo and the Metropolitan Ballet Theatre in the States, an international model
for the US/European and South American market, worked for Ford Models in LA, Sao
Paulo and Chile. Also known as Deca, she worked for a publicity agency and as
the illustrator of the magazine “Magia” in Brazil (by Editora Ondas in 1990).
She wrote poems for an anthology by Mackenzie Publishing (1984). She acted in
innumerous TV commercials and two Brazilian soap operas. She also participated
in two films that reached the big screen. |
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