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Céline

With what eagerness she danced! She swept by like a whirlwind.

Her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkled, and it was plain that

She loved dancing better than anything else.

— The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

The Red Fairy Book

Miguel de la Venegas is playing today. Class is so much better with a live piano. I love the

way he plays Tchaikovsky and his Chopin is divine. I’m content when I’m in class, perfecting my

art. The only time I’m happier is when I’m performing. That’s when the real Céline comes out. In

my ordinary life, I’m shy, but when on stage I become a shining creature.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who understood dancers. ‘How could I, ye light-

footed ones, be hostile to divine dances? Or to maidens’ feet with fine ankles?’

Anna Jurkovska

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I’m feeling empty this morning. I’m exhausted from the battle with the patchouli thug—-

faible, now that the adrenaline has faded. It is notable the strength that adrenaline can unleash. I

morphed into Wonder Woman. I’m working out the soreness. I’d pushed myself to the limit and

my biceps and triceps are aching. I torment my body each day— fatigue, injured feet, sprained

ankles, pulled ligaments, and aching muscles. The most painful part is dancing on point. Our

pointe shoes have a stiff shank and a toe box stiffened with glue, so we can balance our weight on

a tiny flat surface at the tip of the shoe. In the 17th and 18th century, dancers had heels on their

shoes which limited their athleticism. But in the early 19th century, Marie Taglioni, the Italian

ballerina who danced with the Paris Opéra, transformed pointe work from a technical trick into an

expressiveness which revolutionized ballet in the era of Romantic ballet where grace and lightness

became the ethereal qualities of a supernatural world—La Sylphide, Ondine and the wilis in

Giselle. In modern times, the incomparable Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova who had slender

feet, inserted leather soles into her shoes for support and hardened the toe area to form a box.

Relevés, pirouettes, hops, and balanced poses, were not possible until the creation of the modern

pointe shoe.

Anna Pavlova - The Dying Swan - 1905 - Culturizando2

While a dancer may appear ethereal, in reality she is not so ethereal. I try to ease the pain

by wearing toe pads and inserting a toe spacer in between my big toe and my first toe. It helps ease

the suffering from blisters and occasionally even bloody toes. We must choose pointe shoes that

properly fit our foot. Feet vary a lot, the three basic categories being the Greek foot, the Egyptian

foot and the Peasant foot. Mine is the Greek foot where the second toe is longer than the others.

To break in a new pair of pointe shoes and soften the glue of the box, I beat them against the wall

and sometimes wet them before putting them on, coaxing them to conform to my feet. Yasmina

who doesn’t really like pointe work makes me laugh as she softens her shoes by crushing them in

the crack of a door or beats them for ten minutes against the floor in her Algerian accented French,

cursing the little devils.

Why do I endure my masochism? To be a shining creature. My masochism is endurable

only because I’m able to accept the pain. It is my dedication and faith that pulls me through.

Dancers are different. The physical exertion takes its toll. I’ve not yet had my period like girls who

aren’t dancers. We don’t have a normal development. We’re freaks, creatures from outer space.

Last week at a Left Bank revival theatre, Yasmina and I saw The Red Shoes, based on a

fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Boris Lermontov, an autocratic ballet impresario, is

preparing Victoria for the lead role in his new ballet The Red Shoes. When Victoria falls in love

with the young composer Julian, Lermontov fires Julian in a jealous rage. Trapped between her

love for Julian and her passionate need to continue dancing for the obsessed Lermontov—unable to

cope with the two men fighting for her soul, Victoria loses her mind and leaps to her death in front

of a train. Moira Shearer, a Scottish beauty with flaming red hair from the Royal Ballet, is noted

for her brilliantly polished style. When I was telling Ivan about Moira’s dancing at the break

today, he told me he’d worked with her in 1950 in London when Balanchine was rehearsing her for

the Sadler’s Wells production of Ballet Imperial. Ivan said that Balanchine chose Moira instead of

Margot Fonteyn because of the speed of her footwork. Balanchine likes a certain type of shape, a

lean body with long legs and great physical strength and stamina. For Balanchine, speed and

musicality are of the essence. Moira admired his ability as a pianist to find his own music, his

incomparable musicality.

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Moira Shearer - The Red Shoes - The English Group

Balanchine judges a dancer’s best and weakest qualities and changes the steps to fit the

individual style of the dancer. Moira adored his Union Jack. Being Scottish she especially loved

the Scottish parade.

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Balanchine has the ability to adjust the steps to make a dancer who doesn’t have a strong

technique and make them look fantastic. Moira said that no other choreographer has the ability to

adjust to the particular gifts of a dancer the way Balanchine does. His ideas just pour out year after

year as he changes his style from one decade to the next. His style is pure, no margin for error.

Maria Tallchief, the Oklahoma Indian prima ballerina, said Balanchine made the clarity of Mozart’s

music visible to the eye.

Maria Tallchief – Firebird by Balanchine – New York City Ballet – Bois de Jasmin

Balanchine’s dancers say that when he had dancers with personalities, he had no desire to

change them. Balanchine said, ‘You can improve some things but basically you can never really

change individuals.’ He takes his dancers as they are, presenting each one at their best to allow a

performer’s individualism to emerge. That is Balanchine’s genius.

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My ballet master, János Orosháza was a principal dancer with the Hungarian Ballet. During the

war he’d been conscripted into the Hungarian army which was ordered by the Nazis to counterattack the

Russians during the siege of Stalingrad. During the bitter fighting at Voronezh near the Don River, his

Hungarian division was annihilated by the Russians.

The Second Hungarian Army allied with the German Army was totally annihilated by theSoviet Army at Voronezh. Out of 200,000 poorly trained Hungarian soldiers and 50,000Jewish forced-laborers, 35,000 were wounded, 60,000 taken prisoner, and 100,000 dead.

Battle of Voronezh – 1942 – History in Photos

Battle of Voronezh – 1942 – Alchetron

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János survived by concealing himself in a cellar of a destroyed farm house for a few days.

Even though gravely wounded, he walked home over 1200 miles in the dead of winter. When at last

he arrived home, more dead than alive, he was thrown into prison for being a deserter and sentenced

to be shot by a firing squad. Just before his execution, he was set free by an official who

remembered him when he was a principal dancer with the Hungarian Ballet. János is not fond of

Russians to this day.

When one looks at his photographs when he was with the Hungarian Ballet, one sees a

powerful, handsome man, but after the war his health declined, complicated by the shrapnel wounds

he suffered at Voronezh. Quiet spoken and austere, he rarely laughs, but when someone executes a

sequence well he recognizes them in his glance, just a momentary look, but it tells you that you’ve

performed well. János’ is fond of quoting the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, “Gracefulness is to the

body what understanding is to the mind.” His eyes remind me of the men in El Greco’s paintings—

eyes of melancholy I have deep sympathy for János.

“Chassé pas de Basque glissade. Assemblée.”

“Marion, you are leaning backwards!” János barks.

“What the devil are you doing, Marion? You are traveling too much! How can you travel so

far in fouetté?

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János, renowned for being the most demanding ballet teacher in Paris, encourages us to find

our physical, spiritual, and emotional center. Yasmina says he’s a tyrant. She calls him Attila—that’s

from Attila the Hun, a Hungarian chieftain who drove the Roman Empire crazy. But I adore János.

He’s the best. When we’re at the barre, he walks around the floor, stopping to push Marion’s foot

with his cane until it is the correct fifth position, placing his hand on Yvette’s stomach and pulling her

back.

“Your weight must be centered over your feet.”

His sharp eyes miss nothing. “Nani, remember, you are sculpting your body in time.”

He adjusts the arm of Ariana with one hand, while placing the other hand on her hip bone,

until she is level. He makes a slight correction in her wrist and elbow, showing us the Platonic ideal,

the perfection of form. Many girls have trouble attaining the elegant line that János looks for. I work

on it each night moving my arms and hands in front of my mirror.

Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet – Saint Petersberg, Russia – Vaganova.ru

“Yasmina, don’t look at yourself all the time!” János says. When you look at yourself in the

mirror you’re not feeling. If you’re not feeling, you are not dancing.”

Yasmina, being a bit rebellious takes a lot of heat. Yesterday, he said, “Yasmina, I show you a

combination and you talk.”

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Talking is not allowed in class. We approach dance like samurais practicing the art of

swordsmanship. As a dancer I must have the discipline of a warrior. We must sacrifice. We are Spartans

in tights.

I collect János Orosháza’s teachings in my little book, for one day, I will be teaching too.

“We’re in search of the perfect ending,” he says. “When you have a bad ending, you have a bad

beginning.” I must add—it is particularly true of the verticality of my pirouette which I’m working on.

“In your plié, you are the tiger ready to leap.” János means to say that the plié is the source of our

power. It is the wellspring of our magical leaps.

“Everything,” János says, “must have phrasing. Without phrasing, it is nothing.” János tells us that

the difference between an ordinary dancer and a great dancer is musicality. If one doesn’t possess it, one

cannot become a great dancer, that’s why the English ballerina, Margot Fonteyn is wonderful. My theory

is that my body is an instrument interpreting the musical score. I don’t dance to the music, I am the music.

Last spring, I was preparing a variation from Giselle and János stopped me. “What are you doing?”

Giselle – OperaAndBallet.com

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“Well, those are the steps and the counts,” I said.

“We are poets of gesture," he said. "We give meaning to the dance through our gesture. You

must understand what I’m teaching is beyond technique. It’s the feeling of the step…. the spirit of the

step. It’s not just steps and counts. You must break through to the essence. I’m going to dance Giselle

for you.”

He's taught me respect for the music. Music affects me emotionally. A waltz, a polka, a

mazurka is so danceable. They tell me how to move. You can’t rely on one set tempo, for different

conductors have different tempo. You must react upon each occasion to the tempo. That’s what makes

it exciting, you must listen and respond bar by bar to the music. You can’t approach the music in an

intellectual way, but in an emotional way so that you achieve an existential spontaneity. I don’t truly

know what ‘existential’ means, but Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism is the rage in Paris. In fact, it is

the rage in the world. It makes people’s eye brows raise when they hear existentialism from a fourteen-

year-old. The truth is they don’t have any idea what it’s about any more than I do.

“Quatre entrechat quatre. Sissonne faille.”

“Assemblée. Sissonne entrechat.”

In the mirror I could see Yasmina imitating Orosháza. I thought, ‘Oh Yasmina, vous êtes

complètement folle!’

Sure enough, János saw Yasmina in the mirror and strolled along the barre until he was beside

her. He watched her, his body erect, his cane at rest on the floor. Yasmina knew she’d been had.

“Chassé pas de Basque glissade. Assemblée.”

Standing before her, he tapped his cane on the floor. “See me after class.”

After class I waited by the gate for Yasmina. She came out with a chastened look.

“I thought he was going to throw me out,” she said. “But he only asked me if I wasn’t getting

what I wanted out of class. I didn’t know what to say. He said he didn’t want me as a student unless I

was serious about dance.”

“What did you say?”

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“I told him I was sorry. Then I cried.”

“You cried? I can’t believe you cried!”

“It’s hard for me to believe it. But I did. There was something in his eyes I’d not seen before. I

think he likes me. I never realized it. He’s never talked to me before. Céline, I’ve had a change of

heart. He’s not bad. He only has difficulty in showing his feelings. He’s wounded. Teaching is all he

has left.”

“I told you that you were wrong about János. Why don’t you ever listen to me?!”

“Are you still shook up by that beast who attacked you?”

“It’s odd, but I’m just fine. I held him off and tore off his ear. He’s not going to forget that for

a long time. If you hadn’t come running in when you did, I don’t know what would have happened….

maybe tore off both his ears.”

“I’m so sorry, Céline. It would’ve never happened if I hadn’t had the idea of a big party.”

“Don’t feel like it is your fault. You had nothing to do with it. Men don’t respect women.

That’s the fault.”

“I didn’t know half the kids who showed up. If I ever see that salaud again, I’m going to get

someone to take care of him.”

“You were going to tell me something and you didn’t. That happened to you too?”

“Someday I’ll tell you,” she said with an odd look. “Someday…. but not today.” Yasmina

suddenly leaped onto the wall, pirouetted three times and jumped down beside me. “Tomorrow’s a

holiday, let’s do something fun for a change.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s get up with the birds and go to Les Halles.”

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Les Halles, Paris Central Market designed by Victor Baltard – 1853 – 1870 – Marzolino

In the 12th century, King Philippe Auguste enlarged the marketplace and built a shelterfor the merchants. For 800 years the giant steel structure served as the market for grain,fish, meat, and vegetables, providing a center for Parisians to meet. Emile Zola’s novelLe Ventre de Paris called it “the belly of Paris.” Like New York City’s PennsylvaniaStation, a masterpiece of Beaux-Arts style designed by McKim, Mead, and White, andtragically destroyed in 1963, Baltard’s masterpiece Les Halles was dismantled in 1970.

Frenchly

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Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself,

now a god dances within me.

— Frederich Nietzsche

Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev – The Red List

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