Firstly, I must thank Maysa Rose and hitherandyond for my nominations to take part in the ‘3 Days 3 Quote Challenge’. It is my first challenge as a blogger and I thought it would be a great way for A Ballet of Life to start 2017. Through my blog and dance experiences, I always want to encourage and motivate people to find the positive side of situations so the quotes I have chosen will involve the same messages.
Here are the challenge rules:
Thank the blogger who nominated you
Post three quotes each day for three days
Nominate three bloggers per day
Inform the nominees
And here are my quotes for Day I:
Dancing The Sylph in La Sylphide (Photo: Pablo Octávio)
❝You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.❞
Another year passed and a new one begins. Happy New Year everyone!
I hope you all left 2016 feeling content with what last year brought you and leapt into 2017 excited for all the possibilities you can bring to the new year ahead.
I learnt a lot in 2016. Being filled with moments of happiness and times of sadness, it was definitely a year of change and growth, which is what every year should involve. I did not only grow one year older (ouch) but I believe my heart grew larger for the wonderful people I hold close and my brain grew wiser due to tough situations and learning how to handle them correctly. You only learn through experience.
It was a year full of dance, like most of my years are. I was promoted to principle and danced my first premiere in the leading role, both being things I never thought possible. 2016 also came with my first injury and unfortunately that will be something I will have to bring with me into the new year: bones take a long time to heal. May 2017 be the year of healthy bones.
I will happily be carrying my blog with me into the new age. Being something I was very sceptical of at first but now am so deep into the joy of sharing my little life with anyone interested, I am more than thrilled to introduce A Ballet of Life to 2017. I hope it can grow and expand even more in the year to come.
Dancing Kate in Taming of the Shrew (Photo: Admill Kuyler)
A new year is full of potential and will no doubt bring each of us new challenges – offering very different yet very exciting things on the horizon. I want to once again dance my way through the year and am very interested to see what that brings me. I aim to allow all the things I learnt in the year just passed to influence what happens to me in the year at present. I step into January 1st with my point shoes at the ready, all wide-eyed and full of anticipation for what ballet will bring me in 2017.
May your year be full of the things you love most and be brightened by some form of beautiful art too.
🎄I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas filled with love and happiness.🎄
Enjoy your festive season hopefully surrounded by loved ones. I will be dancing this evening along with my fellow colleagues spreading the dancing joy of The Nutcracker.
Have a wonderful day where ever you are and remember to be grateful for the most wonderful time of the year.
A few weeks ago I was asked by Alex if I would like to take part in her interview series about young creatives and their way of life for her blog page ‘Alex In Allem’, and of course, very flattered I said yes.
It was a great experience to work with her interesting questions and in the end, I found answering them showed me how much I have learnt through my life and helped me see my life as it is now. It was a really good exercise for me to express my past experiences and question my future ones. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Find below the link to the interview – originally in English but translated into German for her page (a treat for all my German friends):
How is it already the second week of December? My advent calendar is slowly emptying, snow has already fallen, Christmas markets are buzzing like always, and as the days tick towards the 25th (24th here in Germany), the music of the much-loved ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ is filling theatres all over the world and Karlsruhe is no exception. Tis’ the season to be jolly and what better way to get in the festive mood than dressing up as a snowflake and jumping out of giant presents.
We have been dancing Youri Vámos’s ‘The Nutcracker – A Christmas Story’ since the first year I joined the company. The storyline combines the original Nutcracker with Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. It was actually the first premier I experienced back in 2010. I had just graduated from the Royal Ballet School, and after performing my last Grand Defile with the school and a night celebrating with fellow classmates for the last time, I flew to Karlsruhe to spend a week with the company while they started learning the ballet.
The Royal Ballet Grand Defile in 2010, the day my classmates & I graduated from the Upper School (I am in red, 5th from the front)
A few weekends ago I was lucky enough to have my sister visit me for a few days so I thought it was the perfect time for me to introduce her to my story. Having known me for all my life and me being her much-awaited baby sister, and her my exemplary big sister, we are definitely two peas in a pod.
Growing up together Rebecca and I were very happy, busy girls. After school, our evenings were full of many hobbies and activities. You name it we did it. At the age of three, I joined my sister for ballet, tap, and jazz classes every Saturday with Lynn McCheyne. It was actually not something I loved at first, only doing it because my sister did, so we never imagined that chubby little Harriet would become a professional ballerina.
With the premiere of Peter Schaufuss‘s La Sylphide at the end of the week, things are really coming together and getting exciting. We had a few dress rehearsals last week and I had the unexpected chance to dance the Sylphide.
A beautiful painting like picture taken during a dress rehearsal (Photo: Flavio Salamanka)
Originally being the third cast for the main role and just coming back from injury, I was not expecting to be dancing it for a while. But things changed when Peter asked how I felt about giving it a go in the next day’s run through. I was feeling good and knew the role pretty well so why not. With this ballet, there is surprisingly no pas de deux choreography so it is very easy to mix up the casts. Peter told us he wanted to change the dancers around so we all had the chance to dance and he also had the chance to see us in each role.
After the run, they were happy enough to give me another chance to rehearse it again the next day on stage. This rehearsal also went well and it was beautiful to dance with the live orchestra, which always brings another depth to the piece. I was then surprised last Monday morning when Peter set the cast for the first dress rehearsal and I would dance the Sylph. Continue reading “How a Fairy Gets Her Wings: An Unexpected Chance to Fly”→
As a dancer, there are so many perks to my job it is hard not to love it. I am able to do something I am so passionate about that also encourages me to constantly develop and learn. So considering all these positive aspects of a life as a dancer I wouldn’t want to choose the most important, but at the end of the day, the main goal in this profession is to put on a show. Everything I do, from training and rehearsing to eating well and taking care of my body, is all for that. I love many elements of my work but performing has to be the best part of the job.
Just the fact that after all your hard work there is an audience applauding for you. Who wouldn’t want that? It is truly a great feeling. And for me, it is not the only part that brings me the joy. With every performance I have done, and mainly when dancing principal roles, I marvel at the thought of having taken people to a different world, if only for a couple of hours. From their ordinary lives, they are transported into a place filled with beautiful music and beautiful movement; all the hardship or struggles of life can be forgotten about. And being on stage takes me to that same place with them. This is what makes it so much fun. I can take myself to another world where I really become the character I am dancing. Continue reading “Perform With Your Heart, Not Your Feet”→
A Ballet of Life 