Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
Musings of a former ballet dancer who’s returned, years later, to the studio as a student.
The other night I had a ballet dream. Not a dancing onstage kind, or one of those scary ones where you hear your cue but you’re trapped in your dressing room, two floors down, panicking that you’re blowing it. No, in this dream I was an audience member, not a dancer. I’d been allowed access … Read more
Confession time: I didn’t know about the Smuin Ballet until just a few years ago. I knew Michael Smuin’s name from San Francisco Ballet lore, where he’d been a principal dancer, a choreographer, a co-director from 1973 until Helgi Tomasson’s arrival in July 1985. Smuin founded his own company nine years later, by which … Read more
Ballet where you least expect it can be a very fun thing and bring scads of life and levity to an otherwise mundane Monday. Take a peek at these and have a ball. 1) You may be familiar with this first one, circling the Internet for a few months now, starring ABT principal Daniil Simkin, … Read more
Today, September 17th, is my birthday. I am no longer that milestone, easy-to-remember “fifty years old,” I am now “over fifty.” Which, in truth, doesn’t bother me. I am healthy; my body and I get along well. I can still dance, jog, kick-box and pretzel around in yoga. I remember as a kid, how “old … Read more
Story has it, San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Yuan Yuan Tan’s career once hinged on one precipitous toss of a coin (ironically and coincidentally a Chinese yuan). She was ten, born and raised in Shanghai by traditional-minded Chinese parents. Her father was against the idea of her training to become a ballet dancer (too Western, … Read more