black swan: there's somethin' about ballet

 
no, no, no, you're wrong if you think i'm gonna babbling about the movie natalie portman did great in her role as the swan queen in. nope. not at all.

i just need to say that there's something about ballet that even an amateur spectator like me could appreciate. well, i'm not a big fan of ballet -- i think i'd snore if i have to watch the whole act of a ballet show --, let alone a ballet novice. i don't have the slim and delicate figure, nor the elegant and pliancy movements. hey, but i do the taps and the leaps sometimes and i think i did great so far! (in my wildest dream, of course, ha ha)

so, you see when ballerinas dance with their chin up and hair wrap up neatly in a sweet bun high above the head? all their muscles emerge, but not in a rough and masculine way the roman sculptures amaze us. it’s the other way around. they’re so strong yet so weak, very muscular yet so fragile like a porcelain doll and must be light enough to be lifted by a male ballerina (what did you call a male ballerina? a ballerana? T_T). 
 

anyway, i found it’s captivating to see the poses of a ballerina: whether it’s a tap of her flippers on the hard floor, a bend of a body with arms dangling effortlessly in a sophisticated way that you just could imagine they’re stretched away by knots of rope, or very powerful and quick repeated loops with the tutu swings gracefully.   

don’t ever forget the face. the expression of the face: the wrinkle of the eyebrows, the seducing yet menacing look or even the submission stare from the eyes, the pulling of the tip of the lips that depicts a vaguely smile you could just smell her pain…

it’s the feel. the feel’s just there. and it connects the hearts. the hearts of the ballerina on the stage and the audience trapped in their seats, so that they quietly shed tears, or even applauded in a standing ovation by the end of every act.   

and it’s the same feel that arouses the sense to capture the picture of ballet movements i saw in sketches. i know they weren’t perfect. it’s just that i needed to let the hands speak for themselves through the lines of sketches. (well, so sorry for being a narcissist. i’m just a human, and need to exist, in a way or the other. don't we all?)

 don quichotte, des '99

le lac des cygnes (swan lake), des '99

psst, just so you know, to this day, i’m still wondering what those ballet slippers had in their front part. is it steel? or a solid wad of cotton so that ballerina can stand up on their toe without fearing they would broken their toenails and their feet fingers?

you tell me.