Baryshnikov about Pushkin

Baryshnikov talking about one of the best classical ballet masters of all times: Alexander Pushkin.
Watching this video reminds me of my first steps in dance and as I started learning the craft at the Classical Ballet Conservatoire at the age of 5 years old.
When I was 16 years old, ready to choose to become a professional classical dancer, I left behind Classical Ballet and never looked back because I knew, by then, that art might have been my essential base but was not my CALLING.

Classical ballet was too conservative and restrictive for me. You could not go out of the stipulated structure or move your body in any way it felt. You had to obbey and accept the movement others would impose and I was never good at obedience...

Since I had begun learning ballet, I felt caged into a golden prison where beauty and pain mixed together in a very alluring and dangerous way.
I wanted to be free and faithful to my wild nature and my teachers often complained I didn t control my hips and hands (I wonder from where did it come from! Hmmmm....any guesses?).

I didn t decide NOT to be a professional classical ballet dancer with anger or sadness, although I cried like a baby everytime I watched ballet pieces after that, but I remained loving it in silence, from far...searching for my TRUE mission in dance which ended up being Oriental Dance.

This video also reminds me of the discipline, hard work and humbleness I was taught into. Those are gifts from my past and I am deeply grateful for them.
If I still dance classical ballet?
Sure I do.
Often alone, as a personal training no one, except my own critical mirror, watches. It s a memory lane trip and keeps me rooted, flexible, connected with the place I first learned from.

And yes, I still cry every time I see a good classical ballet performance. I cry due to the emotion - if the dancers are good - and due to my own longing and memories of a full past at the barre repeating and repeating a certain movement or combination until it was what others considered PERFECT.

I came from a world where BEAUTY and artistry cannot be achieved without pain and arrived to Oriental Dance where hard work is always combined with pleasure and never going against my body s nature and instincts. It has been quite a ride!

So many things a dancer is made of...so many.
Yet this was my womb and you always return to the womb.