Alonso: how to defy age in one difficult lesson
Alicia Alonso is a Cuban ballerina who has defied time. Her early career took place in this country, but she returned to Cuba after Castro came to power and he rewarded her by treating Alonso and her company very well.
The first and only time I saw her dance in person was in the 1970s, when Alonso was already in her 50s and way past her prime. I did not like her dancing; I found her style mannered, old-fashioned, and nearly frozen with control. She had an eerie masklike face and a somewhat ferocious look.
But the following video of Alonso is extraordinary. It features the dancer in performances from several different years, doing the identical allegro section of a variation from Act II of the Romantic ballet “Giselle.”
In this scene Alonso is supposed to be the spirit of the dead Giselle, dancing without regard to gravity or exhaustion. Remember as you watch it that Alonso was born in December of 1920, which would make her seventy-two or seventy-three in the last clip in the video. I had to keep re-doing the math to make sure I was not mistaken about that, because such a feat does not seem humanly possible.
I can personally attest to the fact that performing this series of jumps at this rate of speed is extraordinarily taxing for even a young dancer. The legs feel as though they’ve turned to lead about halfway through, and the heart is pounding. That Alonso is still doing this at her age is beyond belief. Yes, in these later years Alonso has lost quite a bit of height in her jump, and her feet are not as pointed and well-articulated as before. But her upper body still floats above the flurry of the feet below, relaxed and graceful as in her younger days.
Oh, and one more little fact: for Alonso’s entire dancing career she has been partially blind, and completely without peripheral vision.
Here’s the video:
Have never been an aficionado of ballet (never gave it much of a chance) but damn! that was impressive. Double damn! – at that age. I just can’t believe it. I’m going to have to ruminate over this one.
pretty amazing actually. Good genes combined with all that dancing sure as heck must keep you in shape. Surprised Michael Moore didn’t use these clips in “Sicko”
One of my classmates is a relative of Maya Plisetskaya. He told me that once he visited her and drank tea with her. There was a bowl of candies on the table; she took a candy, cut it in half by a knife and eat only one half of a candy during all the evening. This was her ration for the second half of the day for decades. She is a legend – not only for millions of her fans, but for her family, too. “I always heard that on this planet never existed another person with such self-discipline as Aunt Maya”, – he told me.
I was a friend of one professional ballerina a few years ago. She ate like a horse but weighed very little. I have to believe that she was anorexic or bulemic or both. All skin and bone and muscle.
She had regular appointments with the chiropractor.. She told me that the first time she went to a new chiropractor, he thought he broke her when he pushed her leg into a direction he thought was impossible. His first ballerina patient nearly gave him a heart attack.
Truly, this is amazing. Thank you!
It is painful to watch. In the last 4-5 clips she’s the opposite of graceful weightless spirit of Giselle.
A rare quality, especially in ballet divas – an ability to quit on time.
Tatyana, Why? Why quit on time? Never understood that sentiment. Why quit doing something you love? More to the point — how do you quit when the desire for something (dancing in this case) seems infused into every cell of your being. No one is forced to watch or pay to see the lesser, older Alonso. Are you not impressed, at all, with the physical ability — at that age. I am a good deal younger than Ms. Alonso but it wouldn’t surprise me if she were still around to dance on my grave – if she wanted to. If she were generous enough to take requests I’d ask for this very same dance from Giselle.
Because she’s not just an athlete – she is an artist. For an artist his/her art – the essence of art, the spirit, the concept, the content – not the personal issues of the practitioner of art – is the priority.
She has an obligation to Dance. When nothing left but the physical ability (which, after certain age, is indicative more of a will power than of the joy of movement) to perform technically difficult tasks – and even in that, it’s more of a carnival freak value than aesthetic perfection (oh, look, she’s like a 100 yo and she can still fuete like a freshface!) – it’s a betrayal of art. Vanity, the custom of being admired. The cynicism of a marionette, devoid of feeling she is supposed to arouse in her audience by her art. The demagoguery.
GeoPal: she wouldn’t be able to perform on your grave: the grade is not flat and the pointe is arthritic. Unless you have a taste for macabre jokes.
Besides: how, if you’re an artist of world caliber, you want to be remembered? As a star in her prime, gracious, light as a feather, a weightless dreamlike vision, a legend – or a harpy clinging to her past fame, with a masklike face and lead in her joints, an obstacle to the young and idealistic?
Tatyana, I am skeptical of the “betrayal of art” stuff. Art is subjective. I can see and understand an aficionado not being in the least bit impressed and seeing the vanity — there is that, I admit. It seems, however, that you go too far with “demagoguery” and “harpy”. I will leave you to stand up for the purity of it all but the pendulum of demagoguery and harpy swings both ways i.e. for artist/performance and audience/critic.
I, and I suspect most every fan, is quite capable of remembering the “great” without having it tarnished by over the hill or past prime performances.
Finally, you take things too literally. Were my figurative “dancing on my grave” ever to see the light of your literal objections, rest assured I am ready to make all necessary arrangements to provide for the proper grade and anything else required – no macabre for me, thank you.
Oh! One more thing Tatyana, you said:
“nothing left but the physical ability (which, after certain age, is indicative more of a will power than of the joy of movement)”
As someone who can see “old” on the horizon I am quite aware that I no longer move as I did when I was in my twenties. I assure you though, I have a greater joy of movement now than I did then. Knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it seems to have intensified the joy.
I can see “old” on the horizon, too, but I wouldn’t compare myself to a professional ballerina while talking of ease and joy of movement. We, ordinary people, are in totally different class from the creatures of the stage.
Dancers, especially classical ballet dancers, are physical wrecks at 50 – that’s a rule. People like Alonso are exceptions – they go on purely on willpower. Which is an admirable quality, from a pov of observer of human athletic achievement. But not from a balletophile.
I don’t think I go too far with “demagoguery”: listen to her pontificating about High Art while blocking some young talent’s opportunity to shine – merely by her own outdated presence on stage! As to harpy – well, I don’t (and I can’t) have any solid proof, it’s just my intuitive impression. But I’m sure of it.
Art has higher purpose than just technical perfection. Dance conveys something more to the viewer than the beauty of high jump and persistence of 32 fuete. What I see in that video is a freak show, you – a worthy model of endurance. To each his own.
Isn’t the demagoguery you hear just the nature of the beast. Alright, not beast – artist. Seems to me artists of such a high order are all pretty much the same. Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi could demagogue with the best of them. They would have killed each other if it wouldn’t have interfered with their careers.
The video of Alonso dancing the same steps over the years/ages was not meant to inspire, it was meant to compare, and to make non balletophiles marvel at the physicality. Freak show is just harsh.
Tatyana, et. al.: you might enjoy reading this post, a version of the discussion you’re having here.
really great ones made up for it in artistry, often exhibiting a growth in spirit and the ability to convey something meaningful through their art. In the end, they transcended technique.
Exactly, *neo.
Plisetskaya did it. I don’t think Alonso did.
Sorry, poetry in English bores me to tears; Yeats lost me on a second stanza.
Neo, first Giselle and now Yeats “Sailing To Byzantium”. I feel as though I’m getting a schooling – and I’m liking it. I can only hope this election cycle and its immediate aftermath ends quickly so I can experience more such pleasantness and culture. More of this just may turn me into a pleasant, cultured man.
“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing”
By all means, if any of “it” still remains, then sing and dance. I don’t have to watch or listen but if I want to it’s there for me and that’s the way the world should be.
Tatyana: I agree about Alonso. Even in clips of her earlier work, she wasn’t my cup of tea as a dancer.
That said, I admire her tremendous tenacious strength and sheer will.
Tatyana: too bad about the English poetry. That poem by Yeats, IMHO, is unbelievably beautiful.
How you feel about Yeats is how I feel about Pushkin in translation. But he must be great in the original.
I also was planning to work the song “Mr. Bojangles” into the post (another aging dancer, of a different type) but in the end I tossed that part.
I might felt different about Yeats in translation: Russian school of translation is much better than American; I discovered many authors that I read in youth and childhood were better translated into Russian; I read Bradbury, for example, and Vonnegut in original about 5-6 years ago – and they are way inferior to their translator’s interpretation.
English phrases sound clumsy and unmusical to me even rhymed. No subtlety. No secondary rhythm. No poetry.
The glaring paradox of Russian school of translation is that most of it was not translation at all, but an original, creative literature disguised as translation to fool government censorship. The greatest masters were denied right to publish and were tolerated by party bosses only as translators. Some Russian literators even invented non-existent British and American writers in order to publish their own poems as “translations”.
Sergey – and this is supposed to be news to me? Or you’re trying to “educate the public”?
It’s touching, really, how someone with 5 kids (or is it 10?), three professions, 7 diplomas, an alien wife, who lives in Moscow (not an easiest locale to day-to-day survival), manages to find time and energy to enlighten us here, million miles away. And do it so regularly, in every thread on this blog. As if it’s another job. As if he’s being paid.
I have absolutely zero interest in ballet, but I watched the video. I’m certainly not competent to comment on the merits of the dancer.
I’d just like to say that this is yet another wonderful thing about the internet. In the past, balletophiles would watch performances and discuss and critique them. Non-balletophiles wouldn’t be involved in any way. They wouldn’t see the performances or read the discussions.
But now we can. Thanks to the internet, anybody can. Someone in the most remote backwater of the world might see this, and be inspired to take an interest in ballet. You never know.