This 13-year-old ballet dancer …
… named Chloe Helimet has a lovely lyrical upper body for her age, and a calm presence. The variation she’s dancing is harder than it looks because the slow tempo requires so much control. Her feet are unusually flexible, which makes them extra-beautiful by today’s aesthetic standards. But such feet are often weaker than less flexible ones, and in my day people with that kind of foot used to wear large strong elastics to hold them back a tiny bit:
I’m not a fan of ballet competitions, which tend to emphasize technique and more technique. They have spread tremendously and taken hold over the last few decades, helping make dance into more of a sport and much less of an art.
But this girl is actually phenomenal, and she has fairly mature artistry as well. I discovered her again and realized it was the same girl as in the previous video – I recognized her feet. Her father was a major soloist for the San Francisco Ballet (now retired), and my guess is that he and his wife – whom I believe is also a dancer; both are from Estonia but have been in England and then the US for many decades – have been her coaches and perhaps teachers. I have never seen such wonderful port de bras (arms) by a dancer this young. Nor have I ever seen such a calm center in slow movements, or maturity of expression and lyricism. She is better than a great many adult soloists these days in terms of artistic expression, highly unusual because it usually develops late.
Here is her dad, who is an excellent dancer also:
I was mesmerized by her arms! Then finally I looked at her feet – goodness, I see what you mean by “unusually flexible.”
Thank you for these posts. My wife was a professional dancer with the Pacific Northwest Ballet in her youth, and these posts help me gain some perspective on her experiences. Sadly, her parents’ divorce led to her quitting that tract…though I probably wouldn’t have met her had she continued.
I’ve never been one for ballet, but I cannot deny the beauty of these dances, and I greatly enjoyed seeing Baryshnikov in White Nights.
Thank you so much for bringing this remarkable young woman to our lives–what a treat! I try to learn from your ballet posts Neo: I have become aware of the arms and fuertes(SP?) and neck. Her feet are lovely. I have so much yet to learn ! Would you please take a moment to explain why the audience claps several times during this performance? Thank you again
Thanks for this–nice change. Yes, Tiit Helimets is Estonian:
https://estonianworld.com/culture/artist-of-the-week-tiit-helimets-san-francisco-national-ballet/
Baryshnikov was also from one of the Baltic states (Latvia).
Here’s a charming video of Helimets teaching five-year-old Chloe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO469tQ6iL4
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” and “Oy!” The essence of ballet in four words. Watching her father dance, you can see where she got her technique.
Anne:
I can’t tell you why the clapping occurred at those points because I don’t know. It seemed rather random to me because nothing that unusual was happening right then. My guess is that the members of the audience who were clapping were somewhat unsophisticated as far as ballet was concerned, and something had happened to impress them, but I don’t know what.
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Love her arms through finger tips. So fluid, like a gentle wave on the inside of a cove.
Slow point always impresses me. There was this gal in college who was steady as a gyroscope on one tip. Blew me away how long she just hold it.
Thanks again.
}}} helping make dance into more of a sport and much less of an art.
I’m going to take issue with the usage of “sport” here, Neo.
A competition, yes, certainly, and this, I think, is your issue with them, and rightfully.
But in “sport” the winner is decided by fairly purely objective criteria (e.g., “How many goals were scored?”). This conflation of the two is common, but is an error.
Ballet competitions almost certainly devolve onto the interpretations of judges, with some objective criteria applied, but it still comes down to the fact that the exact same competition, before a wholly different set of judges, could end up with radically different set of scores, depending on the judges’ personal biases. I’m sure that is not supposed to happen, but we all know it can and sometimes does.
Sometimes the judges are even politically biased, in the sense that there is a clear front runner, who might be threatened to be upset by a newcomer, buuuuut judges shave points from the newcomer just to make sure the front runner wins, because whoever is running things has a vested interest in the front runner winning. Does not always happen, but it can.
While watching that first video I was reminded of the recent post about the more gentle historical pointe shoes… Most of the variations went up briefly and then came down, as in the historical clip… I assume she is not en pointe very much because she is young.
I am also pretty certain that her centeredness and calm is related to having parents in the business.
OBloody:
No, the competition aspect has zero to do with my objection. My objection is that dance competitions focus more and more on extreme technique at the expense of artistry. That’s a sad tendency in ballet in recent years anyway, but competitions encourage it further and further.
This young lady is charming, although my all time favorite of your posts is still Carla Fracci.
I understand your objections to competitions and sympathize with them, however, without knowing anything about how they are structured, wouldn’t ballet competitions give dancers the opportunity to rehearse and perform roles that they would not otherwise be assigned? I can see that being a reason for their popularity.
Another question for you – is puberty as hard on a ballerina as it is on a figure skater?
Molly Brown:
A lot of the ballet competitions are for kids who are quite young and shouldn’t really be performing except in recitals or as kids in Nutcracker, and who are encouraged by their teachers and by competitions to perform in a manner that is gymnastic rather than balletic. These kids have physical talent and generally are hyperflexible, but are being taught ugly extreme lines minus artistry. They often look tense. Gymnastics and ballet are very different and have different aesthetic appeals, and now the line is blurred between the two, with ballet all too often turning into something like gymnastics.
Puberty can be hard, but not always. It depends on the body type.
@ Hubert > ” Watching her father dance, you can see where she got her technique.”
The video of her father was delightful, he was really very good.
I also enjoyed your link of young Chloe’s lesson. I could see that her father was already shaping the use of her arms that Neo complimented, and also getting her used to partnering, which I suspect most beginning children do not experience before at least late teens.
And having Daddy doing lifts like that is always fun!
AF: yes, I noticed his work on her arms as well. Clearly, it paid off later.
I’m no expert (understatement of the year), but: judging by the clips and posts that Neo has shared over the years, it seems that dancers trained in the Russian/Soviet tradition have better overall carriage and dramatic comportment in addition to excellent technique. It seems to be a big part of their training.