Over Spring Break, I went to see the ballet in Philadelphia. Their production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” was absolutely magnificent.
The dancers were so graceful it was as if their bodies were nothing more than water flowing effortlessly from one movement to another. I have always been captivated by ballet, even more so than my intense love of anything and everything musical theatre.
Whenever I go watch a ballet, it is an experience for me. It blends my love of music and dance, and it becomes something awe-inspiring for me. In fact, just last week I realized that I held my breath during some points of the performance, completely entranced by the way the dancers moved as if gravity didn’t exist and there was nothing tethering their feet to the polished stage floor.
Some people think that you have to be an artistic intellectual to enjoy arts like musical theater and ballet. They think that a normal person wouldn’t be able to understand the symbolisms that underlie these types of artistic productions. Both of these beliefs are completely incorrect.
Any person can enjoy a theater production or ballet. Take me for example. I am an avid theatergoer and I’ve dabbled in acting in elementary, middle, and high school. However, I adore ballet but have never taken dance classes or did ballet professionally.
You can know nothing about an art form and still enjoy it. It is the actors and dancers’ jobs to make us feel emotions and leave us breathless when their performance hits home for us in a certain way.
No one gets to dictate how we interpret those emotions but ourselves.
The Arts are not something to be gatekept by the upper classes of society. The Arts are available to everyone. One of my professors runs a theater studio for low-income and disadvantaged kids to experience what it is like to be a part of a theater production.
Being a part of a play or musical can teach kids responsibility, unlock their creativity, and show them how to regulate their emotions both on the stage and off. Her theater studio gives access to the Arts for free so that children can benefit from all the life skills that come from participating in an artistic production, whether it be a children’s play or a dance workshop.
The best thing about the Arts is that it does not rely on your brain, it relies on your heart. You do not need to be brilliant to follow the plot of a play. You only need to understand how the play makes you feel, because if the actors are doing their jobs their performances will make you feel things. You will come away from that play with more than what you came in with.
Life is confusing and sometimes we are unsure of where to go next. The Arts answers that question. Its plethora of plays, musicals, orchestra and symphony pieces and dance choreographies have themes that cover every possible situation you can come across in your life.
Death, grief, love, sadness, happiness — the moments are all there waiting to be seen by you in a dark theater.
The Arts help us understand our lives when we are confused about them, and since everyone has been unsure in their lifetimes at least once, the Arts can speak to anyone from the socialite to the college student.