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Josephine Jewkes,
What Dancers do on Holiday | |||||||
Josephine Jewkes, dancer with Rambert and formerly an ENB Principal, writes each month on the "dancing life". This was first published in August 1997.As I am enjoying that happy state at this very moment, I feel this is the perfect time to answer such a burning question. The short answer is of course "the same as the rest of the population" ie 1) eat a lot (contrary to popular belief dancers are like locusts, it is the dancing that keeps us slim) 2) drink a lot (though this can be applicable during seasons as well, the Russians in particular believing in the medicinal powers of a bottle of vodka: drink half and rub the other half all over the body. Mm-hm) 3) sleep a lot - however late morning class is scheduled (the usual time is around 10.15 am - it always feels like the crack of dawn to us) 4) sunbathe - ballet dancers take particular pleasure in this as Ballet Directors have a nasty habit of issuing suntanning embargoes during tours to sunny climes as the programmes inevitably include a 'white act' (ie hordes of women in skimpy white tutus under a blue light) and pinky-brown toasted swans turn a stomach-churning shade of purple under the blue light which all the wet-white body pancake in the world will not cover. The men meanwhile head for the beach) 5) last but not least....... Yes, plenty of that, it is nice to have the energy for a change. The longer answer is that although a rest is devoutly longed-for by tired bodies and minds, I find from my own experience that I become restless after a few days, and always have in the back of my mind the physical pain and ego-damage involved in the slow process of honing a jelly-like figure back to its former blood-sweat-and tears shape. When I was a member of ENB I saw holidays as a grand chance to take private lessons and improve my work. My coach, Maria Fay, worked carefully with me, concerned that I did not stress my body overmuch and open myself up to fatigue-related injuries, especially mid-season when my body started to need a real holiday.
Now superficially injury-times may seem like mini-holidays but in fact they are stressful and confidence-crushing periods when one cannot shop (for example!) because walking aggravates the foot/knee/hip/back, and time is spent taxiing back and forth from physiotherapy/osteopathy/ massage/faith healing - delete as applicable - and then the rest of it is taken up trying to keep the remains of the sagging edifice (mental and physical) from crumbling entirely. This is by dint of exercising the uninjured bits, lying on the living room floor and then, upon finishing, wrapping a bag of frozen peas around the injury to reduce the swelling caused by 'just trying it' every five minutes to see if it has healed yet. (Not to mention the footbaths, the lotions, the potions etc.) So, injury-time does not equal holiday time. QED. Back to the real McCoy: if a dancer holidays in the vicinity of another ballet company he/she may well drop in and do the occasional class, this being the dancer's equivalent of a coffee-morning. The professional dance world is very small and it is rare not to know someone or someone-who-knows-someone. I am here in Denmark visiting my fiancée Tim Almaas who is ballet-master for the newly constituted 'Peter Schaufuss Ballet' in Holstebro' and so it is natural for me to join in two or three classes a week. But in order for this not to feel like a busman's holiday, on the other days I am retaining my sanity and my fitness by making good use of the beautiful 50m local pool by adapting the usual swimming strokes to emphasise the muscle-use that I need. This involves plenty of breast-stroke with the shoulders down so as to use the deep muscles in the back instead of building bulk on top of the shoulders. I also use the legs as fully as possible, making sure I glide forward with the inner thighs and calves well stretched and pulled together thereby giving the ideal chat-up line to poolside Lotharios ("Hi there, are you a dancer?"). There's more: a couple of lengths of normal flipper stroke (crawl) but without the arms gives the hamstrings plenty to complain about, and then for variety I flip onto my back for lengths of backstroke and frog-legs. Swimming under water is excellent for breath control and then there is a whole range of ballet barre movements which gain added benefit and novelty value from pushing against the water's resistance. (The swimming pool is an essential aid to me when recovering from an injury as I like to do my first tentative jumps cushioned by the buoyancy of the water for such sudden weight-bearing movements as these). There is also an excellent gym here in Holstebro' haunted by brown men with improbably bulging muscles and if I could just pin one of them down (so to speak) then I too could learn to..... Well, no, maybe not. There is in fact an excellent system called Pilates which many dancers now use. The exercises are designed to balance and tone rather than to build bulk, and weights of only about 2.5 Kg are used just to provide some resistance. This is all very worthy but a little too much like hard work on holiday, though I do do a couple of my 'favourite' sets of exercises at intervals throughout the holiday, still at the back of my mind being the moment of truth in front of those unforgiving studio mirrors...... (Did I mention the heavenly Danish ice-cream?) This may all seem remarkably virtuous of me, but some of my Rambert colleagues have been even busier. Several of them have taught three classes a day during Rambert's Summer School, and Vincent Redmon taught repertoire and danced in a collaborative project in Thailand. For some of them, coming back to Rambert will be a relief! All work and no play would make dull people indeed and so I personally relish the chance to bring out my sketchpad and oil pastels at last, as well as walk in the lovely countryside, fish up some supper, go to art galleries, lie on the beach, read, read, read and shop, shop, shop 'til my credit card drops. | ||||||||
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