Isabelle Ciaravola, Étoile, Opéra de Paris: An Interview (Part 3), April 5th, 2023

In case you have not read the first part and second part of this interview, just scroll down the Blog respectively to May 30th and June 12th, 2023.

(or click on “Content” and “Just for the record”)

„I cannot resist, Isa, to make another question: We all know that we are aging from day to day, we know that we are getting any younger, but do you think that, when regarding a personage, you would do something different than you did before?"

„Of course!", comes the answer straight away.

And once more, I cannot help but think of the „lockdown times", which we all experienced three years ago when we were for the first time shot down at home. I restarted reading books. As time was „enough" to cope with it, I decided to reread some classics such as „Anna Karenina", „War and Peace", „Romeo and Juliet", „Macbeth" and so on. Books I had read when in my late teens – because they were an essential part of education – and „some years/decades" later, I could understand them differently... for a 17-year-old like me, „Anna" was an interesting book which you could never really identify with – even if you thought so at the time – but without a comprehension of love, disillusionment, sadness, betrayal, disappointments, how could we understand what Tolstoy had written?"

„I can understand you completely, Ricardo. I feel that now that I am older. The body is aging but the way we are thinking, our maturity is much more natural. We feel and understand things differently. As you said about the books. It is perhaps even easier to understand and „give life" to a character. For a dancer, the tragedy of the matter is that the point at which you reach the best of your technique leveled with your maturity is not a long one. The gist of the matter is that we understand things better but the body doesn't anymore... But that is a fact of life!"

And once more I think of attitude's „slogan": It's about looking at things differently...

"Let us now make a "jump", a real "Grand jeté" to the present times and your occupation now. You are teaching at Conservatoire and I would like to know a bit more about how you are working, feeling. About your "visions" as a teacher – because, as I know you, your work was not always filled with "visions" but surely nowadays, with all your experience and knowledge, you can give even "more wings" to this, let's call it, creativity, tenderness and love and respect to the Arts. I can think of all that you giving to the children and the many connections with your career... but also with that bog heart that I know that you have and, well, yes... "

"I did not think about that for our interview, so let's very spontaneously think of where are getting to", she says with a huge smile that plainly shows me that her "gray cells" (as Agatha Christie's "Poirot" would have expressed himself) are working, "First I have to say that at the Conservatoire, I have the last level... so, my girls are finishing school, and will soon be working professionally – they are not children or so young anymore, between 17 and 19 or 20, and even if they are still "kids" for you and I, I must say that I do not like to work with very, very young people, you know?"

And I had once more to think: "Yes, I see. I know"

But she continues " If they are 9 or 10 years old, I must confess, that it is not my job. Now, at this point of their education, and it is quite an important one. At the end of this year, they will have their diplomas, their "certificats" and then they must get auditions in companies. From now on there is no school anymore and they must find jobs – not only because of artistic fulfillment but also to support them financially. After "me", or after my time with them, they will not be considered students anymore!", she adds with some joy.

"You see, Ricardo, apart from the things that one can "pick up", for me a very important part of my job is to find out their characters as dancers and the need of differentiating each dancer. I do not like when everybody is the same, like robots... "

"Valuing each personality, right?"

"Yes", she laughs "and this means that I have a lot to do, I like that, not to keep them in the same scheme, not giving the same pattern to all of them but individually – or giving advice which may not suit them or portray correctly the real side of their characters... But communicating their emotions; this is the real challenge. The delicacy that is required for one spectator in the audience to completely understand something that the dancer is trying to say is the real "test". If this does not happen, they will, as Artists, never ever want to change or try new things that may challenge them. It is also not the "easiest way"; to try to change, reduce, add, and accentuate your interpretation, and adapt it to your body and movements. It is a very personal matter!"

"...and“, she adds as if talking of a very personal experience „there's nothing as difficult as to be presented to your personality, flaws and all", I say.

"I see that very often when I go teaching in other places. I see the students, sometimes like robots, with no fluidity", and while saying this she gives me her own reading of arm positions, which indicate and translate words and terms like "all the same", and "all equal" like in a Radio City Musical Hall chorus line, like in a factory in China and, let's be honest, like in a Vaganova-oriented Ballet Class. No individuality“ (Note: If you fit into the idea of the requirements asked in a Vaganova school, it's all right. But if you do not, they will never help you find your personality...). Apart from that, from what Isabelle is saying, I am fascinated by this "private performance" that I am getting all to myself and by myself. Fascinating moments when we get so deep into a talk. All of a sudden I feel happy and proud and honoured to have this chance of witnessing that. I am lucky.

She is so much in her element, that she continues with a description of how their (the students') own visions of the movements are missing, what the music is bringing them as an inspiration. Before I get very rigid about that, I want them to be on the music, to "play" with this music, to breathe with it... "

"This is incredible – we are just connecting the thoughts, of which you have spoken in our first interviews and of the times while you still were dancing, with the thoughts, visions, targets, and challenges that you are facing now. It all makes so much sense to me! I remember you saying that music was always so important to you!"

"Yes, and it is not only important but also the most difficult to manage. If you wish to accentuate a certain movement, which means emotion, stretching it longer, or maintaining, extending a passé, you definitely have to work with your mind, spirit, musical and physical knowledge. You have to know how to play with the music. Inside you."

"Definitely", I think.

"When with my students, I am sometimes happy, watching their performances. But even then I cannot concentrate just on steps that perhaps are so wonderfully executed. I want them to take me into their „world“, you know? This is a big part of my work. They are quite young and this is also sometimes quite difficult. I remember it in my days. The issues of technicality tormented me. The thoughts that go through our minds during a performance. That quick pirouette or that, sometimes not logical change of directions, etc. I love working with arms. It is the same with the music itself. Sometimes arms and music are being used separately. They are using arms but the reason for the movements must come from the heart. No automatic movements that you do not enjoy doing. You must enjoy it all, every joint... and, I hate that, they don't work with their hands", and once more she shows me during this private performance, how the hand can look like as if they were "dead“, and I nearly have to laugh „or on the contrary, when hands are too full of tension!", which makes me think of some well known classic dancers whose hands look like as if they were just coming from a "Matt Mattox Jazz Dance training", a style I have always personally disliked, "It must be fluid, it must flow. Through the whole body. This is it!"

We jump into a quick conversation about Maya Plissetskaya and the sources of her arm movements, which I saw once in Rio during "La Morte du Cygne", that, you could clearly see, were coming from the lower back. Unforgettable. The arms were moving but the whole body was in motion.

"Now, Isa, I like to call you like that, there comes the "gist of the matter": Do you think that this lack of understanding about movements, the way they were meant to be, the inability to feel them, is also a question of the "times" in which we are living? Let me put it another way: the "Spectrum" in which they now behave is so much more limited because their minds are so "frozen", trying to "go online and connect to" just a physical side of dance? I have seen performances with Cuban Dancers in Munich which I could not believe. They were obviously bored to death and just "woke up" when they had their turn to execute, like robots, Pirouettes, Tours en l'air, Manéges, etc. How do you see that?"

" I see what you mean... and also because of the Internet. Does it block our understanding of things? I remember working with different coaches in very different roles. When they showed something, my perception made me immediately want to "steal" the movements from them. Why? Because I understand, identify with them... Nowadays, people, sometimes, cannot look past their noses, they simply don't "see". But, thank God, not everybody is like that!"

"This gives me so much to think about. Also about the way, the bodies are working nowadays. I see degagés that are being strongly worked from the hips instead of caressing and using the floor. It has nothing to do with intelligence but is a question, a matter of time. And we cannot deny that times have become more and more superficial. This is not only in Ballet but it reflects on Ballet like in anything else!"

She does not need to reflect for a single second and comments "I see this now, too! How we used to work very fast, jump, do petite batterie, pointe exercises so fast... Now, it is all so slow. We are trying at the Conservatoire to "revive" this – it is such a "French" thing to execute things quickly, extremely fast – so we are working on this, also to have them "clean" and work on the musculature of their ankles (Editor's note: A practice that was standard in the past) but has now to be "awaken" again! Quick, fast, faster, and then soft, slow landings... this contrast!"

"The only word I can think of while you are saying all this, dear, is poetry!", I had to mention.

"I love to employ this word too! But to this, you have to listen to and love the music!"

"And there we come again to the same thing we talked about in the first part of our interview. It all makes even more sense to me. Reading the music and its phrases and adapting them to your body, as you just mentioned "landing", is such a beautiful example because it requires such flexibility, not only physically but also inside the music score. You "gave us all the biggest wake-up call". Because of the lack of, let's use the same example, „flexibility on the landing just after a piqué arabesque“: It is given because this lack of flexibility, which ceased to be existent in every aspect of our present times"

Let us think about that.

Thank you, Isa, for letting me trespass the boundaries of your World. What a beautiful World!

Ricardo Leitner

a t t i t u d e

April, 2023

As a “Post Scriptum”, I would like to tell a short story: Talking to a dear friend from The Corps of the Vienna State Opera, Alaia Rogers-Maman, I happened to mention that I was interviewing Isabelle (and having a wonderful time) and all of a sudden she screamed : “What? I can’t believe it..”

Being taken by surprise, I could only say “Why?” and then she proceeded to tell me HER part of the story. “You know, Ricardo, when I was still at the Royal Ballet School, I was planning to audition for a job at the company here in Vienna. During quite a long period, I took the train every week-end from London to Paris to be coached - but none other than Isabelle. She helped me immensely, in fact she helped me getting the job here and guess what: she did for free, as a present to me, she gave me her time, her thoughts, her care, her knowledge. Love. I will be eternally grateful to her!”

Yes, I thought, not only the contribution to the world of Dance as a brilliant, beautiful Dancer, not only the contribution now as a fine teacher but that “icing on the cake” called Generosity. Yes. What a beautiful character trait. I need say no more. Just that I came to the conclusion that the single beauty she portrays on stage comes from the inside. Just a beautiful character can achieve such greatness because the deeply felt performance reflects not only the “script” but also the Person (Yes, I use a capital “P” for that), the Soul, the Care not only for the Arts but also for others. That makes, in the execution, all the difference... Miss Ciaravolla is the living proof of that.

I’ll leave you with that.