These past eight months of my life have been so full, that I have felt the need to just inhabit myself and put down the pen and paper for a while. When I blog I use it not only as information for you, but also as an online journal for myself. I admit that I’ve felt guilty for not writing, but after I uploaded pictures from our recent Japan tour, I realized that I had been keeping a photo journal of almost everything I have been living this past year. Thank goodness for pictures! Now, I do want to elaborate about my life here (the language, learning to ride a skooter, and what it’s like to join a touring company, etc.), but sometimes it’s better to go below the surface of the daily life of a dancer and focus on one thing. So, I decided before this post that I would write about my recent endeavor with the Jean-Christophe Maillot full length - La Belle.

From what I remember, my first experience of La Belle was via youtube. I was looking up clips of Les ballets de Monte-Carlo, trying to flood myself of all that I could, and I found the pas de deux du baiser, or “The Kiss”. The video is about six minutes long, and about 3 minutes of it is just kissing! I remember feeling like I shouldn’t be watching hahaha… The compulsion of the two lovers reads like two magnets being drawn together. And much like a first kiss, they only pause to take a gasp of air. You’ll get a clearer picture of what I mean if you watch it here - Pas de deux of the kiss .

You can imagine my delight when I was able to see and experience the inner workings of La Belle live at the beginning of our season, and then more recently in Japan. Of all my “full length experience” I would have to say that La Belle has been the most raw and revealing character. I say revealing for obvious reasons (basically the whole ballet is performed in a shear unitard), but also in terms of her character and development. Maillot’s version is a mix of his own vision, plus the fairy tale by Charles Perrault - La Belle au Bois dormant, “The Beauty asleep in the wood” if you’d like to read more about it. In the second act of this version, Aurora is forced out of her bubble by Carabosse and the Princes, and then gasps for air, just like when a baby is being born. This is one of my favorite parts of the whole ballet because it is so effective. The stage goes silent and all you hear is Aurora breathing. As soon as her breathing calms, she receives her first touch ever by Carabosse. If you can imagine how you felt the first time you were touched by someone, you’ll catch my drift. She then gets carried away trying to re-live that one touch throughout her variation by touching herself - it’s all very sensuous. What follows is an “assault” (to put it nicely) by the princes, and then later she is put to rest for 100 years by the lilac fairy.

I won’t get into detail as much, but the third act of this version is where the rest of the story is told by only three characters, La Belle, the Prince and Carabosse. Aurora stays onstage for the entire act performing pas de deux after pas de deux, reliving nightmares, and fighting her demons — truly a feat! This is the act where I felt I could never let down. Aurora is constantly seen, and when and if she has a rest step, there is no relaxing because she is wearing hardly anything! I spent a lot of time by myself in the studios thinking of these moments and what I needed to be doing, or how I should be standing. It’s these instances on stage that I find almost as important as the dancing. These are times when it’s easy to reveal yourself and let go of your character.

All in all, my time working on La Belle proved dawning - in rehearsals and in my own personal life. With every persona on stage, I have often tried to bring an aspect of my world into that character, in hopes that it will bring more to the role. I found that La Belle somehow paralleled to me and my own experiences in these past eight months. Much like a first glance, a first kiss, or a first touch, La Belle has taught me that in order to have riches in my existence, I have to have new beginnings.

To see more of les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, visit the company’s Youtube page here.