Ballet is a normative art.
Every art in the world has its own rules. For example, you need to know what corner kick, offside, penalty kick, etc. Simply put, you need to know the modern football game. If you watch more and love watching, you will gradually change from an amateur to an expert and even become a real fan.
To learn to appreciate the art of ballet, you should also know some basic knowledge of ballet, watch more performances, or listen to more recordings and videos, so that you may become a ballet fan. So what are the basic characteristics of ballet? Here we can simply summarize them into eight words: open, tight, straight, positive, light, accurate, stable and beautiful. These eight words can be said to be the basic skills of every ballet dancer, the skills we must master, and the essentials we must understand and understand when appreciating the external beauty and internal beauty of ballet.
Open. It refers to the outward opening of the legs, that is, turning the legs outward to the maximum from the root of the thigh. This is not only the basic aesthetic characteristics of ballet, but also a scientific achievement that people have gradually studied from the perspective of human body structure. People's legs are turned outwards, which can greatly increase the scope of space activities and can do many actions that can't be done under normal circumstances. For example, lift your legs sideways while keeping your upper body vertical to the ground.
In general, the legs can only be lifted to 90. Ballet has five basic postures of feet, all of which are based on the opening above, as shown in Figure 1 ~ 2.
Therefore, many ballerinas "contracted" an occupational disease, walking a bit like Chaplin, with their feet rolled out to show their big figure.
Nervous. It means stretching the foot, and it is best to let the foot surface protrude to increase the aesthetic feeling of the foot shape and the expressive force of the foot. At the same time, foot stretching can increase the strength and flexibility of ankle joint. For example, when jumping, your feet should be stretched straight and sharp when you leave the ground, so that the lines of the whole leg look beautiful and smooth. This is the same as gymnasts and divers' requirements for feet.
Straight man. It means that the knees of the main leg (support leg) and the extended leg (strength leg) should be straight. In other words, stretch the muscles of your legs to the maximum. Take the most common ballet dance "First Allah Beske" as an example. Turn out as far as possible, straighten your knees and lift your left leg back 90. Turn out as far as possible and straighten your knees, as shown in Figure 3. Straightening the knees is mainly to make many dances in ballet stretch, with long lines and perfect visual modeling. The straightness here can also be found in the illustrations of the second, third and fourth dances of Allah Beske.
Stand up. It means that the body should be tall and straight, and the center of gravity should be accurately placed on the center of gravity of two legs or one leg. Actors are required to tuck in their stomachs and expand their chests, and they must never pout and stoop. The actor's incorrect figure or center of gravity will affect the accurate completion of various dance movements and techniques.
Light. It means dancing lightly and freely. For example, when jumping, it is best not to hear any sound when pushing the ground to the ground. At the same time, you should dance easily. Even if the actor is very hard and tired, try not to let the audience see and feel it.
Quasi. It refers to the specification requirements for accurately completing each movement and dance. For example, in ballet, there are strict rules for the movement of arms. Even when doing difficult skills, the actor's arm is required to walk in strict accordance with the prescribed route, and he must never be insane and wave wildly. Another example is the technique that ballet dancers often do two laps in the air, which requires the actors to take off from the exact five places and then land in the exact five places after completing 720 laps in the air. This is what we often say: clean and accurate movements.
Steady. It means to be steady and sell. For example, there are many spinning movements in ballet, which require the actors to maintain good stability when spinning, and to stop firmly in a dance posture when ending the spinning. If the actors stagger when they turn and don't stop when they stop, then this kind of rotation is not only beautiful, but also a failure. Another example is that an actress often needs to stop dancing with one leg and one foot, so if she falls down before stopping, it will also ruin the good impression of the audience.
Beauty. It means that dance should be beautiful, every movement, every dance style and every movement process should be beautiful. Ballet is the art of time and space. It is not only restricted by time like time art-music, but also occupies a certain space like space art-sculpture. At the same time, it is a visual art with strong ornamental value. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that ballet is the art with the highest requirement for beauty, and it is also the most beautiful art created by mankind so far. Of course, it is not easy to reach a higher level in the most beautiful art. In this sense, ballet is also a very cruel art. People generally think that dancing is interesting, jumping and relaxing, but it is not. Ballet requires very high figures of the actors, so the selection of materials is very strict. Ballet schools in China generally recruit students.
9 ~ 1 1 year-old children require symmetrical figure, slender figure, small head, long neck, good softness, good openness, high feet, long limbs, beautiful legs, small hips, cute looks and so on. It is even necessary to know the height and thinness of parents as a reference to predict the future growth of students. Even if the whole country enrolls students every year, it is difficult to find 20 ideal seedlings.
After entering the school, students have to undergo several years of rigorous training before they can become talents. Among them, the best can only become a soloist after 2-4 years of college or undergraduate study. In this 10 year, they don't know how much sweat and tears they have to shed, and even have to pay the price of blood (they often wear their toes and bleed) and how many pairs of training shoes they have worn. They have to repeat the same basic movements thousands of times and tens of thousands of times before they can spread their wings and fly, and dedicate the beauty of ballet to the audience. Therefore, ballet art is the crystallization of heavy physical labor and high mental labor.
Ballet is a highly technical art.
Any art has its own techniques and skills, but the techniques and skills of ballet are recognized as the most difficult and difficult to practice in the world. For example, where ballet heroines often end.
32 lashes. She has to turn 32 times in a row with the toe of one leg, and the other leg has to do 32 whips. In the process of turning, the toe landing area is only slightly larger than a nickel, and it can't move at all, and it has to be very standard and beautiful. The difficulty of this technology can be imagined.
The techniques and techniques of ballet include spinning technique, jumping technique, tiptoe technique, control technique, duet lift technique and so on. An excellent ballet dancer must master these techniques in an all-round way, and at the same time, he must have a high artistic accomplishment, such as a sense of music, dance and performance. He can't just focus on technology and forget art, nor can he emphasize art without technology. It's really hard to leave a trace of tension when completing a difficult technique. When we appreciate ballet, we can also pay attention to the proficiency and level of the actors' skills and skills, and evaluate their technical and artistic quality accordingly. Obviously, if an actor makes a lot of mistakes, then his technical level is not too hard, or a cast can perform well, but he can't perform, then his artistic quality is poor and he lacks artistic cells. These problems are easy for the audience to find and make correct judgments in appreciation.
Ballet is a multimedia comprehensive art.
Ballet art is a comprehensive art integrating dance, music, literature, drama and art, which can help us appreciate and understand it to a great extent. Many ballets are based on literary masterpieces or fairy tales, which are familiar to everyone. Therefore, it is easier for the audience to understand the dramatic plots of these dance dramas. Even for dance dramas that we are not familiar with, we can generally buy programs or brochures in the theater before the performance. We only need to spend three to five minutes reading the instructions, and we can get a general idea of the content of the dance drama. In addition, the scenery and lighting of the dance drama can also help us understand the environment and time of the plot. For example, whether the plot takes place in a dense forest or a beautiful garden, in a comfortable home or a battlefield filled with smoke, in the early morning or late at night, in modern or ancient times, and so on. The costumes and makeup of the actors can also remind us whether the characters are from China or foreigners, whether they are princes or farmers, whether they are Daiyu or Ming-feng, and so on. The theme melody and emotional changes of various characters in dance drama music can provide us with rich perceptual materials and inspire us to understand the development of the plot, the emotional ups and downs of the characters and the relationship between them. The prince in Swan Lake has his own music theme melody, and so does Aogueta, the white swan. When we hear these melodies, we will know that they are appearing. And these theme melodies are sometimes gentle and lyrical, sometimes anxious, and sometimes loud and tragic. Through these changes, we can capture the changes of the masters' inner feelings and grasp the context of the drama plot. Another example is the scene called storm in the fourth act of Swan Lake. The composer created a stormy atmosphere through the rapid ups and downs of music, and the scenery and lighting on the stage added this critical atmosphere, just like we were put through a severe test with the prince and Aogueta in the storm on Swan Lake. In this way, through various feelings of vision and hearing, we can understand and appreciate this tragic scene more deeply.
Because ballet is a multimedia and comprehensive art, it is easier to understand and appreciate than music and art to some extent. Therefore, our young friends need not regard ballet as an unfathomable and mysterious art.
4. Ballet is an art that is good at lyricism but not good at narration.
Everything, including art, has its strengths and weaknesses. Ballet (including other dances) is the most expressive and lyrical, but it is an art that cannot directly express a certain idea or directly tell a story. For example, we can't directly say the very simple idea of "I love my motherland" by dancing, but we can only indirectly express our attachment to our hometown land and our deep affection for the motherland's mountains and rivers. This may be the reason why people feel a little hard when they appreciate it. When we appreciate ballet, we can all participate in its creative process as we listen to music, watch drama and read literary works. A ballet work must first be created by the director, that is, once created. Dancers should make a second creation on the basis of realizing the intention of choreography through rehearsal and performance. When the directors and actors show their works to the audience, we enter the third creative stage, that is, we can freely give play to our life experience, feelings and imagination while accepting the information transmitted from the stage. What matters is participation, and what matters is that you get an artistic enjoyment, a beautiful edification and spiritual satisfaction. We don't have to force ourselves to be an omniscient ballet fan, but we also believe that as long as you can watch ballet a few times, you will be fascinated by it, because ballet is the most beautiful, sublime, charming and relaxing art!