00:01
Hello and long time no hear. If you were our listeners from before, thank you so so much
for coming back to this episode, and thank you so much for your patience. I know it's been a minute,
right? No excuses. But we're back with the regular scheduling of our podcast, so stay tuned. And if
you're new, nice to hear you. Hello, hello. Masako and I are two researchers trying to make English
learning for scientists a bit more curiosity friendly and accessible by sharing our perspectives
on sometimes scientific topics, sometimes not. We mix Japanese and English here and there.
We hope you like it.
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スポーツでした。スポーツでした。 So search with the hashtag
科学系ポッドキャスト and give it a go at other podcasts as well. Hope you find something you like
as well. Well, without further ado, here's our episode. So recently I was talking to my friend and
she asked me if I ever, like, you know, if I think that ballet would ever become an Olympic sports
because you know how there's, you know, recent Olympics, there's climbing, there's skateboarding,
yeah, like a bunch of new events that are being added to the Olympic sports and she asked me if
I think ballet would ever become one and my initial response was like, oh fuck no, I like
never thought ballet to be a sports. I just never did and it was first and foremost
an art form and I never thought about it as anything else but this friend of mine had a good point
because she was like, well, like, you guys train like crazy. Dancers are insanely athletic.
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Yeah, using your bodies and then skills, yeah, you'll improve your skills.
Right, we work on skills, there's specific sort of sets of technique that we need to improve on
and if you go to competitions and stuff, you get judged by the technical elements as well as, you
know, some artistic elements, of course, like that's never not in the picture but if you go to
competitions, that's usually sort of the main thing is that they focus a lot more on technical
elements as opposed to when you're just buying tickets and going seeing ballet for fun, right?
And yeah, I think she was right in saying that we are very athletic, we train like athletes,
right, you know, since you're super young, you train like, you know, five, six times a week,
many, many hours, many, many years and, you know, you dedicate basically most of your childhood
to be a ballet dancer professionally, if you're gonna become a professional, right?
And she asked me, like, what's so different about it than, for instance, figure skating,
you know, they also have technical elements and artistic elements and it's an Olympic sports.
So that got me thinking, I'm like, huh, you have a point.
It's true, I do think dancers are just as athletic as athletes of various kinds
but does that make ballet a sport?
So to you, it's more an art, like artistic rather than
like sports, like art, like expression. Yeah, it's always been,
well, I just feel like there's no point in doing ballet if all you're gonna look for is
how high your legs can go, how long can you stay on balance, how many pirouettes you can do,
like, if that's all there is to ballet, then I don't think that's ballet, you know?
So my understanding of dance technique is that the techniques are like
grammars in language, you know, you need to know how to spell things out or how to construct
grammatically correct sentences in order to make your point across to the audience, right?
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You need to speak the language and without it, you know, it doesn't matter how expressive,
how emotional your dancing might be, it's really hard for the audience to receive what that means,
at least in a classical ballet framework, right?
Like, this would be different if it's like contemporary dance or tap dance or maybe
some other forms of dancing. Yeah, ballroom dances, maybe it's different, but like,
strictly speaking for classical ballet, there is a set grammar that's been established for centuries
and we all agree to speak that language. And then on top of that part, there's an art,
like expression. Right, when you're reading a book or watching movies, you're not
watching them or reading them to be exposed to grammatically correct sentences, right?
You're like watching and reading them for the contents of it, like trying to see what the point
is, trying to see what is the vision or thought behind that made this author, writer do the
authoring and writing and filmmaking and other things. So to me, that's an artistic part,
right? You do need, because if you're just going to read grammatically correct sentences,
you can just read like a dictionary, right? You don't need to have...
You just need to replicate what has already done before, yeah, just copying.
There's no sort of, yeah, new elements that you personally are going to bring in. Like,
what's interesting for audience is when you see that there's a personal input, whether it's
personal experience or personal condition of that day, right? Specifically for performing arts,
it only happens between you and the audience at that moment. So it's transient, it only happens
in that moment and you cannot, you precisely cannot replicate, right? So that's what makes
it interesting. And to me, that's like... But sports relies, like the point scoring system
relies on the fact that there's a set standard that you can always refer to at any given point
of the performance, right? But I feel like that's not necessarily the point of ballet.
So I still think that ballet is an art form, mostly. But it's art form performed by
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athletes? Does that make sense?
And there's a competition too, right?
Right, I mean, there are competitions. Like, the thing is, the competitions, for the most part,
is used as, you know, stuff to put it on your resume. It's not necessarily, like,
once you join the company and you become professional, I mean, there are some competitions
that's specifically geared towards young professionals or starting out professionals.
But for the most part, your primary focus is how to develop as an artist rather than
winning a bunch of competitions. So that's kind of irrelevant also.
I was thinking about the definition of sports and art and the combination of those.
And then, you know, you will have to use your body, right? In order to do some kind of sport.
And in some sports, there's an artistic part, like figure skating and dancing.
Gymnastics, synchronized swimming.
Yeah, yeah. And then I was thinking about Shodo. We use arms. And then we execute some kind of art,
right? Why is it not a sport? It is art. There's competition to it.
But we are only using our arms. Though, when we make a huge,
huge piece, we use our whole body. We can stand up, sitting down,
on a paper, and there's a performance to it.
Oh, really?
Yeah, there's a kind of performance.
How you move matters, not just the product. So what are people being judged on in that case?
Are they being judged on the final product of the calligraphy? Or are they also being judged
on the process of writing?
I see. That's a good point. Maybe just the products at the moment. But if we
want to make it as a sport, like sports Shodo, a whole new field, right?
Yeah. I mean, is that a thing?
No, no. I just made it up.
I mean, who knows? There are a bunch of new sports out there that I have never heard of.
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I always wanted to make a new field in Shodo. But now, because of this topic,
I came up with this whole new sport Shodo thing. So this may be a new era.
You could start.
Yeah, I can start.
Your new sports and get it registered at the Olympics.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting, too, because now that, like,
it used to be the case that dancers were only told to train in dancing, right?
Like, don't do anything other than dancing. Because the muscles that you need for dancing
is only going to be developed by dancing. Like, that was the philosophy for the longest time.
Like, some teachers would actively discourage students from pursuing other forms of sports,
because that could lead to injuries or wrong muscle usage. And now, sports science has
caught up to it, and they are finding out that all athletes of all kinds could use cross training,
meaning, like, training the parts of the body that is not the primary focus of whichever
respective sports. And so in case of ballet, you know, dancers have very, very strong
lower bodies, like their legs and their torsos are very strong, but their upper body strength is
close to non-existent for a woman. You never see, like, big shoulder ballet dancers, right?
You know, they're always usually, like, really muscular in their legs, but really skinny on the top.
And that's changing, because now people are realizing that having upper body strength is
really crucial for lifts, for turns, for jumps, like any form of movement that requires a massive
shift in weight. It's really critical that your upper body is there to help you rather than, like,
not support you at all. So professional dancers are now training in a gym with, like, people who
have zero experience of dancing, but they know how to train athletes, right? So that's what they do.
There's also people who are doing strength training, like lifting heavy things,
which was never, never, ever a part of the training for most dancers.
You know, we don't dance with weights on in the performance. So people are like,
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why do you need to lift heavy? And that's also changing. So it's really cool. And people are
finding out that that prevents injury. That also extends your dancer, you know, life, like
longevity in your performance and your peak performance as well. So more and more dancers
are able to dance beyond 30s, beyond some even getting up to 40s, right? But previously, and
really not that long ago, like, 30-year-old dancers, the classical ballet dancers were, like,
way too old, you know, because usually by then, your body is wrecked. Yeah, because of overuse
of, like, muscles. Yes, exactly. Body parts, like, lower body. Yeah, so that's changing.
So we are becoming more and more athlete-like. And that's sort of what the modern
contemporary choreography is expecting us. You know, it's very different kind of dance than
doing Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty for 10 years. It's very different. Like, you know, you
roll on the floor, you do cartwheel, you do insane movements, you do really difficult lifts.
So that's another reason why I think the requirements for the ability for dancers to
be able to execute is changing. And that's why we need to change our training, which is making us
more and more like sports athletes, I think. But I still don't think that makes us
just an athlete. Like, we are athletic. I mean, when I say we, like, I mean, like, ballet dancers
are athletic. But I don't think they're just athletes. They're artists first and foremost,
because otherwise, we can just watch gymnastics on the Olympics TV or figure skating.
So when you, my question for you would be when you practice or,
you know, when you go to a lesson, and then you do the same training, but yeah,
when you do the same training, do you think about your own expressions or, you know,
something that no one else can do? Do you think about that? Your own,
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your own styles? Do you think about that when you execute or when you do practice?
So that's not a naive question at all. It's actually a really good question. And I think
it really depends on the intention and the goal of the dancer. Sometimes, like, I think you're
talking about everyday classes, right? Not like rehearsal for a performance. Everyday classes
are mostly there to sort of check in with your body, you know, like, you know, what is there
other, are there parts of my body that's sore today? Or does your hip feel tight? Does your
back feel stiff? And for that, that's sort of like the at the level of professional dancers, right?
For me, just as a hobby person, I have, when I go into ballet class, I'm not necessarily thinking
about how to be expressive, because I'm there to learn the technique, because I'm still in a stage
of learning and perfecting my technique. But if I am performing, I would obviously have to work on the
expression part. The tricky thing, though, is that if you only do classes with just technique in mind,
you do that for years, and suddenly you need to perform, it's really hard to bring yourself back
up to the performance mode. So those are different. Yeah, like, it's a very different mode of
dancing. And since I'm not regularly performing, what, usually my goal when I'm going to a class
is honing the techniques, working on my weakness, and also, while doing that, but also staying
musical. So that's sort of my compromise, because ballet always happens with music. And
some people choose to completely ignore music when they're working on techniques,
right? That's one way to go about it. For me, I want to improve on my technique within the musicality
that's given to me. So that's always in my mind. Yes, I am focusing on my techniques
and focusing on which muscles to engage, the coordinations and stuff. But I'm also not forgetting
about the music. And if you count musicality as sort of artistic expression, then yes,
I'm working on that also. But I feel like that's sort of another facet of ballet performance,
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where it's like, it's not me expressing, I don't know, love for Romeo in Romeo and Juliet,
right? It's not that. That's not what I'm trying to do. What I am trying to do is to sync
my body's movement with music so that it flows better and it looks a lot more effortless.
But that's just me. I think everyone has different focus at different stages of their ballet journey
or what they're training for. To me, the whole point of ballet is, regardless of the genre,
regardless of whether you're doing contemporary or classical work, I think musicality is some of
the most important thing. And that's what makes ballet fun. So that's something I don't want to
forget about. And I want to continue. I want that to be a part of my regular training.
Yeah. So yeah, that's that. So yeah, really, really depends.
Interesting.
Yeah. So yeah, I guess I don't really have a good answer for my friend who asked me if it's
a sports or an art. It's both, but it's not. It's definitely always art,
but not always sports, I guess.
So like you mentioned, maybe it's an art performed by
athletes. Yeah. I think that's the closest thing I can generalize to.
Yeah. But that's, I don't know, it's what makes ballet really hard and really
fun at the same time. The tension between the athletism, the physicality, as well as
emotional, artistic, musical elements. I think that's why I keep wanting to do more of this.
Yeah. It must be difficult because you have different senses every day, right?
At one point. And even during a day, we feel our bodies, you know, sometimes
somewhere and another day, it's a different place, different body.
Especially as a woman who goes through like monthly hormonal cycle, every day is like a
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different body. Yeah, a different body. And you feel differently too. You know, sometimes you
need to find your center. You'll find how you relate to the floor and to the space every time
you do ballet, like every time you do the class. Finding a center. That's so interesting. Yeah.
And it's really annoying. Yeah. It's a common reference, right? So you find a center that can
change over time, but then you relate each point to that center. That's the core of your body.
Basically, so a well-trained professional can do that every day, I think with a lot of effort,
but they can find their center, they can find their sort of baseline every day and perform
at a certain standard. Of course, some days are going to be different than the other days. It's
never going to be the same, but they can, you know, what they promise in exchange of getting paid
to do Dancing for a Living is to provide a certain level of standard, right? And that's
really, really hard to do that. I think if you are not a performing artist,
you don't really understand how hard it is. Yeah, but that's the thing. And that's why
dancing is a very short career. You cannot do this for, like some sports like golfing,
you know, you can start really young, but you can also continue well into your 40s, 50s,
sometimes even 60s, right? Maybe not professionally, but like you could be
still enjoying golf well into 70s. Whereas I think for dancing and for something as demanding as
classical ballet, the sort of expiration day comes way earlier because it's very hard on your body.
At some point, I'm still dreading the day where I cannot dance in a way that I want to.
I know my limitations, right? I know I don't have the best physical gifts for ballet,
but I know I have a certain standard based on how long, you know, based on how I've been dancing.
Here are things that I can do. And as I get older, those things change. There are some things I'm
better at now. And there are some things that I'm worse at now than, you know, when I was 18
or something. But it changes. Right now, I'm okay with that, like with it changing. But I think
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there comes a point if I am lucky enough to live long enough, there will come a point where
I won't have fun doing ballet because I cannot meet my own standard. That's really scary.
So, you know, I'm just imagining, obviously, I've never done any, you know, ballet or anything
like that. So I'm just imagining, but based on what you told me, I feel like there's a to some
point there is a sports aspect, you know, like repetition, practicing every day, finding your
core, finding your center, and then trying to replicate what you did before when you could
using a different body of yours, right? Because every day you have a different body.
And then you reach this sports part. And then from that part, so that's the kind of your best
skill, you know, baseline. Then above that, yeah, above that baseline, here comes the art
expression side. And so after you reach the very best of your skill, then finally you can
execute like this is the performance only you can manage to do. So it's a combination of sports and
arts. And then this makes a really like a like a pyramid thing. No, I'm not sure. No, I mean,
like, that's sort of what I used to think. And I think that's how a lot of people in the field
think. Now, I'm having slightly different opinion. I don't necessarily think it's quite
as hierarchical as that. I don't think that you should only start working on artistic elements
once you perfect your physical sports elements. I think you can always work on both.
And you should work on both. One shouldn't be more prioritized than the other.
Because what you mentioned before, yeah, like musicalities, right? That's also very important
for you to always keep in mind, not just practicing like a form, basic forms.
You're right in saying that there's a certain standard, technical standard that one needs to
meet if you are going to dance and perform and get paid. And if you're going to occupy
30:03
a certain level of stage, then you should provide a level of standard for sure. But like if
that alone isn't going to move the audience the way it would move in a way that an artistically
interesting performance would move the audience. Any well-trained person can, let's say, do
five pirouettes. That's really hard already, right? Like five consecutive rotation from one
initial point. That's hard. Just for a reference, I've been doing this for
20 years. I can only reliably do two rotations, three on a good day, like really good day.
So five is really hard. So anyone who can do five or more is going to look really impressive.
But that's just it, you know? Oh, that's an impressive pirouette, right? You're not going
to cry over it. You're not going to be moved by five pirouettes. You're going to be moved
when that five pirouettes is executed at the musical moment, in the story, in the context
of the dance before and after, when it's beautifully executed. That's when you are moved.
And knowing how to do that, I think, is where the artist elements of the dancer comes in.
And maybe the most artistic thing to do in that moment is not to do five pirouettes,
maybe to do one really slow, beautiful pirouette. And that's what makes it interesting.
But that is up to the artist's choice, right? So I feel like that's what I mean.
Developing your own aesthetic taste and musical taste is what makes
a standout dancer stand out. So there are lots of technically beautiful dancers,
technically talented people. I mean, I'm so glad that I'm not doing ballet, seriously,
at the age of Instagram, because every other day I see an eight-year-old Russian kid who is
amazing, who can do everything that I would have never been able to do,
even if I worked my entire life towards it. And she's eight. But this eight-year-old is
yet to develop the artistic elements, right? She can, with time and with good training, she can.
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But right now, she just knows how to do splits that go for 270 degrees.
So yeah, it's hard to judge. It's not like one is more important than the other, I think.
Both are important. And it's only special when both are at a certain standard.
Yeah. Okay. I talked about this for like half an hour now. I should probably stop. But yeah,
I think I'll keep coming back to this question time to time. Because I'm sure at some point,
I feel more like an athlete. And at some other points, I would feel more like an artist.
Yeah. And it's probably really important to, like we said, have both elements. So yeah.
All right. Thanks for listening this far, if you did.
Thank you.
All right. Stopping.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening. And find us at
aegodescience on Twitter. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
