Dear readers, hereby I start my “Ask me a question” column ;). Just so you know it’s almost 2 am again and I have to get up in 6 hours so well… like always I’m feeding my insomnia
What do you enjoy doing when you have free time, and do you have enough time to meet your family ?
- Well what I like is eating, sleeping, recovering, complicated and sophisticated books, simple movies, everything high-fi, technical and mechanical, computers and design, hanging out and meeting friends, going out and having some time out, but only when I can afford it myself with my body and state of mind. Beside this I enjoy writing blog entries trying to put myself in a good light for everybody reading them, haha.
Furtunately I see my parents pretty often since they are not only my parents, but also work as my coaches, artistic advisors and psychotherapists. Therefore they try to come to me as often as possible to support me.
What is your favourite dance piece ?
- Albrecht in Giselle, which I’ll be hopefully doing next year.
Professional dancers do not seem to become nervous. Do you get nervous when you dance onstage?
- From my own experience a certain degree of nervousness has to be there to have a good performance. Nervousness heightens the awareness and sharpens the senses. It gives me more control and a complete fixation on the things I am doing. Through experience and repeating a dancer finds a good level of nervousness he needs. One needs more, one needs less, but in general a certain degree has to be there. If I am not nervous, because I am too familiar with the surroundings or the piece I am perfroming, I might get sloppy, that’s why I then artificially start myself to get nervous through routines I discovered work for me best. But by now I start to bore everyone with that, so I stop here
How/what do you feel when you are dancing ?
- Billy Elliot says: “Don’t know. Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going… then I like, forget everything. And… sorta disappear. Sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I’ve got this fire in my body. I’m just there. Flyin’ ike a bird. Like electricity. Yeah, like electricity.”
Uhm…I know for everyone it’s different, but to me this quote sounds kinda kitschy and funny (sorry if I insulted somebody with that).
I don’t feel any elictricity. Nor Fire. Sorry if this sounds now very unspectacular, but I just try to completely focus on giving a good performance. I try to remember the mistakes I made before and to do the corrections I heard from my teachers. The only thing I ‘get’ from time to time is that I feel the audience. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like the audience becomes one ‘thing’, a creature which follows me and which I can control. I don’t see it, nor can I touch it. It’s one abstract whole, surveiling me.
Oh, and if achieved my goal and danced well that’s is pretty much how I feel afterwards:
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Ok actually it’s really time I’m getting some sleep. I’m leaving for London to rehearse with my partner Roberta Marquez tomorrow, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet in London, for our gala performance in New York in February. I ‘ll be staying only two days, so there is not much time.
Anyway good night to everybody and hope to hear from you.
PS: Thanks to Mi-Gyeong Song for the questions. If you out there have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to ask them.
Hey there. Well first of all, Happy New Year 2008 to all of you even though I am one week late. I wish everyone who reads this first of all health and then… everything else! I often catch myself worrying about stupid things and then I have to remind myself that my number 1 priority is staying healthy. So stay healthy, all of you!
Well I had a nice New Year’s eve and am currently working on my second principal performance of the prince in our Nutcracker here in Vienna. I will have the premiere very, very soon on January 9th. Wish me luck ! Unfortunately there will be no video this time since they are very strict here with performances being recorded.
Beside this I know that this blog is being read by a lot of people from the United States. Just to let you know and remind you, I will be dancing in New York on February 11th in the Lincoln Center on the gala “Stars of the 21st Century”! Get a ticket if you want to see me perform live ;).
Hmmm, some friends told me that I have a social network account on Orkut, which I do not! One more time: I have no Orkut account! Anybody seeing an Orkut account, that is not me, but a person pretending to be me ;). One more time in portugese for my brazilian friends (I apologize in advance for the google translation): Não tenho conta do Orkut! Or in spanish: No tengo cuenta de Orkut!
Well something more…you know, I am kinda busy these days and therefore am unable to answer mails, comments and such from people who admire me or like my work and would like to know me better. Therefore I was looking to a way in which I could answer some questions which would interest not only one person, but a group in the same time. So I thought of that: write me one or a couple of interesting questions, send them to me, no matter which way. It may be through a direct comment to this post, and email or myspace message or whatever. Out of these question I will try to pick the most interesting ones and answer them in a post here on my blog (hopefully there will be more than one and I will have the possibility to make a series out of it ), so my answer will not only go to this particular person, but you as a reader will get to know me better!
Wrote that really some time ago. Sorry to post it only now
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Hi again.
I’m sorry I did not get back to blog some days (actually more than 2 weeks :-/ ). I had a busy time back there. Well I’m sitting right now in the plane to Amsterdam (the connection flight to New York) and write this thingy here to later post it on my blog.
London Well I was in London for two days to rehearse and unsurprisingly it rained like always. Whenever I am there it somehow happens to rain, no matter what time of the year or how long I stay. It just rains buckets. The rehearsals with my partner Roberta Marquez from the Royal Ballet went well and I had a nice time over there walking around in Covent Garden and meet some old friends. I was there already before. What comes to my mind now is a clip I found back last year in YouTube. It’s funny actually. Please watch that clip here and focus on Second 00:36…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsGHSg81wbk (unfortunately the embedding is disabled)
Furthermore here are some pictures I made with my phone (I apologize for the quality).
Covent Garden:
View from the Royal Ballet area:
(By now I was interrupted by the stop in Amsterdam. Now I am writing from the flight to New York.)
Vienna Opernball Well immediately after that took place Vienna’s Opernball. I actually don’t know how popular this is apart from the German speaking countries, but here it is definitely a big thing. (Really excessively) dressed up people come together and celebrate, dance and have fun. Even the theatre itself gets dressed up for the occasion. The tickets have a hefty price tag, but luckily I got to go for free since I was dancing a small variation choreographed by Giorgio Madia. All in all it was a nice and special experience, which I will not forget.
New York Preparations
Well, my program in New York is not an easy one. I am going to dance Les Bourgeois, Moorhuhn and the Don Quixotte Pas De Deux with Roberta. First of all the worst thing is that DonQ (that is the acronym for Don Quixotte) will be in the very end and it is definitely the piece which I need the most energy for. It always has been and will be, so I just have to deal with it, I guess. The problem is the constant warming-up-dance-getting-cold cycle, which really drains on your powers, especially when you are dancing three times. In this case the normal routines you are used to do not apply fully and you really have to plan things and your energy out in between the performances and in the breaks. I will try my best as always but unfortunately you never know with what surprise life comes up for you. I like things to be pinpoint precise and planned out in advance, but you never know If you have watched, please know I tried to do my best
Well. They are giving out ice-cream inflight now (even though unfortunately it is no Ben Jerry’s or Häagen Dazs, but now any icecream will do it actually ^_^) and the flight is about to land soon, so I’ll finish that here and post it later in my hotel.
