Zou in his new dance company, the Trocks
Over the course of the year, I know we’ve been speaking about the traditional art of ballet and how beautiful it is (all of Sandra’s posts come to mind!). To fix some of my neck and back problems with playing the violin, I have recently decided to begin taking ballet lessons; according to a massage therapist that I went to, it will help my posture and back alignment and teach me to use the proper back muscles.
While I know I am not going to be the next prima ballerina, I would still like to believe that I can learn something so new at such a late age. In reading the NY Times this week, I was especially interested to read one particular article about a boy from China who similarly has had to learn something completely foreign to him, but in quite the opposite direction. Long Zou is from a small town in China named Liling and was never exposed to anything other than strict traditional ballet until he was accepted in Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, which is a unique dance company of all male dancers who dance on point and perform in tutus for many of their numbers.
What I found so amazing about his story was his way of breaking through to this open, new world of dance that he never got the opportunity to explore while living in China. Mr. Zou described how his first experience in China at a ballet school in Guangzhou was military-like with long hours of ballet dancing and academic work, which was so vastly different from the Central London School of Ballet, where he “saw a completely different dance world…In China, they tell you, this is right or wrong. You can never doubt your teachers. In London, I understood you can move in this way or another way. There were so many possibilities.”
It took Zou a lot of courage, hard work and determination to first convince his parents to let him dance at the age of 10, then go to ballet school in China where this isn’t very common and then ultimately get permission from the government to leave the country in order to dance abroad. He even admitted that “In China, we don’t have news from outside, and it’s hard to get out…There is no Facebook, no YouTube, it’s very limited what you can see. When I told my mother and uncle that I might want to dance elsewhere, they laughed at me.” I feel inspired to now start ballet lessons and will remember his courageous success as I continue on in my violin career!
Read more about this here.
Les Ballets des Trockadero is an all-male dance troop that has some really amazing dancers. Dancing and moving and good body posture are crucial to play an instrument properly. what does not bother you at the age of 10 can become a problem when you are 20. It is a good idea for you to take the time to straighten out your posture now. The effort will repay you for the rest of your life and a musician.
I just read that article in the New York Times this weekend! I found this piece incredibly apropos to our essay on snobbery. What’s great about the ‘Trocks is that they perform as if they were in a old Russian ballet school, similar to that of Najinsky. The all-male dancers take on the personas of dramatic ballerinas. I also thought that this piece directly connected to what Alexa later wrote about gay actors and homosexuality becoming more accepted with time, something that the leader of the ‘Trocks thinks has directly influenced their popularity.