Teaching ballet
By Lisa Macuja
(Note: Prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde wrote this piece for her column On Pointes in Malaya newspaper in the mid-1990s, after establishing Ballet Manila with perennial partner and fellow dance mentor Osias Barroso. Then as now, she expresses a love for teaching ballet and sharing her knowledge to mold new generations of dancers.)
I am often asked in interviews that are geared to be “in depth” what I would be doing right now if I wasn’t dancing professionally. I think I would have become a teacher.
As school director and faculty member of The Lisa Macuja School of Ballet, the prima ballerina has had to adapt and become adept in teaching ballet through online classes during the pandemic. Photo by MarBi Photography
I consider myself lucky. There are dancers who abhor teaching. There are also dancers who do not know how to teach. Unfortunately, in our country, there are also dance teachers who were never real dancers.
I love to teach. There are times when the energy I put into teaching far exceeds that which I put onstage dancing. Ultimately, I end up more exhausted at the end of class or rehearsal than all my students combined. But the reward of finally seeing a perfect “ronde de jambe par terre” or “double pirouette” from a ballerina wannabe, plus that “I did it!” look that they often get in their eyes after a particularly tricky combination, more than makes up for the aching lungs and legs I get while explaining and demonstrating just exactly how it’s supposed to be done.
Although I am not a child psychologist, I do know from my own experience that children learn a lot by copying. In a ballet class, demonstration is a key tool that can often give the child wrong information when a movement is improperly executed, or half-heartedly done by the grown-up. When demonstration fails, then I get down on my hands and knees, grab the limb in question, and like a sculptor working with a living body, mold the leg to execute the proper movement.
For Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, a dance teacher’s greatest reward is when her students reach that “I did it!” moment after exhausting hours spent in the studio. Photo by Icet Barroso
Ballet is such a physical and visual art form. Working with observant and absorbing students, there will always be the eventual blending of teacher and student. Clones? I wouldn’t say that. As an artist grows, the copying child in him will soon be taken over by the rebellious, know-it-all, non-conformist teenager, and then the thinking, mature individual will emerge. I would know. I went through all those stages myself.
There was actually a time when one of my Russian classmates commented that I started to look like my blond and brown-eyed, extremely white ballet pedagogue Tatiana Udalenkova. Although I find that hard to believe, don’t you ever wonder why there are times when you start to look like your dog? ... And vice versa?
Pre-pandemic, Lisa leads a company class for Ballet Manila dancers on the stage of Aliw Theater. Photo by Jimmy Villanueva
If you think that teaching is a one-sided relationship, I beg to disagree. I learn so much about my own technique and artistry with the kind of interaction sessions that we have, most specially from the kids. Right now, I’m smack in the middle of my summer workshop. Every morning the doorbell rings and they patter in. Every morning I stand in first position and show them how to do a plié and a battement tendu. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, we can graduate to developpé and soutenu. Who knows? In 10 years, they could become members of Ballet Manila. The artists that they will become will be of the stuff that is their very own, based on the tradition of which it was taught.
Ballet, just like our rituals and traditions are “handed down” to the next generation. Even if I wanted that next generation to dance exactly like me, and taught them night and day how exactly to move and when, it can never be done. Just take a look at the waves as they hit the shore. There are never two that move exactly alike.
Lisa (fifth from left) has been imparting the same lessons she learned from her own teacher, Merited Artist of Russia Tatiana Udalenkova, at the Vaganova Choreographic Institute in the 1980s. Photo from the Ballet Manila Archives
