High of restlessness
Eisenstaedt’s Future Ballerinas, American Ballet Theater (1937)
There is a wide entry where the rays of sunlight rest, giving the girls a chance to be the queens, to be the princesses that their mothers would be proud of; but although even the sun is betting on them, they don’t believe in white lies, for their mind is dark and their skin is black and a palette of colours doesn’t fix grayscale, because grayscale is not a state of mind, it’s a pre-set setting.
The stairs that lead to the door lessen the motivation of these hopeless children who just want to sleep, not walk up twenty steps, before having to push an old door out of their way, to enter the building. How are they supposed to feel like free birds if the air is thick and the obstacles multiply over time? The door should open for them; the stairs should pull them in.
Their bags are small but stuffed. The number one rule is to look uncomplicated, even if uneasy. Appearance is more important than technique, looking sharp even if not sharp, moving lightly even if the weight of the world is on their shoulders. They walk past artists of all kinds: painters, designers, photographers… So many smiles invite them, but they can’t give in, their skin is soft but their hearts must be frozen, their lips bend but their eyes are shields. They hear words and reply, but they don’t unravel their meaning — they don’t try, they cannot waste precious time.
They make their way inside a room of artificial lighting, the curtains are shut, and the round light bulbs contouring the mirrors as a constant reminder of what must be done. There, they don’t have scars, difficult hair or broken bones. They are flexible and serious, it’s evident.
They arrive, take off their clothes, point their feet to facilitate the entry of their nude thighs and squeeze their already thin stomachs for the leotard to fit easily, without having to feel the elastic extend, because that would make them feel self-conscious about their thick skin that they interpret as fat tissue and then rehearsal would be a mess — lack of confidence would make them jump a little lower or not stand as upright as possible. Then they embrace their thighs with a silk skirt and adjust it to make the right side of fabric cover the left one, delicately. They unleash their long hair out of their low ponytail, roll it into a bun, double wrap a net around it, poke in eight pins, four for each side and, if little baby hair can be seen sticking up around their scalp, they spray a miracle liquid that will stabilize the situation.
They breathe in, take a good look in the mirror and attempt to envision some kind of beauty and brightness behind the heavy, dim souls that live within their structure. They refer to each other as ‘’honey’’, smiling excitedly as if the upcoming pain is a drug they will soon surrender to, yet deep inside the core of their beings, they are well aware of the lack of sweetness of the future moments. Maybe that is why they smile, to wear out the joy before a stage-high emerges.
Once they walk into the room, the pianist sits down and their arms bend ever so slightly, creating a long arch. Then, they are not themselves anymore; they are artists in the making, performers, and sometimes faking. An austere voice can be detected somewhere in the room; and even if the figure is just a shadow by the entrance, it has the power to regulate each of the girls’ moves, as if they were marionettes, controlled by strings that can either force them to “keep their tummy in”, “tuck their rear” or “articulate their feet”. Sometimes it’s adagio, others it’s allegro or even waltz. Behind combinations like the grand jeté, or the fouetté, brisé, piqué or the signature pirouette there are shivering legs and unstable arms that struggle to freeze in time as the movements continue. When their leg extends, it resists finding balance in the unsteadiness that attempts to shoot down their equilibrium. When their feet arch, it holds a silent battle with the natural positioning of the plantar fascia. But against the adversities of the constant fight that happens between human nature and the yearning to become mystically elegant, the leg extends and the Achilles’ tendon tenderness soothes, ever so gracefully.
There isn’t one instant of disruption for these girls, for they are the promise of a new future, to become the next generation to represent the Company and make their mother’s lifelong dream come true as if they were an extension of their predecessor’s lives. However, they are allowed to look through the window once in a while to realise how high they are as opposed to the lowest of lows — those who live under a blanket by an unfinished building somewhere along the big city have it worst.
It is in that moment, the moment when their feet are all aligned with each other and the window dispassionately delineates their facial features, that they recognize their true wish to be down there in the gutter. Such an irony, considering that those who are at their lowest occasionally find the energy to raise their heads towards the skyscraper that shelters the Company and wish to be in the ballerina’s glorious place.
However, it is easy to fall for the passion of attention, to fall for the obsession of perfection. But that is not what the view from the audience exposes, because even if somewhere in between the girls soar in the air, which reminds observers of angels flying towards the sky, the tip of their toes brushing the floor, the exterior world can only see the rise, only the rise. But the girls can visibly perceive the gap that is between their bodies and the floor and in the exact second when the audience perceives the jump, they can effortlessly predict the fall. And so that is what they do: they fall in love for the sake of devotion and precision since it is the only thing they can hold a grip on, once the high of restlessness ends.
The shutter is clicked and a man’s lips stretch into something that looks like a smile. It’s the man behind the camera. A little vivacious man, with eager eyes, thick, black eyebrows and glowing skin, Alfred Eisenstaedt is anything but dull. He is a curious man who taught himself the art of photography and stands behind a 35mm Leica that seems like an extension of his body.
Underneath that bubbly persona, he is a charming man, with a large amount of experience. Born on December 6th, 1898 in Imperial Germany, Eisenstaedt’s life will be indeed a journey of experiences. From serving in the German Army’s artillery during World War I (being wounded there), working as a belt and button salesman in the 1920s, narrowly escaping the Holocaust and emigrating to the United States; to working as a photojournalist, capturing exceptional moments like the first meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb and post-depression America; to taking portraits of John F Kennedy, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe; to once in a lifetime shots of ordinary people across Europe and the United States.
He moves around the girls, trying to not disrupt the rehearsal but becoming, in a way, an unquestionable part of it. In his shots, Eisenstaedt not only captures the girls’ tulle skirts and their Freed Shoes of London pointe shoes, but especially their movement, the mood that encircles them, attempting to portray not just their existence, but their souls’ contemplation. His main assignment is not to depict reality as the public sees it — anyone with a camera could do that — but to engrave in photographic paper the heavy atmosphere within the thin moving bodies, the compound sentiments behind the blank expressions. It’s in exceeding the limit of what is conventional to surpass the boundary of excellence that the artist is made. And that is what Alfred Eisenstaedt does, immaculately.
This piece is an art essay based on Eisenstaedt’s photograph “Future Ballerinas, American Ballet Theater” (1937) was originally written on November 23rd, 2014.
