Noticias

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As part of the festival Despertares Impulsa

"You have to be very obsessive to be a ballet dancer": Isaac Hernández

August 23, 2018

Isaac Hernández, principal dancer of the English National Ballet, shared some of his knowledge, experiences and anecdotes with more than 70 young dancers who participated in the master class he gave on the afternoon of August 22nd at the Arts Theather of the Arts National Center (Cenart, for its acronym in Spanish).

Wearing rehearsal clothes, pants, t-shirt and slippers, the first Mexican to receive the most important dance prize in 2018, the Prix Benois de la Danse, was received with a long standing ovation by those attending the activity as part of the festival Despertares Impulsa. The creative industries in Mexico.

The warm welcome generated a big smile on the face of the performer from Guadalajara, Jalisco. "I am a little excited, I thank the kids who have registered for the class and you for your presence. I've had a lot of excitement this week”.

"Despertares Impulsa is one of the biggest projects I've had in my life, I've been dreaming of sharing with you the Mexican public my experiences, and to achieve it makes me feel proud and excited about the future of Mexico. Now we have to start the class, we have to do what we came here to do," he said.

In a friendly, calm, concentrated and posture-free manner, Isaac Hernández gave the master class that began with a warm-up. Leaning on one of the portable ballet bars placed on the theater stage, the outstanding dancer showed the students the exercises to be performed.

"This is the warm-up I do prior to a ballet performance, it must be adequate, every movement must have a certain awareness and not take it for granted, one step and another have connection, in every movement there must always be energy”.

In the class Hernández corrected postures, positions and turns, he recommended the young people to learn to correct themselves. He remembered that as a boy he did not like to make the adagio and that he almost declined to dance in an important dance company because he had almost no practice on his left.

"I don't like the adagio, there was a time in which I did skip it, until the teacher realized, when I started to do it I discovered that I improved a lot, something that exists from the beginning of the history of ballet”.

Excited to show the movements and speak at the same time, Isaac Hernandez commented that there was a time in his life when he didn't like the left. "I still don't like it, sometimes I consider myself a beginner for the left, I reasoned that someday I would have to do something on stage for the left, I said to myself, no way when it comes the time I will see what I do”.

"One day I thought the Paris opera was going to talk to me about Rudolf Nureyev's Don Quixote, which in the end ends up with several left double pirouettes, and it happened. Last year they spoke to me to tell me to do it, but I thought about saying no, it had made me very good for the right and very bad for the left, it is terrifying not to know how to do it, I decided to accept and try.

"In the end I was able to discipline myself to do the left side and since then I try to keep the left side, I must take care of it, those are the licenses that you allow yourself and that you should not allow yourself. You have to be very obsessive to be a ballet dancer," he said.

One of the recommendations made by the only dancer to be invited into a leading role with the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Ballet, Russia was to listen to and use music which tells the rhythm and energy to be given to each step.

"You can use different musicalities in the same exercise, you do it two or three times later you come back and put a different musicality on it, set yourself different dynamics, that really makes you a versatile dancer and you enjoy discovering different things".

The class concluded with exercises of turns and pirouettes that, at the moment of showing them, Hernández received a warm ovation. Finally, the dancer thanked the young dancers for their assistance, hoping to have encouraged them to keep working hard.

 

 

Mexico