“Every performance I do now after 25 years of dancing is icing on the cake—a miracle that takes place on a daily basis.”
By LISA MACUJA-ELIZALDE
1) Perseverance counts! You do not become a ballerina after a three-day workshop or a summer of dance classes. It takes years, usually six to ten years of daily training in order to be qualified to become a professional dancer.
2) No pain, no gain! If you are not ready to sweat with the effort and endure physical, mental and yes, emotional pain, in order to achieve your dreams, you will never achieve them. No achievement just falls on your lap (unless you win the lottery). You have to be ready for some hard, back-breaking work.
3) Talent matters, but it’s not enough. Teachers count! Ballet is a handed down art form from one generation to the next. Even if you are born with the most beautiful and malleable body for ballet, you need a good teacher and mentor to train you to dance well. Ballet skills, just like the “three R’s” (reading, writing and ‘rithmetic) are skills you learn in school.
4) Family support is essential! Had I not had the full support of my family – most especially my parents Cesar and Susan Macuja – I would never have achieved my dream. Every dreamer needs a cheering squad and your family is the best cheering squad around.
5) Health is wealth! You have to take care of your body. You only have one and each part is irreplaceable. My body is my instrument – I have to fine-tune it daily with proper nutrition, enough sleep and no other illegal, or abusive substance such as nicotine or alcohol – or else, I won’t be able to dance.
6) Good preparation is the key to a successful plan. Several hours before a ballet performance, you will find me onstage, warming up, giving enough time for mental and physical preparation for the show. Most often, the success of any endeavor is in the planning and preparation.
7) You have to be ready for anything and think on your toes! No matter how meticulously planned a choreography is, during a live performance, anything can happen. My dancing has trained me to make split-second decisions in front of an audience as the unexpected can definitely sometimes happen.
8) Better to fall than to dance badly. Vaganova would tell this to her students. It’s so much better to fall (since falling is usually an accident) than to not fall at all but dance badly. In other words, a mediocre job with no mistakes is worse than a high-quality performance with one or two falters.
9) Falling down is part of dancing, part of living! I can’t remember how many times I have fallen down onstage in front of hundreds of people. But, you just have to learn how to fall gracefully, then, pick yourself up, and rally through the rest of the show!
10) If you build it, they will come… I know. This is from the “Field of Dreams” movie. But having been given the Star and Aliw Theaters to dance in on a regular basis, and having danced on a make-shift stage made out of softdrink cases nailed together – if you build it (a stage), they (the audience) will come…
11) Coordination is so important! Dancing is teamwork and coordination. You cannot dance without coordination of every part of your body – just as you cannot accomplish much if your team doesn’t have coordinated efforts.
12) A true partnership is built on trust. I’ve danced with countless of premier danseurs in the last 25 years and I needed to trust all of them explicitly. Juliet needs a Romeo; Odette / Odile a Prince Seigfried; Carmen cannot be Carmen without a Don Jose – that’s just the way the ballet works!
13) Take risks! Whether it’s as simple as an overhead lift with an unreliable partner or a role that everyone said you should never dance – it’s important to take risks in order to determine what you can and cannot do. Otherwise, the question will remain unanswered all your life!
14) Pray and have faith! In the wings just before I enter onstage, I say a prayer and I know that God is there. He is watching, guiding, helping all the time. I am never alone.
15) If the long-term goal seems too far away, break it down into smaller goals! Yes, Life’s journey is like a ballet choreography – it’s always made of individual steps – that should be taken one at a time.
16) Learn to listen – to the music, to your body, to your teachers, to your partners and yes, to your critics. When you learn how to listen, you learn how to improve. Feedback from someone watching you can only be constructive because you can never really see yourself from a distance.
17) Timing is crucial! You just have to dance to the music and keep to the beat! When your movement is misaligned with the music, it’s not dancing anymore – because in dance, the movement and the music have precise positions together.
18) Smile! Laugh! Have a sense of humor. Dancing has to look effortless. Most often, I smile in order to mask the effort. But it’s important to be able to smile – onstage or off – because yes, it’s a proper disguise to the effort and can be very convincing to you and everyone else.
19) You need to learn when, and how, to stop. One word I often hear during rehearsals is “Stop”. And you have to stop moving in order to analyze and correct what you are doing wrong.
20) Accept the fact that nothing and nobody is perfect. As a ballerina, I have always strived for perfection of every movement I do onstage. But, not a single performance of my last 25 years of professional dancing has been perfect. Perfection is a goal that can never be achieved – but we have to try. No, practice does not make perfect.
21) Practice by repetition. It really helps! You remember how you had to memorize that 8 times 8 is 64? Well, repeating a movement again and again makes your muscles memorize how it’s supposed to be done. So, if you still can’t do it, what do you do? Repeat.
22) Discipline matters. No matter how long the standing ovation was the night before, a ballerina’s day begins with ballet class – exercises that you do your whole life. Maintaining your form means working daily on the basics. No room for complacency. You stop, you lose it.
23) Keep your cool. Loss of control of your emotions can make you make drastic mistakes onstage or off. No matter what happens, keep yourself level-headed and avoid making rash emotional decisions.
24) You cannot teach everything. As a ballet teacher and a mother, there are simply things that your child or student has to learn on their own.
25) Be grateful! Every day is a blessing. Every performance I do now after 25 years of dancing is icing on the cake – a miracle that takes place on a daily basis. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I am forever grateful.
i was beginning to consider i might be the sole young man which thought about this, at least at this point i comprehend i’m not odd :) i will make sure to check out a couple of different blogposts soon after i get some caffeine in me, it is really rough to read without having my coffee, I was really late last evening grinding zynga poker and after having a few beers i ended up losing all my facebook poker chips cheers :)