Jealousy Dispelled
Dancer-choreographer Yael Faran has a busy performance schedule but finds teaching in her studio in Tel Aviv, Israel, no less rewarding. She cares deeply for her students and fosters an atmosphere where everyone can find both pleasure and advancement -- or so she thought!
A few months ago, jealousy, igniting an unprecedented eruption of vicious student behavior, threatened to sabotage a performance. "It even wasn't so much them demanding that I put the short girls at the back of the stage and they, the tall ones, at the front that was so distressing," says Faran, "but their fury was awful. And they had arranged for some tough boys to attack the smaller girls as they left the studio!"
Angry and shocked, Faran took control by making all the students sit down immediately. She allowed them to air grievances one by one while reestablishing her authority. "I can do those changements en pointe too," remarked one girl. "Yes, and very well," responded Faran. "But you don't see the whole picture. I do and you should trust me. I have a good eye and great experience. A group dance is like a bouquet -- the beauty and strength of a long flower is sometimes most effective when placed at the back where it is complemented by smaller ones in front."
Berta Yampolsky, founder of Israel Ballet, says, "The jealousy in ballet is terrible. It affects their health. Sometimes I think they are about to murder one another because of a role. The men are able to restrain themselves, but for the women, it destroys their lives."
But fostering vile and destructive emotions isn't part of Faran's vision of dance. "I still believe that our experience of dancing is thwarted if we don't transmit goodwill -- to the audience and to the people we dance with. But it seems I've been mistaken in thinking that every dancer has a vibrant sense of vocation to fuel that goodwill."
In her book Dancing for Health: Conquering and Preventing Stress (2006) Judith Lynne Hanna notes that it is not uncommon for dancers to bring a spirit of devotion to dance: "Unlike most professional athletes, people today usually go into professional dance out of a passion, a calling.....Selfless dedication has an affinity to gift giving."
Perhaps Faran's expectation of others is understandable in light of her own dedication. Risking life and limb, she performed all over the besieged north of Israel throughout last summer's war. She was convinced that the population, traumatized by daily missile attacks, needed dance. And so dance she did: in bomb shelters, on makeshift stages, by the shores of the Sea of Galilee -- wherever an audience beckoned in any Arab or Jewish town. "I've had great audiences before but this was extraordinary!" exclaimed Faran. "They were so intense. Dance helped them to reconnect with life -- normal life from before the fear, misery, and the awful living conditions."
The experience showed Faran that dancer-audience euphoria sometimes overrides even such powerful emotions as fear. She admits though that stirring audiences' emotions is often far more straightforward than motivating positive emotions in her students. In an effort to guide her dancers out of the mire of negative emotions, she began by pointing out that feelings of jealousy are normal, "We can't help those feelings, but we can help our conduct to others."
"I think that until now I was only concerned with whether or not they were keeping accurate lines and formations. They looked like a group but in fact they were only dancing at the same time and not really connecting with each other at all. I had to help them to build up trust and goodwill through working together as a unit," she says.
Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., who teaches "Positive Psychology" at Harvard University, says, "Creativity, innovation, and independent thinking will emerge in direct proportion to the effectiveness of structures that develop the independent component of self-esteem." He continues, "When our sense of self, our ego, is strong enough, the success of the actors in life's drama becomes our success, and the barriers between the I and the we dissolve. We experience pure compassion when others are in need, and unconflicted joy when they prosper."
Faran worked on building up a spirit of cooperation. "I gave the students a questionnaire designed to evoke positive responses relating to motivation and pleasure in dance. Such questions as: 'What was the best experience you had recently in dance class?' and 'Can you describe how you felt after the performance of 'Giselle' that we all went to?' After that, I asked them to focus on the feeling of 'sharing' with the audience -- transmitting emotion and being aware of the audience's reaction," she explains.
She stole precious rehearsal time that she gave over to sessions where each dancer went through the choreography alone. Students' comments were encouraged but only in response to carefully worded questions. "What do you feel when you make that movement?" she asked one dancer. To the response, "A bird in flight," Faran, knowing full well that a positive response was inevitable, then asked a spectator if it did indeed convey such an impression.
Following this up, she then got the spectator to interact with the original dancer to try out the movement and see if she too could find the same feeling. She encouraged them to extend and change the movement to come up with some improved version together. Scores of various questions, answers and small dance experiments were interwoven. Soon sullen faces transformed into expressions of interest and then spontaneously into growing smiles.
Nevertheless, Faran realized that she was still treading an emotional minefield and kept a tight grip on the proceedings. Little by little, however, the dancers began to cooperate with each other as they forgot about their own concerns and focused on the task of rebuilding the choreography as a group. When normal rehearsals resumed, Faran continued to encourage interaction between the dancers, albeit in a less concentrated manner.
I watched Faran from the side-lines over the weeks as she struggled to nurture the emerging spirit of benevolence and good-will in her studio. My faith in her as an artist with great powers of communication has never wavered over the years of our friendship, so I was fairly certain that there probably wouldn't be another outburst of violent emotions in her studio.
And this is the point where our tale would end were it not for a surprising twist that once again confirms the transforming powers of dance. At the Annual Conference of regional dance schools this month, Faran's dancers (yes, the formerly jealous ones) were awarded the First Prize for Group Dancing! The jury remarked on the high standard of technique and dance quality. And, unaware of the recent turbulence, they also noted that: "The dancers moved as one body with the dance flowing as if from one breath."
The dancers are delighted that they won. Faran, however, is deeply happy that they have found a more meaningful way of dancing -- one that enhances both self-esteem and their experience of dance and life entwined.
Great thanks are extended to Judith Lynne Hanna for guidance and inspiration.*