[:en]“Dance: Art or Sport? Or « Tанец – это искусство или спорт”[:]

[:en]Both. It’s mainly an amazing art form, yet it’s also a sport.Sport generally is a some form of fitness, and physical strength etc. all of which are required in dance.

It’s an art form as the dancers every inch of their bodies and music to convey

feelings, that words cannot describe.

It’s full understanding of using their body in precisely timed movements to convey a story, emotions which they want to pass to the audience.

Dance is an artful sport. Competitive dancing is a sport with winners and losers.

Back to my youth in city of Bryansk , Russia, I remember  that very many prominent 

Russian and foreign artists were touring  there. Among them there was ballerina Maya

Plissetskaya. Her dance “ Dying Swan” still stays vividly in front of my eyes right now.

Her hands sailing in the air, her unusual external face expression, long and thin legs moving gently following every curve of her body.

It seemed to me at that second that her human body was slowly transforming into the

swan’s. And it was the last moment of the bird’s life.

Or, it was just as usual my creative imagination played  a joke on me?

I shaked my head, looking around in the theatre. Then I didn’t think whether 

the dance was an art or a sport. I was deeply immersed into the beauty of performance.

And all of a sudden my eye caught a little figure of the girl, dressed as a ballerina and

repeating each movement of Maya Plissetskaya on the stage, trying hard following the music.

I was astonished and at the same time pleasantly glad to see that I am not alone who admired the dance of the great ballerina.

I noticed nobody watching her closely, perhaps she made this decision by herself- approach the stage performer.

Very soon the magic was over, and I left the theatre.

But the impressions about Maya  Plissetskaya’s “ Dying Swan” still remains in my mind.

Watch on you tube her show.

 [:]