Where did improvisation go?

I actually wrote this a little while ago, but after the previous post (The fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination) I thought it would be fitting to talk about improvisation.

Inside every little ballerina is the urge to move, to improvise. The little girl hears music and lets her body go, to sway, to run, to twirl. And yet, I find it strange that remembering myself as a pre-teen, expected to perform improvisation in the odd class, I was paralised by shyness, scared to expose the little girl inside to scrutiny of the world.

It seems that we take all the little girls, and boys, who shows a natural love for moving to music, we put them in a class and teach them how to look like a row of synchronised, cookie cutter perfect ballerinas. If I think about it, everything that we teach in our ballet classes focuses on suppressing our natural urge to be individuals, our freedom to express ourselves with our natural nuances, our own choreography.

The way we train our dancers may make for a spectacular corps de ballet in Swan Lake, but does not bode well for the dying swan who does not want to 'go gently into that good night' by blending into the row of corps girls.

And so I ask, what are we doing to our budding young choreographers - the writers of the stories to be told through music and dance? How do we nurture that fairy princess who steps into class on her very first day, moving to her own song, to achieve the technique, precision, synchronisation and awareness that defines ballet, but also to nurture the free spirit of each individual to unleash to the world an unrestricted creativity from each and every dancer?