Published August 16, 2024

The Importance of Passing Down Legacy in the Art of Ballet

by Rosine Bena

Sierra Nevada Ballet just finished very successful summer performances of Sleeping Beauty – A Fairy’s Tale. The leading dancers for the production came to us from the San Francisco Bay Area.

When I met ballerina Hikari Jacobson on the first day of rehearsals, she told me how very excited she was to work with me because she had heard of the fine reputation that my family had in the professional ballet world, and she knew how we were following the ballet practice of passing down our legacy through teaching and directing.

The art of ballet is a tradition passed down from generation to generation. Unlike students of opera, drama, or painting who practice from scores, scripts or canvases that may be hundreds of years old, ballet students and professional dancers must rely on personal contact with practitioners of the art. 

The tradition of instruction from dancing master to pupil can be traced to the 15th century. Dance first began as a male art form and remained so for centuries. The art of ballet began in Italy but was made popular in France by Louis the 14^th. Russia preserved the integrity of the art form during the late 19^th century. The Ballets Russes won immediate success in Paris when they appeared in 1909, and the offshoots of the Ballets Russes revitalized ballet all over the world. Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who danced in its early seasons, formed her own company and toured internationally.

I was trained as a dancer by two top master ballet teachers: my mother and Mary Day of the Washington School of Ballet. I can still remember stories that Mary told about her teacher, Lisa Gardner, who had been in the original company assembled by Anna Pavlova. Mary even had a pair of Pavlova’s pointe shoes in a case at the Washington school. My mother’s teacher, Vera Nemtchinova, was also a former member of the Ballets Russes, and another of her teachers, Anatole Oboukhov, was from the Mariinsky Ballet Company.

Nemtchinova was in the original cast of the famous 1907 ballet Les Sylphides choreographed for Ballets Russes by Mikhail Fokine. Nemtchinova taught Les Sylphides to my mother, who later taught and coached me in it in the 1970s and 80s and taught and coached my daughter, Ananda, in it in the early 2000s.

Being coached by my mother in Sylphides was an experience I remember as being both from Heaven and Hell. My mother was a brilliant coach who was extremely exacting and demanding. She would never accept anything but perfection. I remember when San Francisco Ballet Principal Dancer, Horacio Cifuentes, first joined my mother’s professional company in the Bay Area. We were just starting rehearsals for Les Sylphides and we were all very stressed. Horacio asked me why everyone was making such a “drama” over the first Sylphides rehearsal. To which I responded, “You’ll see.”

Horacio went into the studio to have his first solo rehearsal with my mother. Three and a half hours later, he exhaustedly crawled out of the studio and said, “Rosine, I never got to even start the steps of the choreography. She said my running entrance was not good enough and made me run over and over and over again until I just could not do it anymore.”

My mother was a strict perfectionist, but it really paid off in quality performances. Our professional company in the SF Bay area under her direction was reviewed as comparable to the two top companies in the United States: San Francisco Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and our school was internationally known for its fine ballet training.

When I moved to Nevada, it was my mother who led me to found Sierra Nevada Ballet as the professional ballet company for northern Nevada in 2001, and it was her inspiration that led my daughter and me to establish both the Sierra Nevada Ballet Academy and the Northern Nevada Performing Arts Collective in Reno.

In this world of computers, cell phones and the internet, the art of ballet continues to be passed down (as it was centuries ago) from one human being to another. In my opinion that is very important because (after teaching hundreds of students for over 50 years) I can honestly share that I have found that no two human beings are alike. Each person is unique and completely different from others, with different strong qualities and different areas that can be improved upon. Each person deserves to be valued and taught as a unique individual.

The dictionary defines Legacy as “long lasting impact of actions from a person’s life.” Like my mother, my daughter and I find our greatest joy in the adventure of passing down the legacy of ballet to each unique individual we encounter in our lives.

For information about performances of Sierra Nevada Ballet and classes at Sierra Nevada Ballet Academy, visit sierranevadaballet.org or call 775-360-8663.

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