The Ballet Story Part III – Interview with Karl Reinisch

© EMMA 2016

Q: When did you start thinking about the time after being dancer? Was there something other than classical dance you were interested in?

A: Oh yes, there were always many things. When I was dancer at the State Opera in Munich, Bavaria, I always wanted to know more about the musculoskeletal system and decided to study anatomy. A very clever professor advised me to study physiotherapy what was fascinating and became a good basis for my later work as ballet teacher. I have been training for many years with professional dancers, with ballet pedagogues and always with children and hobby dancers, something I love most. They do it only for the sake of ballet, without the stress professional dancers have and must have. – The most important message: you can always start doing ballet as long as you can go. There are of course individual limits of the musculoskeletal system to accept. But there are no physical limits (except you are sportively overexerting) to train beauty and harmony when walking and dancing.

© EMMA 2016

Q: In what way is ballet different from other sports?

A: Ballet is something holistic. It includes mind, spirit and body. Sport deals with the body, in the majority of cases only with some parts of the body. Exercising ballet you get the maximum profit. Sport means most of the time strength and endurance training what there is also when doing ballet. Beyond that you train coordination, beauty and harmony in your movement. And there is no stress to do it right and no stress that you must be better than anyone. Everybody does her or his best.

© EMMA 2016

Q: At last, you will certainly guess what I am going to ask – do you have another example from somebody who started doing ballet at a certain (advanced) age?

A: Of course, there are still many! There was an elderly lady coming very often in the afternoon to buy things for her granddaughter in the ballet boutique next to my ballet school. One day she called me asking if it was possible to come at 7 pm. When she arrived there were other ladies of her age, none of them buying something in the boutique but passing by, one after the other, much to her surprise. She asked me where they were going. When I told her that they attended a ballet class for grown ups she was amazed. A childhood dream was near to come true! She still had retired and had now time enough. She totally had forgotten to buy things for her granddaughter but bought an equipment for herself and … was in the ballet school at the barre the very next evening! By the way, she is meantime about 70 years old and is still training there, for nearly ten years.