Ballet roles can be learned through video, but it’s insufficient. Most leading ballet dancers are taught their roles by coaches, ordinarily well-known retired dancers. It’s not usually a question of teaching technique; that is already firmly in place. It’s expression, meaning, emphasis, phrasing, acting, mime, all those little things that have the potential to transform a good dancer into a great one.

Things that mostly cannot be taught, but must be sensed and absorbed if the younger dancer is going to turn into an artist.

Here are some photos of famous Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova preparing protégé Ekaterina Maximova for her debut in “Giselle.” Long ago I possessed a copy of the book in which I recall them appearing (Days with Ulanova) and always loved these two photos in particular.

They show the older Ulanova as a powerful yet gentle presence, coaxing a performance from her young pupil by casting a seeming spell:

[NOTE: I’ve written about Ulanova before, here. She was a dancer with the remarkable and unique quality of not seeming other-wordly, but of seeming to express something both realistic and spiritual at the same time. I saw her when I was a child, in what I believe may have been the only trip she made to this country before her retirement.

They are both gone now. Tempus fugit. RIP.]