‘It wasn’t based on my experience at all. In 2012, Alessandra wrote and choreographed a short piece called The Piano Upstairs, a story about a marriage breaking down. There’s something cruel in the irony of what happened next. Alessandra found she no longer suffered from anxiety before a show. And what’s wrong with that?” ’ With this revelation came others.
‘I thought: “You’re not going to dance like you did when you were 20 years old, but you can dance like you will at 50. And I thought: “Well, why am I not dancing then? That’s what I’m here for. It was still in shape and I could still move. So Alessandra started doing ballet classes, as well as yoga and Pilates. She realised she’d made a mistake - the idea of being the dancer who couldn’t dance ‘gave me great sadness’. Maybe I was afraid of being compared with my younger self.’Īfter two or three years, the sense of not being fulfilled was unbearable. I had still been thinking in a more traditional way - that, at a certain age, you’re too old to dance. ‘I realised what had been difficult wasn’t so much the physical, but the psychological. Suddenly, life is very empty.’Īs her identity faded, Alessandra began to question why she had given up in the first place. ‘I wouldn’t call it really bad depression, but I was definitely unhappy. I ask whether she suffered from a form of depression, like Darcey Bussell after she retired from ballet in 2007 aged 38.
Matilde ferri full#
‘Even though my life was full - I had two kids and a husband, I had taken the role of artistic director of a festival in Italy, I was watching shows and reading books - I was not the one creating. ‘Not dancing, I felt I didn’t have a real purpose' She started to question why she’d given up in the first place and felt bereft.Īlessandra says there was an emotional response. ‘Not dancing, I felt I didn’t have a real purpose.’ ‘I think because the muscle and joints were so used to being moved, they almost felt as if they were going rusty.’Īlessandra says there was an emotional response, too. I’m a trained machine.’Īfter around six months, the pains increased - her joints first, then her back and her feet. I suppose it’s like if you have a Ferrari and only drive it at 10mph. ‘From moving and training hard, like an Olympic athlete, to suddenly nothing, it was very difficult for my body. ‘I started feeling lethargic, which I’m not. ‘My body didn’t feel energetically at its best,’ she says. And it was wonderful, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it,’ she says.īut then, she started getting small twinges. I took them to clubs and music lessons, made pasta. She didn’t even exercise - she’s at a loss to explain why - going from five hours’ training a day to nothing.Īt first, she didn’t notice what was happening to her body: she was throwing herself into the role of a mother, getting the girls up in the mornings, making snacks, taking them to school, picking them up.
Beauty became associated with youth only.’ A whole generation of actresses were not allowed to get old. ‘And then, the world changed - and not just the world of dance. In June 2007, aged 44, she bowed out of her 22-year career. ‘When Margot was dancing later in her life, it was acceptable for a dancer to be older,’ says Alessandra, who sees Fonteyn as a role model for her. Alicia Alonso, the Cuban prima ballerina, now 95, danced into her 70s.īut, by 2000, there was a cultural shift. In 1986, Margot Fonteyn appeared as the Queen in Sleeping Beauty aged 66. The idea of a middle-aged prima ballerina may draw gasps nowadays, yet throughout the Seventies and Eighties, it was not thought odd for prominent dancers to perform on through their 40s and 50s and even beyond. Also, maybe, I was a little bit afraid I was getting old.’īut instead of bringing her family together, she makes a startling admission about her decision to retire: tragically, she blames it for destroying her marriage. Back then, the idea was that she was going to retire to spend more time with her daughters, Matilde and Emma (now 19 and 14 respectively) - that she would be, in her own words, a mum. Alessandra with husband Fabrizio Ferri (left) and daughter Matilde Ferri (right)
0 kommentar(er)
