On Thursday night, Lea and I went again to her friend Roxanne's apartment. We had dinner on the roof, overlooking Paris (and the Eiffel Tour) as the sun went down. It was probably the most romantic moment of my young life.
As before, Lea's friends were very warm and welcoming, and I really loved meeting them. One of the other girls there used to dance, so I asked her some of the questions that I am working on in my research. Alix told me that she began dancing at the age of 5 and that national pride or identity was never emphasized in her ballet instruction. However, she did say that, when she learned jazz dance, she was very aware that it came from another country because the movement style was different from what she was used to and some of the names of steps were in English. I found two things very interesting: one was that she had an American ballet teacher for several years, and the other was that she referred to ballet as "classical dance." This term (which I have seen used by many French dance studios) seems to show how central ballet is to their conception of dance history.
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