Last moments in Opera Garnier

Tomorrow, I will start rehearsing for La Bayadère. As I am writing this post this evening, I am feeling quite emotional about it. It will be my last moments dancing in the studios of the Palais Garnier. In less than two weeks’ time, I will have to say goodbye to these ballet studios, as we will then move to Bastille for the dress rehearsals and the performances.

So much has happened in these studios in the past ten years, where I have lived the happiest and the toughest moments of my life. I remember entering studio Lifar for the first time when I was still a student at the Paris Opera Ballet School, being an understudy of Jean-Guillaume Bart’s La Source back in December 2014.

While in the school, we know the stage of the Opera Garnier when we come for the traditional défilé du Corps de Ballet, the demonstrations in December, and the annual school show in April. But it was in La Source that I first discovered the rehearsal studios of the company.

They seemed big, more modern than I thought in this old theatre, and mythical, as I had seen on YouTube and in different videos the famous dancers rehearsing inside. Magical memories. And here I am, living my last moments in these studios more than ten years later.

Thinking of these studios reminds me of the endless hours of ballet classes :

• the classes in which I felt good, those in which I felt tired and hated how I looked in the mirror,
• the rehearsals as an understudy, trying my very best to note down and learn every bit of the choreography, sometimes feeling unconcerned and terribly bored, fighting the urge to sit down in order to appear serious and professional,
• the long rehearsals in which I danced with sore muscles,
• the private coaching sessions for the concours de promotion, during which I would place my GoPro camera next to the ballet master in order to film myself doing the variations,
• the coaching sessions for my Varna ballet competition,
• and, more recently, the rehearsals and coaching for the solo roles that I had the chance to dance: pas de trois in Paquita, peasant pas de deux in Giselle, Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty…
• arriving one hour before the morning ballet class, finding myself alone in the studio to prepare my body for the day, starting by gently massaging my feet, then my Pilates exercises,
• also playing the piano in the ballet studios when nobody was there, enjoying playing on real pianos since at home I only had my Yamaha keyboard, wondering whether someone outside would hear my playing…

It is crazy to think that I only have less than two weeks’ time to say goodbye to these spaces and to the backstage of the Palais Garnier. Meanwhile, it is also two weeks before the end of the tax season in France, the busiest period for my wealth management work, helping clients with their tax declarations!

I will enjoy my last moments at the Palais Garnier to the fullest.