Ballerina Masters The Nutcracker's 'Sugar Plum Fairy' In A Day | Glamour

the audience is this way so this needs to be here and this my shoulder needs to be tucked down this way my armpit needs to be rotated this way like there's a million things going through my head in this position hi I'm scout for say I'm a professional ballerina with American Ballet Theatre I've been dancing for 12 years and professionally now for six and I danced on some of the most famous and incredible stages that the world has to offer including France and Russia today I'm going to attempt to recreate the hardest parts of the variation I'm not too familiar with the Sugar Plum Fairy variation from The Nutcracker - oh and a good workout into this I'm gonna be going over the choreography today I'm going to be learning hair and makeup and I'm gonna wear the tutu for the actual variation in order to nail the variation I'm gonna need to work on b-plus position bourree steps pointe work arabesque pique minish and koopa jetta jumps the hardest part of pointe work is rolling through the feet and making sure I'm using every single muscle in my foot the hardest part about arabesque is making sure that you're on your leg and keeping your back up without going too far forward or too far back so the sugar plum variation comes from the final scene and the Prince Cavalier and his Sugar Plum Fairy danced together this is her variation to show how beautiful and regal she is and where she is in the land of sweets and it ends beautifully and I get dizzy and that's how the variation goes I'm gonna go mark through the Sugar Plum variation so the first section is her coming out starting on the corner and she's in V Plus and in this moment I'm really thinking of we're on angled towards the audience that the audience is this way so this needs to be here and this my shoulder needs to be tucked down this way my armpit means we've rotated this way like there's a million things going through my head in this position and you go into the first step and this is a little bore a step so just little digit digit you might work is when you go past your flat foot on the ground so your flat foot goes up onto your toes you're dancing completely and 100% on your toes and the reason that point shoes were invented was so the ballerina look like she was floating and then this motion of pas de Bouree with legs up in high passe it the pas de Bouree has to be like a little dude there can't be any slow movements to our heavy where it's like oh I just want to get it done like there has to be a lightness and airiness about it sometimes what happens is I feel like dancers go and dancing there's this loss of connection between their fingers and the head which is such a vital thing for a ballerina to have every little motion you kind of follow the fingers and then look out into the audience to go through things and then stepping into the arabesque you have to have weight going forward to go up oh it's a hard one what makes it so hard is that I have to remember that in order to get on the balance you have to have the hinging at the hips here and if you don't fully go for it it's not gonna happen if you're back here on your leg trying to make it work it's it's not gonna happen you fully have to go for it in order to work so the next section is the pique Minesh turn pique turns add themselves it's a very simple movement you're just doing that turning around but what makes it exciting is the had the upper body the shoulders the quickness the speed these attack of this particular dance you start from the back and your leg goes out forward and you step on a straight leg going into that turn so the pique part is difficult because you have to know where a body weight is going into it and when you go into it you have this turning motion and it's a constant turning the dancer goes around the whole stage in a big circle formation technically we think of it as a box because it's easier to cover every single corner if you think going in a box it turns into a circle and so if he can manage is those pique turns constantly going in that big circle so starting from one area and going all the way around the stage and finishing on the other side at the end of the pique turns those are for me stamina wise where I get the most frustrated and low on energy the peak image some of the major points that I'm thinking about a lot of them is upper body having the upper body held but not pushing down so your ribs can't move when you're doing the pique turn because it turn comes from the upper body and the ability to move the ribcage around your spinal cord and then out of the pique turns becomes the coop a jet a jet a means to dart out and that's one of the major movements it's a quick fast coupe a jet a jump your legs split up in the air but you're not going up you are moving continuously in this jump darting over something it's that's the only way to do it and complete it well so going through that and then we do the pique speaking speaking and then we end it from the corner coming to the end and this is the final part of the dance and it's like the last moment of this dance where you're like alright I just got a push and go through it and then the pose like that last pose up shuts it up and having that final moment of the breath going and then you walk offstage and that's the end of it and then you run off stage and you're like where's the water this is soil again and she's gonna be coaching me through the Sugar Plum variation today from The Nutcracker Tchaikovsky he wanted the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy to be like drops of water from the fountain the quickness of it it's like puddles of water right yeah let's just go some of the beginning and so you come out from the wings and can we do a bit of a plie and say Here I am very nice oh now do that with a breath and turn your fans to aah and turn and excellent there you got it yeah excellent yeah I felt better okay now we're gonna do the peak a minute come to me good nice very nice well the solo looks deceptively easy but it's not really in order to keep the speed and to keep up with the music you have to move your head and your eyes if your eyes are moving your head will go out next I'm gonna put on the costume and do my hair and makeup for the Sugar Plum variation we are going to do her makeup first stage when you're on the stage the light just washes you out and you become very flat so we've rebuild your face to be dimensional and we can also use contouring to distort your face so I'm gonna start with just a very soft highlight powder and we put it right on your cheekbones and you can find your cheekbones if you open your jaw you can feel where your jaw pops and bring you close it right where that separation is that's where your cheekbones are and that's where the contour goes specifically I'm ballerinas I like to bring the blush up and around their hairline up here and contour with the blush versus a contour color we're gonna move on to the eyes for Sugar Plum Fairy we're gonna do some nice soft pinks I like to do shadow and liner and I'm going to extend your wing if you will past your eye on the outside to make your eyes look bigger so you'll see I'll leave a tiny bit of space and keep it open on the stage we tend to exaggerate eyebrows a bit and make them a little bit longer it's just to exaggerate every feature the same way you exaggerate your arms and your legs to make it so grand and fluid it also follows the same lines as your facial structure so your jaw line goes up your cheekbones go up so then it's all parallel so I like to use a lip liner and for sugarplum fairy we're gonna do a nice neutral pink let's take a look so good all right that's great is a Sugar Plum Fairy look ready for stage ready for camera we're gonna move out to here we're gonna do a classic high bun I like to section the hair into three parts we're gonna use a center part and I come down and make a t-shape down to one ear and down to the other this is gonna help her get some better definition and detail in her hair and also make it more secure for when she's dancing we're gonna put most of it in a ponytail and the breast is gonna be pinned up we like to put her ponytail nice and high and then on each side we're gonna give her a little bit of volume so she doesn't look bald on stage we want it to be full enough that your hair is in line with your ear oh that way your ears don't stick out if that's something you don't like and it also creates more depth of your hair so I'm gonna drape this up over the ponytail and we're gonna pin this up I like to either braid it or twist it and this is gonna be the top of your button loop that up we're gonna make sure that it's right where you want the bun when you look from the front and then we take the leftover hair from the sides and this is gonna be the bottom of your button ballerinas contrary to popular belief they don't actually like donut buns because it looks like an extra head on their head so they actually like a very tapered heart shape fine now we can perfect everything you put a hairnet on very important for dancers once the hairnet is on then you can really perfect your shape so the profile is super important for ballet you want this line to be one continuous shape with this but her sides come swooping up they follow her cheekbone lines so for her Happy's we're gonna make sure it's nice and center we're gonna fit it right around her bun you also have to be aware of their balance because their balance and their center of gravity is so important we also have to then pin it that way so it doesn't feel heavy on one side more than the other all right and I think she is ready for costume this is Tomoko what a dumb bar and she is the wardrobe supervisor at American Ballet Theatre we were talking earlier that whenever you bring or store a tutu you store it upside down because when it's the other way the gravity is pulling down on it did most of the classic juju maid always poop which is the wire yes here and that helps exact yes it helps keep them up but without it it just keeps dripping down yeah and this is like giving it a rest because there's no pressure on it to do it has a space yeah so this is how you store a classical tea too so this is the Sugar Plum Fairy to to I will be wearing today all this decoration and stuff how does this happen because you can make tutus as well yeah you make the tutu bottom and then does the decoration go on top or is this and this is a separate thing yeah separate thing yeah like all separate things and then this one is like dyed it like an old lady so start from like a dark pink in to why some of them it's completely white yeah all right and now Milko is gonna help me get this on and it'll be show time [Music] [Applause] it just had such a wonderful experience today I really enjoyed working hard struggling a little bit but also taking the steps to further this sugarplum fairy variation within my own repertoire I know for me like the beginning section is always a little bit of more of a struggle for me and kind of let me get some more momentum going that's where I really feel like I was able to enjoy and kind of had that moment of like I'm just gonna let go and do this because I can I can trust myself in this moment and then at the end the last big manage that was so fun it was so great to have the power and the adrenaline kind of behind what I was doing I would love to do this again it was such a great experience we'll see what happens next time

Channel: Glamour

Views: 2,479,576

Rating: 4.9680033 out of 5

Keywords: ballerina, ballet, professional ballerina, scout forsythe ballerina, ballerina makeup, scout forsythe, ballerina routine, pro ballerina, ballerina interview, american ballet theater, scout forsythe dancer, scout forsythe interview, the nutcracker ballet, the nutcracker sugar plum fairy, scout forsythe 2019, the nutcracker choreo, sugar plum fairy choreography, sugar plum fairy ballerina, ballet choreo, sugar plum fairy variation, nutcracker makeup, glamour, glamour magazine

Id: K97ash4dXs4

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/destlpestl]

She seemed really lovely and I loved her energy throughout the whole video but oh my god that editing when she performed the variation. Yes, she is really beautiful but I wanna see her entire body, not a close up of her upper body or some really weird shot looking down on her.

[u/Owlmerlyn]

Kinda makes me wanna become a ballerina. Even for a non dancer such as myself what she says makes complete sense and, in fact, gives me a deeper appreciation for ballet.

Only disappointment is the lighting should have been better for the actual routine...