Elevating Grace: The EBGP Journey to Vienna

Preparing for the International Ballet Competition
The European Ballet Grand Prix in Vienna

Elevating Grace

Dear Aspiring Ballet Dancer,

The road to success is paved with hard work, discipline, and passion—and you have already shown these qualities by setting your sights on the prestigious European Ballet Grand Prix in Vienna. This incredible competition is not only a chance to showcase your artistry but also a vital audition where the world’s stage opens up to those who dare to dream big. It is a remarkable opportunity to present your talent, dedication, and unique style before an audience that includes some of the most influential figures in ballet.

With the right preparation, you’ll not only compete but also thrive, leaving a lasting impression on judges, coaches, and fellow artists. This guide is designed to help you prepare for every aspect of the competition and audition process, ensuring you are mentally, physically, and artistically ready to shine on this international platform.

Preparing for the Competition and Q&A Session

This edition of the EBGP competition often includes a unique Q&A session with the jury—an invaluable chance to learn from industry experts, gain feedback, and deepen your understanding of what it takes to succeed in the world of professional ballet. Your preparation should also include thoughtful questions for the jury that showcase your curiosity, respect for their expertise, and desire to grow as an artist.

Here’s a comprehensive preparation guide that also incorporates strategies for excelling in the Q&A session:

1. Set Clear Goals

• Define what you aim to achieve in this competition and audition: whether it’s mastering a technically demanding variation, standing out in the audition process, or making connections with key professionals.

• Write these goals down and remind yourself of them daily. Each practice session should bring you closer to them.

2. Perfect Your Technique

• Dedicate focused time to polishing your selected variations or audition routines. Pay attention to precision, timing, and fluidity.

• Work closely with your coach to refine even the smallest details. Nuances often set apart a strong audition performance from the rest.

• Schedule daily drills for core techniques like pirouettes, jumps, and extensions to ensure you are technically sharp.

3. Develop Emotional Expression

• Ballet and dance is not just about technique; it’s about storytelling. Dive deep into the narrative of your chosen piece and bring out its essence. Become the character you play!

• Practice emoting through movement—every gesture, glance, and line should communicate with your audience and the judges.

• Remember, the judges are looking for performers who can convey passion and connect emotionally with their work.

4. Prioritize Physical Conditioning

• Cross-training enhances strength, flexibility, and stamina. To build core strength and prevent injuries, consider the Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, Girokinesis, Pilates, yoga, etc.

• Don’t underestimate the importance of rest and recovery—your body needs time to repair and recharge.

• Maintain a balanced diet to fuel your rigorous training regimen. Proper nutrition supports peak performance during auditions and competitions.

5. Perfect Your Costume and Presentation

• Choose costumes that complement your routine and fit the professional tone of an audition and competition setting. Attention to detail shows your readiness and professionalism.

• Test your costume during rehearsals to ensure comfort, fit, and freedom of movement under performance conditions.

6. Mental Preparation is Key

• Cultivate a positive mindset. Visualization techniques can help you imagine yourself succeeding during both the competition and audition stages.

• Practice mindfulness or meditation to calm your nerves and channel your focus.

• Embrace critiques and challenges as stepping stones toward greatness. Each rehearsal is an opportunity to improve.

7. Research the Competition and Prepare Questions for the Jury

• Familiarize yourself with the format, judging criteria, and expectations of the EBGP in Vienna.

• Study previous competitors and winners to understand what made them stand out.

• Prepare thoughtful questions to ask the jury during the Q&A session. These questions can help you gain insight into the competition and your potential career path.

Suggested Questions for the Jury

1. Technique & Performance:

   • What qualities do you look for in a winning performance?

   • How do you balance technical precision with artistic expression in your evaluations?

   • Can you share an example of a dancer whose performance stood out and why?

2. Feedback for Growth:

   • What is one piece of advice you would give to dancers who want to grow as performers?

   • If a dancer doesn’t win a prize, what key lessons should they take away from the competition?

3. Career Development:

   • What do you believe is the most critical skill or quality for a dancer entering the professional world?

   • How important are competitions like EBGP for a dancer’s career trajectory?

4. Cultural Connection:

   • How can dancers draw inspiration from Vienna’s rich artistic heritage and incorporate it into their performances?

5. Overcoming Challenges:

   • What are common mistakes dancers make during auditions, and how can we avoid them?

   • How can dancers overcome stage fright or performance anxiety in high-pressure settings?

8. Schedule Regular Mock Performances

• Perform your routine in front of friends, family, or mentors to simulate both the competition and audition conditions.

• Accept feedback with an open mind and incorporate constructive criticism into your practice.

9. Take Care of Your Well-Being

• The journey to Vienna is as much about the process as it is about the performance. Celebrate milestones, no matter how small.

• Surround yourself with a supportive community that uplifts you and shares in your dreams.

10. Remember Why You Dance

• At the heart of all your preparation, never lose sight of the joy that brought you to ballet. Dance with your heart, let your soul shine, and connect with the music and the audience.

• Auditions and competitions are not just tests; they are opportunities to share your passion and tell your story.

This competition and audition are a testament to your years of dedication, discipline, and passion. It is a stage that will challenge you, transform you, and inspire you to reach new heights. Remember, the journey is just as important as the destination. Each step, leap, and pirouette brings you closer to your dream.

Vienna awaits your artistry, grace, and brilliance. Believe in yourself—you have what it takes to captivate the world.

With all my admiration and best wishes,

Simona Noja-Nebyla (former principal dancer, director, and dance researcher)

"The Holiday Trilogy" by Carlo Goldoni: A Theatrical Exploration of the Sacred and the Profane at the Theater in Josefstadt, Vienna

Essay by Simona Noja-Nebyla

On November 26, 2024, I attended Carlo Goldoni's Trilogia della villeggiatura (The Holiday Trilogy) at the Theater in Josefstadt, Vienna. This production provided a profound opportunity to reconnect with the theater as a space of transformative encounters, which can retrospectively be understood as sacred on multiple levels.

The Theater in Josefstadt, situated in Vienna's 8th district, was originally constructed in 1788 as a modest neighborhood theater. It was later redesigned in 1822 by architect Joseph Kornhäusel in the Biedermeier style, characterized by simplicity and elegance. In 1924, under the direction of Max Reinhardt, the theater underwent significant renovation by architect Carl Witzmann, who drew inspiration from the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. This renovation introduced neoclassical and Baroque influences, further enhancing the theater's aesthetic appeal.

While familiar with the preparation of the artistic act on stage and the creative process it entails, I was intrigued by the deliberate framing of the audience's role in this production. The spectator, much like the actor, undergoes a process of transformation—a necessary purification from the mundane, particularly relevant in today’s politically charged climate. This purification begins as one ascends the narrow staircases and navigates the low-ceilinged corridors of the theater, admiring the intricate designs of the box doors and feeling the tactile allure of the red velvet seating. Such sensory experiences create a liminal space, where one is drawn towards either the sacred or the profane.

As noted by Mircea Eliade, the sacred does not represent a homogeneous space but rather one punctuated by openings that allow for the manifestation of the sacred. Eliade posits that the homo religiosus "always believes in the existence of an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests within it, sanctifying and making it real" (The Sacred and the Profane). Similarly, the homo creator, whether understood as homo faber (the artisan) or homo ludens (the playful being), requires a space where their creative essence can take root and bear fruit.

Recent advances in neuroscience corroborate the existence of a shared cognitive space between artist and audience—a dynamic interplay facilitated by mirror neurons. These neurons serve as intermediaries, creating a symbiotic relationship between action and observation, actor and spectator, and, by extension, the sacred and the profane. The "profane," in this context, denotes that which remains unexplored or unknown.

Goldoni's fictional Montemare—a symbol of the Venetian aristocracy's 18th-century desire to escape the urban environment for the rural idyll—becomes the site of this transformative journey. The trilogy, comprising Le smanie per la villeggiatura (The Fever of Vacation), Le avventure della villeggiatura (The Adventures of Vacation), and Il ritorno dalla villeggiatura (The Return from Vacation), marks a departure from the conventional masks of commedia dell'arte. While Goldoni retains the essence of character-driven storytelling, he deepens the psychological complexity of his figures.

Psychological Archetypes and Their Commedia dell'arte Parallels

1. Giacinta (Juliette Larat): An intelligent and independent young woman grappling with societal and familial pressures regarding marriage and social status, Giacinta recalls Isabella from commedia dell'arte, a character known for her beauty and wit.

2. Leonardo (Claudius von Stolzmann): A young aristocrat obsessed with appearances and social standing, Leonardo mirrors Flavio, the idealistic yet often naive lover.

3. Guglielmo (Alexander Absenger): Leonardo's rival, embroiled in romantic and social intrigues, Guglielmo aligns with Leandro, another archetype of the lover, often depicted as Flavio’s competitor.

4. Filippo (Marcus Bluhm): Giacinta's father, preoccupied with family reputation and advantageous matrimonial alliances, evokes Pantalone, the avaricious patriarch of commedia dell'arte.

5. Brigida (Katharina Klar): Giacinta’s practical and witty maid, Brigida parallels Colombina, the clever and loyal servant.

Themes of Transformation and Reflection

Goldoni’s characters, driven by their obsession with a summer retreat in Montemare—a vacation that symbolizes social prestige and the fulfillment of latent desires—undergo significant transformation throughout their journey. This process invites the audience to reflect on their own hidden aspirations. Do we, too, harbor a "Montemare" within ourselves? What are the social and economic consequences of striving to maintain appearances and social status? How do societal and familial pressures influence individual choices, particularly regarding relationships and marriage? What is the impact of escapism on interpersonal dynamics and personal identity?

The Staging: A Journey Through Purgatory

Director Janusz Kica and set designer Karin Fritz frame the trilogy as a journey akin to Dante’s Divine Comedy. The audience is metaphorically guided through seven terraces of Purgatory, faced with the choice of ascending to the paradisiacal or descending into infernal realms. Despite the minimalist staging of Goldoni’s Venetian terraces, the audience is invited to navigate these levels imaginatively, in accordance with their complicity in the theatrical act. The decision to pursue the sacred or the profane remains an open and deeply personal choice.

This production masterfully bridges the gap between Goldoni’s 18th-century context and contemporary questions of identity, societal expectation, and the transformative potential of art. Through its interplay of the sacred and the profane, it reaffirms theater's enduring power to illuminate and elevate.

Remembering Béla Károlyi or about competitive gymnastics and the understanding of self-transcendence

In the late autumn of 1977, during a national gymnastics competition, the coach of Romania's Olympic Gymnastics Team, none other than Béla Károlyi, the trainer of Nadia Comăneci, noticed me during the floor routine competition. Forgetting the choreography, I improvised the entire performance. I was even more surprised to learn that only two gymnasts were selected from the competition to join the Olympic team in Onești, and one of them was me. I was 9 years old.

The two-week training camp in Oradea in January 1978 with the Olympic team, from which Nadia Comăneci had since departed, was followed by a trip to Bucharest, a training stint in Onești, and the team’s transition to the new specialized training center in Deva, Transylvania. These were my first encounters with elite performance.

We had two training sessions daily: 8–11 a.m. and 5–8 p.m. In between, we had lunch and school. I believe there were no more than 10 of us gymnasts training with Béla Károlyi, his wife Márta Károlyi, and the dance instructor, Geza Pozsar. We also had a specialized doctor and a governess. My friend was Lelia Cristina Itu, a gymnast older than me, also from Cluj.

For those outside competitive sports, training six hours a day, weighing yourself weekly, and dedicating all your time to what you believe in might seem like sacrifice. For me, as a child, it was passion and joy—a state of mind I was fortunate to experience later as an adult.

Of course, there weren’t only happy moments. One afternoon, I was supposed to execute a complicated beam jump—Márta Károlyi’s favorite apparatus—and admitted I was afraid. She told me to do squats instead of the exercise. I did. I reached 1,000 repetitions before she allowed me to stop. Strangely, I didn’t have any muscle soreness afterward. It was only during a phone call with my parents, when I told them this news casually, that they both panicked. They still saw me as fragile. I suspected something might have been slightly exaggerated, but I wasn’t sure if it was for better or worse.

I chose to believe it was for the better. I thought the experience would serve me someday. I eagerly awaited the future.

My journey with the Olympic team ended before the Olympics. Besides my parents' concern about my fragility, there was another reason tied to their belief that general education should take precedence in a child’s upbringing. From their perspective, things weren’t quite right. In the Olympic team, we ranged from fourth to twelfth grade, and classes were held in the same space, at the same time, with the same teachers. It was clear that gymnastics performance took precedence over intellectual performance. The prospect of having a daughter who was more or less illiterate did not fit into the Noja family’s plans.

Was it for the better? Was it for the worse?

I was 10 years old. After a quarantine due to measles, during which my maternal grandmother came from Mănăstireni to Deva’s dormitory to care for me, my fate was sealed. At the beginning of the summer of 1978, I was withdrawn from the Olympic gymnastics team with my tacit agreement. Yet deep down, I felt that any chance of becoming famous—after all, I wanted to be the next Nadia Comăneci—was gone. If I wouldn’t achieve fame in gymnastics, where would destiny take me?

Perhaps that’s when the idea of becoming a librarian was born. As a 10-year-old who loved to read, I viewed librarians as the privileged ones, close to wisdom… able to touch it anytime. To meditate in the quiet of a library, live near books, far from the world’s chaos, freely choose inspiring texts, and ignore "unfriendly" ones were then, and remain to this day, profound desires.

My contact with the Olympic team was my first step toward extreme performance. Experiencing firsthand the wonders of the human body, in a stimulating environment with competent coaches and doctors, alongside other gymnasts with dreams like mine, I understood that anything was possible.

There and then, I learned that through hard work, any obstacle can be overcome.

The fact that all three coaches (Béla, Márta, and Geza) were in the gym every day for six hours, without a trace of fatigue or boredom, and that the team doctor chose to operate on hospital patients in his free time to save lives, became benchmarks of high moral and educational standards. These distant memories came vividly to mind when I became a teacher and mentor myself. They became guiding lights as I theorized my own experiences. Even though being a ballerina differs from being a gymnast, the human pedagogical models I had in childhood profoundly influenced me. Decades later, I am deeply grateful to all the sports coaches who, consciously or not, shaped my character and my passion for movement.

Through sports, I came to understand Protagoras' dictum: "Man is the measure of all things."

Gymnastics gave me physical endurance, benefiting my career as a ballerina, and reinforced my belief that performance begins when you compete with yourself, and that life's obstacles are merely official measures of a continuous competition with oneself.

Time proved me right. Nine years later, in 1987, during my debut as "Kitri" in the ballet Don Quixote, the tempo of the fouettés in the third act was so slow that, instead of 32, I had to perform 64 fouettés. With the experience of doing 1,000 uninterrupted squats, spinning on one leg 64 times was merely an unfriendly challenge. My choice nine years earlier not to play the victim had been inspired.

Performance begins the moment you accept your destiny and decide—without knowing exactly what will come next.

This belief was confirmed during the same performance when the conductor made clumsy decisions. In the third act, after my variation was poorly conducted, the most spectacular part, the fouetté coda, was grandly botched. My second coda, meant to be the apotheosis of a fiery pas de deux, started as an adagio instead of an allegro. I was 19, debuting in a demanding role I had prepared for months, in a packed National Opera House in Cluj-Napoca. I had already furiously launched into a series of pique turns…

There are moments in life where everything is decided on a single card. As Bainbridge Cohen, founder of Body-Mind Centering, said, the difference between being and not being is as thin as a membrane. Space becomes an open field, weightless; time breaks free from rhythm, becoming timeless.

It is the moment when reason exhausts itself, and the present becomes pure emotion—a timeless, spaceless field.

At that moment, I like to think my movement became a word. A word freed from matter, a word that bore its meaning outward (Ion Noja). From the depths of my soul, in the middle of my performance, I shouted: TEMPO! It was entirely unexpected. The conductor heard it, the orchestra heard it, the entire audience heard it, and they erupted into applause. I finished the performance enthusiastically… freed from prejudice, seeking truth, and beginning to understand my artistic purpose. Movement, too, could become a word. Was it a beginning? An end? Was it for the better? Or the worse?