Ballet in Wi-Fi Mode

These days, when sirens remind us that history has once again decided to stage one of its heavy dramas, a completely different play continues inside a small rectangle on a screen.
There, the students and dancers of the Jerusalem Ballet, under the direction of Nadya Timofeyeva, open their laptops, place chairs where the barre should be, and turn kitchens, living rooms, and hallways into improvised ballet studios.
Zoom suddenly begins to behave almost like a theatrical stage: in one square an arabesque appears, in another a battement; somewhere in the corner a cat flickers past, while from a distant shelf a teapot observes everything with quiet indifference.
The music travels through internet cables as if along a long invisible staircase — the very staircase a musical scale always climbs. Step by step: plié, tendu, relevé.
And at some point you realize that art has a curious habit.
It is not particularly interested in the news.
While the rather tedious adult world discusses rockets and strategies, children of all ages continue to practice their pas de bourrée.
There is a quiet, almost stubborn form of hope in this.
It turns out that ballet works perfectly well in Wi-Fi mode.

Distance ballet has its own inventions.
For instance, fingers that temporarily become legs.
When Nadya Timofeyeva explains combinations to young dancers on Zoom, a small miracle takes place. She places her hands on the table — and the table suddenly becomes a miniature stage.
The index and middle fingers step forward.
It is almost a pas de bourrée.
The ring finger carefully stretches back — a tiny arabesque appears.
Then the fingers make a jump.
Most likely a grand jeté — only about two centimeters long.
Ballet turns out to be a surprisingly clear art even in miniature.
Sometimes it seems that if the camera moved a little closer, an entire performance would become visible: two fingers as the corps de ballet, the palm as the orchestra’s conductor, and the computer keyboard quietly serving as the orchestra pit.
And at some point you understand with complete clarity that ballet is a rather mysterious kind of matter — one that fits perfectly even on a writing desk.
And sometimes simply on the tips of one’s fingers.

If you dig into ballet history, you’ll find plenty of curious examples of choreographers and teachers “dancing with their fingers.” Not because of any war — oh no — but simply due to age, injury, or because it was sometimes the most convenient way to explain a step. In ballet circles, this is jokingly called “showing the steps with your fingers as feet.”
Old Imperial-school teachers did it too, and they would say, with characteristic bluntness:
“If a combination can’t be explained with two fingers, it’s no good at all.”
The reason is simple: ballet is, above all, the geometry of movement. If a student can understand the pattern — where the foot goes, what follows next — the body will later fill in the technique.
In the age of Zoom, this method has become almost perfect. Online, cameras rarely capture the full legs, small screens make micro-gestures easier to see, and fingers can clearly indicate count and direction.

Now let me tell you a particularly delightful stories about how some great choreographers sometimes “staged” entire sections of ballet with their hands on a table.
Students of George Balanchine recalled that during rehearsals he would often sit at the edge of the stage and demonstrate combinations with his hands. Sometimes with just two fingers, sometimes with his whole hand. Fingers would step across a table or his knee as if they were tiny dancers. He could show the direction of a diagonal, the pattern of the corps de ballet, the turn of a torso, even the character of a movement — and the dancers understood it perfectly.
One of his performers said:
“When Mr. B moved his fingers, you could already see the whole ballet.”
In other words, the movement of just two fingers could convey the entire choreography.

On one occasion, he staged an entire fragment of a ballet almost without moving from his seat. This is one of the favorite stories of the New York City Ballet dancers, often recounted with particular delight.
It is said that during a rehearsal, Balanchine sat at the edge of the stage, leaning forward slightly, more listening to the music than directing the dancers. There was no orchestra — just a pianist and a long, empty hall. The dancers waited for guidance.
Balanchine remained silent for a moment. Then he placed his hand on the edge of a table and began moving two fingers along its surface.
At first, slowly.
Then, a little faster.
“Here,” he said.
The two fingers made a small turn.
“And here.”
The fingers paused, then one extended slightly backward — almost like a miniature arabesque.
The dancers watched.
Then he added:
“You see? The music goes like this.”
And once again, he “walked” the combination with his fingers.
A minute later, the corps de ballet was moving across the stage exactly as the fingers had just moved on the table. Later, one of the dancers explained in an interview that Balanchine saw choreography as geometry in space: the stage was almost like a blueprint, and the dancers were moving lines.

Stories about Marius Petipa are even more legendary — believe them or not. One tale has it that when he was very old and could no longer demonstrate movements with his body, he would sit at a table and arrange small objects — sometimes pencils, sometimes buttons, sometimes just his fingers — to show, how the corps de ballet spreads, where the soloist appears, how the symmetry of the scene is built. For Petipa, ballet was architecture in motion.

Here’s a delightful paradox: choreography is one of the few arts that can be shrunk endlessly. Ballet can exist on the stage, in the rehearsal hall, on paper (through notation), on a table, on the tips of fingers.
And yet, it remains ballet.