Can a World-Class Ballet Dancer Be Trained in Jerusalem? Part III

(Final part. Read the beginning [here] and the continuation [here].)

Is it possible to imagine a ballet school where making a mistake isn’t terrifying? Or is high art altogether impossible without fear?

Nadya Timofeyeva: It depends on the level of preparation. When a dancer steps onto the stage in a specific role, they must possess a deep reserve. They need to be roughly twenty-five percent better than the choreography actually demands. True confidence stems directly from your degree of mastery. If you are strong enough to play a Liszt Rhapsody, executing a simple nursery rhyme is hardly a challenge.

Yet nervous systems vary widely. People are built differently. My mother used to enter a singular mental state a full twenty-four hours before a performance; her entire being would narrow toward that single moment of stepping onto the stage. By midday, she would leave for the theatre, stop speaking to anyone, and achieve absolute alignment of all her physical and mental systems.

When a dancer is assigned a role that slightly exceeds their current technical reach, it creates profound discomfort. You lack certainty in yourself. I can suffer from pre-stage jitters, yet I know with absolute certainty that I cannot fall below a specific technical threshold. Anyone on stage can fall, slip, or miss an element—that is simply life. You can never predict what might happen at any given second. But there is a baseline level where you know: I can master this.

I tell my students: you must execute an exercise perfectly ten times out of ten. If you manage nine out of ten, that single flawed attempt will inevitably resurface under the stage lights. That is where fear takes root—and fear breeds paralysis.

Everything is dictated by the volume of correct repetitions. To achieve this, you need a sharp, swift mind that prevents the body from making endless errors, each of which the body meticulously records. In essence, you are training your physical form to operate like a sewing machine—every movement identical to the last. If a breakdown occurs, the body registers that flaw.

It is like working with clay: if a piece cracks while being sculpted, you can knead it back together, but the clay remembers the fracture. The human body is no different.

This is why, when a student arrives with a flawed, imprecise foundation or deep-seated technical errors, correcting them is exponentially harder than starting with a clean slate. Those early flaws always manifest eventually, forcing the dancer into a perpetual state of managing their own technical “bugs.”

Athletes are prepared for the Olympics using rigorous, specialized systems. Ballet operates under the exact same principles—except an athlete might compete in the Olympics once in a lifetime, whereas a dancer steps onto their own Olympic stage every single week. This is why an artistic director finds it so agonizing to put a dancer on stage who isn’t fully prepared: you simply never know how the evening will unfold.

  Nadya with her students (can you spot Yuval Cohen?). From the archives

What Is Beauty Today?

The contemporary world speaks less and less of beauty, focusing instead on efficiency. Ballet remains one of the few arts where beauty remains the primary objective. What does that word mean to you today?

Beauty? It is a gift when beauty surrounds you. And beauty exists everywhere.

Take my own neighborhood, for instance. It is a strange, paradoxical place where people often toss their garbage beside the dumpsters rather than inside them. Yet as you walk past this overflowing trash, you might see a magnificent tree in full, glorious bloom standing right beside it. You suddenly realize you are living in a sharp contrast, witnessing immense ugliness and exquisite perfection at the exact same moment. The essential thing is choosing to notice the perfection.

A sense of beauty shapes our entire perception of existence. Architecture and art cultivate a child’s taste and sensibilities. You can observe generations shaped by one aesthetic or another; those who travel widely can see how young people from different cultures diverge based on what surrounds them.

Perhaps that is our primary duty as adults—to envelop our children in beauty. Regrettably, we rarely give it enough thought. Thank God we have survived at all; we live in a state of perpetual stress and endurance.

Beauty, therefore, should not be treated as a rare luxury. Beauty ought to become our everyday condition. We must live beautifully, and only then will human beings become beautiful.

Though even that is not a simple equation. There are unrefined people who grew up immersed in beauty. Yet when people grow up in ugliness, their chances of becoming refined are undoubtedly far smaller.

The Jerusalem Ballet School as a Spiritual Realm

Is there something intrinsic to the city of Jerusalem that influences the language of dance?

I believe Jerusalem possesses a unique energy, an unmistakable aura—though I cannot fully articulate it. To me, Jerusalemites seem distinct from Tel Avivians. I wouldn’t say better or worse, simply different. If that atmosphere colors one’s daily existence, it naturally permeates creative work as well, since existence dictates consciousness.

Yet Jerusalem is deeply complex and multifaceted. So many worlds intersect here; there is a vast religious population, and simultaneously, perhaps we have cultivated a greater tolerance for one another—or perhaps not. It is difficult to say definitively.

We exist side by side, yet I live a very insular life. The Jerusalem Ballet is a vast bubble we step into for the entire day, emerging only to head home or travel to a performance. We inhabit our own sanctuary, so generalizing is hard for me.

The Legacy of Nina Timofeyeva

You grew up beside Nina Timofeyeva. Is there a specific phrase spoken by your mother that you find yourself constantly repeating to your students?

Yes: “One must work.”

That was my mother’s phrase, and I repeat it endlessly. One must work. One must work. Otherwise, nothing will ever come of it.

I never once heard my mother say: “One ought to rest.” Though resting, too, is an art one should learn. Whenever I suddenly find myself with free time, I am at a loss as to what to do with it; it feels superfluous, almost unnatural.

“One must work”—I absorbed that dictum with my mother’s milk. From my earliest days: one must work.

Yet working alone is not enough—you must derive joy from it. You must labor and devote yourself to what makes you feel genuine vitality. Occasionally, you reach a state of sheer exhaustion where you feel you have nothing left to give, yet you push forward anyway.

I cannot fully explain how it happens. You simply keep going because you love it, or perhaps because you have grown so accustomed to the labor that it has become your very identity.

That is why a crushing weight of responsibility descends when you reach your limit: so many people depend on you. Children depend on you, adults depend on you. There are moments when you want to cry out: “I can’t anymore. I don’t want this. I want to abandon everything and escape to a warm pool in Bulgaria.” But then you realize: maybe next year. You never truly know if you will get that single week in the year just to soak and unwind.

In truth, that mindset isn’t entirely healthy—it is a kind of psychosis. This obsession with “one must work” is its own form of addiction. Everything is best in moderation, of course. But at this point, there’s no changing it.

A New Generation of Dancers

So, is it truly possible to cultivate a world-class ballet dancer in Jerusalem?

I believe it is possible. But it demands relentless work. It requires a deep understanding of the body, the mind, anatomy, and technique. It requires critical thinking, the capacity to embrace constructive criticism, and the deliberate development of coordination, willpower, and endurance.

It requires an eye for beauty, encounters with inspiring mentors, and a commitment to continuous learning—for both master and student. Above all, it requires understanding that raw talent alone resolves nothing. If you have not built the machine through which you operate, your talent is useless to the world.

Yet we must never forget that a human being is not a machine. There is motivation, character, love, and emotion. There is that sacred, living transmission from one soul to another that no technology can replace.

And that, ultimately, is why a school exists. Ballet is a voyage of self-discovery. If you truly learn to comprehend yourself, to guide your body, to work rigorously, and to perceive beauty along the way—then perhaps you become something far greater than merely a dancer. You become an artist.