Dancer creates art with every step

Ballet dancer Mario Elefante glides through the air. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Mario Elefante creates art with every step. The talented artist is a ballet dancer.

“It really is just who I am,” he said. “There’s no difference between my life and my dance.”

Mario explained his passion for ballet.

"Art, especially dance, as we use our bodies, is meant to give life to a deeper expression of humanity not just on stage, but as a community," he said. "Your voice is not to be compromised."

Mario, 22, a native of Italy who left Washington, D.C., for Hong Kong, wants his dance and everything else he does to have the same impact.

“Not just when I dance, any sort of picture that I take, any sort of thing that I write or anything I sing, when I share it with somebody, I’m just trying to make the receiver feel more human and more in touch with their raw, emotional self,” he said.

Mario, who performs across the globe, savors dance for being able to convey what the spoken word can’t.

“Dance and music, they can really say things that you can’t explain with words,” he said. “It’s the same thing with photography. It’s about your senses and how you’re experiencing the art form.”

Mario is an artist who dances.

“Dance is just one of the main vehicles,” he said. “I feel with dance, I like to get really honest with the audience and perform vulnerably. But I don’t always get to choose what I’m gonna portray, for example, be a peasant. Sometimes, doing a simple character can be harder because you don’t have as many things to work with.”

However, such instances don’t deter Mario from creating art.

“Whenever I’m asked to do something specific that I don’t get to choose, then that’s just a way for me to deepen my understanding of that experience, for example, the experience of being a simple peasant. I have to be a peasant for the audience. How am I gonna do that? It’s all a trip for me. Whatever I’m asked to do, it’s just a trip.”

Mario’s next journey took him to a noteworthy part of China.

“I’m getting to work with the Hong Kong Ballet,” he said. “And then I don’t know where I’m gonna go. I like that for now, there is no plan. I’m liking the idea of just figuring out step by step along the way and doing different things. I trust myself and I will find the right places.”

Mario enjoys ballet enabling him to traverse the globe.

“It’s the only reason why I’ve traveled so much,” he said. “It was because of ballet or ballet connections, ballet friends. I come from a really small neighborhood in Naples in South Italy. Just the fact that I’m going to Hong Kong now, it’s pretty surreal. I moved away from home when I was 12. I moved to Milan after getting accepted into La Scala Ballet School and been away from Naples since, outside the holidays.”

“I want them to feel truth. I want them to feel movement. I like to switch up my energy on the audience in the same performance. I don't want to give a stagnant performance.”  

Mario was in D.C. for two years.

“I’m in my grief stage,” he said. “It’s hard. Made lots of friends, but I’m also really excited.”

Mario also likes ballet for being surrounded by other creative people.

“To be a creative, sometimes you feel like you’re the only one in a room,” he said. “It almost feels like you’re more of an observer sometimes.”  

Mario has a few favorite roles he’s performed.

“I did Melancholic from (George) Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments,” he said. “That was my first Balanchine ballet. It really left something in me. I did West Side Story by Jerome Robbins. It was so cool. Everything I did at Miami City Ballet was so cool. The coolest company. And then here in D.C., among my favorites is Murmuration by Edwaard Liang. I absolutely loved it. The choreography was a language I speak. I did the Prince in The Nutcracker in the Washington Ballet’s Nutcracker this year and it felt enriching to be a prince and carry Clara through the snowstorm.”

Mario said there are many more roles ahead.

“I’ve done a lot, but I feel like I haven’t done much compared to other, experienced dancers,” he said. “I’m definitely very interested in neoclassical works and modern works. I love ballet and I love it as a discipline, but I have more fun with neoclassical stuff. For someone like me, there aren’t many ballets with which I can fully express myself because they’re so archetypical, but I still love them.”

Among the attractions to some roles Mario seeks are the respective styles and costumes, such as In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated by William Forsythe.

“Green is my favorite color,” he said. “And just the ballet, it’s one of the coolest pieces ever. I’ve always wanted to do it.”

Mario hopes the audience is affected every time he’s on stage.

“I want them to feel truth,” he said. “I want them to feel movement. I like to switch up my energy on the audience in the same performance. I don’t want to give a stagnant performance. I don’t want to just put a pretty face and smile on stage. For me, it’s much more than that. It’s a journey that I go on both with me and the audience.”

Mario’s favorite moves change over time.

“It always changes,” he said. “I love a pique arabesque, but that’s cliché.”

When learning ballet, Mario was surprised by some moves being easier and some harder than he anticipated.

“I thought jumping high was gonna be much harder than it is, which for some people it is,” he said. “For me, it’s really hard to turn, to do a lot of turns. It was much easier learning to jump high. I can do my turns when I’m asked to do them, but I definitely still have lots of work to do with that.”

“You discipline your body to do whatever

it’s been asked to do. You know your choreography.”

Mario concurred with other dancers that it’s more difficult for ballet dancers to fall off a stage than for other performers, such as singers, due to learning each venue's stage so well.

“You discipline your body to do whatever it’s been asked to do,” he said. “You know your choreography. Hopefully, you know your spacing. Especially when it comes to performance, it has a lot to do with trust. You just have to go out there and trust yourself and trust whatever is going to happen. We don’t fall much.”

Mario always liked to dance.

“I was always just dancing in my living room,” he said. “And then my sister said she was going to ballet school and I begged my mother to take me and that’s how it happened. Then once I started, I was enamored by so many dancers and artists.”

Mario cited some dancers he’s influenced by now.

“I love Hugo Marchand from Paris Opera,” he said. “He’s a principal dancer. I saw him perform. There’s this sensibility about him that I really want to bring into my work. She just retired, but I have a soft spot for Alessandra Ferri and everything she says about dance, not just how she dances. You can see it’s all a very linear thought. Suzanne Farrell, Gelsey Kirkland and Merril Ashley are also of huge inspiration to me. A lot of the dancers I love, they don’t dance anymore.”

Mario finds time to pursue other interests.

“I love yoga,” he said. “If the weather is nice, I try to be outside all of my free time. I don’t read all the time, but if there’s a book that I like, I really enjoy reading, listening to music. Lately, I’ve been taking a lot of photos of myself or of where I’m living, where I’m walking. I want to eventually learn how to play the piano and guitar.”

Mario doesn’t let unmotivated moments deter him.

“You won't feel motivated every day," he said. "Sometimes, I’m not motivated, but it’s the discipline. It's about being responsible and respectful of the art form. Now, I’m on a layoff week. I’ve had to learn how to separate the two things. When I used to have a week off, I would just spend it entirely working out and that was killing me. Sometimes, I’m not motivated, but I have to do it. Whenever I’ve had a crisis, do I want to keep doing this? Every time, it only strengthened my knowledge that it’s what I want to do.”

Mario offered advice to aspiring professional ballet dancers.

“My main advice is to give it your all because it’s something you want to explore," he said. "So don’t expect anything out of it, but take everything that you can take from it.” 

Mario’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marioelefantee/