From the Parc des Princes to the Montevideo ballet.
And finally news from Edinson Cavani.
He swapped the jersey for tights: the Uruguayan football star took a ballet class to promote this discipline in the small South American country where the round ball remains the king sport.
"I do not agree with this idea that boys should only play football," ex-PSG scorer told AFP, who accepted the invitation of the National Training School artistic (ENFA) to participate in a campaign to promote dance for boys.
"Girls and boys must be free to find their happiness in what excites them, because it is the best way to be well trained, and that they grow day after day on a good basis", added the footballer in a message sent to AFP by WhatsApp from Europe, where he is located after spending five months in Uruguay due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"My wife is passionate about dance (...) In Paris, we went to see ballets that we really liked"
Edinson Cavani
As the football world was speculating on the 33-year-old's future after his contract with PSG ended, the forward was donning dance shoes to record a spot in which professional dancers teach him the basics of dancing. classic.
“It was an incredible experience!
The dancers taught me how to do the steps and when I watched them I was really in awe.
The dance is something wonderful, ”says the one who will forever remain the“ Matador ”for Parisian supporters.
Ballets in Paris
The Uruguayan, top scorer in the history of PSG, played for seven hours on the stage of the Adela Reta Auditorium, in Montevideo, for the filming of the spot in which he participated completely free.
“Edi”, another of his nicknames in Paris, confided that classical dance was not entirely unknown to him thanks to his wife, Jocelyn Burgardt, a graduate in cultural management.
"My wife is passionate about dance (...) In Paris, we went to see ballets that we really liked", he said.
Only a quarter of the 440 pupils aged 6 to 37 who take courses at ENFA (classical dance, contemporary dance, tango, folk dance and lyric art) are boys.
And the proportion drops drastically in classical dance: 148 girls for 12 boys, while the Uruguayan national ballet of Sodre has become in ten years one of the most recognized in Latin America.
“This divide between boys and girls cannot be reduced, not even for the tango.
And that has not changed in recent years, ”regrets Natalia Sobrera, director of ENFA, while the courses are completely free, once the entrance examination has been passed.
In addition to the limited number of boys enrolled, Sobrera said, many of them drop out after just a few years, often for lack of support from their own families.
“There is everything to do with group pressure.
There are many boys who hide their ballet shoes, sometimes even from their own father, ”notes the director.
In a country where a soccer ball is an obligatory gift for all boys, the campaign in which the Uruguayan star participates is as much aimed at children as at families.
For children, there is no prejudice, “it's a bodily experience, where you acquire movement habits, like in football,” says Ms. Sobrera.
For adults, on the other hand, "we have to work on this construction of gender" to show that dance "has nothing to do with a question of masculinity", she adds.
In Uruguay, a small country of 3.5 million inhabitants, which won two World Cups in 1930 and 1950, football remains the king sport and a national passion that is cultivated from an early age.
In the capital or in the interior of the country, it is not uncommon to see very young children "teasing the round ball", dreaming of one day of equaling Luis Suarez, the star striker of FC Barcelona, or Edinson Cavani .
Read also
Labrune president of the LFP: an election "a little bizarre" for Le Graët