Ranting Details: Dance at the Gym

There was a time when I actually enjoyed grade school. It was a brief period in my adolescence; a time before my friend shared with our entire class the fact that I occasionally donned my sister’s press on nails; my reputation was forever changed. But for a moment, I enjoyed the cement hallways of Hellgate Elementary. So much, in fact, that I was more than willing to partake in the annual talent show—words that now cause my fingers to repel from the keyboard—on several occasions. How I mustered the courage is beyond me. I can only assume it was because teachers knew that after fifth grade, students became too cruel to act civil in any type of school assembly, and as I felt closer to the teachers than the students, I absorbed the knowledge that it was a ‘now or never’ situation.

And so, each Fall, I laced up my Converse sneakers and spun around the polished gymnasium floor so quickly that my bowl cut flew up like a helicopter propeller. I never planned anything. I just turned on the latest Cirque du Soleil soundtrack I’d pre-ordered at the town’s independent record store and cartwheeled until the music stopped and the audience roared.

Each time they started clapping, it was as if one of those therapists I’d seen on primetime TV had snapped his fingers after hypnotizing me for five minutes; I was unable to tell whether I’d kicked my legs or shimmied up the rope hanging in the corner of the gym while I delivered a monologue from “Saved by the Bell.” What I knew was that I had been transported to a place where the jocks didn’t laugh at me every time I missed the soccer ball; a place where I could get out my frustration or happiness through the sheer force of movement.

This was long before I was aware I was going to be a professional dancer. (I think I was still convinced I was going to grow up to be Bernadette Peters’ personal assistant. Or just grow up to be Bernadette Peters.) But I was aware enough to know that this feeling, this joy I felt every time I did the talent show, was different than every other feeling I’d experienced in my ten years on Earth.

Last weekend I found this feeling again. It seems strange to admit that I had lost it, but, as many professionals can tell you, when you begin to work day in and day out on ballet after ballet, the same joy that got you into this mess of an industry can seem as hard to find as a dancer’s foot without calluses. In such a detail-oriented profession, it’s hard to just let go and move. I worked my entire life to succeed as a dancer, but, even though I experienced incredible joy in my brief career, I rarely experienced that blurred whirlwind of emotion I felt on the gym floor.

Perhaps that’s why, when rehearsing a few weeks ago for my first performance in over two years, my instinct was to choreograph the entire piece wearing a beat up pair of Converse sneakers. My ballet vocabulary, which requires muscular strength I worked my entire life to attain, was all but impossible to recapture, so I knew I would have to depart from my standard style of movement; what better way than to don footwear that made ballet’s required articulation impossible?

This plan quickly went awry. I felt stifled in the studio. The same freedom I experienced when I pressed play on the boombox as a child was nowhere to be found, and if anything, I felt more lost than ever trying to explore an art form that had always been second nature to me. Two years away will do that. And this wasn’t the school talent show anymore. I had a gorgeous piece of music composed for me by my friend Nico, and all I’d figured out was a title: “If I Had Thumbs, I’d Be Snapping.”

For a moment, two days before the show, I contemplated relying on my inherent ability to muster some type of movement and thought I’d try to just improvise the piece. But while improv is a viable option when dancing in my apartment to The Pussycat Dolls, I knew Nico’s music warranted more thought than a song about wanting to have boobs when you grow up. So I did what any frantic person does in a situation like this: disregarded everything I’d created and started from scratch.

By forcing myself to treat the piece of choreography more like a piece of writing, I was able to forgive myself the two rough drafts it took to come to a more complete whole. I took off my shoes and socks, felt my calluses waltz with the wood floor—nowhere near as polished as the one from my youth—and began. Within an hour I’d concocted something that seemed pleasing enough for the occasion, where my only direction was to somehow have it reflect the struggle of creation (I told myself standing on stage and sobbing was too literal) and also accomplished my goal of reflecting the struggle I’ve encountered over the past two years.

I’ve written endlessly about my emotions regarding my experience with Epstein Barr Virus. I thought there was little left to feel and that I would go about this performance as professionally as I had when I was, well, a professional dancer.

Dress rehearsal passed and I knew I was emotionally connected, but I was still very aware of the fact that I was standing on stage, in a theater, with eyes peering at me just as they had every time I walked on stage since I was twelve. This made the actual performance all the more startling.

I stood in the wings watching other performers sing and dance, but my mind was somewhere else. From my precise mathematical deductions, the space was roughly twenty-four times smaller than my childhood gymnasium, while my physical size was roughly twenty-four times larger. (Roughly.) I studied the space and reviewed my movement in my head. Suddenly it was my turn to go on.

The lights dimmed and I made my way upstage center and felt my back press against the wall. My leg lifted from the ground, foot flexed, and I walked forward as the first piano chord struck; everything that followed is a complete blur. I didn’t come back into my body until I began my final walk off and was reminded of my physical location due to the blinding stage lights beaming at my face. The therapist had snapped me back to attention.

I stood in the wings again, this time on the opposite side of the stage, and I felt my childhood self staring at me. How did you get to this moment? he wondered. Two years ago you were performing on the largest stages in the world and tonight you were on a stage that you could cross in three small strides.

Tonight I was on stage, I thought.

I sat and let it all soak in. My dancer mind went to work and attempted to analyze every gesture from the past two-and-a-half minutes. But I could only feel the overall emotion of the experience; I couldn’t remember any details. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I knew I had truly danced again.

Comments

Wow. Wish I could have seen it.

Posted by: Eran | April 27, 2009 at 04:47 PM

Leave it to you to bring tears to my eyes like a mother seeing her baby walk for the first time! I am sitting at the break and looked up to see you in the chair across from me...and the tears kept coming. Do you think these people think I am crazy?

Posted by: Jes | April 28, 2009 at 01:24 PM