Notes On A Recital

Dance.

From a list of things to do pinned to my dance bag:

cut hair ribbons (46)

iron skirts (24)

move buttons

playlist (with notes)

bloomers and booty shorts

1 blue boa

schedule extra rehearsal

dolls finale

prep dance camp

staff list

get sets from storage

find other shoe

take aspirin

eat food

The Stuff Of Life

Things.

Scenes from a dance bag:

oranges
pointe shoes
duct tape
water
sparkles
safety pins
stitch kit
banana
leg warmers
notes
fleece pants
hair pins
toe pads
arnica

Photograph:
www.rubygonewild.com

The Dancing Truth

Work.

If you are a working, full-time, professional dancer these things will be true about your life. You will wake up sore. You will dance all day. You will go to bed sore. You will work seven days a week. You will take class, teach class, and be up to your elbows in projects. You will never stop having to take class. You will take on projects that go well. You will take on projects that go terribly awry. You will always worry that there will not be another project to take on. You will worry about your weight. You will memorize everything you do. You will get on stage and forget some of what you memorized. You will keep dancing anyway. You will never get sick enough to have to stay in bed. When you do get sick enough to not get out of bed, you will get out of bed. You will be alternately told that you are talented and gifted and that you have no talents or gifts. You will invest enormous amounts of time and money to train in what you do. You will get paid for little of what you do. People will tell you that it is okay that you do not get paid because you love what you do. People will also tell you that you are not really working because you love what you do. You will love what you do. You will still be working.

Unexpected Joys

Vignettes.

Anyone that knows me knows that regardless of the general malaise regarding Christmas around me every year, I persist. I love the Christmas season. It is shiny and sweet and heart warming and generally designed to make us all feel hopeful about life and the coming of the light and longer days. Every year I am gifted small tokens of Christmas cheer that keep me in the good fight. This year, it was offered to me backstage at the Eugene Ballet's Nutcracker. It was the Sunday matinee, the last show of the season and early morning in company class. Everyone looked tired. The ballet mistress was playing Christmas music for barre. And then, in the middle class, in the middle of dancing, the guys started singing along to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. By the end of the song they had most of the company singing with them and the rest of us in fits, still dancing. They kept at it for the next two songs. Christmas cheer had won out over fatigue, sore feet, being far from home, and a long Sunday at work. Try to let it happen to you too.

To help that along, watch and maybe sing along to this, one of the best Christmas vignettes I have ever seen:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

Growing Old, Gracefully

Dance.

For more than thirty years now I have danced. I have stepped to the barre to repeat the same exercises over and over again like a mantra, working the floor beneath me as a worry stone, over and over again. In my younger days I suffered, tormented by the mirror, self doubt, the pressures to be better, stronger, slimmer. Now, though my jumps are lower and my leg not quite so high, I find inside myself a centering and calm so crisp and clear that I turn more easily and perch for long periods in my balances. It is a trade off and an irony, it seems, that at just the moment we gain our grace we begin to lose our vigor. I, for one, am glad for it. What I have lost in youthful athleticism I have gained in presence and expression. I am no longer tormented, no longer concerned with rank or virtuosity. Now, I dance from the inside out and feel my soul stretch beyond the reaches of my fingers, grateful for the dance.

Photograph 

http://fresnobeehive.com/archives/1817

Hard and Steady

Work.

I have a hard time expressing to even those that know me well just how hard it is to dance and train day after day.  Typically, people are over-impressed when they first hear that you dance all day and treat you like an invalid, only to assume later that since you do it every day you must not be tired at all. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.  From the archives of Life Magazine, "The Hard and Steady Work of Dancers"

http://life.time.com/culture/the-hard-steady-work-of-creating-beauty-ballet-dancers-rehearse-1936/?iid=lf|mostpop#14

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/archives/peto/petosample.htm

On Waiting and Watching (III)

Etiquette.

Most audiences of live performance understand the amount of time, talent, and hard work that goes into training for and producing a stage show. What audiences do not know is that backstage all of the performers are reminded that regardless of their hard work and dedication, regardless of how important this is to them personally, what it symbolizes in their life, what they are about to do is work, and it is not for them; it is for the audience.

As an audience member then, it is important to remember that those people are up there giving it all away to you, each and every one of you.

Some things to take into consideration, or, how to be an audience member:

1) Arrive on time.  This means that if the show begins at 2, get there at half past so that you have time to use the restroom and find your seat.

2) If you can turn it on, turn it off.  Yes, we can see the glow from your phone, the little yellow light on your camera, and the reflection of the screen in your glasses.  Yes, it is a distraction.  And yes, we would prefer for you to watch us without a screen between us.  Live performance is best captured in our memories.

3) If your child does not want to be there or simply cannot sit still or be quiet, leave, quickly.  Sorry.

4) Remember that large casts may have many friends and relatives in the audience, so maybe call that girl fat after you leave the theater in case you are sitting next to her mom.

5) Clap enthusiastically and throughout the performance.   

Edward Gorey Image Courtesy of:

http://favim.com/image/10112/

Watching Dance

Look.

It is remarkable what we miss when watching dance.  Some simple tips for dance audiences:

1.  Look at their feet.  In most forms of dance a lot of the work and technique is in the feet so make a point of looking down.

2.  Read the program notes.  Story lines, influences, history, imagery and motivation are all often articulated in program notes and can be important to understanding or relating to the work.

3. Appreciate the challenge of synchronicity.  Dancers often achieve amazing feats of sameness without notice of or recognition by the audience.  Being able to dance is one thing, being able to do it exactly like ten or twenty other people is a different story.  Appreciate the work of the corps de ballet as well as the soloists.

4. Listen.  Much of the work and mechanics of dance are revealed in the footfalls and breathing patterns of the dancers, if you are close enough, try to listen to the dancers as well as watch them.

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.selmarosner.com/radiocity.html

Step In Time

Repeat.

Studying dance is a repetitive and unruly thing.  Most of what is taught in class is technique and form, the rules of the movement.  Good dancers, dancers with drive, dancers that want to dance, spend hours in repetition, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, sometimes at near impossible tempos.  Dance is learned in repetition; is it the primary tool for teaching the body.  Repeat, critique, repeat again.  Repeat, measure progress, repeat again.  Ability is not stored, a dancer has to always practice, always fight to maintain or push forward.  For every piece we master there is a new movement to begin to study.  Repetition makes it easy to be a technician.  True artistry though, comes from finding release from those things and dancing from the inside out.  Using technique and form to support the movement rather than dictate it.  Some artists work from the ground up, building the dance from assembled bits and pieces. Others work in retrograde, deconstructing phrases, and movements into their most basic elements.  Some are motivated by imagery, or the need to communicate something.  Others are driven by the music.  Ultimately, like most things in life, it is all an improvisation, the following of one impulse, and then another, and another until with repetition, we come to know it as a dance.  

What dances are in your life today?  What kind of improvisation will you do?  What are you using to support it?

Photo Courtesy of:

http://balletclassroom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/ballet-stretching-feet-with-pointe-shoes.jpg

The Glass Slipper

Ballerina.

Dame Margot Fonteyn was perhaps the worlds best known and certainly most loved ballerina.  She revitalized ballet in post World War II Europe and brought it into the American mainstream in the 1950's.  She was a master of the classical vocabulary, and set the bar to which prima ballerinas are still judged. She performed into her late sixties.  She did this in spite of the fact that she was a homely child, plump, and lacking the the long neck and legs desired of ballerinas.  She was ambitious and unstoppable, she dyed her hair, got a nose job, and trained with an unprecedented diligence and fortitude.  She was a remarkable, astonishing dancer, with the ability to make almost anything look effortless.  She stands as one of the great beautys of her time. 

But by all accounts, in spite of her success and legions of adoring fans, she was lonely, isolated, unhappy, and largely taken advantage of throughout her life.  She was childless, unmarried, and without close friends.  She died penniless, alone, and nearly unable to walk.

I wonder about the sacrifices we make.  I am curious about ambition, envy, and ego and where they intersect with discipline and the pursuit of greatness.  I look at the choices people make, the trade offs, bargains, and business deals, the ways in which we get the things we want.  I think that work is good for us and I believe that sacrifice, of time, energy, leisure, is a part of work. I want to understand the tipping point, where desire becomes study, becomes lifestyle, becomes success, and how it can consume some people and nourish others. What are the things you want in life?  What are you willing to do for them?  Will you work, sweat, and fight for it?  Will you lie, cheat or steal?  Will it be worth it?

References/Images:

http://www.myspace.com/joke-joanne/photos/

Eyes Wide Shut

trust.

I am an idealist. Still. Not because I maintain naiveté regarding the nature of the world or ignorance of its evils and seeming inevitabilities, but because it’s in my nature and, well, someone has to be. Idealism gives us cause to fight the good fight. Idealism gives us hope. However one of the complications of being an idealist is the ever-present and looming threat of disillusionment. To combat this I have had to create a paradigm of hope and faith in certain over-arching values, love, compassion, charity, through which to see the world in order to reconcile the evening news with my vision of a peaceful society. The extension of my idealism to my personal life and relationships creates a peculiar and piercing vulnerability, particularly in terms of trust. And trust, as with idealism, is both important and dangerous. Trust is the thing that binds me to the people to whom I am the closest, it lets me be my true self, free from fear of judgment, allows for the exchange of confidences, and combats loneliness. Betrayal of trust is the fastest route to a loss of self respect and a profound sense of abandonment that I have ever experienced. It is easy in the face of betrayal to want to put up barriers and refuse to trust again. But we can’t afford to do that. I think my willingness to trust other people is directly tied to my idealism, my hope. And I choose not to live a life devoid of hope. So I take a breath, gather myself, and begin to trust again.

Also Referenced:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trust

Red Shoe Diaries

push.

Right now, between work, dance, and life, this is how I feel. Up against the wall, pushing. Pushing to meet deadlines, maintain relationships, and meet obligations. Pushing to be stronger, faster, better, legs higher, more graceful, we'd like to see that be a double, can you get a beat in there before you land? And always, always, my feet hurt. There's a unique form of exhaustion related to being a dancer. At best, it leaves you fatigued, just on the edge of truly aching through your whole body, at worst, it leaves you sore to the touch, stiff, shin-splinted, bruised and bleeding. I think that one of the driving forces in dance is the concept of "never enough". There will always be someone in the room doing it better than you, there will always be room for improvement. And in time, you learn that your body will, in fact, always give you a little more. But it means you have to push. Always.

Complacency in dance, as in most things in life, breeds inaction and mediocrity, the all too familiar dangerous and unfulfilling tenants of our modern society. Right now, I struggle to find my point of balance, that place between the push and pulls of life that allows me to manifest the things I work for.

"I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing."~ Hillel

The Dancer: I

legs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLG9DheSh-c

One of the distinguishing features of dance as an artform is the masochism inherent in its participants. As company members, our lives and bodies are not our own, but offered up, sacrificed for the greater good, for someone else's vision. My knees look like this because of a piece choreographed by a good friend that we've been working on for a number of weeks. A piece of hip hop that is proving to be beyond the grasp of his dancers, classically trained ballet dancers. Its not just that the movement is unfamiliar, which it is, but we lack vocabulary to put to the steps, which means we can't say the choreography to ourselves as we dance, and we have to learn it by muscle memory, a tedious and repetitive process. But mostly, the piece is actually painful, and at times frightening, with its knee turns and handstands with splits, particulary in the practice studio with its hard floors and low ceilings. But we love this man, and he's a true artist, so we dance, knowing that it isn't good enough and that we're running out of time. Pull it together. Do the artist justice. Collect the bruises to show you worked for it.

"If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know."~ Katherine Dunham