Tonight we premiered three new works.

I danced a principal role in two of them, with two excellent partners.

I made a tiny mistake in my first piece that the audience didn’t see (my brain skipped ahead and my partner saved me from myself right away ^-^’), and an angel press didn’t quite get all the way there because I let a wardrobe malfunction distract me (my trousers ripped — good thing I kept my tights on under them!), but other than that it was quite possibly the best performance I’ve ever given as a dancer.

I felt confident. I felt strong. I felt connected to each of my partners, to the music, to the corps, and to the stories we created with our movement.

In short, I felt good. I felt present.

~

Afterwards, I had this moment that felt like a little series of  windows in time had opened up.

For a heartbeat, I caught a glimpse of a long-ago me from a terrible time in my life; a me that couldn’t believe that he would ever dance at all, let alone like this. A me that politely demurred when someone suggested auditioning for the dance program at Academy (the arts magnet that I did attend, although I didn’t major in dance) because the thought of not making the cut felt like a knife twisting in my heart.

A me that honestly didn’t believe I’d make it to the age I am now. A me that didn’t even really believe that I’d make it to my next birthday.

For a heartbeat, I saw a slightly older me — the me who couldn’t follow up on a friend’s suggestion that I drop in at a local ballet company’s school. I still couldn’t let myself hope. I still believed both that you cannot return, once you leave the country of Ballet, except as a tourist, and that I probably wasn’t really good enough — that I had the physical aptitude, but not the brains.

For an eyeblink, I saw myself, raw and just a little bit hopeful, a college student finally setting foot in the studio again, cradling in my heart of hearts the dimmest hope that somehow, maybe, I might find a way to dance, even just a little.

For a breath, I saw the dancer that I was towards the end of my first year as an apprentice at Lexington Ballet, stubborn and determined, but also frustrated and so, so afraid I’d never figure it out.

I wanted to reach back and say to them — to all those iterations, all those past selves, so to speak — Even now, we’re making it. We’re getting there.

A couple of years ago, my friend BG told me, “You will dance, and you will do great things.”

And tonight I danced, and tonight I think my company made something great and beautiful.

Tonight I danced a pas de deux that ends with me carrying my partner off the stage, and as we vanished into the wings, the audience responded resoundingly. I heard a voice shout, “Bravo!”

That’s no small thing, on a Thursday night in a city where people don’t see a lot of ballet, and really don’t see a lot of contemporary ballet. (That pas was in the closing ballet, which is quite contemporary.)

Reader, none of that is the main reason that I dance: I dance because dancing is where my soul, or whatever you want to call it, thrives. It’s where my heart feels whole.

But I’d be lying if I said that it was anything less than amazing to know that you’ve captured this room full of strangers and brought them with you on your journey and actually moved them.

~

At the end of the day, besides the dancing itself, it blows my mind that I am part of this company: that I’m valued and wanted; that I have friends at work; that I get to spend my working days creating art with these vibrant, singular people.

It blows my mind that I’m living this life.

The sense of gratitude is impossible to articulate. So much of my life right now is a prayer of thanksgiving that, even in the hard and dark and troubled times we’re living through, somehow there’s room in the world for art and for artists, and somehow I’m one of them.

This night is a golden night. My heart and soul keep thrumming with a deep kind of contentment.

I think: so this is how it feels to be in the place where, not too long ago, you hardly dared to dream that you might someday be.

Right before I went on for the first time tonight, standing in the crossover behind the stage, I took a deep breath and repeated something that L’Ancien told me time and again in class. Simply: “Remember: you are a Prince.”

He would say this to me when I was struggling and getting into my head and getting in my own way. Just, “Remember: you are a Prince.”

Tonight, I was a classical prince in foofy Regency-revival sleeves and a velvet waistcoat and tights and a contemporary prince in 50s (60s?) Greaser gear, with my t-shirt sleeves rolled up and black trousers (that almost made it to the end of the show).

What links the two is the decision to believe, for this moment, that you deserve to be here.

That and my hair, because 10 minutes isn’t really long enough to un-shellac your hair and turn a buttoned-down Edwardian ‘do into a passable DA.

PS: Counting the five in the Noir finale, there are about 20 lifts distributed between the pieces I did tonight (10 in the main Silver pas; five in each finale). And excepting the angel press that didn’t quite make it (see above) they all went well by any measure, be it metric, Imperial, or SAE.