Category Archives: balllet
Ballet Squid Chronicles: A Mixed Bag of Combos?
Class was interesting today. Claire called in sick, so we had two teachers — Margie for the first half of barre, then Brienne for the rest of everything.
I employed Claire’s suggestion about keeping my fingers in my eyes (okay, maybe that’s not exactly how it goes!)…
So many fingers. So few eyes.
…which made my balances a bazillion times better and let me focus on today’s challenge — preventing the Fail Chain and keeping my turnout, well, turned out.
At the start of our fondus, Brienne handed us a deeply-useful bit of advice: if thinking of bringing the heel forward is making stuff not work, try imaginging that you’re bringing your calf forward (I assume this means the back of the calf).
It’s a brilliant trick. Simply put, you can’t bring the back of your calf forward without opening your hip (and, where appropriate, your knee). Somehow, this little mental-imagery thing makes it way easier to find and activate the muscles that wrap around the back of the thigh and make your turnout go — which, in turn, makes your extensions about a bazillion times easier.
Also makes your balance in passé much prettier — I actually got a “Nice, Asher!” on one of these today … a non-ironic one, even 😀
Other things I learned tonight: PDG’s name is, in fact, Brian. He wasn’t in class tonight, but PDG2 (whose name is Connor) was, and wow, was he lovely to watch.
I (stupidly?) decided to stand on the same end of the room as PDG2 during barre (and, frankly, just about everything else) in hopes, perhaps, that some of his loveliness would rub off on me. At times, it worked, or maybe I’m just improving. At other times, it was more like, “Yeah, here’s a foil for my badness.”
I also decided to go ahead with my bold, bad self in the first group on every freaking thing — in part because I realized that we comprised an odd number, so then I could run around, hit the end of the line again, and practice all the combos cross the floor twice! Bwahaha.
That said, my jumps kind of sucked. Which is weird, because usually I’m all about the jumping, and I didn’t feel like my legs were particularly cooked. In fact, I specifically chose not to go home between school and class in order to spare my legs. I think the problem was actually in my brain; today was one of those distracted days.
Anyway, some of today’s combinations were good (the adagio was pretty, even); some of them were, well, meh. There were good moments (Pirouettes from fourth! I love them!) and there were terrible moments (Recite this in waltz time: Sauté arabesque! Sauté passé! Crap, what comes next? I have no clue!)
The weird part about that last one — I actually did know the combination (the next part was tombe – pas de bourrée – glissade – assemblé), but as soon as I would light out on the first sauté, my mind would go completely blank. It so happens that I can Sauté arabesque! Sauté passé! all day on autopilot, so I kept getting that bit down, and then the rest … ehhhhhhhh.
So that was my class today. I decided that it’s better to screw up boldly and confidently at the head of the line than to screw up mousily and quietly in the back.
For what it’s worth, at some point, the secret to all forms of dance is being able to fake it when you totally forget what you’re doing. You put on your biggest, most confident face (I would say “smile,” but what if you’re Von Rothbart, and you’re supposed to be getting your butt kicked by angry swans?).
Then you do something, and you sell it so well that everyone in the audience believes that you’re doing it right, and everyone else in your line (or in the entire corps, or whatever, depending on the scale of the piece, eh?) is doing it wrong.
Oh, and you don’t stand next to someone who’s better at faking it than you, or it won’t work.
So that’s it for tonight.
Be good, and if you can’t be good, be bold!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: More Brilliant Thoughts from Claire
I get great corrections from all of the teachers at LBS, don’t get me wrong — but something about the specific corrections I get from Claire just works for me. It’s like she instinctively knows how I think or something.
Today’s highlights:
1. You should always be able to see your fingertips.
I put my arms in all kinds of interesting places. The idea that my fingertips should almost never leave my field of vision keeps them where they should be. Much of the time, they hang out in the periphery, but they should still be visible*.
Like many flexible people, I have less-than-perfect proprioception (the “Spidey sense” that lets you know where parts of your body are without looking), so using a visual cue makes a huge difference. Eventually, I won’t need the visual cue — through repetition, my body will train my brain to place its arms correctly without the visual reference.
Anyway, sighting the fingertips fixes your placement so you don’t throw your weight backwards (which is still a problem for me at times). This, in turn, improves balances, turns, and just about everything else. Some of my pirouettes from fourth were pretty nice today.
For what it’s worth, I think the arms look nicer this way as well. One suddenly looks less like a crash-landing stork and more like a gliding swan.
Don’t be this guy.
2. Don’t hop out of turns. Ever.
This correction was issued to the whole class, but I’m pretty sure I did this at least once today — you’re turning, and something in you panics, and instead of letting the momentum of your turn do its thang, you hop out (and then you curse yourself because Professional Dance Guy is doing a triple).
It looks awkward. More crash landing. It also pretty much eliminates any hope you have of gracefully moving into whatever the next step in the combination might be.
Worse, as Claire pointed out, every time you hop out of a turn, you’re training your brain and body that it’s okay to hop out of turns. So just don’t. Fall over instead, if you must.
But, in fact, once I relaxed and just let my turns go, I found I was suddenly landing them rather nicely.
In general, class was good. I felt a tad fumbly and awkward at times in Margie’s class (too much thinking, maybe?), but mostly felt good in Claire’s.
PDG (whose name I really seriously don’t know — like, maybe it’s Tommy? Maybe it’s Brian? Maybe I’m just guessing, and I should, you know, ask?**) shared a barre with me again. It was just the two of us, all by ourselves, on our own barre on the end. Apparently, nobody wanted boy cooties. I totally cribbed off his breathing, since this week has been all about everyone telling us to breathe into our pliés and stuff.
The cool part is that it’s really hard to overthink your dancing when you’re conscious about your breathing. I guess that makes sense, though — when you learn Zen meditation, you begin by following the breath.
Claire also sorted another problem specific to balances that’s been plaguing me at the barre but not at center: I kept losing turnout on my supporting leg, and couldn’t figure out why.
Turns out (no pun intended) that I was leaving the shoulder on the same side behind my center of balance, so then my hips would rotate in an effort to correct, and instead of bringing the shoulder forward and the hips back, I would attempt to do … who knows what? All I know is that the end result was a half-baked turnout and shoulders at an obtuse angle to the barre.
By bringing the shoulder into alignment, one prevents the whole chain of failure. The hips stay where they’re supposed to stay and everything else remains appropriately perpendicular to the barre.
Now if I can just get the whole chain to hang together when moving from attitude devant (which I do quite easily en relevé) to passé (wherein I fall apart again), I’ll be quite happy.
We did lovely little sous-sus turns across the floor in Margie’s class; in Claire’s, we did all kinds of stuff. Like glissade – jeté then two sautés on one foot, change direction, lather rinse repeat, followed by glissade – assemblé – soubresaut – soubresaut. I thought my soubresauts were rather nice today. My one-footed sautés started out high and pointed and all that good stuff, but around the fourth repetition or so I got tired and they stayed pointed but lost most of their height. Oh, well.
My favorite combination today was cabriole-sauté passé-cabriole-sauté passé-glissade-failli-pas de chat. But I think I’ve left out something in the middle, perhaps? It sounds like I’m missing a couple of beats in there somewhere. We couldn’t do anything much longer because we were in the small studio and there were something like thirteen or fourteen of us, all long-leggedy leapers.
Anyway. I enjoyed that one simply because it was pretty. We went in groups of three, in lines, and because we all had the combination cold Claire asked us to focus on staying together. The effect was quite nice.
After class, one of the newer students said to me, “You’re so good! I have to get like you!” So I was totally flattered (especially since I spent the whole class thinking the same thing about PDG and a fellow student who I’ll call Claire the Second).
Oh, and the Shoes
The new shoes worked nicely.
Perhaps because of the construction of the shoe or perhaps because I’ve placed the elastics correctly this time (maybe both?), I found the support through the arch quite nice. My ankles felt quite stable today (sometimes they want to supinate en relevé). Some of this is probably a question of improving technique and increasing strength, but I suspect the shoes do help.
The bottoms of the Pro1Cs feel seamless, which makes rather a difference. I’m not sure how exactly Sansha accomplishes this effect, since the sole pads are quite stiff — but one does not at any point feel as if one is standing on an earbud wire or something (which was definitely a problem with my other shoes at times — not the Romeos, but the little inexpensive eBay shoes).
A word of caution: if you do buy yourself a pair of Sansha Pro 1Cs, be aware that the sole pads (both fore and aft) will be slippery at first. Mine had mostly sorted themselves by the end of today’s second class; they’re still a little slick, but not too badly. At the beginning of the first class, I felt like I was trying to dance on ice. IIRC, this was also the case with Capezio’s Romeos.
So there you have it. Still no pictures, because I was starving by the time Claire’s class ended and didn’t think of it.
Here’s one of the Pro1cs, anyway. The little seam right under the arch seems to enhance the support of the shoe.
Soon! I look so different than I did six months ago. I am trending towards being rather lean and defined. That’s a surprise. Prior to gaining a bunch of weight, I was more or less skinny (except my legs, which have never been skinny). I had some definition because I had so little body fat, but now when I look at myself I get a sense of working musculature instead of just twink-tastic scrawniness. Not that I minded being scrawny, but, there you have it. I think I rather like being built like a dancer.
Anyway, homework beckons (though I think I’m going to take a bath first; my legs are seriously cooked), so I’ll close here.
It’s 4:00 — do you know where your fingertips are?
Notes
*The obvious exception is when you’re in allongée with your face turned towards the hand in front, and so forth. In that case, you probably won’t be able to see the fingers of hand that’s to the side.
**There’s a part of me which feels that sharing a barre with someone three or four times and still not knowing his name is kind of like waking up next to the dude you met at the bar last night and not knowing his name. Only, I’ve never done the latter. Still, it’s awkward. Like, “I should have asked this weeks and weeks ago, and now I’ve missed my chance” awkard.
Ballet Stuff: Sansha Pro1c
I ganked Denis’ Sanshas, which he doesn’t wear anymore, re-sewed the elastics, and wore them to class last night. The width proved suitable, which answered my remaining question about them (I know I like canvas shoes, people speak well of them, and they seem to wear well).
I’m glad it worked out as well as it did, because I had already ordered myself a pair — size 11N, which is basically a 41 narrow in European sizes. They arrived today. I’ve sewn in the elastics and they’re ready to go.
My balances seemed more stable last night — two-foot demi-pointe balances seemed pretty effortless. Part of me thinks, “It’s gotta be the shoes.”
Anyway, the new Sanshas are the right width (finally), which means they don’t roll off at the heel, and the right length, which means they fit well fore-to-aft without cranking the around-the-top elastics ridiculously tight.
I’ll try to give them a proper review (and some pictures?) after class on Saturdy. Unless I make it to Friday class, which is marginally possible.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Combination
Piqué arabesque,
Glissade,
Assemblé,
Faillé,
Assemblé,
Faille´,
Assemblé.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
When you do it right, it looks like dancing. For some reason it fell apart for everyone tonight going left (there were only three of us in class). I realize now that I kept leaving out the assemblé after the first faillé.
I’ve gotten past the thing last week where I kept getting tangled getting from piqué arabesque to glissade. That was the result of too much thinking.
Things are coming back faster now. There were a few nice pirouettes from fourth. Still a few, “Oh, crap! I’m turning the wrong way!” moments.
For some reason, instead of going en dehors, en dehors, en dehors, I found myself wanting to go en dehors, en dedans, en dehors. But the turns are coming, too.
My barre was kind of meh today — some okay bits, some not so okay bits. A couple of times, I totally lost my place — it was like my brain just opted to reboot mid-combo. On the other hand, a couple of my fondus felt beautiful. Were they? Who knows. But that’s how they felt.
I try to keep it in perspective: when I started dancing again back in March, I would’ve been delighted with today’s barre (especially the frappés, even though one of my “reboots” occurred during that combination). That’s the whole thing about ballet — you’re dissatisfied, so you work hard, and then you sort of “level up,” and you get that “Yes!” feeling.
Then you realize you can do it better; that whatever you’re doing, you can refine it.
I enjoy pursuits in which perfection is a goal, but is one that recedes forever into the distance. In ballet, in horseback riding, in cycling, in music, you can always improve. Even if you achieve technical perfection, there’s always room for more musicality, more expression, more subtlety, or more strength.
In other news, today I put on a shirt that’s been too tight for a long time — and suddenly it wasn’t too tight anymore. I might even be able to use it for ballet class.
I have trouble seeing changes in my body, but even I’m beginning to see what all this ballet is doing for me in that regard. Pretty cool stuff. Tonight I was messing around in the mirror at home after class, doing Pretty Things With My Arms, because as a squid those things are hard for me, yo. I transitioned from first-arabesque arms to élongé and caught sight of all these cool little muscles doing their thing in my shoulders and chest and went, “Wow, hey, that’s my body doing that!”
Pretty cool stuff. Denis always says I’m such a teenager when it comes to that. He’s right. I am discovering this body that, when I really was a teenager, was still this scary thing that kind of betrayed me during a time when bad stuff happened to me. I didn’t look at myself. I didn’t want to look at myself.
So now I’m discovering all of it; it’s all totally new, and it’s beautiful in a way. I still struggle to see my body as beautiful, but when I see it working; when I see it doing dancer-ly things; when I see the beautiful machine working the way it’s supposed to work — yeah, I kind of love it then.
One last bit to close. Tonight, when Tawnee arrived, she greeted us (all three of us, ha) with, “Hello, dancers!”
So there you have it. In case you were wondering: we are dancers.
And that’s pretty great.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which My Ears Do Weird Things
Class today was like the weather – mostly sunny! I started off over-thinking and being tense and trying too hard, but by the end of my second class I had managed to relax enough to do some quite decent work going across the floor. I also totally hosed up the frappé combo in Class #2. Feh. On the other hand, during our adagio section, I did a couple of decent promenades. Also a couple of bad ones, but hey, that’s a better ratio than it has been!
Going across the floor, Jessica gave us a simple but rather lovely little combination: tombé-pas de bourré-fourth-pirouette, pause, repeat.
After the first run from the left corner I was convinced I was turning the wrong way (Oh noes!!!) so Jessica made me run the combo by myself. Evidently I was doing it right the whole time, so Yay! Pirouettes from fourth without all the confusion.
On the first repeat, however, I exhaled as I finished my pirouette and suddenly my left ear went all funny.
I spent the rest of class (fortunately, only about ten or fiften minutes) mostly deaf in one ear, but it didn’t really seem to affect my balance much *(I had noticed, earlier, that my promenades on the left leg were iffy). It was just really strange. Later I tried pinching my nose and exhaling to see if I could clear it out, but that just made the right ear go funny as well.
So, um, hooray for allergies, I guess? I think I’m going to take some allergy meds tonight. The time has come.
Both T and J were in class today. T is pretty darned good. If I can dance as well as he does when I’ve been back in it for a year, I’ll be pretty satisfied (I think I’ve probably said that before). J, meanwhile, is funny and lovely and humble and gives me really useful notes (for example, the one about watching my mouth, and another about being lazy with my turnout while practicing releve balances in coupé before class ;)).
After class, I took my time coming home. I was too tired to ride the whole way, so I waited for the bus, then ate lunch downtown, then slow-pedaled the remaining seven miles.
This evening, Jenna joined me for dinner at home (You guys! I made baked falafel and didn’t ruin it*!) and then we went to see University of Louisville Dance Theater at Iroquois Park Amphitheater.
Jenna is evidently my sister from another mister. I looked at this and went, “Huh, we could totally be siblings.”
The whole show was immensely enjoyable — UofL Dance Theater put together a program of varied choreography, including one very fun Bollywood-inspired pieces — but the two pieces at the end with Louisville Ballet’s Eduard Forehand were stunning. He is simply a gorgeous dancer, and the rest of the company raised their game to approach his level.
For what it’s worth, Forehand is totally the kind of guy you watch and think, “And that’s why he’s a professional.” He’s very fluid, expressive, and musical, and his technique is very good.
Also, his pas de deux work could be used to teach a partnering masterclass.
So that’s it for now. A lovely way to close out the summer, even though school has already resumed (and if it hadn’t, I’d be at Burning Man). We don’t have class on Monday, and I may or may not be going on an epic bicycle adventure instead. Depends on the likelihood of major thunderstorms. The weather has been iffy of late, and while none of us mind riding in the rain, we don’t want to get caught in a severe storm in the middle of nowhere.
Good-night, everybody. Don’t burn your falafels.
Notes
*So, the last time I made falafel, it was an unqualified disaster. I didn’t own a deep-fryer then and I don’t own one now, so baked falafel seemed like a good plan.
I have no idea what I did wrong the first time (I was still in high school, and I really had no idea how to cook anything but spaghetti, ramen noodles, hot dogs, and a really fine grilled cheese). Whatever it was, I didn’t repeat my mistake this time. I suspect that’s because in the intervening period I have learned to occasionally read all the directions. Both times, I used boxed falafel mix; this time, I got Ziyad’s mix, which has a short list of recognizable ingredients and easy-to-follow directions. I recommend it.
I’m posting this because Jenna pointed out that I’m always wearing my composed “portrait face” in photos. So there 🙂
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Just call me Vidal Sisson?
Tonight, I learned that when I’m tired, I sisson when I should sauté arabesque. My legs are all, “We are not getting off the ground on just one leg,” or something.
Also that when I think about getting my extensions higher, I return to Defective Construction Crane Mode.
When I’m just learning the combo, it’s all, “Ohai, well, there’s my leg way up there.” And then we run the combo and I’m all, “Dangit, it was up there before and it’s getting up there again!” :::gripgripgrip:::
But I can defective – crane higher than I used to, anyway. Is that a good thing? Beats me.
Meanwhile, I still can’t count and jump at the same time. D’oh. Will I ever learn*?
That said, I managed to glissade and assemble without dissembling or disassembling, so that’s something. I can also glissade – jete. Getting from sauté arabesque to glissade still looks a bit awkward. Have to work on that.
This was not a great day for Letting It Happen. I definitely suffered for missing class on Monday. All told, though, it’s coming along.
I also mostly remembered not to make faces. Mostly.
Edit: I forgot to mention the (rather depressing) highlight of last night’s class: left split all the way down, no sweat (well, actually, I was sweating buckets by then, but not because of the split). Yay! On the other hand, I would rather have done beautiful combos than a full split.
Notes
*Yes. In fact, I’ve made progress in this regard. Now I’m usually okay if the combination is fairly simple; in more complex combos, I count fine until suddenly I don’t.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Who Hid The Squid?
Today started off with a bang — I miscalculated and made it out of the house with 20 minutes to make the “ballet bus,” so I hammered my poor legs off for 3.66 miles at 16.6 MPH average (which is more impressive when you consider that, for the first couple of miles, there are So. Many. Stop. Signs, which really kills your overall speed). I made it to the bus stop in 13 minutes, which is good, because the bus came early (which is unheard-of for the #29, especially on a Saturday!).
I did just Ballet Essentials because afterwards J. and I went for brunch and coffee.
Class went brilliantly — with Denis away at That Thing In The Desert…
 |
| We interrupt your regularly-scheduled Squid Pictures to bring you this image of Camp Friendzied Serenity going up in Black Rock Desert*. |
…we numbered only four students, so everyone got a lot of individual attention. I was very happy that most of the corrections I received were related to refinement and expression — not so much just re-learning how to do stuff as taking it to the next level: really using the brushing-the-floor bit in grandbattement; making nice lines when doing sauté arabesque; turning cleanly. I don’t get to not “do the arms” anymore, either 😀
I was not all that squidly today. Dare I say that, at times, my arms were even pretty? Not all the time, of course. There was a little bit of Swan Arms if by Swan Arms you mean Angry Swan In A Thunderstorm Arms.
“Siegfried, what is he doing?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, Odette, but it surely isn’t anything I’ve ever seen.”
Shamelessly stolen here:
“Young swan pair” by Ralfie – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young_swan_pair.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Young_swan_pair.JPG
At least it wasn’t all Domo Arigato Mr. Robodagio? (“Domo, domo. Domo, domo**.“) There was a little bit of, “Wow, those actually look like ballet arms!” arms.
And, of course, the usual leapy goodness, including a couple of good efforts to get some actual height. Sauté arabesque looks more impressive if your supporting leg is more than one inch off the floor, and since tossing the working leg ceiling-ward isn’t too hard, I decided to concentrate on using my plié more effectively. I also got to concentrate on making prettier lines. When your instructor starts correcting you to make your dancing prettier, you feel like you’re getting somewhere! ^-^
I found myself making things happen sometimes during class today, but there were lovely moments of letting things happen as well.
I still sweated balls the whole time because it was hawt in studio 5 (FWIW, it’s just hot in Louisville in general right now, and so humid you might as well bring your scuba gear if you’re leaving the house).
After class, brunch, coffee, and walkies, I rode my bike another 17.4 miles or so (I decided to explore for a new route, and not-so-quickly discovered that there are a lot of roads that don’t connect because there’s an interstate in the way). The first 9 miles I averaged about 13 MPH (including lots of slowing and stopping and roving around in curvaceous neighborhood streets); after that, I backed off the gas and tootled home at 11 MPH moving average.
So, basically, today I used my legs a lot, and since J. and some friends and I are going dancing tonight, it would appear that I’m going to use them some more. I understand that if you use them enough they will fall off and then you grow new (and, one hopes, better) legs?
Or maybe I’m thinking of what happens if you’re skink and someone grabs your tail.
Speaking of which, our neighborhood is rife with adorable skinks right now, and it makes me super happy.
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They look just like this one from Wikimedia Commons.
Last Monday, one was hanging out under our recycling bin before I brought the bin in from the curb. The poor skink experienced a moment of great panic and confusion when suddenly its shelter rolled away and then wove around drunkenly in an effort to avoid its equally-erratic evasive maneuvers.
So. Um. I guess that’s it? I am going to go eat moar food, because feta and hummus and olives, oh my!
Notes
*After five years, our camp has evolved into an official Theme Camp with early admission for setup and everything. This is exciting.
**Denis is a huge Styx fan. I have grown rather fond of them as well over the course of our relationship.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Leapy
I’m all kinds of tired right now, so probably going to keep this short.
Another mixed bag tonight. My turnout muscles felt wimpy — my turnout was there, and elastic, and then I kept losing turnout in my supporting leg during one-foot balances en relèvé, and I felt like I had to work harder than usual to keep my working leg turned out and my weight in the right place and stuff. My arms and back were kind of all over da place.
Beyond that, though, barre went pretty well. A lot of “Holy crap, that’s my leg!” during grand battement — that feeling when suddenly you’re grand-battementing and your foot is past shoulder height à la seconde. So the flexibility is coming back, though I still need to strengthen the muscles that let you do high developpé side without gripping like a coconut crab in a hurricane (yeah, I should be asleep now, so I’m kinda loopy, here).
Adagio was sound if not particularly beautiful and my promenade sucked much less. In fact, one or twice it didn’t even really suck at all.
Petite allegro was also pretty much back to my normal standard. My glissade – assemblé is now glissaded and assembled, so then I screwed up the glissade – jeté part. Just kept changing feet where I shouldn’t have, though. Nothing horrible.
Our choreographic bit was fine, except the one time I decided to pirouette the wrong way. I also remembered how to do waltz turns. Yaaaaaay! So then I had to try do them well. Not sure I’m there yet.
Big jumps were awesome as always. Less high at times than they could be.
Long Edit:
That said, I got a look at myself in the mirror while we were working leaps across the floor, and was actually pretty impressed with my legs. They were straight, high, and turned the frack out. The arms also did what they were supposed to, if a bit wildly at times. I looked, um, exuberant. I guess exuberant is a good place to start. It was definitely more “ballet jester” than “ballet prince,” but at least it was “ballet jester with awesome legs.”
Sometimes I watch myself dance and I despair (usually during adagio, because, wow: sometimes I adagio like a robot, which is not good). Sometimes I watch myself dance, and I’m like, “Holy snotrockets, that dude can leap.” Which is, you know, useful if you’re a dude who’s into ballet, because Impressive Leapiness is part of the ballet boy package. On the other hand, it also means I should focus on learning how to adagio with, like, fluidity ‘n’ grace ‘n’ stuff.
Which I can totally do at home, but then I try too freaking hard in class.
End of Edit
They were the last bit, and I was pretty tired. Definitely a bit under the weather tonight.
Tonight’s main corrections were for my turnout and for not jumping as high as I could.
Everything is kind of starting to be there again. Very much looking forward to class on Saturday. Might even take an extra class on Friday. We shall see!
Not Really About Ballet (or Bikes): A Weighty Matter
Everyone in the United States now lives in a place where being bigger than the “norm” is the norm.
Yet we still also live in a place where fat people (as a non-fat person, am I allowed to use that phrase?) are treated as a minority — and an unwelcome one, at that.
In her amazing blog, Dances with Fat, dancer/Health At Any Size maven/size activist extraordinaire Ragen Chastain recently wrote about how, structurally, our culture still behaves as if fat people don’t exist (for what it’s worth, at least hospitals, medical offices, and movie theaters in this area seem to be “getting it” to some extent, but our cultural prejudice against fat is still rife).
She wrote about how we often, as designers of environment, sacrifice the safety and well-being of a whole group of people – moms, dads, brothers, sisters, friends; real people – and how we feel like it’s okay to do so, because we feel like, you know, they could choose to lose weight.
We could figure out how to make seat belts and bus seats (and other things) that work for bigger people, but we don’t because, in short, we don’t like them. We don’t like them even when, in the immortal words of Pogo, “… they is us.”
I think this is wrong. I think it’s as wrong as choosing not to work on a cure for lung cancer because could choose not to smoke and we don’t like smokers. Our Puritan heritage makes us think that by making better seatbelts or whatever we’d be enabling people, but even that thought reflects an inherent prejudice. Regardless of how we feel about the question of size, big people are here, and they deserve to be safe and happy just like smaller people.
Yet, as cyclist and especially as a ballet dancer, I move in two worlds wherein body size is a constant undercurrent. Even as I talk about Health At Every Size and size acceptance (and the fact that I find people of many different sizes valid, and worthy, and attractive), I am focused on reshaping my own body in pursuit of an aesthetic that I believe will improve my performance as a dancer … and I’ve probably been only too willing to accept praise for the results of my efforts, when in fact effort is only part of the picture.
I know that it’s a bit hypocritical to be like, “You’re fine at your size, but I’m too big for me even though I’m actually kind of small, relative to the current average.” I get that I’m allowed to have my own aesthetic, but at the end of the day that aesthetic is definitely one that is linked, for a lot of people, to some pretty unhappy stuff.
Choosing to become slimmer is, to an extent, very much like choosing to straighten your hair if you’re black or “act straight” (for whatever that means) if you’re gay: you might just be doing it because you like the way it looks on you, but it’s impossible to fully decouple the act from its cultural implications.
Choosing to pursue the classical ballet aesthetic or a bike racer’s lean physique, meanwhile, takes that to a whole new level — both in cycling and in dance one encounters a fair bit of elitism, and body-type elitism is definitely part of the picture. Bigger dancers tend to feel like they’re not as good (in a basic-worth sense) than leaner dancers — indeed, would-be-dancers sometimes shy away from their dreams because they feel like they’re “too big” even as they admire lean and graceful professionals.
Likewise, I am definitely aware that there is more at play here than just my effort – genetics have a hand in it, as does the fact that I was flat-out skinny for much of my life – so I’m not going to go back to thinking everyone can lose weight as easily as I have if they just try harder. But other people might not be aware of that, and might either use my “success” in reshaping my body to shame fat people or might look at me and say “He can do it, so why can’t I? What’s wrong with me?”
I’m not responsible, at the end of the day, for the meanings and feelings other people connect with my actions. I can’t control that.
What I can control, though, is how I act – – not just what I do, but how I do it.
So here’s what I’m wondering: what is the best way for me to be an ally, here? Obviously, inclusiveness and advocacy are important — but what else can I do to let the world know that even though I’m small, I think big people are great, and deserve a fair shake?
From the outside, do my words and actions look like those of an ally? Or am I getting it wrong?
The time the I spent being overweight definitely opened my eyes. For example: I learned that if you walk into a new doctor’s office and tell them that you’ve been skinny for most of your life and now you aren’t and that you’re concerned about that (that is, worried that maybe there’s an underlying health thing happening), they are very likely to assume that you’re either lying or hyperbolizing about the “always been skinny” part. There is a moral judgment that people make about fatness — they assume that you’re lazy and undisciplined* and always have been, and that there’s something morally wrong with that, and with you.
That said, there’s a lot I haven’t experienced, and we are the worst arbiters of our own behaviors and prejudices. So, basically, I guess what I’m saying is this: if there’s something about me that reflects an underlying prejudice that maybe I could work on, feel free to tell me, and if there’s a way you feel like I could be a better ally definitely let me know.
Especially welcome would be any thoughts on how to make sure I’m supportive of dancers if all sizes — because dance is definitely a world unto itself, and one in which the norm is still very much lean.
What prompted this post, in fact, was the thought (which I mentioned on tumblr) that I’m “starting to look like a dancer again” – a perfect example of the kind of thinking that relegates anyone who doesn’t fit a certain aesthetic to the “non-dancer” category, which could definitely make folks feel unwelcome and unwanted and unseen.
Those folks should be welcome. All of them being something unique to the studio, and some of them are great dancers very much deserving of the opportunity to perform**.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep examining my own behavior, because at the end of the day, it’s up to me to not be a jerk, and to learn to see how my words and actions might be jerky and unhelpful.
So that’s it for now. I know this is long and it all makes at least some sense!
Notes
*As a cyclist and a dancer, I find it a bit surreal that the average person in this country might assume, for example, that either Ernest Gagnon or Ragen Chastain is lazy or undisciplined.
We Americans imagine ourselves to be disciplined people, but observation has led me to conclude that we really mostly aren’t.
For what it’s worth, though, laziness is a valuable evolutionary strategy, and I contend that discipline, per se, doesn’t exist – only motivation exists.
**I’m going to go out on a limb here, though, and say that I think we probably shouldn’t crack down on artistic directors and choreographers who tend to select dancers that fit the current dominant aesthetic. Artists choose whatever media suit their particular creations, ADs and choreographers included (that doesn’t mean they should be jackwagons about it, if course).
Instead, we can support both the more traditional modality and innovative ADs and choreographers who work with an array of body sizes and types. After all, we didn’t clamor for the end of oil paint when acrylics and other new media were on the rise – we just made room for the new media, which bring their own merits (and that didn’t happen overnight, either).
I think there’s a place in the world for the current classical ballet aesthetic, but also for other dance “media,” if you will.
danseur ignoble 
