You guys, I took actual shower this morning, and it was amaaaaaaaaazing.
I say this as someone who is normally not a huge fan—someone who generally regards showers as perfunctory and boring—but after ten days of sponge baths? That. Felt. Good.
Category Archives: health
The Weirdness of Actually Liking This Body
We dancers are notoriously critical of our bodies—sometimes in unhealthy ways, but also sometimes in realistic ways.
I, for example, am way scrawny compared to the vast majority of Pilobolus guys, but a Clydesdale—really, more a Welsh cob —if you toss me in with the guys from ABT. In short (or tall), different companies require different bodies. ABT favors a lean, clean aesthetic. Pilobolus needs strength. The Bolshoi wants powerful, flexible jumpers.
I wrestle with those things, as one does—with the question, when I’m auditioning, of “Does this body fit this company or gig?” I’ll continue to face that on a regular basis as long as I’m working in dance and circus. I’m okay with that.
That, however, isn’t what this post is about.
Rather, it’s about finally looking at myself in a full-length mirror and thinking,”Yeah, okay. is my body.”
I didn’t grasp how very much my moobs got in the way of that, nor to what degree there would be this sharp before/after scenario. Before, I looked and I saw moobs. After, I look and I see this compact, well-knit boy with really nice shoulders (thanks, ballet!).
To an extent, it’s still startling because I expected things to just look a bit weird for a while after surgery. I was prepared for that and okay with it. I mean, I guess the surgical tape and Post-Op Pasties™ look a little weird, but they look like they’re applied to a body that’s, like, just there. No big bruises or anything.
In that same vein, I’ve begun to forget it that it once felt awkward—mentally, that is—to rest a hand on my chest in bed. The skinflaps were always there, waiting to remind me. Now they’re not.
At the Burn this year, I found myself feeling—well, not quite envious, but wistful I guess, over M’s smooth, tight chest and his lovely little pink nipples. It didn’t occur to me that I’d wind up similarly equipped after the skinflaps went, though maybe it should have? I mean, did I my nipples were going to turn purple or what? Yet, still, I feel like I got so much more than I had expected.
Even the scars, where the tape has begun to peel, are mostly ultra-thin. I’m not sure if my surgeonwas extra careful because I’m a dancer and the appearance of my body is a career asset, whether I was just really to work on, or if he’s just always this good. Regardless, I’m immensely grateful.
And tonight I looked at all of myself, stark naked, in the mirrored shower door and I thought, really for the first time in my life, “Yeah, okay. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty nice.”
I’m not going say I’ve lost the voice that says, “You have more than 4 percent fat. You suck.” Maybe it’ll leave, maybe it won’t, but it’s still there now.
But another part of me, on the other hand, finally feels it can speak up with confidence.
Like I don’t have to secretly dread petit allegro because things might shift around and get awkward.
Like when I walk down street the in that flimsy orange tank top and a guy looks at me, I don’t have to look away or shut him down because I think he wouldn’t like me with my clothes off.
Like whenever I get to dance with a smart, hot guy like M again, I won’t do it half afraid he’s going to run his hands down my chest and think, “WTF?”
Like I won’t have to take my contacts out, maybe, to stop me catching sight of myself in the giant closet door mirrors when D and I are playing around in bed because it might make me think, “WTF?”
Eventually, of course, I’ll get used to this actually being my body. Right now, though, it’s rather a marvelous little mystery all my own; a prayer answered slowly but beautifully.
I know it’s not like this for everyone, and I’m grateful, too, for the sheer simplicity of my feelings about all of this. It’s pretty much an unalloyed good in my life.
So me for tonight. Time to sleep.
Um, Yaaaaaaassssssss???
I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me earlier.
When I finally got my surgery scheduled, it occurred to me, of course, that down the line I might finally feel happy enough with my body for audition for the enormous portion of dance jobs that can be filed under “Topless Boys Live!”
It occurred to me that I would probably be much happier in class without a compression vest, and definitely would be much happier swimming without one. And, of course, it occurred to me that I would definitely be much happier when the Queen of the Costume Vault inevitably holds up some tiny-ass shirt and says, “He’d look great in this!!!” and the choreographer-director goes, “Make it so!”
It didn’t, for some reason, occur to me that I would, say, finally feel comfortable just sitting around the house with no shirt on.
Which, I realize, probably sounds like no big deal to most of us in the first world—only I’ve somehow contrived to live in a very humid place and also in a house that lacks both central aircon and proper cross-ventilation. In short, it can get pretty sticky in my house, and the more skin you can expose without feeling weird about it, the happier you’re going to be.
So just now, after changing out my most recent round of Post-Op Pasties™, as I lamented the impending inconvenience of a shirt, it occurred to me that, hey! Now I can sit around my house half-naked, like any other idiot-without-central-air-or-cross-ventilation.
This feels so much better.[1]
- Yes, my office is that freaking chaotic right now, because too much travel. In addition to being where I do the book-keeping[2] and fold the laundry (and eat Cup Noodles), the office serves as a dance intensive-and-festival staging area. This year, we started staging stuff in April and really haven’t un-staged, ever.
- Yeah, I’m basically doing the book-keeping in dance shorts AND NOTHING ELSE. You wanna fight about it? (Well, I don’t. Really, it’s too warm for all that.)
So, anyway.
In other news, not that any of you really need to know this, but given the particular surgery I had done there’s a potential for significantly reduced sensation in the nipples. (I’ve fretted about this a bit before.)
Evidently, I’ve completely dodged that bullet, as mine are hecking ticklish right now. I am rather grateful for the post-op pasties, or I wouldn’t be able to get anything done that involves wearing a shirt (which, to be fair, wouldn’t prevent me from doing stuff around the house, I guess?).
Anyway, the right one looks a little weird because it’s a little scabby for some reason, but honestly they look and feel rather a lot better than I thought they would by this point.
Look, they’re basically normal! Also, that’s a lot of tape (all of which is beginning to think about peeling off).
The weird part is that the sutures around my aureolae have caused me exactly no discomfort, which is not what I would’ve expected. I figured that would be the worst part, but nope.
You can probably tell from this shot that I have some minor swelling (which comes and goes, so I’m not worried about it) near the middle of my chest. Curiously, that’s the only place where I’ve regularly had any discomfort, and the place where it gets uncomfortable is nowhere near the sutures.
Behold the mysteries of the human body, I guess?
Lastly, I got to do a little work today at Bark in the Park, a fund-raiser for the Animal Care Society (one of the best local organizations for animals in need). Basically, I wandered around in shiny vertical-striped lycra twirling a dance ribbon and conscientiously avoiding raising my arms or my heart rate. That was fun, not least because I got to meet all kinds of nice doggies.
It was also fun not to have to wear a compression vest under my costume in the 90+ degree (F) heat. The festival was pretty quiet (mostly, I think, due to the heat), but the folks in attendance enjoyed having some circus-y folk afoot.
In Which I Revisit An Important Concept
(…Or, “Hey, what do you know, maybe knowledge really is power!”)
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
I’ve been looking stuff up on the internet since I was a kid. I should know how this works by now! Got a weird question? Pretty sure you don’t know anyone who can answer it? Ask Dr. Google!
Anywho, I’ve been fretting over the deep details of What Is Going On With My Chest, and what should make me worry, and what shouldn’t, etc. For some reason, however, it didn’t occur to me until this morning to just, like, look it up.
Even though research is, like, kind of my jam[1]?
- Or, like, my tertiary jam, close on the heels of dance and circusing. But, like, if this was a horse race, research would definitely still be in the money.
So, needless to say, this morning I decided to apply my research-fu to my involved questions about the whole healing process … and, actually, I found really good answers from legit sources (being able to identify legit sources is an important skill, you guys).
Basically, the problem has been not the what, but the why (and how):
- Why can’t I put my hands in the air like I don’t care?
- Why can’t I lift things?
- Why, from a physiological perspective, are those things bad ideas right now?
- How could they impact the healing process (and, more importantly, are they going to make my nipples, like, fall off or something????!!!)?
- How can I prevent myself from screwing everything up?
Anyway, I now understand what’s going on physiologically, which will make it a lot easier to remember not to do things.
I find it very helpful to have that extra data point—it not only strengthens the synaptic connections associated with the information in question, but adds a degree of motivational magic.
Basically, a really strong motivator can, to a degree, sometimes curb my impulsive nature[2]. The challenge is finding a motivator that’s stronger than the motivators that lead me to do dumb stuff.
- Works best in combination with Adderall, admittedly.
The motivation to make sure that all this surgical stuff heals as well and as quickly as possible is very powerful, but not terribly specific.
The specific knowledge of what’s going on under my skin and what I’m avoiding by following my surgeon’s instructions is really very helpful: it adds a layer of information that makes it more likely that the motivator, “Don’t eff up your surgery” will win in one of those momentary battles between impulses.
On the upside, I’m now past the point of greatest danger of really crazy outcomes (like my nipples actually going necrotic and sloughing off, for example o_O) … which is good, because the first thing I did upon halfway waking this morning was stretch, and although I stopped myself immediately, it made me feel a wee bit panicky. I also got fed up with my compression dressing in the middle of the night, woke up, and took the freaking thing off.
Turns out that I don’t really need to worry about either of those things too much—just keep an eye on things as always, but they probably haven’t done any real damage to the healing process. I’m doing a pretty good job behaving myself, and the nipple-aureola complexes should pretty much have made themselves at home at this point, having been significantly disturbed during surgery but taking only about a week to establish themselves again. They’ll be back to normal resiliency within a couple more weeks.
Anyway, I’m feeling much better now.
So, basically, I have yet again discovered the age-old principle of alleviating concerns by increasing understanding.
Um. Go me? Yay?
In other news, maybe I should also Google, “How the heck do I get all this freaking medical adhesive off my skin?” (Edit: Yup, I Googled it. Evidently, acetone—the main ingredient in nail polish remover—will do the trick. Going to give that a try in a bit.)
~
PS: I am working on Saturday—a wee bit of low-intensity ambient dancing. It will be an interesting challenge to see what I can accomplish without raising either my heartbeat or my arms 😀
Check Out My Fancy Hospital Pasties
I’m officially decompressing!
It turns out that what was driving me so crazy was the combination of uber-tight compression wrap and surgical drain tubing, which conspired to irritate the living daylights out of my intercostal cartilage and muscles. Those are still a bit angry, but sooooooo much better sans poky tubing and with relaxed compression.
During my surgery, I got trimmed down and liposuctioned and so forth, and now I’m all taped up and decorated with ridiculously large hospital pasties (I feel like perhaps I should decorate them?[1]) … And, yes, I still have nipples 😛
- Made an attempt. Didn’t bring any wide Sharpies, though. SOON.
I debated whether or not to post pictures, but I’m going to bite the bullet and do it.
First, I’m really stoked about how clean everything looks already. My body just looks like, you know, my body. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting? But I think it involved bruises and stuff.
Second, I’m not the first guy who’s had to undertake this kind of surgery, nor will I be the last—and I was okay with it in part because I saw photos in various phases of the healing process from other guys who’d had the same thing done. Maybe mine will help someone down the line—another dancer, even—feel okay with it, too.
A note about the dancer-specific end of that: I hemmed and hawed about which surgical approach to pursue in part because of the potential for scarring and the fact that, as a male dancer, I’ll have more options if I feel like I can take roles that require me to dance shirtless [2].
- Like, for example, I’ll be able to work in modern dance, which is apparently code for “Topless Boys Live!”, ever at all
Ultimately, I opted for an approach that would leave longer scars, but in more discreet places, and would be a sure shot in terms of removing extra skin in awkward spots. Having seen myself this afternoon with no shirt and no medical pasties, I know I made the right decision.
Speaking of that, I got to see myself sans Hospital Pasties this afternoon, and I’m quite happy with the results—though as a good citizen of the internet I’m kicking myself for failing to grab a photo.
Anyway, I had a bunch of extra skin before (thanks, collagen disorder!), but you’d never know at this point. Also, I appear to have normal tactile sensation everywhere, which is great. It wasn’t terribly likely in my case, but I was a little worried about ending up with tactile “dead zones” that could be awkward for some kinds off partnering.
There will be narrow scars below my pecs extending from about 4 cm to either side of the center of my chest (looks closer to the center in the shot below due to tape and guidelines) to a point straight down from my armpits. They probably won’t be very visible. The upside of the collagen thing is that I tend towards hypotrophic scarring, which in turn tends not to stand out too much against my ultra-pasty pallor.
How do you like these gigantic pasties? You can also still see some of the guidelines my surgeon drew before surgery 😛
I’ve also got extra gauzy stuff and even moar tape going on under my arms where my drains came out today. Those will be there for about a week. (You guys, I really should’ve purchased stock in 3M’s medical supply division.)
I have some sutures in my aureolae, so I’m supposed to wear some kind of medical pasties for a couple of weeks whilst those heal up, but my surgeon suggests the big, square band-aids with adhesive all the way around. There’s no need for them to be huge like the current ones; 4×4 gauze just happens to be ubiquitous in US medical practices.
I feel like I should thank my ballet and aerials teachers for making my surgeon’s job and my life easier. He had zero trouble locating the margins of my pecs, and my blood supply and overall fitness are basically stellar, which made everything smoother and easier in every way.
That’s it for now. We’re heading home tomorrow, so I might even make it back in time to stand around idly at rehearsal on Wednesday, learning by osmosis.
PS: I am greatly enjoying wearing just one shirt at a time. I cannot explain how amazing that feels.
PPS: Still heckin’ itchy, though, because omg so much tape. At least the stuff under my pecs will fall off on its own in about a week.
This Mammoth Moment
Class was decent today.
My allergies were, as they have been, off the chain—but that’s par for the course, and no small part of the reason that I bother working on my cardio. The more fit my cardiovascular system is, the less it hates me when I can barely inhale because my nose and the back of my throat are full of goop but I dance anyway.
It wasn’t flat-out the best class I’ve had recently (that was Sunday, I think), but I still feel like every single day I make progress, which is something. Even last Thursday, when my allergies were so bad I thought my head would explode and I had to beg off of grand allegro (to my great and undying humiliation), I made progress.
After class, I reviewed Siegfried’s variation. I had meant to just mark it, but instead after the first phrase I found myself running it: contretemps-tombé-pas de bourrée-glissade-saut de chat, repeat. I was watching my port de bras and my turnout in the mirror and heading back to “stage left” suddenly I noticed that I was, as the song[1] goes, “Way up in the middle of the air,” without actually trying, in this surprisingly nice saut de chat.
- The song in question being “Ezekiel Saw The Wheel,” a folk song which I’d never heard until I met my last roommate, who used to sing it: Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up, way up, Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air.
Anyway, that saut de chat startled the heck out of me and I landed like a mammoth, but it’s really good to feel like I’ve regained the best of my “Terpsichorean powers[2],” so to speak.
- Why, yes, of course I’m referencing T.S. Elliot. Also, the musical Cats.
On the other hand, I don’t recommend landing like a mammoth even on good floors. I went back to marking, though with a little more vigor than your usual mark.
I also realized that I tend to fail to bring my second leg to the party when I do assemblés in the context of petit allegro.
I mean, it’s not that it doesn’t get there. It’s that I fail to really actively transport it. Like the first leg gets on the train, but the second one has to walk to the party.
I had somehow failed to notice that … no doubt in part because when I do grand allegro assemblés—especially porté—I really snap that puppy right the heck up there. But, in case you were wondering, petit allegro is not, in fact, “grand allegro, only smaller,” no matter what its name might imply. It requires its own approach (they do it like nobody’s business in Copenhagen).
But, anyway, I haven’t been really pushing the second foot through the plié and snapping it up there, and Killer B schooled me over it this morning.
So Killer B’s advice is to think of glissade-assemblé as a compound word; a hyphenated phrase like tombé-pas de bourée, (or, if you’re a guy, tombé-chaîné-chaîné-chaîné-chaîné-chaîné). You have to really push the trailing leg through the bottom of the plié that’s sort of the hyphen so the momentum doesn’t get lost[3].
- When you lose the momentum, you wind up with two separate words, one of them mumbled: “Glissade. Assemblah.”
So I tried it, and wouldn’t you know, it worked like a charm.
So that’s today’s bit of technical advice. Since glissade-assemblé is a petit-allegro stock phrase, think of it with a hyphen and pushpushpush the second leg through the plié in the middle, so when it leaves the ground again all the momentum is there.
And use your plié. And use your plié. And use your plié.
Which, coincidentally, will also stop you landing your saut de chat like a mammoth, which you will appreciate when you’re seventy and haven’t yet had to put in new knees, or so I’ve heard.
~
On Monday I found myself reading some old posts in the bath (because reading in the bath is what I would do basically 90% of the time that I’m not dancing, if I had my way … well, that and swimming in the ocean).
It was surprising to look back on where I was only three and a half years ago: to realize that, really, I had no idea I’d be doing what I’m doing now—or maybe just a glimmer of the idea; something that felt like the vaguest of pipe dreams, I suppose.
It was weird to read the words, “If I ever get a chance to perform,” or however I phrased it. At the time, it seemed like gift one distantly hopes to receive: perhaps if I’m really good, someone will give me–no, not a pony, but maybe a hobby horse?
Now the chance to perform is something I pursue and lay hold of with both hands and create for myself. It’s something I am beginning not to feel weird about getting paid to do, like, “Maybe if I keep my head down they won’t notice that they’re paying me money for this.”
And yet I realize, still, that in a way the chance to live the life that I’m living right now is a gift—a gift, I suppose, I’ve worked hard to be worthy of, and will continue to work hard to be worthy of, but still one that depends upon the goodwill of so many people other than myself.
~
Friday, early, we leave for the Playa again.
This year, a group is staging The Rite of Spring. I’ve never seen it live, so I’m looking forward to that. Perhaps I can find other dancers and do class with them.
As for me and my camp, we’re doing Open Barre, with Mimosas, twice. Contact improv, twice. And all the other things that my camp does, but that’s what I’m in charge of. My gift to the Playa, along with whatever I wind up feeding people, as so often I do.
My feelings are mixed about going this year. I’m working, so that’s a challenge—learning the choreography at a distance will be interesting—and I’m afraid of coming back with a respiratory infection again. I’ll have to be careful this year.
But there are always things to be learned, and what was it I was saying about learning not to constantly try to control the outcomes?
So there it is. This is the outcome right now. I’m strung between two loyalties, but perhaps it’s okay. If things work out as I hope they will in the coming months, I most likely won’t be able to go to the Burn in 2018.
Because, as D told me so many times, there is something in the world for which I will sacrifice all other things—even Burning Man, as much as I love it.
When all this is over, the desert will be there still (unless we blow up the world before then, in which case it’s all a moot point anyway).
Not Dead Yet, Again
I’m a bit tardy in reporting that I made it home safely from Connecticut after a lovely weekend with my parents.
Since then, I’ve been muddling through the side-effects of the antibiotic I’m taking, which has caused me to feel like I’ve been run over by a truck or something.
I’d forgotten how thoroughly this stuff hoses me up by the end of a course. This was not in any way improved by driving for 14 hours straight on Monday 😛
Fortunately, I took my last tablet last night. It’ll take a few days to get back to normal. The challenge with this stuff is that it causes fatigue, pain, tightness, and weakness in the muscles and can cause tendon ruptures, so one must be careful.
I managed not to rupture anything at Pilobolus’ intensive, though—the side-effects were accumulating last week, but hadn’t peaked (and I forgot to take my dose a couple of times).
I went to class yesterday but skipped out after barre because everything in my body felt like it was about to snap. My grand battement was pathetic. I spent much of the rest of the day asleep (so I woke up at 5:30 this morning … Yay?).
Not sorry at all to see the back of this prescription, though I’m glad it has sorted my sinuses.
I’ve got so, so many thoughts gleaned from my week in Connecticut. I’m slowly organizing them. I’ll try to report back soon-ish.
Lesson Learned
Tonight, BG posted a bit of video from one of last week’s classes to our community group on the Facebag.
It’s a simple Sissone combination, the kind you do to build endurance:
Sissone fermé x3, sissone ouvert landing in 1st arabesque, pdb, changement X2, back and forth until you either drop dead or run out of music.
Watching it was illustrative: at the beginning, I’m carrying my arms, my eyes are up, my jumps are high and elastic, and I return to an acceptable fifth. I can tell I’m a bit tired by the pacing of the jumps, but overall the effect is decent.
By the end, I look like I’m flapping my arms in an effort to fly away, my face is frozen in a thousand-yard stare, and my working leg has given up on the whole concept of fifth position.
Oops?
So I guess the emphasis on endurance will continue.
I’ve felt better the past few classes, though. It’ll come.
Choose Your Own Intensive: Days 3 & 4
Yesterday, I had nothing before ballet, so I was properly fed and rested and so forth.
As a result, BW’s class went very well.
After, I went and played at Suspend, where we did all kinds of lifty things in Acro 2.
After that, my car decided to throw a fit and D had to come rescue me (fortunately, I noticed that it sounded weird and didn’t get on the expressway). As result, an already late night got later, and I was too tired to pack lunch.
This morning, D came home early and sent me to Cinci with his truck, which was really sweet of him. I had eaten two hot dogs for lunch, with the intention of grabbing some real food when I got back into Louisville.
In Cinci, partnering class was half really frustrating: I couldn’t hear because my allergies were trolling me, and we were learning partnering phrases, so I kept not quite understanding what was going on[1]. As a result, I kept frustrating my partner, which made me nervous, which makes my brain not work too well.
- Also, my body wanted all the fouettés to be tour jetés. WTF, body?
Anyway, we got there eventually.
During the second half, we did group lifts, and that bit went really well. Didn’t hurt that Acro 2 last night was all about the dynamic group lifts :p
Anyway, after Partnering, my plans for food were scuttled by a traffic jam. I resorted to buying Chex mix at a gas station when I refueled the truck. I would be surprised if that even brought me back up to baseline.
Anyway, BW’s final class was more challenging than it should have been, since I basically ran out of juice. I got all the way through anyway, but my grand pirouettes weren’t really all that grand. They started out nice going right, then fizzled, going left, I just worked fourth-passé-second-plié-relevé-plié-relevé, etc, without the actual turns.
On the other hand, I cracked out some nice grand allegro: it was kind of my way of saying, “I value your class and, dammit, I’mma try as hard as I can!”
That backfired, of course, when we proceeded to follow the second grand allegro combo with even moar petit allegro.
Oh, I can now check entrechats six off my goals list. Or, at any rate, I can mark them as done with baseline success but in need of werk, werk, werk, werk. They’re not pretty, but they’re there.
We did 36 of them.
Also, after that, so many Royales, which are my least favorite jump. I mean, seriously, in France there’s a hamburger named after them[2].
- I may be employing artistic license here. Who knows?
Anyway, my legs felt weak and resentful (I suspect that, if you’re a dancer or a cyclist, you understand what I mean), and I resented their resentful attitude (note to self: I need to draw a resentful attitude 😁) until I realized that it wasn’t fair to resent them when it was my own fault for not feeding them.
Evidently, it takes a lot of calories to run this body at peak performance, or at any rate more than the ≈600 I have it before tonight’s ballet class.
…Oh, well.
At any rate, I’m pleased with myself for not giving up. There were a few times in class tonight that my dark side whispered,”You could just say your foot is unhappy!”
But I didn’t.
So there’s that.
Anyway, I’m going to go have a wee soak in some Epsom salts. Tomorrow, I have to leave at 7 AM for Cinci because evidently I’m insane, so after that I’m off to bed.
A Few More Thoughts On Choreography; More Good(ish) Classes
D and I are now rehearsing our #Playthink piece.
It’s actually going much better than I expected it to.
As one does, I’ve re-written essentially the entire piece now that I’m setting it on actual people and not just on myself prancing about in the studio and waving my arms to vaguely represent the acro moves.
Initially, I had one vision in mind. Because I was futzing around with it by myself, it involved a lot of ballet.
Now, of course, that has changed. I mean, there’s still ballet: there’s always going to be ballet because, hello, it’s me. That’s kind of what I do, apparently.
But choreography has a way of getting away from you. You begin with one vision, and as you actually create a dance and actually set it on actual people, it transforms.
I suppose that this is because, in a way, a dance is sort of a living thing. It’s a little like having a child (though, of course, on a very different scale) or maybe an elaborate pet. You might think, of a horse, “I’m going to train this horse to be the best cow pony ever,” but the horse might actually not be any good at being a cow pony. It might turn out to be a dressage beastie or something else[1].
- My philosophy on training horses was very much shaped both by my childhood trainer and also by the trainer of my friend’s lovely Arabian gelding, which began life as what the Arabian show world in the US calls a “park horse,” morphed into what the Arabian show word in the US calls an “English pleasure” horse, did a brief stint in Arabian-show-world western pleasure, and then eventually found his calling as an endurance racer. Basically, the lady who was responsible for training the horse felt that you needed to figure out which discipline suited the horse, and then train it to be as good as it could possibly be at that discipline. I think that’s a good way to do it.
Anyway. I digress.
So this dance is now almost a steady stream of rather-balletic acro and physical theater, and I’m okay with that. One of my goals was to build a dance that tells a story, and in this case, the story is kind of funny and implausible, and acro and physical theater are good ways to tell it.
I’m not going to try to force this dance to be something it isn’t. I have an entire lifetime in which to craft ballet pieces on ballet dancers (I keep joking that I have this entire three-act ballet in my head, now I just need about fifty dancers and a million dollars or so to get it off the ground … but, really, I do have an entire three-act ballet in my head, and it’s taking up a lot of space!). Right now, I’m working with one ballet dancer (me!) and one Denis, and that presents its own set of challenges and limitations.
Honestly, in creative work, it’s so often the limitations that free us to innovate (just as necessity—or, just as often, laziness—gives birth to invention).
The neat part is that this has led us to inadvertently create a new acro move. I mean, probably someone, somewhere has done it before, but I’ve never seen it. It happens to be one that requires that the flyer have a legit center oversplit (among other things), so probably there are a lot of people who can’t do it. Bony impingement is real, it’s just not something that I experience.
Anyway, the sequence involves moving from this:
Kind of, erm, scorpion? thing…
…to this:
Double stag…
…to this:
Superman? Deep sea dive? Front balance? Limbs bird?
…via returning to a standard vertical candlestick, then opening to a straddle and rolling down onto the base’s feet, and then rotating your legs back and around into the position above (the arms also have to do a thing, obviously).
The same basic end could be approached by moving from the vertical candlestick into a pike candlestick and lowering both legs down that way, but I don’t think it would look anywhere near as cool.
Annoyingly, when I snagged these screenshots, I completely failed to get one of the straddle transition. At the time, I think I was like, “A still photo of this isn’t going to impart any useful information.”
Anyway, you really have to have a perfectly flat straddle for this particular sequence so you don’t just rip your legs off, because your hips take a lot of your weight in the middle of the transition. Basically, if lying face down in a center split feels stretchy, this isn’t the sequence for you.
You also kind of need really good turnout in order to do the rotation bit.
The fact that D literally cannot straighten his legs in an L-base also means that I kind of drop myself onto his feet. Eventually, I’ll reach a point at which I can do a complete smooth rolldown whilst upside-down in a full center split, which will make things a little easier, but right now there’s a gap between the end of my smooth rolldown and the end of Denis’ range of motion (because my core strength is still only pretty good, and not completely awesome).
I wanted to use a sort of grand rond de jambe as an exit, but that also takes more adductor power than D has right now. If I bring my downstage leg to second, then rond it over, the force makes his right leg (which supports my left hip) shift, and I fall off 😀
We’ll get it eventually, but not in the next two weeks.
So there’s that.
Anyway, classes were good-ish yesterday and today.
Yesterday’s, in fact, was fairly lovely. Today’s was our first Advanced Class with JAB (OMG, his initials are seriously JAB!!! XD), who really does actually give an advanced Advanced Class.
On the upside, I’m finally (FINALLLLLYYYYYY) jumping again for real: grand allegro and everything. Cabrioles with turny bits, even (though I think I kept turning them into some kind of cabriole-scissor hybrid and landing on the wrong leg).
On the other hand, possibly because I went to a party last night and didn’t get to sleep ’til almost 4 AM (and then had to wake up and eat a sandwich, which was surreal because I was still pretty tipsy and more than half asleep), my brain was for the birds today.
I struggled because there were gaps in my recall of Every. Single. Combination. once we left the barre. The bits that came off, though, mostly went pretty well (except for a weird disaster in adagio during which I basically fell off my leg and then couldn’t get back on because gravity is the worst thing sometimes).
I also hit up a new class at Suspend, which is basically floorwork for acro.
You already know how much I love floorwork, soooooo…
Anyway, we got to break out our improv for the last 10 minutes of class, which resulting in some video that’s party really cool and partly like WHY DO YOU KEEP NOT COMPLETING THE MOVEMENTS WITH YOUR ARMS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
But, anyway, here are a few nice shots from this morning’s video, just because I like them:
Also, I feel like in the arch picture, my butt looks like a couple of angry badgers having a fight. Muscular angry badgers, though.
The tape, by the way, is just there because a tree stabbed me in the foot yesterday 
Anyway, I was being annoyed with myself for not making the effort to do quadruple turns today, and then realized that I’ve somehow, like, sideswiped my ballet goals without realizing it. Like, basically, I’ve made a significant dent in them and didn’t even notice.
Basically, one of my major goals for this year was to nail down reliable triples and unreliable quadruples, basically. And, bizarrely, I have achieved that goal. I had this weird epiphany on the way home from class yesterday: I realized that, like, a year ago or so, even doing one little triple turn more or less by accident was the most amazing thing ever.
And now I’m like, “Meh, triples, yawn,” when I don’t try for quads.
So, basically, I need to pause and appreciate how much progress I have made.
For what it’s worth, I’ve also got turns in second sorted. They’re not always beautiful (or, let’s be honest, even pretty), but I can always do them. Just not always sixteen of them.
So, yeah. There you go. I feel like I’m “back,” more or less, right now.
Of course, Choose Your Own Intensive begins Monday, soooo… . . .
danseur ignoble 