That feel when your insides are suddenly like:
RED WARRIOR NEEDS FOOD BADLY! RED WARRIOR IS ABOUT TO DIE!
…but you’re eating ziti and it refuses to cooperate with your fork.
Seriously, who has trouble eating ziti*?
*I guess I do. So, that would be me. Hi.
In other news, I really need to see this movie:
Keiji Ballerino, as reviewed by Notorious Rambler, as suggested in one of WordPress’s “If you liked this post, you’ll love this other post!” boxes.
Basically, I will tell my friends about it, and they will be like, “Oh, so it’s like your life, more or less, if you were a detective, and Japanese?**”
**And if my Mom who taught dance, and if I had won a prestigious dance competition in high school, but whatevs. I can, however, attest to the fact that the “extremely small planet” effect apparent in this story is also fully operational in my life. My world is terrifyingly small, sometimes.
Also, I am reminded of this video:
Which we have all, by now, probably seen a bazillion times, but frankly it never gets old. My friends on facebook and G+ have repeatedly shared this to me with comments like, “This is how I imagine your life!”
And, honestly, I am forced to admit that while my day-to-day wardrobe department has yet to supply me with such an elaborate jacket, I have totally been known to do barre exercises on the El and … you know, basically everything else in this video, except for grand pirouettes a la seconde on the sidewalk because, y’all, I would in fact actually kill myself for reals (and probably some other people).
That said, I have been known to do them in dance clubs. Just, you know, nowhere near as well as Daniil Simkin would. Because I am not that awesome. But, frankly, there are too many clubs in Louisville where nobody dances, and somebody has to.
And then I’m all, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” And I step up and do what I can. For Great Justice, etc.
Because it’s all about your base, your base your base. All about your base, are belong to us***.
***Oh, come on. Somebody had to say it.
In other news, I took El Robertador shopping today because he did not own any proper shorts, and I wound up buying another shirt for ballet classes, a cycling-specific wind vest to replace the wind vest that is now about eleventy sizes too big for me, a pair of cycling gloves to replace one of the pairs I’ve been nursing along forever specifically because I got a great deal on them on clearance, and an actual regular shirt with, like, buttons and everything. Now I can also give away another of the button-y shirts that is now too big.
Because sometimes dancewear actually isn’t the ideal choice, at least not according to other people (but, let’s be honest: they are probably people who don’t actually know any better, and would wear dance clothes everywhere if they did).
I am proud to be able to state that I DID NOT buy any tights. Not even one pair. Because there is NO ROOM in my tights drawer at this point (I know, I know: clearly the answer is to kick Denis’ socks out of his sock drawer and colonize).
Okay, so I almost bought them anyway, but I realized that I only ever wear short tights or stirrup/convertible tights these days, so I put them back.
Even though they had pockets.
TIGHTS WITH POCKETS, YOU GUYS. The innovation that means we might never have to wear normal trousers, ever again.
And I put them back!
I am assuming that this lapse in judgment resulted from sleep deprivation, which in turn resulted from a weird series of nightmares about paranormal phenomena, such as a kitchen sink drain suddenly turning into a fearsome gravity well … because ghosts (seriously, WTF?).
For the record, I have no idea what caused the nightmares. My brain is a strange place, sometimes much of the time okay, most of the time.
Oh, and lastly, the other night I actually sat my tuchas down and watched a freaking movie, and that movie was Mao’s Last Dancer, which wasn’t half bad.
To be fair, my standards for ballet movies basically read like this:
*****There was a moment at the beginning in which I was like, “Ye gads, this is going to be Skeezy GAY AD creeping on Insecure, Young MALE Ingenue. Wheeeeee. *sadface*” but then it got better. Skeezy Gay AD wasn’t partcularly skeezy and was only a douche canoe for a small portion of the movie, and then only because Main Character’s Dreams and Not-Really-Skeezy Gay AD’s dreams were in conflict.
Mao’s Last Dancer suffered from a few plotline glitches (basically, clumsy handling of some of the more touching bits of the story, so nothing any worse than your average Halmark Channel movie, and there’s a lot more ballet in this one!), and does this one thing where Wife #1 goes, “You Have Your Career! But I Have To Think About Mine! I’m Moving To Seattle!” (I think it was Seattle?) and then in the next scene it’s five years later and our winsome protagonist is, like, totally married to some other lady.
To be fair, there was totally like 10 seconds of foreshadowing when said Other Lady was first introduced — it’s just that the particular bit of Li Cunxin’s life in which they, like, get MARRIED didn’t quite make it into the budget/allocated time.
In honesty, though, as ballet movies go, I rather liked this one (probably because it was actually based on real life).
So, like, I totally recommend giving Mao’s Last Dancer a watch if you stumble upon it on Netflix or Amazon or whatevs.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go balance people and balance on people and so forth.
I took Monday evening class today because Ms. B (of Killer Class) was teaching. Also because I figured some ballet might help my mood (it did; I’m not all sunshine and roses, here, but I’m … Eh. Less awful?).
I’m glad I did. I struggled in my last two morning classes due to circadian rhythm disasters, but tonight I was on it (except I still don’t have my triple turns back, and for some reason my right leg didn’t want to coupé-balloné at the start of our medium allegro.
I got a lot of notes at the barre — detail work, now, refining port de bras and épaulement, mostly, and a “Nice, Asher!” during adagio.
Barre adage was good, too: working at relevé, I managed to finally lift my legs with the right muscles, and it was like, Boom! Effortless extensions at 90 degrees and above. This was a spectacular development, as I’ve been fighting with my à la seconde to a wildly unreasonable degree. My gluteus medius usually thinks it’s supposed to do, like, all the work, so it blocks several degrees of extension and then cramps. Tonight it was just like, “Oh, I’ll be over here, just call if you need me,” and the rest of the muscles were like, “Thank you. OMG, thank goodness that guy got outta the way.” And there was my leg, extended just above 90 from dèveloppé, and nothing cramped or strained or anything.
I continue to be surprised that I’m sorta, kinda becoming good at adagio. Also that I like it. As a kid, I thought adagio was boooooooring. Now I don’t — it has become a lovely opportunity for expression, not to mention a chance (in class, anyway), to check in with my body and pull everything together.
Speaking of which, my turns were sloppy at first, and then I realized that I was doing them with my “Cheetah eyes” turned off and my core all kinds of disengaged. Fixed that, and things got so, so much better.
After class, Ms. B said I look good! That’s a huge thing — I feel like I came back from Mam-Luft&Co a much better dancer; more so than I would ever have expected. That’s what I’m working for, so it’s good.
I’ve also been surprised by the conviction I feel about dancing: the audition I’m looking towards will mean, if successful, skipping Burning Man and returning early from Florida. I would do either of those in a heartbeat to be able to do this thing.
I guess that’s how you know you’re doing what you really want to do, though. All those decisions become essentially effortless.
I have, as is my habit, been fighting a depression that wins a little ground each day. My strategy, generally speaking, is to put a brave face on it in hopes that nobody will notice, and then, when I can no longer manage that, to beat a hasty retreat into the nearest isolated cave, emerging only to dance.
I’ve decided to pop the rest of this behind a cut, both because of strong language (“He said a-hole, Mom!*”) and because of subject matter that maybe could be a little on the triggery side for those of us currently wrestling mood disorders.
…Just half mediocre?
The were good moments today, but it wasn’t a shining example of my best work.
It was, however, an opportunity for comparison.
A year ago, I think, things that seem mediocre now would’ve seemed pretty excellent. I realized this whilst kvetching about the fact that I kept switching the entrechat trois with the entrechat cinque in a combination; whilst internally taking myself to task about some turns that were decent, but not great*; whilst being irritated about my tour lent being a touch wobbly on the first run through the adage.
I was a wreck at grand allegro, though. For some reason, my brain didn’t bother to video most of the combination; it recorded the audio instructions instead.
The instructions were:
Préparé
Glissade
Grand jeté
Glissade
Grand jeté
Glissade
Grand jeté
Failli
Piqué arabesque**
Chassé
Tour jeté
Chasse
Tour jeté LAND IN A BALANCE!!!
Tombe
Pas de Bourré
Glissade
Saut de Chat
Buuuuuuut! The initial glissades traveled, erm, kinda diagonally. Otherwise the whole thing turned into a disastrous zig-zag, like a Mini-Demolition Derby Bumper Ballet ride (which they totally DO NOT have at Grandma’s Nap Land; Grandma says that is WAY too dangerous).
Which I somehow failed to grasp.
Fortunately, we are having air traffic control issues (how often does one get to say that’s a good thing?), and I wound up in the second group, so at least I didn’t collide with anyone while angrily yelling at my body about still trying to launch its glissades to the side. I just looked like an idiot, so, you know. Par for the course, eh?
I also kept wanting there to be more tour jetés, but I always want more of those, soooooooo…
We all also got a general correction on our arms with regard to tour jeté: apparently, our legs were all, AGRIPPINA VAGANOVA! while our arms were like OMG WE ARE FIREWORKS!
This correction included the memorable phrase, “You can do fifth opening to second or you can do this: *demonstrates the arms everyone likes to do with grand jeté* but make sure I can tell which one you’re going for.*
So I then proceeded to think about my arms. I’m not entirely sure that helped, but we all know the rule about thinking in ballet, anyway.
Except, like, sub in "thinking" and "ballet."
(Okay, so that rule isn’t 100% literally literal, obvs. It’s more like, Think with your body, not with your brain.)
So that was my day. That, a bike ride, and open fly. Which isn’t where you inadvertently expose yourself, but where you get to play around in aerial apparati until your arms won’t go anymore.
Oh, and I was totally that guy today: I demonstrated to Denis how I could do awesome pull-ups on the lyra while complaining that about how I was still convinced that I couldn’t do regular pull-ups.
Then he sent me over to the pull-up bar, where I totally did a freaking pull-up.
So that happened, too, I guess. No humble-bragging intended; I just kind of felt like an idiot (which goes with looking like one in ballet class, so…).
Jun 13
This gallery contains 18 photos.
On my last evening in Cinci, I was playing around with a desk lamp and my phone’s camera, just sort of exploring the play of light and shadow on my skin. After a while, it got away from me and got all conceptual up in the place — and then it turned into a series of […]
I try not to lend aid to the cause of people who would use fear to control the rest of us, so I’m not going to comment on them. Not directly. Not here.
Nobody — asexual, bisexual, queer, straight, Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, female, intersex, male, transgender, immigrant, native-born, Asian, Black, Latino, White, any race, any faith, any anything, whatever else people can be — should be targeted with violence.
And yet it happens every day.
We notice when it happens to a lot of people at once. We don’t always notice when it happens to one person at a time; not until it reaches a kind of critical mass.
I thought about this when I was in Cinci; when I saw the words WE CAN’T BREATHE stenciled on the same square of pavement every morning; every evening. I thought about it today, when people in Louisville came together to organize a vigil for people in Orlando who they never met.
Regardless, tragedy is tragedy. Human cruelty is human cruelty.
I don’t pretend to make sense of any of this. I don’t pretend to have intelligent things to say about it; I don’t.
Even if I did, maybe it’s too soon to make sense; to say intelligent things. I don’t know.
Grief is a mysterious thing, whether it’s the direct grief of an immediate personal loss or the indirect grief of living in a world where things happen like this.
So that’s what I’m saying, because I don’t have any other words; because for a long time I haven’t had any other words.
At risk of doing that thing wherein I get up early and proceed to make myself late by getting caught up in the wicked hempen seive that is the Internet, I want to comment briefly on a cultural phenomenon that really grinds my gears: specifically, the phrase,
Nobody wants to see that.
Over on Dances With Fat today, there’s a post about how a lot of us just plain don’t want fat people in our eyespace. It’s worth a read (I’ll come back and link it in a bit). It might feel very in-your-face, but I think Reagan Chastain and other fat people have probably earned the right to get a bit confrontational. I’m not sure the rest of us are going to hear them if they don’t.
Some of us will tolerate the appearance of bigger folk conditionally — like, as long as they fall within x distance from “normal” (whatever that is) or as long as they “cover up.”
When they don’t, the given justification is often, “Nobody wants to see that.”
There are some serious problems with that phrase.
First, I beg to differ on purely literal grounds: try dropping in on a convention for bears (not literal bears — 0/10, do not recommend, wildly unsafe — source: every naturalist ever). Try asking anyone who loves someone who’s fat. Try visiting a Sumo match.
Second, though — and more troubling — is the stunning degree of privilege and/or internalized prejudice entailed in that phrase.
Think about it: when, in judging someone else, we say no one wants to see that, what we’re really saying is:
A. Of course my personal likes and dislikes are of critical importance to how all other people live in their bodies.
B. Of course everyone shares my opinion.
C. Of course I get to police other people’s self-expression.
… And also:
D. I cannot possibly look away if I see something I don’t like.
When we say it about ourselves, we’re really saying:
A. Of course bodies like mine are disgusting.
B. Of course everyone else has a right to enforce their likes and dislikes upon my body.
C. Of course I should be invisible.
By the way, I don’t mean to imply that the people who say this about others are necessarily giant flaming arse-hats. Every single person on the face of the planet, including myself, has prejudices.
It’s just that this one is still reflexively accepted. I’ve heard some of the kindest people I know say this very thing.
Hell, it only dawned on me when I was in the middle of saying this exact phrase maybe a year or so ago that it didn’t jive with the beliefs I’m trying to embody and that it was immensely problematic.
The interesting thing is that, since I’ve forced myself to stop saying it, I’ve discovered that, in fact, fat girls can look great and stylish in lycra (not that they have to look great and stylish; I don’t get to decide that, either), fat guys can rock mesh shirts, and so forth. It was my reflexive dismissal that kept me from recognizing that.
As someone with an immense degree of body privilege, I’m in a position that allows me to step in with authority when I hear someone I care about saying, “Nobody wants to see that.” (The trick is doing it without sounding like a self-righteous busybody).
The funny thing is that, when I have, the response has usually been pretty positive. People usually sort of stop and blink and go, “Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way.” (On the other hand, I mostly know really thoughtful people. It isn’t always going to go that well, unfortunately.)
In the end, what we say to ourselves and to others impacts the way we see the world.
And, for what it’s worth, as a general rule, there is somebody who wants to see that — but neither they not the nay-sayers really matter.
What matters is how we see ourselves.
I’ve been trying to sort out the unique flavor of my feeling of anticipation about my upcoming trapeze performance, and I think I’ve finally sorted it.
I was surprised by this sense that I don’t want the next few days to slip away too fast — I’m not prone to stage fright. Rather the opposite, in fact: I’m essentially a giant show-off by nature, but shy around strangers in small groups. Give me a stage or a podium, and I’m good.
So why, I kept wondering, is my anticipation not the unadulterated OMG OMG I am going to explode if Saturday doesn’t get here soon! of my childhood?
And then I got it: this is the feeling of knowing that it will be over as soon as it begins. We get one night: for me, 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It will be amazing — and then it will be over. It would be easy to get so caught up in eager anticipation that I actually don’t experience the actual thing, let alone this whole week.
I don’t want to get caught up in the anticipation of this singular moment in the future — our first-ever trapeze performance — and miss now.
Right now, my summer looks a little like a running start off a cliff into a wild, exhilarating wingsuit flight. It would be easy to miss the whole thing if I let my monkey mind run away with me. Anticipation has its merits, but it can definitely take the but in its teeth and run.
So I’m going to work on being present for the next few days. Really, I guess, that’s work we should be doing always — but some moments make better examples than others of why that is.
Shamelessly stolen from Hendy Mp/Solent News via The Telegraph.
So, in short: here is good. And I’m going to try to be here, now.
…By which I don’t mean taking a certain band to the gym 😉
I think it’s fair to say that I’ve done a bunch of injuring myself in the past two years.
I think it’s also fair to say that I’m getting better at managing injuries and recovering from them — at reasonable share of which is learning, through trial and error, what “rest” means in relationship to various injuries if you’re a dancer and/or an aerialist (and, for that matter, what “rest” means in general as someone that my physiotherapist spouse defines as “an extreme athlete” — read, if you’re a serious dancer or aerialist, that’s you! Hi!).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, I’ve found myself doing a fair bit of reflection on why I’m injuring all the things and how I might, you know, stop that. (Or at least mostly stop.)
I’ve concluded that there are three major components:
Let’s start with Point the Third: Learning When to Say “When.”
Like most dancers, I take pride in my ability to listen to my body in certain regards.
I know when I’m hungry, and I know when I’m full. I know when I should eat all the salty pommes frites and when I shouldn’t. I know when I need a freaking salad. I know that I should not have more than one beer when I have class the next day (so, basically, ever; we’ll address that under the heading of REST).
I more or less know when I’m really freaking tired and should just Go the F**k to Sleep (hint: I realize that I’m acting like a poorly-socialized two-year-old; shortly thereafter, I put my cranky behind to bed).
I know … okay, I almost know … how to not spend all my money on dance and aerials (I really did need that fourth dance belt; there might not be even one laundromat in Cincinnati, and more importantly, I might be too tired to bother! Also, it is totally important to have twenty pairs of tights and three pairs of ballet shoes and special socks that you basically only use for modern class and … okay, maybe I’m not that great at this one yet).
But when it comes to classes, I’m not great at knowing when I just plain need to STAHP.
Or, at least, I wasn’t.
Recently, I’ve tried a slow-and-steady approach to getting back into class after an injury. Amazingly, just as every physiotehrapist and exercise scientist and coach and trainer and ballet instructor on earth would’ve predicted, it worked!
I didn’t completely forget how to dance. My legs did not fall off. I did not lose my single knee-hang on both sides (though I’m still working back into it on the left, because when you basically completely disengage your adductors for a couple weeks, they detrain pretty fast).
I’m now working out the series of kinks (not injuries so much as low-level irritations) that I accumulated while compensating for my most recent injury: weirdness in my back; knee and calf fatigue on the opposite side. My right calf was a wee bit sore by the time we finished petit allegro on Wednesday, but not so much that it felt like I should skip grand allegro. I rolled the dice and it worked out, but I’ll probably need to think carefully about that tomorrow, too.
And every other day, for the rest of my life.
Okay. So that covers the whole “know when to say when” thing. On to Point the Second: Balance.
While this isn’t quite how things work in the real world, it’s usually more or less functionally accurate to acknowledge that when you increase strength, you reduce flexibility.
This is a problem for normal people, but it’s a huge problem for hypermobile people.
In short, if you don’t pay attention to muscle balance when you train and/or you don’t stretch adequately (or you overstretch, or — worst of all, if you do some of each), you can throw your whole body out of whack.
That goes double if your body isn’t strung together very securely in the first place (that is, if you’re hypermobile).
I would like to show you a picture.
Here:
Top Row: Janie, Me. Bottom Row: Amy, Courtney. Both Rows: COMPLETELY FREAKING AWESOME. Also, I am astoundingly modest today, amirite?
On the face of it, this just looks like a really cool acro-balancing pile (and, for the most part, that’s completely accurate).
However, ballet wonks will notice that my eyes say Armand (from La Dame Aux Camélias) while my hands say OMG DON QUIXOTE!!!!!1!!oneone
Which is what they say ALL. THE. TIME. unless I pay a ton of attention to what I’m doing with them.
I hear about this in essentially every class ever, unless I pay a ton of attention to what I’m doing with them.
All this is more or less the result of muscle imbalance. I don’t always stretch adequately after aerials classes, nor do I do much to counteract the effects of working on aerial apparati in terms of strength balance — so unless I think very hard about making my hands soft and graceful, they do this*.
*Okay, it might also partly be a personality trait: as a dancer, I tend to operate in one of two default modes — I have no idea what I’m doing right now or I am such a cocky little badass, depending. The fact that it was specifically the Russian dance in Nutcracker that made me want to take up ballet probably tells you essentially everything you need to know.
Anyway, until I started being really conscious about stretching my hands after trapeze, silks, lyra, and mixed apparatus, this was making my hands hurt, because things were pulling on other things in unbalanced ways.
The whole disaster with my pelvis started more or less the same way. I neglected to train the bottom third of my abdominal muscles, and things pulled other things out of whack — and since my connective tissue is unusually stretchy, they got really, really out of whack.
So, in short, things that train strength need to be balanced with things that train flexibility and vice-versa. Likewise, when you train the crap out of your adductors, you should also do some work on your abductors. And so on.
And, of course, training needs to be balanced with every dancer’s favorite four-letter word:
Point the First: REST.
The process of getting stronger is essentially one of creating tiny tears in your muscles, then letting them heal.
Guess what makes them heal?
REST.
Likewise, the process of accumulating explicit knowledge requires rest. A great deal of memory consolidation, as far as we can tell, takes place during sleep.
Also, the brain itself gets tired. The brain needs rest, too (and not just sleep: sometimes the brain just needs to, like, kick back and sit on its cerebral porch and watch the world go by).
And ballet, modern dance, and aerials need the brain.
Moreover, all kinds of injury-preventive functions, from equilibrium to coordination to proprioception to decision making, are compromised by fatigue and sleep-deprivation.
You know what one weird trick combats fatigue and sleep-deprivation?
Say it with me:
REST.
(Also, sleep.)
I also need a fair amount of rest when it comes to that whole Being Around Humans thing.
I am very much an introvert in the sense that I recharge by being alone: like, really alone. Like, “Don’t bust up in my kitchen on one of my designated Leave Me Alone days and start chatting with me and expect me to be anything other than a complete b1tch” alone.
So, basically, I’ve done a piss-poor job giving myself adequate rest. Even on the days that are supposed to be my days off, for the past several weeks, I’ve had to go out and get things done and be among humans, which has more or less literally been making me insane (seriously, sobbing-on-the-floor-in-the-kitchen-at-9-PM-on-Monday, snapping-at-my-best-friends-for-no-reason insane).
So, yeah. That’s part of injury prevention for me, too: first, because I get really, really tense, which makes the tight muscles tighter and increases the likelihood of strains and so forth; second, because I have enough trouble sleeping without being, as my old roommate used to say, “outside my mind;” third, because it keeps me from eating people’s faces, which is definitely a kind of injury, just more for them than for me. Heh.
So here’s another picture:
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it whole-ly, even if you have to move it to Sunday because you have a Cube Workshop on Saturday afternoon. Also, sorry it’s fuzzy.
Please notice the dark circles under my eyes. They are what happens when I don’t sleep (also when my allergies are going crazy).
Please notice also the bold text and giant circle around it, reminding me that:
THIS REST CRAP IS IMPORTANT.
So, basically, I’ll be scheduling my rest days much more strictly (and, it appears, emphatically) in the future. I’ve also opted for one less-physically-demanding class on Tuesday and Thursday at the Cinci intensive in order to build in a little more rest.
I don’t know about you, but my long-term goal is to to be (as my trapeze instructor is) completely, mind-bendingly awesome at trapeze when I’m 50; to still be dancing when I’m 90.
It would also be great if my legs don’t fall off long before I reach either of those milestones, because I’ve got a pretty long way to go, frankly.
Paying attention to moderation, balance, and REST are probably the keys, really, to making that happen.
So that’s what I’m going to do, even if it kills me.
…Wait, no that’s not quite what I’m going for. In fact, to some extent, that’s what I’m trying to avoid.
Let’s try this again:
So that’s what I’m going to do, so all this doesn’t kill me.
Edit: Lastly, a very short clip of the juggling-while-Rola-Bola-ing bit,complete with juggling-club videobomb 😀 This was before I figured out I could plié on the Rola-Bola, pick up the balls, and start juggling without falling off.
YouTube: BOSU Balance Series
danseur ignoble 