To put it mildly: Thursday was cold. Though many places had it worse than New York City (where I'm located), waking up to a 4-degree day with a windchill that made it feel like -15 had me looking for the nearest Tauntaun to slice open. (Ah, if only we could make a fire out of the Hoth references evoked by frigid weather, we'd stay warm for days.) But, since I didn't go to ballet on Tuesday, that meant I had to get my weekly fix Thursday, Rura Penthe climate or not. (Yeah, I guess Star Trek cold references don't work as well as Star Wars ones, eh?)
So I put on my two coats, boots, and my most bank robber-y of ski masks, threw my flats in my gym bag, and off I went to a jam-packed class of...seven people. Seven. I've never seen so few people there. This was not good news. Normally, in a class of 20, I could hide behind Baryshnikov II and hope my feet just sort of get lost in the temporal displacement caused by the other dancers' warp-speed movements. But in a group of seven, there was nowhere to run. At first, this was a scary prospect. I'd have to sink or swim by my own abilities. Whatever I contributed, it would be noticed.
And noticed it was. But, honestly, that wasn't so bad. In fact, the adjustments and attention I received were incredibly helpful in allowing me to correct some misalignments that had been plaguing me from the start. Plus, looking around the room, I actually got to see the other students for who they were, too. I've said before that everyone is incredibly kind, and this was no different. However, now, I could see some of their needs, as well as my own. As a group of seven, we all benefitted from our teacher's notes, and her individualized encouragement. Small class size is something we academic teachers argue for a lot, but, to feel that difference as a student really hammered home the impact fewer students in a room can make on the learning process.
Not to mention, I think I moved a part of my body that has literally never moved before. My teacher asked me to open up my back and feel it in a particular spot, just below my shoulder blade, that I had never consciously considered. I did this, and it was as if a new part of myself just said hello. It's, uh - pretty stiff? But it's there. I think my whole body - mental and physical - is trying to adjust to the demands of this class. I can't do fifth position in the way my teacher or my classmates can. Two feet lined up basically parallel, but touching toe to heel. It gets a little closer each week, but this reinforces the fact that there are some things bodies do, and there are other things bodies learn. My body, granted with movable feet, will try to learn to bend this way. Or, if it can't be a rubbery "Bend-'Ems" toy, well, that's okay, too.
Everything was moving along pretty well until the last five minutes, which really gave me something to chew on. As a final dance, our teacher separated us into men and women, and had the men do a dance counterclockwise around the room while women did the same dance clockwise. Men made up an outer ring, women made up the inner one. My teacher put me into the "men" group which, well, makes sense. It's how I present to most, and I've never spoken to her about me being non-binary. (In fact, this was only the second time I've met her at all.) I figured, misgendering or not, dysphoria or not (and there was some dysphoria), I'd just take the opportunity to practice the steps and perform a role.
Once I got past the initial discomfort, I started to think about ballet on a broader scale. Old dances built around wooing often preserve heterosexual, gender-binary wooing. Men woo women. Women woo men. Any period movie about 18th Century socialites will no doubt offer some common examples. But what would the non-binary version of this look like? One might argue it would look a lot like what we were doing before, all dancing in the same, non-segregated group. But I think that loses the performance of wooing. (It's important to note that this is performed wooing, as no one in class was actually trying to woo IRL at all. I would be seriously interested in an asexual/aromantic dancer's experience of these dances, though.) It also creates this idea that "non-binary" means no recognition of gender whatsoever. This is not what I want, and it's not what I think many non-binary folx want. I think many of us - me, certainly - want tons of gender, lots of gender, all gender recognized, validated, loved, and non-toxic. This is what the circle-of-men-circling-a-circle-of-women offers that a large group of everyone can't. So, if we're building on the idea of circles within circles, one might say, okay, just make more circles. Men, women, and non-binary people. But, there, "non-binary people" is a huge catch-all. Do we break this down into folx who are agender, demigirls, demiboys, Two Spirit, burrnesha, etc..., etc..., etc...? That seems like a lot of circles, and circles that may, in some small groups, consist of just one person.
Gender has been described by Ramzi Fawaz as a network with nodes that dip into other nodes at different times for different folx. In this way, gender, to me, is closer to feelings. If instead of men and women, our teacher separated us into "happy people" and "sad people," the task would be nearly impossible. Do you mean happy today or happy in general? There are times when I'm happy and times when I'm sad, and there are times when I'm other things all together. How can I put myself into one group when I'm fluid? I experience gender similarly. I'm non-binary, but some days are more masc, some days are more femme, and some days are other things all together. Luckily, though, Fawaz's network is inherently dance like, with synapses connecting then dissolving only to reconnect later. There is a dance in this, but I feel like it's better left to a choreographer with more than four ballet classes to their name.
That said, though, I think it is a worthwhile project to look at ballet and formal dances of England and France (and the U.S.) and think of ways to queer them. That doesn't mean "just add Queer people," but, in addition to that, think about ways the motions of the dances themselves might better embody the non-binary reality experienced by so many cultures for centuries. Until I can better figure out a way to approach that, I'm happy to learn the binary dances ballet can offer, even if it means I have to perform a male role (and who knows, my teacher might be into my fluidity if I talk to her about it - and I might just do that!). I'm privileged to be able to do what my friend calls "boy drag" without being triggered by such a performance. For many Enbies, taking on that kind of binary role would be a massive emotional hardship, and I respect that immensely. For me, though, if I can use it as a way to think of an alternative, I'm more enthusiastic about engaging in it.
Also, in the case of this specific dance, I was struck by how, even though we were in two separate, gendered groups, we were all doing the same dance. Maybe that's an underlying metaphor in and of itself: that, yes, labels can help us find and talk about our people and ourselves, but, on some level, the actual dance can be a reminder of similarity among us all. It honors the difference and the sameness, an admirable achievement for what basically amounts to a lot of skipping and smiling.
As I donned my layers, the pianist from last week asked me how things were going. I said I thought they were going pretty well, but, hey, could I just ask one question? She said I could. "Okay, so, last week, I was doing that one particular dance, and, like, something kinda snagged my mind, and I thought it was really cool. Um. Were you playing the theme song to Jurassic Park?" "Yeah," she said, "I was." Finally, I thought, a mystery I could solve.
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