Before going to ballet, I like to go for a run. My favorite place to run to is out by LaGuardia Airport. If you run to the Marine Air Terminal, you're right by one of their main runways. I love listening to a plane's engines spool up and then seeing the wheels jolt into action. When the plane hits its V1 speed, the pilot pivots the nose up and, in seconds, it's airborne. Just like that. From there, there's no telling where it'll go.
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Ever get your ass kicked by a very pregnant ballerina? I mean, anyone pregnant is, by definition, solidly planted on the ass-kicker spectrum. But there has to be a special place for anyone who can be pregnant and do expert ballet at the same time. I'm barely managing now; I can only imagine how this would go if I had a vaguely human grapefruit inside of me. I kick myself enough with my own legs trying to get through the jumps, getting thwacked by another set from the interior? That is Alien chestburster-level pain...I assume. But my teacher today, someone new to me but clearly very experienced, doesn't need to assume. She knows. However, you couldn't tell by looking at her. She led us through class effortlessly. In fact, I think her child-to-be, who will no doubt be awesome, probably upstaged me in utero.
In all seriousness, though, seeing a pregnant body perform and teach ballet made me revel in the infinite combinations of body diversity that exist in the world, and how this art form can open itself to, I believe, any of those bodies. Pregnant bodies, differently-sized bodies, differently-limbed bodies, differently-healing bodies - you name it. It seems to me that the key is knowing the body you have. I don't think it's a "limitation" to say, "Okay, my body doesn't do that." When we were stretching by lying belly-first on the floor and flexing upward, I am glad that that was something my teacher said she was not going to do with us. Her body was doing other things, things that a hard floor on a stomach would not have helped. And if the thing that's being asked doesn't help your body do what it does, then I think that's a good enough reason to, well, not. If you're not sure whether doing a thing would mess with the truth of your beautiful body and you assess the risk to be worth it, then by all means: run the experiment. But other sentiments are much more expressive of for-certain body awareness. "My hips don't open like that." "This arm is shorter than the other one." "My knees won't like it if I jump like that." We should embrace statements like these. How great it is to know yourself enough to confidently say this stuff.
Beginner-level ballet seems like it can be receptive to this kind of awareness. In speaking with a psychologist friend of mine, though, career-track ballet isn't always so body positive. My friend talked to me about the eating disorders and body dysmorphia she sees in her ballet patients. Seeing ballet at my very, very introductory level, I kind of feel like this is a betrayal of what professional ballet could be, what ballet, in the best of circumstances, is. I know some dancers are pushing back against this, but perhaps any field where there's any sort of perceived homogeneity, there is pressure to conform. "Everyone looks like this." "Everyone does it that way." The sad thing is, it's almost always more interesting to see someone not do it "that way." It's one of the hardest things my students do in English: break away from the writing style of the person next to them. "But what if I'm wrong?" Reaching the clearest expression of your most essential self could never be wrong to me.
But philosophy aside, today's class, the actual class, was amazing. It was small again. Not quite as small as last time, but small. It was a warm 61 degrees outside, so maybe folx decided to ditch and head to the park. Not me, though. Neither rain nor sleet nor snow. Nor sunshine. I'm like a ballet postal worker. Today was the first time I really felt in the same boat as everyone else in the room. There were students there whom I had seen before. Students who seemed so unattainably far from where I was. But today, watching them, I realized they were grappling with the same stuff I'm grappling with. There were points where we all struggled together. (And then **cough** **pirouettes** **cough** there were times when I was the only one flopping around like a fish out of water.) I don't think the others were having an "off day" or anything. I think I just now have a more detailed understanding of our work so that I can now see more clearly the complexity of every step. And complexity is, uh...complex? So people struggle with it. We all struggle with it. It's good struggling. It's educational struggling. And I think this impacted my comfort level in the room. I talked to more people. We shared insecurities and successes. We complimented each other honestly. That's the great thing that can come from struggle, the desire to uplift. I felt that tonight, and that dance was delightfully radiant.
And then I flew. Okay, so, not actually. Here's what happened: the final thing we had to do was a sort of leaping arabesque. My teacher demonstrated it, and, halfway through, I completely forgot the first thing she said to do. I watched everyone else perform the dance, studying them dutifully. When I tried it myself, I watched my feet to try to make sure they did what the others' did. They didn't. It looked like I was on roller skates for the first time, and both my feet were uncontrollably slipping off in different directions. There was nothing elegant about this. That's when my teacher, ever-attentive to the needs of everyone (as all the teachers here have been), said to us all that we are not just an exercise class. We are a dance class. Your eyes should look up. The floor will be there. You'll land on it. Science will take care of that. Just look up and leap like you're flying. I instantly thought of Supergirl and Superman. When they leap, especially in the older comics, they have this look of hope on their face, eyes pointed at the sky. This was clearly the right thing to tell me. I took my teacher's advice. I shed my need to micromanage my feet and I just looked up, hopeful, and leaped. When I landed, my teacher said, "That's it!" My delight made me totally miss the next step, but that was okay. After repeated failed launches, that one worked. In ballet, you can fly. And, if you're lucky, your feet might even leave the floor.
The movement was so liberating. It was like taking off from a skip. When I was a kid, skipping wasn't really considered a "manly" thing to do. There are plenty of male ballet dancers who would surely, and rightly, take issue with this, and I'd support them 100%. But, for me, to take a gesture that I was told was somehow a betrayal of my assigned gender and just fully relish it made me euphoric. I'll never understand why we try to restrain bodies, as if for them to move in one way or another will mutate them into something unholy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Body movement is a language, and, like any language, it takes on the meaning we give it, usually based on contexts both historic and personal. The sentence I said through this particular movement translates to, "My body does this now." Sentences like that, often bravely yelled by those with a lot less privilege than I have, inspire me every day.
I circle back to those planes I saw during my run. Their noses high, no one worried the wheels will somehow stick to the ground. Planes want to fly. When they land, they must account for ground effect, the air that comes up from the runway, pushing the plane back into flight. You can't keep these things down. Not when they have wings.
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