Why do we keep returning for more pain? Like, what drives us to do this? It feels like something out of a Nathan W. Pyle androgynous alien comic: "That caused me to hurt severely." "Will you return?" "Of course. Tomorrow." To know this feeling is to truly know Bill and his unique brand of dance, Bill-et. In all honesty, though, I was feeling off all day yesterday. I don't know why. Just one of those days. In the morning, my bus had the heat blasting right on top of my seat, which made me feel gross all day. When I walked into ballet, I pretty much had "This is going to suck" written on my face. But me and my Transformers T-shirt made it through. Thanks, Bumblebee.
It did suck, though. I mean, I sucked. You pretty much have to if you're doing Bill-et. It's rule number two. Rule number one is never talk about Bill-et, but I figured that, since I'm failing Rule Two, why not break #1 while I'm at it. My friend Mary was there. It was her first Bill-et, but she had heard talk of what was to come. She has much more ability than I do, having done ballet in spurts throughout her life. The return, now, she says, feels like coming home. I love that.
I'm not going to focus too much on the actual dancing, here. It was basically the same as Bill's last class. I'd like, instead, to focus on something new that I thought about while dancing. This time, I noticed I often led and/or landed on the wrong leg. I always received clear direction to "start left" or "close right," but for some reason I always ended up doing the opposite. This has been a life-long struggle for me, telling my left from my right. You'd think it'd be easy. There are only two options. But I usually tend to think, say, and go with the wrong one. I've read dyslexics have this problem. I don't know if that's why I have it, too, but it did get me thinking about neurodiversity in dance.
People learn differently. I know this from my line of work. There are myriad reasons for this. All learning types are valid. How, then, does dance look through the bodies of such learning-diverse individuals? How must it fundamentally change for the dyslexic brain? The ADD or ADHD brain? The Autistic brain? How is dance taught to people of these and other similarly-situated demographics? I don't have the experience to even speculate, but I know there are dance teachers exploring these questions, especially in young children.
That being said, I would love to see more ballet explicitly performed through bodies run by diverse neurologies. In fact, I'd love to see that in stories told through various media. Instead of penalizing those who interpret their instructions differently, let's elevate them. I'm not saying let me off the hook for leading with my left instead of my right. (I actually, personally, want to get better, through practice, at "correcting," especially as a beginner.) I'm saying lets pedagogically instill in dancers and other performers alike that dancing is de facto interpretive. Though choreography is followed, that choreography will look different beamed through different bodies and different minds. It has to. We aren't clones. We aren't robots. So let's mine our individuality for all of the artistic diversity it can contribute.
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