Thoughts on a Career

I was conscious of my dance career's mortality before I even got out of college. I'd had medical problems, was suffering from massive shin pain (later diagnosed as exercise-induced bilateral compartment disorder), and was not feeling at all at the top of my game. I thought I should have been, graduating from college, dancing in a company I helped create, but I just saw it there, the end: dark, hollow, down the road waiting for me, and it put me off for much of my senior year. I even choreographed a piece about moving from the stage to the audience for my senior concert. I called it "Succumb" and it was a solo in which I moved through the stage, touching the curtains, leaning into the scrim, feeling the coolness of the marley floor, staring directly into the lights, until I noticed the audience and, fighting less and less, made my way to the front of the stage, climbed down and sat in the first seat.

It was a facade of acceptance. I thought I was okay with my future like that. I was lying to myself.

The next time I saw the end closing in on me was several years later when I was in my second season at Malashock Dance and Company. I remember the moment: working on a duet, using everything I had to pick up another dancer by wrapping my arms around her neck and pulling, and I felt the muscles in my lower back stretch beyond capacity and give way to excruciating pain. I laughed it off, hobbled around the room with my hand on my sacrum, told everyone to "give me a minute; I'll be fine," and took some deep breaths before plunging back in, but I saw it there. I thought, "here's where it ends. I'll never be the same again."

Though I think, ultimately, endings are rarely that dramatic. I persisted. We all do when we want something bad enough, but as I grew older I got stiffer in that same back, unable to lift my leg as high in arabesque, unable to drop down as low, unable to find as deep a contraction. Four years later, I had finally found the stage presence and dramatic understanding of myself as a dancer, but had lost some of the physical prowess I had as a teenager. How frustrating.

So frustrating that I stopped taking class on a daily basis as I always had. So frustrating that I refrained from stretching in the morning, that I found other things to worry about, that I pretended that it was no big deal that my jumps had lost a bit of their loft. I was still competing with the best of them, it was just little things I noticed. We all notice those things - especially dancers who are so hyper aware of their body. For instance, I would wake up in the morning and walk into the bathroom and go, "Huh, my ankle's a little stiff. I've never noticed that before..." I'd take ballet class and say, "Huh, how odd. I don't have impeccable balance on my left side anymore. When did that disappear?"

A year and a half ago I had emergency abdominal surgery. It had been coming for some time methinks. The signs were there that something was going to go terribly awry. I was going through incredible social upheaval, I'd been sick with the flu that was then strep that was then a sinus infection. I remember getting ready for a First Night Escondido performance, and I was going to fill in for one of the dancers who couldn't be there. I jumped in to do her role (along with my own) and, still recovering, got so winded and dizzy that I promptly sat down and started crying in the middle of rehearsal. I don't think I'd ever cried in a rehearsal before. I, as a rule, don't cry in public. I was just so exhausted and so spent and so frustrated that my body couldn't find the stamina to do one more thing, that I lost it then and there. I don't think my fellow dancers and choreographer knew what to do with me. I was the polar opposite of this blubbering, heaving lump, slumped down along the mirror at the San Diego Center for the Moving Arts.

I got better, but not really. In Detroit, I would go for six weeks and dance in my second round of "The Pearl Fishers." I was dancing better than I had in some time, but at night I was waking up in a cold sweat and my intestinal tract decided to suddenly stop working entirely. I knew something was up but was too scared to do anything about it. Three weeks later I was rolled into emergency surgery to remove my appendix. My whole life changed at that moment.

I gained weight, lost flexibility, my sleep patterns changed, my stamina changed. Anyone who says that an appendectomy is minor surgery has no idea what they are talking about. Any time you get your abdomen cut open, things change inside of you. I recovered within six weeks, but my balance and metabolism were off forever. Dance became such a frustrating experience that I stopped doing it at all. The end seemed to be sitting right in front of me - I was all about changing careers, and I wasn't coming to terms with it. It makes me sick to think about not being a part of the dance world anymore.

I'm back from Miami for three weeks and I've been taking class and feeling like a beginner in an advanced world. I see all of these other people that I danced with for years circling around me and I feel like they've improved so much when what's really happened is my abilities have declined. I don't know how to reconcile with this loss.

I was at a dinner party last night with some members of the dance community here. We were talking about beautiful dancers in San Diego and then some who have taken long breaks and look like they aren't ready to be on stage. I am longing to perform again but very conscious that people see the lack when you've been out of the picture for so long. I'm not sure if I look like I've not been training or if I just notice my own short comings in hyper mode. I want to do my own work, but sometimes worry that I will work down to myself and still miss that challenge of going on stage and performing something to perfection that could, very well, knock me on my ass.

And you know...I think that's really what's irking me as my needs and career changes. Well, maybe two things. One is that I can't find the willpower to work beyond the pain anymore. I've worked through pain my whole life and now I just can't seem to do it anymore. I don't find it comforting and it doesn't improve my performance. I'm already strong; I don't need to be in excruciating pain in a dance class to prove that to myself anymore. The other thing is that I'm too much of a perfectionist to look like crapola when I dance. When my leg is a la seconde, I want to see the sole of my foot and I want my leg above 90 degrees. I want my back attitude to be parallel with the floor, I want to execute double turns without any wobble and find a perfectly balanced finish on one leg. When these things don't happen because my body's changed or my flexibility has fallen away, I get pissed at myself. There's nothing I can do about it but I'm pissed anyway. What happened to the beautiful precision that I once had?

I remember being at Jacob's Pillow in 1993 and watching Danny Grossman, stiff, in pain, lacking in his own former precision, warming up in one of the studios. I was so enamored of the fact that he persisted; that he couldn't execute the movements he used to, but he was still in the studio every day warming up. What dedication and strength of will he must have had.

Maybe I don't want it as bad as I think I do, or maybe what I really want with my career is actually down an avenue I haven't tried yet. Either way, I feel like I'm grasping at something that doesn't want to be taken anymore.