My body and it’s a bittersweet self destruction. Like I am a blooming flower but my pollen dries over crusted and caked when it rains. Again and again to break through my own disgruntled remains.
SO… I started training in ballet again 🤨 since taking a hiatus from organized dance since May of 2022. The first time taking such a long break in my VERY ripe professional career. This choosing to return to ballet had me bent! Right now I am really enjoying my ballet training and it is the most affordable, technically advanced and realistic option for me. Ballet bar has always made sense to me, since I was 12 I have been tuned into its flow and it serves to be quite the safe space for me.
Ironically enough…
It’s a complicated relationship because of many many reasons but mostly this right here
*inserts Haitian Declaration of Independence*
I literally feel like a traitor…
But the form itself is beautiful if you as Spenser Theberge (an amazing dancer I have yet to connect with IRL but I have been taking their online classes loyally since COVID and I would highly recommend) would put it “Leave the ballet baggage at the door”
Ballet also is a place of a lot of first for me, I will never forget the day I saw this excerpt of Eric Underwood perform Wayne McGregors Chroma on youtube, it’s a big part of why I decided to pursue dance after High School.
That video changed me… it’s explicit passion, the attention to detail, the theatrics of it all is definitely something I really try to recreate in my everyday life. MAD EROTIC! It always makes me chuckle and my stomach turn a bit whenever ballet core trends, because I can never understand why people are so obsessed with white purity. Or even worse, the performance of that purity 🙁 mind you… it is used to mask intense sensation, drive, power all of those get down dirty things that is the dance. Granted not all ballet is like this, hence the clip we just saw. And yes, I know it is the fantasy of it all that really trends but still..
For those of you who don’t know, this is literally why they created Modern dance! It is separate from ballet… in one type of elitism LOL. It takes the turned out leg parallel and shifts the themes of the work out of fantasy into a guttural and whimsical reality. Modern dance is amazing because the context shifts, while still holding space for a technically challenging practice get into it y’all.
Any who… the ballet form was born out the very elite white of whites and thats why I have beef with it. It can trigger me and a lot the culture is anti-black. So it’s kind of like why would I continue to torture myself then? Truthfully, lately a lot of the appeal to ballet is that I will never ever be a reflection of the image of what ballet is (at is CORE VALUES.) Which allows some room for reinvention. A separateness that some of my faves like Alonzo King have found. Literally the work being rooted in invention of our own sturdy luminous magnificent worlds. How stunning.
When I think of ballet like that, a container, a tool in my very deep and vast tool box. A lot of the pressure is removed and I can slay with a load lifted.
I’m still working on finding balance, between training ballet, Haitian-folklore, my own improvisatory practice, my street dance practice and the commercial work I do. Oh and then doing nothing at all. Because this dancer grew up obsessed with hustle culture, I really wanted to be the best version of me it was cute but harmful. And if you’ve taken my class you would know, we do a lot of work trying to rewire the thinking process from going ham to simply expressive action. Letting that marvelous information be a gage on how you feel, which can then inform how hard you push. Not the other way around.
Which takes me to my next point, I was talking with a friend the other day and we had the funniest little revolution. How can I advocate for soft training; when a big reason why I have the work ethic I have today is because of my teachers relentlessness and my go hard or go home attitude? Soft training has not got me booked. But it has helped me keep dancing, sustain my career and find balance in my life. Sometimes when I feel like b*tchin (which is often🤷🏾♀️) I groan out “BUT WHY DOES MY TRAINING HAVE TO COME WITH SO MUCH TRAUMA??” The answer can be simple or we can really zoom in on it. Regardless its a nice thing to chew on.
I used to talk about the industry, commercial, concert, collegiate with this it’s so fucked up attitude. Now, I am here in the middle of it like okay this is an alive thing I am actively participating in. How can I facilitate GENUINE safety? A big part of that is asking a lot of questions, like what the f*ck am I doing? And why the f*ck am I doing this? Then my all time favorite how does that make me feel… and if I can stomach it why.
Writing about these feelings before and/or after practice has really aided in the mind body spirit evolution that is possible with dance.
Side bar: Have y’all read My body the buddhist by Deborah Hay? If not you should! They are a great dance practitioner and their book, mentioned above, really explores how we can think of dance in this deep critical way. Applied to our world, our healing and our creative practice.
Anyways thats it and thats all. I literally have class tomorrow and I am writing this at a pretty indecent time of night so hopefully I can be alive enough to take dance cause if not I will literally skip... Don’t be like me… Y’all stay blessed okay.
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