Interface

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Part 1:

Chapter 1: Dancing with a string attached to my head. Confessions of a true escapist.

“Dancers have a direct connection to the heavens and the gods- Balenchine and Stravinsky receive their talents and visions from God, and we as their instruments interpret those visions for mortal men. We are their servants. We are creative in the same way that paint in the pot is creative. We are the means to the end. We are essential, and we are on display. We receive the applause. Alone we are incapable and stationary.”

- Toni Bentley

I can’t remember much of what it was like during those years that I was a dancer: one cigarette, one croissant, and one cup of strong, cheap, and extra-sweetened coffee for breakfast before limping off to class. The smell of hairspray, the dull thud of pointe shoes on the dusty floor, the flat resin bin at the corner of the room, and the satisfying cracking noise it made when I pressed the worn surface of my Capeezios into it.

Pretend that you’re a puppet, they always told us, and stand as if the crown of your head were connected to a thin, invisible string that God pulled taut. Stretch your neck. Relax your shoulders. Straighten your hips. Turn out your feet one-hundred and eighty degrees. Soft hands, arched back, and…

The outside world disappeared and nothing else existed except for the tautness of our bodies, the geometrically perfect movements, the barre, the resin, and the string that connected us to that higher power.

Of course I had my own faulty reasons for being there. I didn’t dance because I thought it was fun, and that was my first mistake. People who think like that don’t last very long in this business, but I just knew deep down that I didn’t belong on the other side of the curtain- the darker side where people sat silently, their minds empty and their bodies trapped within the iron fisted confines of a logic-based reality. Our stage side world of assembled fantasy afforded me artistic asylum.

Oh yes, I was a fine example of a true escapist, but I was smart enough to know that things like freedom aren’t free. And so for allowing me to live in that other world, I paid my dues to the powers that be by giving them my body. I was plugged into the system and my life energy came flowing in from an ambiguous Something Else that all dancers thrived on.

Whether or not I danced to dance, I was immediately addicted to the feeling. Beyond the music and movements existed something that beckoned. I can’t really explain what it was, but I knew I was at the border. Lost gods crossed over after losing their believers. Lost lovers and lost warriors.

I was getting closer. There…in that world. I belonged there.

The longer I danced with the company, the more heroic I started to feel. It was as if by dancing I was committing a revolution against the rigid laws of the universe outside the theater. I- no- we all spat at it and embraced the fluid reality of our flesh and the stories they told.

In truth, I know that the conclusion of what happened back then was inevitable. There were several paths to that same end and I just happened to stumble upon the strangest of them all.