A Series of Paintings; Math & Ballet

I performed on stage tonight for the first time in...since high school. Which, believe it or not, was a decade ago. My "dance", called "body cartography", was a post-modern creation: 7 or 8 of us stood in a line, dressed in colorful street clothes, and jumped up and down for 5 minutes straight, then side-to-side for another couple minutes. I have a feeling we looked like a bunch of skittles bopping around on stage. It was very silly and fun and aerobic. Afterward, we stood still and focused on our organs, then muscles, then sent stuff out of our skin toward the audience. I could feel a bead of sweat pouring down the left side of my face as my skin tingled and radiated.

After the blackout, I skedaddled into the wings while the rest of my fellow jumpers walked right into the audience and took a seat to enjoy the rest of the show. From here, I photographed a stage performance for the first time ever! The first thing I had to figure out was how to compensate for the gajillion-watted spotlights. That's an issue I've never had before in photographing tango events-- too much light! It was nice because it gave me an opportunity to stop down my shutter speed and capture movement with clarity rather than blur-- artistic blur, but blur nonetheless.

As I crouched in the wings with my camera, the music changed to something outer-space/star wars-like, and suddenly I felt like an explorer on a strange planet, observing these alien avatar creatures crouching like beasts and leaping in sync and climbing on top of each other, forming a tangle of arms and legs. It was such an incredible experience.

Lots of people say that with a camera, you can't experience the fullness of reality because you're too busy viewing through a lens and clicking away. Sometimes this is true, but other times, it's not so much a lesser experience than a totally different one. Cameras make you see things differently. You are in a separate plane from reality-- separated by a lens-- and yet more focused on the details that go unnoticed by people whose view is not boxed in by the size of the viewfinder. The viewfinder frames scenes in a particular way so you start seeing reality as a series of pictures or paintings.

During the subway ride to the event, a girl sat across from me, constantly changing the position of her head as if she couldn't find a comfortable spot, but always using her hand to support her head, and eyes always downcast. She looked so incredibly tired and sad, and yet, I was struck by how much she resembled the old paintings of the Madonna, or whatever random woman model...her pose was utterly classical, incongruously set within a dirty subway speeding through the 21st century.

Last weekend, at a dance bar called Time, Jess and I were waiting at the counter for water, when suddenly she pointed out this incredible vision of a girl's face lit up ghostly white next to the DJ's table. This mask-like paleness contrasted sharply with the surrounding blackness that permeated the space around her. Her huge eyes stared out from disturbingly long, black eyelashes. Maybe the shadows lengthened them, I don't know. It was haunting at any rate. For a brief moment, I felt slightly more intoxicated, as if maybe the absinthe was doing its hallucinogenic magic after all.

The other night, before I left the tango studio, Meredith beckoned me toward a car seat set amidst the piles of coats and bags near door. Inside this car seat was the most adorable half-Indian, half-white baby boy, sound asleep, while his parents tangoed the night away. How was it that he was undisturbed by all the activity and noise outside of his little bed-on-the-go? One could only guess what he was dreaming about with all these grown-up figures waltzing and whirling around him in the dim orange light, and tango music seeping into his subconscious mind. As Meredith and I lingered outside of the studio, we watched amazed as the couples on the other side of the glass danced in time to music that we could not hear. This is what it was like to be deaf, I thought. To see people moving to imaginary rhythms, as if they all shared the same internal clock. Hey it's like watching an ipod dance party!

The other day, after ballet class, we fell into conversation with our instructor, and he told us a very interesting thing about first arabesques. First arabesque, where both the arms and the legs are opened toward the audience, is the ballet equivalent of e^ipi + 1 = 0. In other words, it's considered to be the most beautiful position in ballet, the very symbol of classical ballet. A good first arabesque position gives the illusion of a very long line from fingertips to toes, and this is what makes arabesques so beautiful. "Ballet is about living line," as our instructor once said.

For some reason, as he explained the intricacies of this symbol of ballet, I suddenly thought of a lecture I once had in an undergraduate math course. We were going into projectile geometry, and the professor compared the point of infinity to the point where the parallel lines of a railroad track appear to meet. Of course, in reality, they would never meet, given that they are perfectly parallel lines. Just as you would never reach infinity, even if you spent your entire lifetime plus everyone else's lifetime counting. But one could comprehend infinity as a point using this railroad track analogy.

Now I find myself wondering why the discussion about arabesques made me think of projectile geometry and the railroad track analogy. Mathematics and ballet share this obsession with ideals. The ideal proof...the ideal line...the most beautiful equation...the most beautiful pose. Rigorous...precise...detail, detail, detail...