Spectrum of Behaviors

I am learning early on that the kids at my school have the capacity to be very good, but they also have the capacity to be very, very bad. One minute a little boy is giving me the sweetest hug; the next minute, he and another boy are about to pound each other on the playground.

Thinking While Dancing

Adam once told me that for an interview, you should go dressed as the person you want to be. And that I wasn't trying to become a photographer, I was a photographer! And that I had to 'sound like a Russian' when I'm trying to speak Russian phrases. Now, thanks to him, my Russian accent has improved, I go around telling people that I'm a photographer, and I go to interviews in a tutu and toe shoes. Did he turn me into a liar with a guttural laugh and perpetually unemployed by reason of inability to dress in proper office attire? Perhaps...But! On the bright side, I carried this philosophy of pretending to be what I want to become with me into the world of dance, and it has served to solidify shaky holds and straighten bad form on more than one occasion.

The Dark Age continues

I took a class at the Rock School this evening. The teaching at this supposedly reputable dance school was awful. I learned three things from this class:

(1) that it was possible for a dance studio to be too big (so that the instructor spends half her time running to and from the music and cannot focus her attention on the students)

(2) that it was possible for the music during a ballet class to be played too loudly (especially when the instructor turns it on early in order to save herself a walk across the huge room, and then gives out the combinations over the blasting music), and

(3) that I could actually hate ballet.

It depressed me to watch the other students perfunctorily and clumsily carrying out the steps which were too advanced for us; it was an insult to the art. The teacher's own form was utterly uninspiring. Where were the exquisite lines? The hypnotic grace? I could not bear the disappointment any longer, so I left early and trudged home in the foulest of moods. If I were a cow, I would have shot a cud right into the face of anyone who crossed my angry path. Luckily, no one crossed my path...and I was not a cow.  Little did I know that the end of this Dark Age of Symmetry was fast approaching.

The Renaissance

I took a bowl of strawberries up to the rooftop and ate them mournfully. I was mourning for the "tragedy" that was the Rock School experience, and I was mourning for our ballet instructor who was going through real, genuine tragedies. Sarah sat in a picnic chair next to me with a bowl of salad and joined me in mourning and eating. We were a really mournful pair up there under the stars, but at least we were eating healthful foods.

We talked, we ate. We gazed upwards and spotted one of the Dippers. That made me happy. Spotting constellations has a knack for lifting my mood. I thought of my friend Orion, who would be in hibernation until next winter. Eventually, we picked up our bowls and headed back inside. I stopped by my room, checked my email, and squealed. EEE! An email from the Symmetry listserv! Classes were "definitely" on next week! Unbelievable! Etta James crooned from my laptop as we read and re-read the email, unable to believe this sudden turn of events.

What do you think about when you're dancing?

--A question asked by a non-dancer friend of mine, which I passed on to my instructor. Rather than trying to recap our e-dialogue, I'll leave you with direct quotes:

K: When you learn to dance, an intense amount of focus and conscious effort is involved...But one thing interesting about dance is that it is an ultimate expression of a moment; there is no real conscious thought, it is a feeling, it's intuitive and emotional.  So the further that one moves along in dance the more the actual thought process changes.  It becomes less about thinking about each movement consciously than a pure kinesthetic response.

A: ...Now that I think about it, it's a lot like learning a language: in the beginning, you learn all the grammar rules and memorize a lot of vocabulary, but even with all this knowledge about the language, it doesn't imply that you're fluent in it. The fluency comes only once you've been immersed in the language and speaking and thinking in it for quite some time, and at first, this requires a lot of mental exertion and conscious translation from English to whatever language. My Spanish teacher once said that you know you're on the verge of fluency when you have your first dream in that language...I guess because conscious thought has no place in the average dreamer's mind.

Summer Sweat

Though all my days-- no matter how great-- are tinged with sadness as of late, today is a beautiful day filled with Persian verbs past and present, the youthful feelings of Rostov in War & Peace, and a foamy cappuccino from La Colombe.

The evening, by contrast, wiled itself away in tango fashion, only in reverse. I offered to be a leader for this class because there were way too many women as usual. I realized I loved learning how to lead, how to use the connection between my left hand and her spine to "convince" her to carry out an ocho, to use my spine and not the force of my hands to lead the ocho.

Through ballet and tango, I am learning that no matter the dance, the true source of movement and balance is the spine; arms and legs-- though they are the most visible, freely moving features of the human body-- are more often than not auxiliary. Learning to lead and alternatively being used by Andres as a follower during demonstrations gave me a great sense of what is expected by and of both sides. If I were ever to teach tango, I would make everybody learn both the leader and follower parts.

After this great lesson, I came home, stuffed myself with carrots (I think my metabolism is still kicking strong from the race yesterday), then slowly made my way up the stairs. As I approached my room on the third floor, the damp, musty smell of summer grew stronger and stronger, and I welcomed it. It's the smell of freedom, of college, of Korea even.

I am sad because of the sudden vanishing of ballet at Symmetry from my life, and this makes me nostalgic. Though there is still hope, even the tiny possibility that it might never come back leaves me with a constant ache. However, I'm slowly, forcibly coming to terms with this worst-case scenario, and am currently making plans to either go abroad again or start a Master's program this fall.

We shall see where this goes.

Broad Street Run

This morning, I was one of 30,000 people to run the Broad Street Run. However, I can state with certainty that I was the only one to run this 10-mile race with a key attached to my shoelace, and 2 subway tokens and a tampon nestled in my sports bra. One of the tokens was lost somewhere along the route. Throughout the race, I splashed water at my face at every water stop and ran through sprinklers to keep cool from the rising heat and humidity. For the first 7 miles, I felt as if I was running and dodging people just to get to the start of the race. Before I knew it, the race was more than half-over, and I was averaging something like 9.5 minutes/mile. Then, around mile 7, I knew I was slowing down because I started running with the crowd, rather than steadily passing up my neighboring runners.

It was around this time that I had to pull up my Reserves-- a pile of tricks that help to keep me running even though all I want to do is lie down on the pavement or jump in a pool. First, technical advice like "keep your knees up, Angie" or "lean forward, let gravity do the work". Then around mile 9, I had to dig into my Special Reserves: "You're Sydney Bristow, chasing after yet another nemesis! Don't lose him!" "You're at the end of ballet class, and the last thing you want to do is another set of royales, but he says to do it again! Just keep jumping!" And etcetera. Any strange or embarrassing fantasy to keep me going.

Finally, I saw the finish line. The sight of it was enough to push me past whatever I was feeling and just pound it. However, 5 steps before the finish line, an annoying lady got in front of me and was not sprinting so victoriously to the finish. "Get outta my way!" I thought to myself. Unfortunately, she failed to read my thoughts and continued to toddle on across the finish line. Hence, my finish was not as victorious as I had wanted it to be, but overall, it was not a bad race! I'm glad I did it.

Best sign from the crowd said "Run fast Carl! Beat Steve!"on one side, and "Run fast Steve! Beat Carl!" on the flip side.

Race Results: 96.5 minutes and seriously stiff knees. Ouch.