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.