Energy

Heaven is a beautiful ballet adagio. Earth is bowling a 40. I did both tonight!

The longer I dance ballet, the more I believe that energy is a palpable thing. On the surface, dancing seems to be purely about controlling and manipulating various parts of the physical human body. The part that we don't see, however, is the control and manipulation of energy. Striking a pose and striking a pose with energy could mean the difference between losing and keeping one's balance. As well, the way the dancer chooses to direct his or her energy could mean the difference between a captivating style and a distasteful one. Dancing ballet is as much about containing and releasing at will this invisible energy as it is about moving and positioning the visible body.

The longer I live, the more I believe that energy is a palpable thing. I am most convinced of this truth when I share a deep, private connection with another human being. What has become of me? I speak of Providence, purpose, and now energy. I swear I still have one foot in the real, rational world.

It's true that the province of ballet is in the air, but there's no doubt that it comes from the province of the ground.-- Kip, in critiquing our manner of jumping like marionettes with no solidity in landings. And in fact, to emphasize the point with a demonstration, he did dance like a marionette for us.

Romeo & Juliet

Today, I saw the Romeo & Juliet ballet performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet. Overall, I found the experience boring except for when Romeo and Juliet danced together-- then it was breathtaking. I was surprised by all the character/folk dancing and pantomime involved in this production, elements which I'd read were a major part of 19th century Romantic Era ballets.

Paris' buttocks were gargantuan. Like slabs of concrete dressed in white tights. Attached to these slabs of concrete was a pair of big hunkin' thighs. How was he able to close his fifths with such big hunkin' thighs?

As the story unfolded before my eyes, it suddenly occurred to me that Juliet is a pretty ballsy teenager. It takes balls to take a scary potion that's supposed to bring you an inch away from death. Stupid!-- but ballsy. I wondered how many in the audience had loved with the intensity that Juliet loved, and whether they thought she was stupid or ballsy. During intermission, I browsed the program and found the following dedication from one principal dancer to another, her husband:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea
My love as deep; The more I give to thee,
The more I have, For both are infinite.

He had proposed to her onstage after one of their performances together.

It was a curious experience to be a part of the audience after 9 months of being the performer for an imaginary one. I was now the conscious observer that gave directional meaning to the dancer's movements and poses. She set her arabesques, croises, effaces, and ecartes with respect to me and my fellow audience members. As I'd learned in class, ballet combinations can take on an infinite number of pathways, but logic dictates that only a few of those options will actually work. The observer (the audience member) is a key driver of that logic.

I love this about ballet. On the one hand, it's full of ideals that dancers strive for like the perfect first arabesque, or creating perfect lines and circles. Ideal beauty. On the other hand, it is a heavily observer-dependent art. Without a conscious observer, the movements take on meaning only up to a certain point-- positioning various parts of one's own body in relation to each other-- and past that point, positions cease to be defined. To maintain meaning, the dancer must also position her body with respect to an external viewer separate from herself, who maintains a separate, opposing perspective. In this way, ballet does not exist in a vacuum like Platonic ideals; rather, it is firmly grounded in reality. It is a human experience.

But I must say, it is a lot more fun to do ballet than to watch a ballet. It bothers me that I can't see things up close, like the facial expressions, the veins on the neck, the abnormally arched feet, the sweeping hand. Everything was just so minuscule and that much less impressive as seen from the distant crowd.

Two Sets of Kids

I love teaching. And I think I like my job. Today, I convinced a kid to get on his feet and climb the stairs to his classroom. He is a particularly troubled kid that I've spent all my brief time at the school developing a rapport with, and so this tiny feat meant a lot to me-- that I was able to convince him to get up from his obstinate crouch when no one else could. Later, I passed by him as I was going up those same set of stairs, and he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the cheek, saying that he loved me. I was so mentally thrown off by the kiss that I drew my head back in surprise and knocked it against the wall. I am fairly certain that "I love you" was not a phrase that this kid regularly tossed around.

To think that yesterday, I was ready to quit my job. I was suddenly so sick of being at the receiving end of all this bitchy behavior from a bunch of 7-year-olds. Why was this my burden? I asked myself. But later I was reminded of where these kids were coming from, and it was enough to keep me on board for the time being.

Today, after a super-challenging ballet class, which was more like a counting class, Sarah and I sat at Capogiro's until nearly midnight talking about ballet, teaching and work. During a lull in conversation, I heard MGMT's "Kids" playing and the song reminded me my kids in Kurdistan. Suddenly I missed those kids so much. I recalled the way they were so openly affectionate with me, and so happy in general. Then I thought about the faces of the kids I teach now-- mutinous, angry, sullen, and insolent being the base-level expressions of choice for far too many of them. Today, though, I drew a smile from one of the especially insolent faces, and it meant a great deal to me as ephemeral as it was.

I realize this now that I have something to compare it to: My kids in Kurdistan knew how to love and laugh easily, and their hearts were unbelievably pure. My kids in West Philly on the other hand are apparently hardened to feelings like love, their laughter is mean-spirited more often than joyful and childlike, and their hearts are prematurely sullied by the grime of their much less sunny reality. One needn't look very far to find an explanation for the disparity between these two groups of kids. One set grew up in wealthy homes with overbearingly loving parents in the isolation of Erbil, Iraq; while the other set grew up in entirely different socio-economic and cultural circumstances in West Philly. In the first set, it is the parents who suffered by the hands of Saddam, while the kids grew up in relative peace; while in the second set, it is the parents who suffer, and the kids continue to suffer with them. The two sufferings are also of an entirely different, incomparable nature.

An "I love you" from Liya in Kurdistan is an entirely different beast from an "I love you" from K***** in West Philly. Both are equally heartwarming, but one is given freely, while the other is earned. Hugs on the other hand are easily doled out by both sets of kids. I was amazed at how quickly the kids in West Philly started throwing their arms around my waist. Strange for someone like me...when I was young, giving a hug was the biggest fucking deal.