In that moment of utter uncertainty, all of the sounds and activity around me became muted and fuzzy, as if there were cotton in my ears, but my brain’s dialogue was crystal clear. For that one frozen minute, I knew with absolute, unemotional frankness that I had just danced my last step. I saw the future, the past, and the present all at the same time as I hovered there on one leg, looking down at my foot raised slightly in the air (for once not even trying to hold my balance, just miraculously stable). These were the strongest words in my head: “You are finished now.”
That “frozen minute” happened in the winter of 2008 when, as a principal dancer with Oregon Ballet Theatre, I was in the middle of taking company class. It was a performance week, about halfway through a hard run of shows. My load was particularly heavy: I was in three ballets, one of which was particularly demanding both aerobically and technically, and on top of that, I’d been battling bronchitis. The antibiotics had just started to take effect, and that day was the first time in over a week that I could get through a combination without being seized by a coughing fit.
I was a strong dancer in some ways, but fragile in others. Very tough in determination and mental fortitude, pretty strong in musculature, technique, and stamina, but my body— my tool, my instrument, my currency— kept complaining. Giving out. Hurting. Every dancer’s body hurts; it’s just the nature of a life lived with extreme physicality. But I was starting to suspect that mine hurt more… or was it just that I felt it more? Or that I couldn’t, for some reason, handle it? Did it just bother me more, psychologically?
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