Evolution
From the Wayfarer Archive, 2013
I. The Barre
I never expected that I would be starved for more than words, more than lines elegant and nimble on the page. So many times we do not expect, and yet. This is where my story begins: in my hand, in a friend’s head, through her body, through mine.
*
The Hockaday School’s dance department recitals were the most beloved of all Upper School gatherings, an occasion that brought out the very rowdiest in the all-female student body at the southern prep school both Shaina and I attended. Even the most rogue of plaid-clad girls chose to abandon half-smoked cigarettes in the parking lot rather than miss the dance assembly. People made posters to wave in the air; cheering between pieces was not only inevitable, but somehow allowed.
Shaina seemed to me the center of every dance, the youngest in the most advanced class since her ninth-grade year. She was graceful and elegant, and I was overwhelmed with pride to claim her as my own. We had been in school together every year of my life, save for those when she advanced to a new school one year ahead of me, first high school and then again to college. I had admired Shaina from a distance for as long as I could recall; the summer before my first year at Hockaday, we became friends and I admired her up close. Traipsing along the path Shaina had just prior paved was never my intention but always my fate, and we developed the deepest, most intuitive sort of bond as a result. For an only child who had always longed for the ties of sisterhood, sitting in a Hockaday dance assembly felt like home. While Joan Acocella was not writing about Shaina, she could have been: “On the stage, particularly when they are moving to music, [dancers] can seem to us a dream of the perfect physical life, in which the body is capable of saying all that needs to be said”.i
In the fall of my junior year at Washington University, Shaina asked me to write a piece from which she could draw inspiration and incorporate into the Senior Thesis she would choreograph for the spring. Here was my chance to swiftly move from admiring observer to inspired collaborator; alternately full of humility, skepticism and pride, I began an attempt to capture in poetry the theme that Shaina had taken as her subject—that shift between our mode of expression when we leave the self-abandoned freedom of being alone and enter into the company of others.
One of my oldest secrets is this: I feel a raw longing when watching Shaina dance, a jealousy fueled by both bottomless admiration and my own self-perceived lack of grace. The way in which she communicates through her body invariably reminds me of the power people hold over one another, and also the constant threat of failure to say what we need. In The Last Life author Claire Messud argues that, “Words meaningless though they might ring, as wrongly as we may interpret them, are the only missiles with which we are equipped, which we can lob across the uncharted terrain between our souls”.ii Claire clearly never saw Shaina dance. To anyone who watches her move, it is clear that through arches and leaps, Shaina lobs something meaningful across the terrain between souls, implicating her audience in a gesture of self. Her invitation to collaborate contained within it the world of my aspirations and concerns for reconciling my own disconnect between body and mind with her absolute mastery over it.
I engaged my premise as one takes to the battlefield, projecting confidence while feeling none; Shaina’s thesis seems primed for dance and lost on words. I tried to pinpoint moments when I felt most honest: writing in a journal because I have thought of two words which, when paired together, sound smooth, or staccato, cool like jazz or wild as a riff. I had recently devoured my birthday gift from Shaina, Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, and was drowning in prose so poetic and lush I could cry: “He hauled lines of poetry like buried barbed wire with his bare hands.”iii And I thought Yes, it is so.
I realized I had to envision a world through the dancer’s conversing form. I considered the tree that falls in the forest: what if no one hears? Does it still sound? If no audience is listening, does the cliché count? Do gestures still count, our presence still matter, if we have no one there to respond?
I dreamed of Shaina in fiery costume—ballet skirt of orange and red, pink tights, bare feet—dancing in my forest. No audience, no critics, a ballet simply for ballet’s sake. Without anyone to clap, critique or comment, did her art risk losing something of its life? Without any pressure from outside, I wondered, might not some more meaningful understanding of the self be gained?
Despite years of participating in writing workshops, I struggled with the anticipation of my own vulnerability as I progressed toward something to share with Shaina and, by extension, her audience. I hoped that my small “Modern Dance” poem conveyed this duality: both the delight and alarm of being revealed, the fear of slipping dancers recognize and push through because of the possible rewards waiting on the other end.
Modern Dance
1. A Body Swiftly
Glides across dust floors.
Breathes,
Canopy of limbs in all directions— Music amidst debris.
Arc of triumph in a bow Toes swept and sweeping, Pleasure unaware Echoing every curve.
2. A Voice
Swept and sweeping, Glances off a shoulder Shadows. Negative space Conscience meets critique.
Cacophony or perfection, Apples on sultry tongues Delight and alarm.
Toe tips scuttle, Traces of juice pool. The fear of slipping.
“Modern Dance” felt like Shaina, reminded me of her dancing, the delicacy of her poise and grace. But it was not sufficient; it did not capture what I increasingly recognized as my own interpretation of the premise, which had less to do with conversation and more to do with perception. I ventured to write myself into contrast with Shaina without apology or inhibition.
Sometimes I want to scream.
To a mirror / a man / an emotion: My echo.
Ceilings closing in, Laundry thrown to the wind, Window sliding softly down &
Clanging shut.
The curve of my back— A sand dune sinking low.
Sometimes I drown in inflection. But a voice / an occasion / a touch: My skin.
Mattress heaving sultry sighs, Canvas tilted on the wall,
A lily in a pot opened wide. Folded like a question mark— My writhing body stills.
I was anxious the day I presented my poems to Shaina, not because I did not trust her with my words, but because I knew that once passed off they entered into a different world, one not sheltered by the pretense of Workshop. I realized I would need a new self-assuredness; an unapologetic claim that what I am giving you is art. I am The Writer to your dancing.
*
First Position: demi-plié
The sun shined in through the windows of the Rosemeade Recreation Center as girls in tights and pink shoes posed in first position, second position, then third. I was nine and trying, attempting to curve my arms into a smooth circle, one without elbows jutting in all directions. There was Mary Beth Cagle and Joanna No-Last-Name (more important was that she was thirteen and wore a bra, its thin nude-colored straps teasing out from beneath her black leotard). Miss Kay Lynn had likely insisted I curve my arms many times during the seven years of my dance tenure, yet I remember only this last one. I could not make my arms, full of elbows and joints, form a rounded circle, nor could I keep the tip of my tongue from sticking out as my concentration on this task increased. The tutu had unraveled. Graceless and poorly mannered, I bid my ballet slippers goodbye.
I left dance, but dance would not leave me. What no one tells you when you hang up the leotard is that dancing will be everywhere: Bar Mitzvahs, high school dances, parties your first year of college where you wonder if a drink might justify the shifting and jerking which have become your signature moves.
How I longed for it to be sexy, in a masterful, conscious way. I could not imagine how any dance critic might find it demeaning to characterize modern dance as primitive, sexual, and Dionysian. Far from an insult, these descriptors struck me as celebratory cries. What dedicated dancer waves and moves without a deep understanding of the history of modern dance, without knowledge of technique and years of training? Far from ignorant in her body, she is powerful, in control of her sexuality to the most precise degree. Only through discipline and trust in herself can the dancer develop the means for modern dance’s magnificent release. The Dionysian must be a consequence of careful study. I wished so much to experience this paradox: the dancer releasing her energies with a grand, perhaps even violent, gesture of self through knowledge of and confidence in her body. Martha Graham called it contract and release—a release only the body, in its intrinsic fusion of outer and inner, might realize.
How did I dance before my reservations arose, when everything was to gain and I had no pride to lose? To the child who dances not for grace but for fun, the stage is a world of endless chance; to a girl who has lost touch with that naïveté, for whom movement is characterized by an acute awareness of all that grace which she lacks, even a bedroom mirror provides ample opportunity to fail. And yet, though that gust of self-release rushing out through arms and toes eludes her, the echo of it all must somewhere remain endlessly swaying in her limbs, an afterimage displaced but not gone.
*
Second Position: demi-plié
I should not have been surprised to happen upon tango night at Dunn Brothers’ Coffee one Texas night so hot even the Cicadas hummed with melancholy. An oasis of cool, Dunn Brothers’ always pulsed with the business of living and doing. And yet it was a thrill nonetheless to learn from the barista that tango night, a monthly occurrence drawing a loyal and regular crowd, was upon us.
Lights dimmed to just candle wicks, speakers in back keeping the beat, I felt anxious and exhilarated as I found a seat, an intruder, uninvited. With each twist of the tangoers’ torsos and elegant taps of the heel I grew ever more mesmerized, each stomp reverberating in my chest. The pairings appeared loose and spirits appeared high, couples swapping in and out as though two songs danced with the same partner would be to deny one’s body a vital breath of air. I assumed there was an instructor—certainly people cannot intuit how to move in such a way—but it was difficult to ascertain. While the men of the group were ostentatiously dressed, I found the women most captivating. The graceful female with hips that whipped in simultaneous contradiction to her still torso; the petite figure in suede platform boots, her nimble and sweeping body following her partner with ease; the youthful red-head who, though stiffer than the others, held her partner’s gaze with conviction. The shades and sounds blended as smells do; the bodies balanced in perfect geometry, angles aligning and sliding in time.
I observed from the well-lit front half of the shop where business continued uninterrupted, tea cradled in my hands as I replied to a barefoot man with whom I was obliged to sit. I skimmed the occasional paragraph in my book, though all I wanted was to watch. Though I was aware that no one at tango night, chatty tablemate aside, paid me much mind, I felt anxious and excited and tempted by the thought—the scandalous, seductive, terrifying thought—that perhaps I would be asked to dance.
*
Lean limbs loosen up: arms are raising and stretching, reaching over sides, brushing the floor. Bare feet patter everywhere: at the back of the room in compact circles, miniaturizing a dance through small beats; in a cluster of bodies refreshing one another on the moves sorted out weeks ago and refined over time; in the center of the studio, absent-mindedly because moving is simply a vital function of life. Sounds ricochet: skin drags across hardwood floors, joints crack, heels land, fabric slides on the ground.
The motions, sounds and smells of Shaina’s rehearsal blend seamlessly; I, on the other hand, am quite conspicuous. As I try to appear effortless, sitting on the floor without leaning back on my arms and struggling as my back immediately begins to ache, I am aware of the stark contrast I pose to this room of women with cores strong and postures erect. Yet they do not notice me, or choose not to, intent instead on their own disciplined forms. Each of the six choreographers rehearsing here has her own style, variations on a modern dance aesthetic I do not much comprehend. I find myself inhaling deeply, transported by the smell of bare feet. Each grouping will dance for the rest, presenting works in progress for encouragement and critique.
My body stills / My body stills / Dissolve, dissolve / Step / Stepping on cracks / Still. How nonchalantly Shaina’s group dances my phrases; how seamlessly they weave word and curve in our dance. I scribble notes, coveting my role as co-conspirator, thrilled to be invited into this intimate place, though I am still sorting out just where I fit. While her father wrote Finnegans Wake, Lucia danced circles around James Joyce’s scratching hand, “…the writing of the pen, the writing of the body becom[ing] a dialogue of artists, performing and counterperforming, the pen, the limbs writing away.”iv Am I James crafting or Lucia spinning dizzily around? Is Shaina a recipient of my phrases or the creator of new terms? As bodies perform, my writing performs; one medium breathing new life into the next.
I realize my words and I are safe in the rehearsal studio with these women who have art in their muscles, relationships between sound and shape in their bones. It is less about me here than them, their movements becoming the essential thing, the only thing, in a room lit by mirrors and illuminated by bodies radiant with truth.
Fourth Position: demi-plié
Among its many lasting gifts, The Hockaday School bestowed upon me Mrs. Orlovsky, an English teacher who paused her ninety-minute class each day to lead students in deep breathing and warrior pose amid closely packed tables and chairs. For those ten minutes—and then, somehow, for all remaining minutes in the day—our bodies were drawn into intimate contact with our minds, narrative-descriptive essays becoming part of our being as we rose in our seats, lifted our arms, lunged down and exhaled. Greek Mythology and Homer and creative writing merged with our physical selves under the tutelage of Mama O. If the body does not lie, then we learned from ours that literature, when it melted into the corporeal, told truth.
I could not have known then how the symbiosis in this relationship would become everything for me. I now see how the honesty of communion between body and mind was what both Shaina in her project, and I, with my small but precious part, were after this whole time.
*
The studio is like a cave: chairs are black; floors are black; dark curtains cover the walls, minimal overhead lighting guides people in through a low doorway. People with soft footsteps and heavy coats chatter in hushed voices as they find friends and available seats, while several stragglers sit down in the very front on mats adjacent to what will transform momentarily from floor to stage. I am nestled among close friends of my own and a boyfriend to my left, in perfect centrality to the performance space. Scanning slyly over my shoulder I see an infinite number of programs waving in the air, casually lying on laps, already fallen to the floor. I inhale deliberately and count my exhale, one to four.
Outside it is March and the lightest of spring snows drifts down from the sky. Crystals linger everywhere: on doorposts, streetlamps, bushes along the sidewalks, a lacey haze descending on the parking lot as a thoughtfully draped spider’s web might. Unwrapping layers of coat, sweater, scarf, I tug casually at my shirt, attempting to cool off. I grip a program in my hand, allowing it to flip open. I lean in towards Jeff and nudge him, Look, and point to my name.
“I know, very exciting!” He gives my knee a little shake. I shrug as the lights go down.
My body stills. Dissolve. The first dancer speaks and my stomach tightens. I bury my hands in my lap; glance around to see if anyone is grimacing or otherwise displeased. I consider the first time I undressed in front of a boy, my confidence tinged with hesitation, fully aware that I should not need anyone’s approval but desperately seeking it despite.
Two dancers twirl about one another, interacting furiously for a moment and then slowing to still. They are partnering, a term I have learned from years of Shaina, bodies in contact with one another, each flowing effortlessly through the negative space of the other. End. One dancer removes her hands from the other, stops moving. The music stops. End / End, stop. The first dancer speaks once more as the light fades.
I am anticipating Shaina’s solo—I know the performance is a duet, a solo and a quartet in this order—but still feel my stomach jump when Shaina enters alone. She looks beautiful in a grey flowing dress, black tights, and bare feet. Nameless / Nameless and folded / Folded like a question mark / Nameless. Each spoken word incites a dance phrase, establishing an echo between text and body. Shaina caves inward, a form convex in questioning; she forces an arm jarringly across her chest, down her torso, learning a body that is seemingly not hers. Sometimes I think I am real / Nameless / Connection and longing / Nameless / Sometimes I think I am real.
Whether or not anyone in the audience has noted my name in the program alongside this piece, I am being revealed. With each phrase a dancer echoes, a piece of my clothing falls to the floor. So many times have I shared my writing with others and yet never have I been so exposed as now. Later I will realize that I am experiencing Shaina’s premise more intimately than ever, but for the time all I know is I am both named and nameless. A voice / An occasion / A touch / My skin. A voice, an occasion, my skin.
I am glancing at Jeff out of the corner of my eye. My silhouette, my silhouette, my silhouette / Seen by another. What is he thinking? Does this matter? My silhouette / Seen by another.
“So you wrote that stuff they were saying?” Annie, Shaina’s roommate, turns around to face me as the lights go up.
“More or less, yeah.” “That’s amazing.”
As I wrap my scarf around my neck, I laugh a little. Yes, I suppose it is.
*
Fifth Position: grand plié
Crouched on a miniature chair among glossy peels of apple slices and with my leg damp from a drizzle of spilled milk, I entertain light conversation with the four-year-olds; after all, it is snack-time on a Friday afternoon here at the University City Children’s Center. Following talk of macaroni necklaces and the color red, it is story time. I rush to the embroidered reading rug with everyone else, scooting around on my bottom before settling on the letter S for snail.
I read aloud to the class—The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, It’s Pumpkin Time, Autumn Is For Apples—alternating picture books with Danny, the other college student visiting the pre-K room this week. About ten minutes in, little bodies start to squirm and a teacher suggests we switch to dance time. Dance time? The Disney music starts up and the kids start kicking it.
I am surprised, though not in a position to question this ritual. Taking a cue from Danny, who is already popular with the girls as he swings each around on his toes, I tie my sweatshirt around my waist and start grooving. But I do mean grooving—arms above my head, head bobbing side to side, hips shaking vigorously; my tiny classmates, lost in their own fancy combinations of jumps and rolls, don’t appear to notice my spasmodic moves. My hair falls loose from its ponytail and my curls frizz out on either side of my face. I am falling in love with dance time.
Halfway through a child-sung version of “Life Is a Highway,” Danny catches my shoulder, gestures that it is time to go. I crouch down to slap my fellow revelers farewell fives. Turning to leave, Danny and I notice our friends, all of whom spent the afternoon with other classes, peering at us through the room’s window.
Though my instinct is to cringe, relief soon after washes over me, as it does when I finally understand the punch line of a joke. I realize that I am both not embarrassed and secretly pleased. Did anyone else have dance time today? I am twenty years old and receiving lessons from four-year-olds. It would seem I have a great deal left to learn.
II. The Center
The experience of attending Shaina’s dance performance and watching my words gain new life through movement transforms me. In coming so close to the world I admire, I realize that I need to learn my body all over again. With a mix of anticipation and anxiety, I sign up for Intro to Modern Dance. Perhaps, in the right hands, I, too, can learn to say all that needs to be said.
Shaina tries to prepare me for David, my instructor. She described him as unconventional; she shares that even seasoned dancers are not conditioned for a session with him because his way of moving is so unlike any other. On our first day, David rouses us to recognize how much our bodies are capable of if only we can return to the fundamentals of movement, the tactility we were conscious of as toddlers when we cruised the floor on all fours. He insists that we become cognizant of the cadence of our walking, the artful movements in everyday motions, taking not one for granted. His voice is smooth, sensual and flowing; his gestures encompass sex and life and art. In introducing us to the physicality of being alive, David invites our incongruous ensemble of novices into a world I once thought reserved for someone else. We use breath to echo movement—woosh and zhaaa and PUH. The studio becomes my playground and my body a vehicle for engaging the world. I touch, explore, and delight in the same way that a child does when she discovers movement for the first time. David provides me with a second opportunity to have this most precious experience.
We spend the first several weeks of the semester dancing with our eyes closed, mirrors hidden from view and bodies hidden from one another. Lying loose and limp on the cold floor, I focus on the sensation of moving rather than my perception of it. Vulnerable and shifting in inelegant ways, I release control, relinquish responsibility for the things my body might do. It feels primeval and Dionysian, tentative at first but increasingly urgent with time. In the studio I am learning it is okay to be flawed; being human is not just acceptable but essential. The world opens up when my eyes close, tempting and reductive and revelatory. I am finding more than the press of my back down onto hardwood and the roll of my hips left and right. I surrender responsibility for how my body looks and become delightfully self-aware.
*
David has a master plan for the future of movement. This plan, called The Movement Movement, is rooted in a fundamental and earnest faith in the power of bodies, and posits that every person can make movement magnificent. Among other ideas to revolutionize movement is a game David calls Dance Everything: walk with a skip every third step; remove a plate from a
cabinet while spinning on one foot; shuffle sideways through a door; slide down into a chair instead of just falling.
We are assigned to Dance Everything for one hour outside the studio. Our experiment can be as public or as private as we wish, as obvious or as subtle. We are required to write a response and post this to a class website. I have forgotten to Dance Everything until the day before the assignment is due and half-heartedly spend ten minutes dancing my dinner, waving an arm in the air before opening the fridge.
The next day I am in a terrible mood. Because I have had many of these this semester and am growing weary of myself, I force my sulking body out to jog in the glorious midwestern autumn, my favorite season that St. Louis does to perfection. In a miniature park that is really a median in the center of a neighborhood close to campus, I spot a bench. I remember an exercise we did with a chair during David’s class that day. I jump up onto the bench, lift a leg around the back, place my hands on it, sit with great intention, and kick my legs up in the air.
Something happens when I do this, surrounded by crunchy leaves and crisp air. I roll like a child in the leaves. I bend, lean, fall, and do not fix my hair when it comes loose from my bun. A car drives past; I revel on. It drives past again, more slowly, the driver staring. It’s okay, watch me! I am the spirited nymph those Russian ballet critics were really speaking of when they watched Vaslav Nijinsky perform: “For a second the soul carries the body.”v I am consumed by the sensuality of the brisk wind, the setting sun, and my body, a source of release and pleasure such that I have never experienced in this context before.
David has been teaching us the warm-up he calls the Quadruped Evolution for several weeks now. It involves all the “movement fundamentals” we have learned this semester and is also useful as an exercise in core strength, balance and, for me, mastery over fits of dizziness. One such fundamental—counterbalance—we discovered early on. Leaning forward with our heads, we are told to kick one leg up into the air while keeping the other leg behind, nearer the ground. It is an almost-handstand. Before someone flings her leg up too forcefully, falls with a smack on her back and David cancels the exercise, I feel my body evening itself out in the air, catching itself before it falls. Of all the odd, upside down experiments we have done, this is my favorite; I can float in the air and not fall. Almost-dancing.
In the Evolution warm-up, counterbalance, curve, line and the three elements of dance (space, time and energy) collide. David has developed this progression of movements, small sequences that build upon one another, with the belief that mastering simple combinations prepare the body to understand more complicated dance. We lie flat on our backs, arms and legs extended out in an X, maximizing the reach of our bodies. Henry, our dedicated accompanist, begins to count the beat on his drum. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We curl into ourselves, one, two, three, four. We extend out with all limbs, balancing on our side and then roll onto our stomachs, five, six, seven, eight. The progression builds; we rock up to sitting, flip up and around onto all fours, experiment with falling back to the ground. By mid-semester, our Quadruped Evolution takes about fifteen minutes. Advanced dancers like Shaina know a version twice as long, twice as fast, and infinitely more dizzying.
David critiques us, offers feedback to refine our movement and make it not only practical, but pretty, too. In these moments, I realize how much dance is a part of me, was long before David patiently began coaxing it out. I recognize my faith in David’s instruction—that this will, in fact, make me a dancer—and the familiarity of such instruction as “release your neck,” though I have never personally been told to do so before. Several weeks in, my eyes are opening, and David peels back the curtains that have until this point concealed the wall-to-wall mirrors. By Vaslav, I’m dancing.
Shaina and I get a kick out of doing the Quadruped Evolution together on her carpeted apartment floor one lazy Friday night mid-semester. She is exposing me to worlds we’ve yet to map out in class: a warped-speed “cyclone” version of the Quadruped Evolution with falls from standing—standing!—my classmates and I are not yet qualified to attempt. Now that I am re- becoming a dancer, I do not just admire Shaina’s movements, I try them. I recognize this arch or that slide from more basic versions I am learning in class. I am certified by David to be moving about and so I do. All over the place. She shows me a movement and I copy in earnest, allowing my body to do what it will. We are laughing so deeply it hurts. After years of sharing almost everything, Shaina and I are beginning a conversation we have never had before.
i Acocella, Joan. Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007, 168
ii Messud, Claire. The Last Life. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1999.
iii Dillard, Annie. The Maytrees. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.
iv Acocella, Twenty-eight Artists, 9.
v Acocella, Twenty-eight Artists, 169.