Deep Down
Long ago, but not too far away from where I am now, I was a dancer. I wasn't a particularly good dancer, but I tried hard and I was always spot on for performance. I was good enough that I won a few awards and did a few ballets, you know, in the back, easily tossed around. My heart and my mind still remember this. Years and years of training (I started training around four until I was 20 years old) managed to ingrain the movement in my head, but my body can no longer complete the moves with the same grace and power. I can feel my own weakness when I try. It is sad. My muscles feel unused.
Lately I have been missing the rigor and the dedication that was required to be a dancer. As much as I hated the long hours and the sacrifices and the sores and the seemingly constant injuries, that's how much I miss dancing, now.
I want to leap and kick and, oh, how I want to be en pointe. I want to feel my body balanced on just the tips of my feet. I want the ache and the burn.
I suffered an injury, like so many people do, and I never was able to be strong enough to go back in to dancing. Well, and there was the fact that my attention had been divided for years between dance and theater, with theater often winning out. I felt more secure in my talent as an actor. I knew that I was able to do far more with my voice and my body in different characters than I could ever achieve as a 4'9" dancer who, no matter how thin I got, was too curvy to be acceptable.
I miss acting, too. I miss the long hours and the camaraderie. I miss memorizing and fiddling with dialects. Hours in front of the mirror, trying to pull the perfect face. I remember wanting to arch one eyebrow. See, I didn't know how. I had never done it. When I was sixteen I forced myself to learn. Hours and hours and hours over a few weeks staring, willing myself to arch just one eyebrow. Now I can do it so easily that I often do it without thinking.
When I was young I was fairly solitary, weird, and I would play with my mother's old makeup, trying to recreate bruises and cuts. I wanted to learn stage magic. I was involved with costuming, but I was horrid at sewing, so I was often limited to rummaging to find the look that I wanted to portray for a production.
I am not sure why I am aching for silly things like that right now. I should be using my free time to write, pursue something creative within the confines of the life I have carved out for myself.
Instead I am spreading myself too thin. I am writing, sure, but I am also working on stretching and relearning the different positions. I am trying to strengthen my body so that, maybe, I would twirl and leap in my living room. Just to know that I could still do it.
I am also working a monologue from one of my old books. I am finally able to do some of the women I had to look past because no matter what age I am, I don't look it, and I was always told to keep my pieces more accurate for my appearance. Yeah, so, twenty-five years old still reading as a sixteen year old and being told that I was pushing it to try for sixteen.
"Perhaps you should read younger. We are still having a hard time seeing you as older than thirteen. But, you are lovely."
I don't miss the rejection.
I miss the auditions, though. I miss the buzz and the people. I miss the cold readings and watching the choices that other people made.
There are two phrases rattling around in my head these days:
"I feel like a mouse screaming in a hurricane."
and
"This is how a shadow survives when the body has been severed.'
Lately I have been missing the rigor and the dedication that was required to be a dancer. As much as I hated the long hours and the sacrifices and the sores and the seemingly constant injuries, that's how much I miss dancing, now.
I want to leap and kick and, oh, how I want to be en pointe. I want to feel my body balanced on just the tips of my feet. I want the ache and the burn.
I suffered an injury, like so many people do, and I never was able to be strong enough to go back in to dancing. Well, and there was the fact that my attention had been divided for years between dance and theater, with theater often winning out. I felt more secure in my talent as an actor. I knew that I was able to do far more with my voice and my body in different characters than I could ever achieve as a 4'9" dancer who, no matter how thin I got, was too curvy to be acceptable.
I miss acting, too. I miss the long hours and the camaraderie. I miss memorizing and fiddling with dialects. Hours in front of the mirror, trying to pull the perfect face. I remember wanting to arch one eyebrow. See, I didn't know how. I had never done it. When I was sixteen I forced myself to learn. Hours and hours and hours over a few weeks staring, willing myself to arch just one eyebrow. Now I can do it so easily that I often do it without thinking.
When I was young I was fairly solitary, weird, and I would play with my mother's old makeup, trying to recreate bruises and cuts. I wanted to learn stage magic. I was involved with costuming, but I was horrid at sewing, so I was often limited to rummaging to find the look that I wanted to portray for a production.
I am not sure why I am aching for silly things like that right now. I should be using my free time to write, pursue something creative within the confines of the life I have carved out for myself.
Instead I am spreading myself too thin. I am writing, sure, but I am also working on stretching and relearning the different positions. I am trying to strengthen my body so that, maybe, I would twirl and leap in my living room. Just to know that I could still do it.
I am also working a monologue from one of my old books. I am finally able to do some of the women I had to look past because no matter what age I am, I don't look it, and I was always told to keep my pieces more accurate for my appearance. Yeah, so, twenty-five years old still reading as a sixteen year old and being told that I was pushing it to try for sixteen.
"Perhaps you should read younger. We are still having a hard time seeing you as older than thirteen. But, you are lovely."
I don't miss the rejection.
I miss the auditions, though. I miss the buzz and the people. I miss the cold readings and watching the choices that other people made.
There are two phrases rattling around in my head these days:
"I feel like a mouse screaming in a hurricane."
and
"This is how a shadow survives when the body has been severed.'
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