Ranting Details

Clown Faces and Kisses

I often wonder what happened to the girls who had to endure me at middle school dances.  It was, after all, the one night where I couldn’t create excuses in order to avoid contact with the female folk my friends were so eagerly pushing me toward during recess.  Normally I’d concoct a plan, scribbled on a yellow notepad, which I could defer to any time a girlfriend called the house.  My mom would yell up to my bedroom and I’d pause the copy of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers playing in my VCR, scramble to find the written monologue of choice for the night, then click onto the phone line and regale said female with stories about my commitment to creating a new spaghetti dish or catching a deer that evening. In actuality I’d be ripping Britney Spears photos out of Tiger Beat. 

However elaborate my notepad schemes became, I was never anti-social enough to bow out of a school dance.  Inevitably, they’d be pumping Spears’s latest hit through the loud speakers and there was always a chance I could execute a bit of her video choreography in the corner if the crowd was big enough and the lights dark enough.  It was during the other songs I’d be forced to interact with my peers.  They’d reside, scattered around the cafeteria in different packs, bucking on each other like the deer I’d used as a scapegoat.  I managed to abstain for the majority of middle school, but I almost didn’t make it out of our final 8th grade dance alive. 

Our lunchroom had been converted just for the occasion: each table, usually covered in a thin paste of fruit punch and crackers, had been shoved to the side, and the white linoleum floor had been polished as to become the perfect reflector for the rainbow lights the DJ had set up.  While the college student turned MC was never the same, I always had a moment when I’d try to place where I knew them from.  He looks just like that drug addict from the D.A.R.E. videos we watched in gym class, I’d think to myself.  Yes, I’m certain that’s the cokehead from the fourth scene.  I imagined his lighting rig must have been purchased in some drug-induced trip to Spencer Gifts at the mall and his only way to feed his habit and acquire a collection of lava lamps, was to play the latest Swedish pop songs for a gaggle of pre-teens.   Not that I was complaining.  My favorite songs to lip-synch to were usually cooked up by the Swedes. 

Unfortunately, none of my friends were impressed by the fact that I knew every syncopated beat to “Bye, Bye, Bye.”  But it was the syncopation that saved me.  Any number without a thudding base line was slow enough to draw boys to girls like my Montana friends were drawn to hunting rifles. As I was the “sensitive” type in boot-cut jeans and a turtleneck my mother and sister had convinced me was the “perfect look” during a Santa Monica vacation, girls tended to flock to me as soon as the lights dimmed.  This particular night was an endless barrage of requests, as everyone knew I was fleeing town to attend high school in another state.  All through the night I obliged, certain that three minutes couldn’t be that bad, while secretly hoping one of the teacher chaperones would patrol our area for the entirety of the song.  Please, Ms. Horton, ask her to take her hands off my ass, I’d think, testing my Jedi communication powers.  My friends, meanwhile, were receiving most of the attention from the teachers due to the fact that they were kneading their girlfriends’ asses double time and licking their necks with a ferocity I’d only experienced when faced with a Hostess treat. 

My dance partners would glance over at our friends and then rotate their gaze back to me.   Each girl had clearly raided her older sisters’ Caboodle makeup case for the occasion.  Where there were supposed to be cheeks there were instead streaks of red that looked like they’d scrapped their faces along the brick wall at the front of the building.  In place of eyes: mounds of colored shadow that made Ginger Spice look like the Virgin Mary. 

Despite my confusion about the female life forms in my arms, the druggie DJ apparently had my back.  The night progressed and just as things were beginning to get uncomfortable with each dance partner, he’d throw in a party staple to ease the tension.  ‘Cotteneye Joe’ is my favorite song, I’d explain with a shrug of my shoulders.  Please excuse me while I go gallop in a circle.  And off I’d go, certain this lie was my best, most convincing ever.

It was while taking a victory lap during this hoedown of a song that I spotted a group of all my female friends standing by the Coke machine, primping Lisa for her final attack.  The lassoing motion I was making with my arm began to wilt.  All through middle school Lisa had done her best to attract my attention; she’d practically molded my face out of clay during art class one day.   (Little did either of us know that the only thing she could have molded out of clay to attract my attention was a penis.)  She persisted, and through my assortment of girlfriends I never so much as awkwardly held her hand at a movie.

Yet there they were, all of the ladies who had felt the sweat on my palm, feeding advice to the only thing standing between high school freedom and me.   My victory lap quickly turned into a panicked search for an exit path.  There wasn’t one.  And just as the song stopped and the gentle strums of Savage Garden’s “Truly, Madly, Deeply” took over, I heard the DJ stutter an announcement that this song would be the last of the evening...the last of our middle school career.  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Lisa and her teenage clown face staring at me. 

Do you wanna dance? she asked.  Bette Midler’s song started running through my head and I wished I were in my bedroom, waltzing in my socks.  Sure, I lied, not quite sure why I was so adamantly against what all of my other friends seemed intent on groping. 

She grabbed my hand and led me to the side of the room, near the table where the special-ed kids sat at lunch.  We did our best to move our feet, but I was only concerned with keeping to the prescribed meter-stick distance rule our teachers had reminded us about the day before. 

We rocked back and forth for a moment. 

I’m sad you’re leaving, she said.  It's weird that you won't be in high school with us. 

The best answer I could give was silence.  I would have been better served to continue speaking, because as soon as the words had left her lips, those lips were on mine. It was the first time I’d kissed someone since I pecked a girl on the jungle gym during recess in fourth grade and I wasn’t sure how to react.  We continued rocking back and forth as I felt beads of sweat forming on the upper lip I’d only recently begun shaving. 

The song ended and the fluorescent lights turned on, illuminating the girls’ make-up like felt posters underneath a black light.  I backed away slowly, and did my best to smile as Lisa ran back to the group of girls and giggled about the previous three minutes. 

After a quick set of goodbyes I made my way to the parking lot and the safety of my parents’ SUV, excited by the promise of a new world where middle school dances didn’t exist. 

Bacon For Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

 

Francis Bacon doesn’t terrify me.  In fact, I can’t remember a time when this Irish painter, whose centennial retrospective recently opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, prompted anything in me other than pure fascination and awe.  I find that this opinion, much like my love of abstract expressionist master Willem de Kooning, is not one that is widely held among the people of my generation, and when defending myself I’m often left contorting my mouth into positions that look reminiscent of Bacon’s own alien-like creatures.  He’s just depressing, the dissenters say, citing the screaming, almost unrecognizable men and women who populate his sparse portraits as reason enough to stay in the 18th Century wing of the museum.  Yet, to me, Bacon’s work is a mirror more capable of reflecting a human’s flawed, dizzying existence than almost any other painter I’ve come into contact with.  And for that reason above all others, this exhibit is a must see. 

Perhaps this comfort around undeniably uncomfortable imagery stems from the fact that I was all but brainwashed into being a Bacon fan.  Any night when I crept out of my childhood bedroom to get a sip of water, I was met by four large paintings: one naked man hanging Christ-like on a pole at our stairway landing, one bed-sized self portrait of my father hanging perpendicular to Christ, and a diptych of flesh colored dog-men floating, with little more than a wooden chair filling out the pink and orange panels.  It wasn’t a Bacon original, but the painting, which my father had created over many tenuous hours at his downtown studio, may as well have had a page torn from a Bacon book nestled in the corner; the inspiration was clear.  As was the fact that my inoculation to this particular brand of art was well underway.  (There were only so many times I could walk out of my room and be frightened before the images came to be as comfortable as the pillow from which I’d just lifted my head.)

Walking around the exhibit yesterday I was reminded of the overwhelming amount of energy that explodes from each of Bacon’s canvases; the same type of jolt that used to pop my eyes open as I shuffled around the corner outside my bedroom at three A.M. 

For a painter who has openly discussed his distaste for Abstract Expressionism, Bacon, to me, employs much of the same visceral brush technique—where solid lines suddenly fade into nothingness and the only thing identifying the head of a person may be an anatomically misplaced eye socket—as the painters who were parading around New York City’s Soho at the same time Bacon was holed up in London’s equivalent.  But Bacon is able to construct a hurricane of movement within the single frame of one of his paintings that is more placed in reality than paintings by his American contemporaries.  You get the feeling that when painting portraits of his friends, or his lover George Dyer—as is the case with many pieces in this particular exhibit—he is not just documenting what is sitting on a stool beneath a light bulb in his studio; he is painting the energy in the room; he is painting his overall perception of the person, and every moment of interaction he has had with them is amalgamated into one frenzied blur.   Yet for all of his emotional accuracy, there's nothing realistic looking in his photos.  Perhaps he summed it up best when he said that "9/10ths of everything is inessential.  What is called 'reality' can be summed up in so much less."

Personally, what makes this exploration so thrilling is its closeness to dance.  Though the subject matter and use of color may seem more unsettling than your typical day watching a fairy princess at the ballet, the way Bacon tries to both contain and unleash his imagery through the canvas reminds me a lot of how a dancer interacts with a stage.  The most exciting performances, just like Bacon’s most exciting paintings (which is to say…almost all of them), are those that manage to respect their boundaries while simultaneously obliterating them and pouring out over the audience.  These paintings reach across the orchestra pit and demand that you pay attention. 

If yesterday’s crowd was any indication, this exhibit, no matter how unsettling, is a high priority destination for art lovers.  And judging from the handful of younger patrons, maybe I’m not the only Bacon lover in my age bracket.  After all, a man who shares his name with breakfast’s most delicious meat must have some universal appeal, right? 

So, Ranters, do we have any Bacon lovers here? 

Dance at the Gym

There was a time when I actually enjoyed grade school.  It was a brief period in my adolescence; a time before my friend shared with our entire class the fact that I occasionally donned my sister’s press on nails; my reputation was forever changed.  But for a moment, I enjoyed the cement hallways of Hellgate Elementary.  So much, in fact, that I was more than willing to partake in the annual talent show—words that now cause my fingers to repel from the keyboard—on several occasions.  How I mustered the courage is beyond me.  I can only assume it was because teachers knew that after fifth grade, students became too cruel to act civil in any type of school assembly, and as I felt closer to the teachers than the students, I absorbed the knowledge that it was a ‘now or never’ situation.

And so, each Fall, I laced up my Converse sneakers and spun around the polished gymnasium floor so quickly that my bowl cut flew up like a helicopter propeller.  I never planned anything.  I just turned on the latest Cirque du Soleil soundtrack I’d pre-ordered at the town’s independent record store and cartwheeled until the music stopped and the audience roared. 

Each time they started clapping, it was as if one of those therapists I’d seen on primetime TV had snapped his fingers after hypnotizing me for five minutes; I was unable to tell whether I’d kicked my legs or shimmied up the rope hanging in the corner of the gym while I delivered a monologue from “Saved by the Bell.”  What I knew was that I had been transported to a place where the jocks didn’t laugh at me every time I missed the soccer ball; a place where I could get out my frustration or happiness through the sheer force of movement.  

This was long before I was aware I was going to be a professional dancer.  (I think I was still convinced I was going to grow up to be Bernadette Peters’ personal assistant.  Or just grow up to be Bernadette Peters.)  But I was aware enough to know that this feeling, this joy I felt every time I did the talent show, was different than every other feeling I’d experienced in my ten years on Earth.  

Last weekend I found this feeling again.  It seems strange to admit that I had lost it, but, as many professionals can tell you, when you begin to work day in and day out on ballet after ballet, the same joy that got you into this mess of an industry can seem as hard to find as a dancer’s foot without calluses. In such a detail-oriented profession, it’s hard to just let go and move.  I worked my entire life to succeed as a dancer, but, even though I experienced incredible joy in my brief career, I rarely experienced that blurred whirlwind of emotion I felt on the gym floor.

Perhaps that’s why, when rehearsing a few weeks ago for my first performance in over two years, my instinct was to choreograph the entire piece wearing a beat up pair of Converse sneakers.  My ballet vocabulary, which requires muscular strength I worked my entire life to attain, was all but impossible to recapture, so I knew I would have to depart from my standard style of movement; what better way than to don footwear that made ballet’s required articulation impossible?  

This plan quickly went awry.  I felt stifled in the studio.  The same freedom I experienced when I pressed play on the boombox as a child was nowhere to be found, and if anything, I felt more lost than ever trying to explore an art form that had always been second nature to me.  Two years away will do that.  And this wasn’t the school talent show anymore.  I had a gorgeous piece of music composed for me by my friend Nico, and all I’d figured out was a title: “If I Had Thumbs, I’d Be Snapping.”  

For a moment, two days before the show, I contemplated relying on my inherent ability to muster some type of movement and thought I’d try to just improvise the piece.  But while improv is a viable option when dancing in my apartment to The Pussycat Dolls, I knew Nico’s music warranted more thought than a song about wanting to have boobs when you grow up.  So I did what any frantic person does in a situation like this: disregarded everything I’d created and started from scratch.  

By forcing myself to treat the piece of choreography more like a piece of writing, I was able to forgive myself the two rough drafts it took to come to a more complete whole.  I took off my shoes and socks, felt my calluses waltz with the wood floor—nowhere near as polished as the one from my youth—and began.  Within an hour I’d concocted something that seemed pleasing enough for the occasion, where my only direction was to somehow have it reflect the struggle of creation (I told myself standing on stage and sobbing was too literal) and also accomplished my goal of reflecting the struggle I’ve encountered over the past two years.  

I’ve written endlessly about my emotions regarding my experience with Epstein Barr Virus. I thought there was little left to feel and that I would go about this performance as professionally as I had when I was, well, a professional dancer.  

Dress rehearsal passed and I knew I was emotionally connected, but I was still very aware of the fact that I was standing on stage, in a theater, with eyes peering at me just as they had every time I walked on stage since I was twelve.  This made the actual performance all the more startling.  

I stood in the wings watching other performers sing and dance, but my mind was somewhere else.  From my precise mathematical deductions, the space was roughly twenty-four times smaller than my childhood gymnasium, while my physical size was roughly twenty-four times larger.  (Roughly.)  I studied the space and reviewed my movement in my head.  Suddenly it was my turn to go on.  

The lights dimmed and I made my way upstage center and felt my back press against the wall.  My leg lifted from the ground, foot flexed, and I walked forward as the first piano chord struck; everything that followed is a complete blur.  I didn’t come back into my body until I began my final walk off and was reminded of my physical location due to the blinding stage lights beaming at my face.  The therapist had snapped me back to attention.   

I stood in the wings again, this time on the opposite side of the stage, and I felt my childhood self staring at me.  How did you get to this moment? he wondered.  Two years ago you were performing on the largest stages in the world and tonight you were on a stage that you could cross in three small strides.

Tonight I was on stage, I thought. 

I sat and let it all soak in.  My dancer mind went to work and attempted to analyze every gesture from the past two-and-a-half minutes.  But I could only feel the overall emotion of the experience; I couldn’t remember any details.  And I didn’t care.  I didn’t care because I knew I had truly danced again.

Like Father, Like Son

(This image has absolutely nothing to do with the following post.  And as much as I wish I had taken the photo, for multiple reasons, I am not a photographer for GQ.  Let's just pass this picture off as "artistic inspiration.")

The panic of creation.  This is something I learned about at a young age, when I would awake to find my father sitting in his study, two cups of coffee into the morning before I had even brushed my teeth.  He, being a painter, actor and, when most panic stricken, a director, was always in the throes of some inner conflict that could only be resolved by pacing or tying flies in the garage. 

I’m not a fisher.  But I am most certainly a pacer.  And just like my father, I don’t do my best pacing against wooden floorboards or threads of carpet, I do my best pacing within the curvature of my brain, where the audience is comprised of judges even the Supreme Court would be intimidated by.  I’ve reacquainted myself with these powdered wig-wearing intimidators this week as I’ve taken a step back into something I know well: the dance world.  But despite my familiarity with the art form, a familiarity that dates back to the days I would tour jete into the very kitchen in which my father was brewing his coffee, nothing has ever felt as unknown or terrifying as this journey into my first piece of movement in exactly two years. 

To be honest, I’m not sure how I got here to this moment, brainstorming in my bed late at night while my roommate sleeps mere feet away, just as my mother did while my father scribbled ideas on his yellow, lined notebooks.  Actually, I guess I do know.  I said yes.  I said yes to a request to perform a solo in an evening of theater put on by a friend of my sister’s.  After all of the challenges I’ve faced in the past two years, where I’ve accepted offers to do things I have no training in and have come out relatively unscathed (next up: diving horses!), accepting this offer seemed like a no brainer. 

And then my brain stepped in.  Before it went into overdrive, however, I managed to procure a beautiful, original composition from my friend Nico Muhly, who, in between writing scores for Oscar-nominated movies and sending me pictures of cats, wrote a haunting piece for piano and brass that is beautiful in its simplicity. 

If only I could say the same for the movement I’ve created so far.  Time in the studio has been limited, so my downstairs neighbor has had to deal with the thudding of limbs across the floor of my entryway both when I’m “dancing” and when I’m rolling around, whining on the phone to my parents about my lack of ability.  I should fix the damage to her ceiling.  Or at least send her some flowers. 

But I have bigger things to worry about.  Three days away from the show and I’m contemplating scrapping all I have created and standing on stage in a dance belt with two arrows pointing at my hernias while a giant neon sign flashes the words: “Performance Art,” overhead.  (Somehow, I think Nico would approve.) There have been moments where I’ve wanted to give up. (Somehow, I think Nico would not approve.)  But of all the challenges I have faced in the past two years, this is the one I am most intent on finishing.  This is a moment for myself.  A moment to tackle some of the demons that have flown over, and within, my head every night since my dance career was cut short two years ago today, and a moment to give myself permission to be okay with not living up to every expectation in my brain.  Of course, I want this to a tour-de-force solo, but given the atrophied state of my muscles, I am attempting to give myself credit for simply taking a step back on stage.

To be honest, I have no idea what is going to happen Saturday night.  Actually, I guess I do.  I am going to stand on stage again.  I am going to dance again.  And I am going to be proud, even if I am just standing there in a dance belt beneath neon lights.  It sure beats pacing.  

The Trampoline

I was never a rebellious kid.  My parents knew they could trust me not to pour soda on the dog or to sneak out of the house at all hours (things my teenage sister and her friends were all too good at).  After all, we lived in the woods.  Sneaking out of the house meant I would either have to find someone to pick me up, walk ten miles to a friend’s house, or chill with the deer all night and hope I didn’t step in too much of their pellet poop along the way.  The only moments of disobedience in my childhood came when I would scamper across the street to jump on the neighbors’ trampoline, defying my mother’s stern rule to stay away from all things that could potentially launch me into the surrounding tree line.  On the Richter scale of disobedience, I ranked a mild two.     

That is, until I went away to the Houston Ballet Summer program at the age of thirteen and got a taste of Boston Market.   Suddenly there was a fast-food restaurant right across from the dance studios—where I was spending my second summer away from home—that allowed me to have my favorite meal, Thanksgiving dinner, on any day I desired.  When I discovered the addition of cornbread that was almost as sweet as a Hostess product, I knew I would routinely be making my way across the busy intersection behind the dance building while others concocted vending machine lunches where peanut butter crackers constituted a main course. 

I became addicted.  I’d hop scotch through oncoming traffic with packs of dancers in tow, everyone anxious for a hot meal that wasn’t cooked in the dormitory microwave, and hope to be able to cram in all the food before the next rehearsal started.  This was always a challenge, considering our nearly eight hour schedule that mixed dance class, Pilates, gossip sessions in the lounge and, what was initially the most exciting thing to me, new choreography. 

Broken into two sections over the six-week course, the student choreographic workshop was unlike anything I’d ever seen in Montana.  At my home dance studio, the name of our teacher was VHS and the rep was continuously from storybook ballets; I didn’t know what else was out there. 

For the first of the two sessions I was in a ballet created by an older student, Brian, whose group of friends, trainees with the company, I emulated and hoped to please.  This plan went terribly down hill when I grand jeted directly into the testicles of his close friend Anthony during class, causing the boy to cough up blood and stare me down until I thought most certainly I was going to be hung from a changing room locker by my dance belt, if not castrated. 

But while rehearsing Brian’s piece, I followed the rules just as my parents had taught me to do: I executed the choreography whenever asked; I showed up early to rehearsal; I even went home at night to my dorm room and wrote down the steps in my notebook while other boys, my Fruit Loop-loving roommate included, snuck out the tempting sliding glass doors to make out with female students.  My goal was to be the star pupil. 

I thought for sure I had succeeded when, for the second round of the choreographic workshop, I was cast in Brian’s piece again and given yet another chance to impress his friends and make up for my earlier ball busting.  But a strange thing happened when the cast list went up on the board: my name was beneath a slot labeled “Understudy.”  This was a word that had surely not been associated with me in Montana (except for the time when I begged my teacher to let me understudy one of the fairy variations in “Cinderella,” but that’s neither here nor there).  My dreams of being the only thirteen year old asked to be a principal dancer with Houston Ballet were crushed by that one simple word.  I needed comfort.  I needed macaroni and cheese slathered over a luscious turkey breast.  I needed Boston Market. 

For the first few weeks of rehearsal I did my best to feign interest.  I stood in the back of the cramped rehearsal studio in my uniform black tights and white shirt, while my classmates executed choreography in a ballet that to the best of my knowledge was about an angel and some sort of demon.  It also could have been about Christmas.  I wasn’t paying attention.  Most of the time I was thinking about how I would rather be at home in Montana on the trampoline.  The back of the room was so boring.

It didn’t take me long to think of a single word that could save me from my boredom: cornbread.  One afternoon, when we were only three days away from the final performance, I decided to do the unthinkable and skip rehearsal to get some grub from my favorite high-class establishment while the rest of my peers executed choreography that didn’t reside in any dorm room notebook, or my head for that matter.  I took my time.  I used my plastic fork to swirl the potatoes with the creamed spinach.  I strolled along the intersection on my way back to the studio, dangling my foot off the curb like a gymnast on the balance beam; just an awkward teenager in jazz pants roaming around Houston.  This is the life, I thought to myself. 

And then I heard someone scream my name. 

I looked across the intersection and saw a boy, Josh, outside in little more than ballet shoes and cut-off tights, waving his arms up and down and yelling for me to hurry.  I scuttled across traffic, half-hoping a car would take me out before I got to the other side to receive what I was sure couldn’t be good news.  Anthony just twisted his ankle and we need you to go into the piece right now!  Brian is looking all over for you, Josh informed me.  It was time for the castration. 

The walk from the front entrance of the studio, up the staircase to the second floor, down the fluorescent hallway to the studio in the back right corner of the building was a blur.  All I could think of was how angry I was that my roommate had crushed an entire box of cereal into the carpet of our dorm room the night before.  For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single step of choreography. 

The studio door slammed behind me with all the weight of a prison cell.  Everyone was staring.  I was sweating in places I didn’t think my pubescent body could sweat, and then I saw Anthony, sitting in the corner with an ice pack around his ankle and a strange twinkle in his eye. 

Okay. We’re going to run the piece from the top, Brian said.  I shuffled to find my place in the opening tableau. The music started.  Occasionally I was in the right position, but more often than not I turned around to execute a step and found a body directly on top of me, or a foot perilously close to kicking my face.  All the while, Brian refused to stop and help me.  The music reached its climax and the piece ended.  I wanted to cry as everyone exited the studio, but Brian pulled me over to discus the fact that there was a large chance I would be performing the piece during the showing in two days, and that I better go over the choreography tonight in my dorm room. 

The bus ride back to the college campus we were staying at seemed more like a consistent crowbar to the head than a means of transportation.  Dress rehearsal was the next day, and I would have to use my cereal-covered floor as a stage for the evening.  When I got back to the cell, my roommate was sitting on his side of the room (clearly delineated by a line of masking tape I had secured to the ground after one too many instances of walking into the room to find his items strewn over my bed), shoveling handfuls of dry Lucky Charms into his mouth.  The marshmallows occasionally missed his chomping teeth and tumbled to the floor, but I had no energy for nitpicking.  I popped my head into the common room to see if any cast mates would pry themselves away from the ping-pong table to teach me the choreography; no one budged. 

Through the course of the night I managed to piece together a bulk of the choreography with the occasional grunts of approval from my roommate.  I showered for bedtime and did my best not to slip while I marked the steps beneath a showerhead whose water pressure seemed to bruise my skin.  I wanted Montana skies.  I wanted to get as far away from the temptations of Boston Market as possible.  I wanted to go back a few weeks and not jump on the trampoline of boredom, just like my mother had warned me. 

But it was too late.  The next morning I awoke and did my best to contain shivers of terror while we walked to the theater.  Backstage was hectic with people trying to piece together costumes and students stretching against walls.  Brian pulled our entire cast aside and called us to the stage to talk.  He asked me if I had solidified the choreography over the course of the night.  I told him I had.  It was a lie. 

The cast dispersed and Brian walked me to the front of the stage.  Anthony is doing the performance, he said.  Bullets to my skin; the most relieving bullets ever, but bullets nonetheless.  He’s fine.  But you can’t skip rehearsal again.  All I could do was nod.  The whole thing had been a farce, a joke at my expense to teach me a lesson.  There was no injury, only great acting by a cast of people I looked up to. 

I made my way to the audience to take my place among the other understudies.  Even though I was seated firmly in a leather seat, I felt like I had been launched into the surrounding treeline, my limbs broken like my mother had always feared would happen.  The music for the first piece started as the house lights faded to black and I vowed to myself never to jump on a trampoline again.  If only I hadn't gone across the street in the first place. 

Gig at the Guggy

I’d like to take a moment to apologize to anyone who sat in the front row at Sunday night’s Works & Process show.  Patrons of the Guggenheim had to deal with my beating heart desperately trying to make an escape from beneath my shirt—but fortunately I had a thicker sweater to add an extra layer of protection, kind of like a heart condom, if you will, that saved the Center Stage fans, parked front and center, from seeing a bloody heart dancing on the stage before any performers had executed a pirouette. 

Regardless of the fact that I’d spent time formatting note cards for myself in the week leading up to our sold-out two night engagement discussing Ethan Stiefel’s recent appointment to Dean of the School of Dance at The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, I still fought off nerves all day Sunday; after all, this was my first time moderating a show, and, in fact, my first time ever speaking on stage.  (Contrary to popular belief, the cards were not merely a prop to make me appear Lipton-esque.  I contemplated wearing a bald cap in homage to the Inside the Actor's Studio guru, but my budget wouldn’t permit.)

It wasn’t until two minutes before showtime, when I looked at Ethan, who I used to dance with at ABT, that the real moment of panic hit me; all of us, in fact.  Between Ethan, choreographer Larry Keigwin and myself, we would have not a single person on stage who was primarily a speaker.  How this had not occurred to us before, I have no idea, but we had no choice but to let out a sigh and hope we wouldn’t suddenly start speaking in tongues once behind the mics.

For all I know, my first few sentences were delivered in Klingon.  That wouldn’t have been a total disaster, as the setup for the panel at Guggenheim bears a slight resemblance to a Star Trek set, with angular ‘60s chairs and a beige color palette.  I would have fit right in.  Whatever I said, it somehow led to Ethan speaking, which as the moderator, is ultimately the description of my job.  So I know it couldn’t have been too unintelligible. 

Once Ethan began his first portion of charming delivery, I took my first breath of the evening and tried to keep my facial muscles from twitching like I was undergoing acupuncture treatment in front of an audience of three hundred people.  (Strange what your body does when nerves set in.)  Before I knew it, he was introducing the first performance of the night and we were well on our way.

(Students rehearsing Larry Keigwin's "Natural Selection.")

I felt an immense amount of pride watching students from NCSA—where I attended high school—perform to an appreciative New York audience, but I quickly found that, as a moderator, it’s almost impossible to focus only on the moment in front of you.  My brain was constantly churning, planning out my introduction for our next segment, and trying to use Ethan’s answers as a jumping off point for my next question. 

Having done a fair amount of interviews over the past two years, I have been subjected to all types of interviewees: those who take an open ended prompt and respond with a simple yes or no, those who have such a limited vocabulary that they use the same four adjectives repeatedly, and those who can elaborate in perfect sound bites.  Fortunately, Ethan and Larry both fall into the latter category.  As moderator, my biggest responsibility is to pitch the question clearly and let the speaker hit it out of the park.  Despite a few stutters along the way, the first night went off relatively well. 

The trick was to do it all again.  Monday night’s show was, in almost all respects, a better evening than Sunday.  I felt infinitely more comfortable on stage, the dancers performed with more confidence, and I dropped a few moments that didn’t land right the first time around.  (Unfortunately my one Melissa Hayden story of the night was met with a few chuckles and a symphony of crickets on Sunday evening.) 

That’s not to say the second show went off without a few strange moments.  My favorite memory of the weekend was during Monday night’s discussion with Larry, who worked as a resident choreographer at the school during the winter session, when I was interviewing him and started speaking only to realize mid-sentence that I had no clue what I was arriving at.  Somehow I finished the stream of thoughts and Larry responded with: “That’s a really interesting question.”  If only I had been aware of what I’d asked! 

Occasional mistakes aside, I am proud of how the three of us pulled together and gave, what I hope was, an informative show.  Most importantly, I felt both evenings succeeded in giving New York audiences a taste of the incredible things Ethan is doing for UNCSA.  Having danced alongside him for years, and after observing him this weekend both in social interactions with the students and as their teacher, it is clearer to me than ever before that he is the right person for this job.  Not only is he an intelligent, articulate man filled with a wealth of knowledge and experience as a result of his ongoing career as a principal dancer around the world, but he has the passion and the ability to pass along that knowledge in a way that will shape artists that are not automatons, but instead human beings capable of great artistic feats. 

I felt privileged to be part of such a prestigious event where I could act as a conduit of sorts for both Ethan and Larry, who is one of my absolute favorite choreographers, to share their thoughts with an audience.  Fortunately, my heart stayed in my chest where it belongs.  

(Students performing Larry Keigwin's "Natural Selection.")

(Matt Foley in Larry Keigwin's "Natural Selection.")

At the Shoot: Gee, Officer Krupke

(Photo by Kendra Ratliff for Movmnt Magazine.)

My right index finger turns the wheel.  My left hand rotates a barrel of glass and metal.  And my voice emerges from my body, shouting words completely unrelated to the technical activity happening beneath my fingertips.  It’s another day at a photo shoot—my third this week—and another day where I hope my nervous excitement doesn’t make itself evident by fumbling hands or stuttered words. 

To passerby traffic on 11th avenue, I must look ridiculous.  At the moment I’m on my knees, in the middle of a pack of barren branches lining the West Side highway, as I try to move far enough away from my subjects to achieve the ideal angle.  My jeans are covered in dirt.  My thighs are cramping from the tangled position I’m in (sometimes it’s easiest to use a limb as a tripod).  And I am elated. 

Over the past week I have brainstormed a lot for this shoot, arguably my biggest to date.  Not only am I photographing six members of Broadway’s newest revival of West Side Story, but the photos will appear in a multiple page spread in the next issue of Movmnt Magazine, where I have worked as a writer and copy editor for the past year.  The images in front of me combine two of my favorite photographic subjects: dancers and the grittier side of New York City, which until now I’ve only photographed when I framed spilled coffee cups or the tops of buildings.

Today is different.  I can feel it not only in the energy that hits the front of my lens as rapidly as bugs on a windshield, but also from the collection of people who reside behind me: two stylists, a makeup artist, a hair guru, two photographic assistants and a fellow employee at the magazine, who has helped me coordinate this entire adventure. 

Twenty-four hours ago I found this location, a collection of Technicolor garage doors in saturated hues of orange, red, blue, and yellow, at an old Marine building near the water.  I walked along this stretch of docks and galleries with music trickling out of my earphones while I did my best to re-envision the classic musical about gang tension, romance and jazz hands against the backdrop of lower Manhattan, an area where glass-front art galleries mingle with brick parking garages and scaffolding.  Each block contains one abandoned lot or missing building, a gaping hole in the gentrification of Manhattan, like a rotten tooth in the middle of a Colgate ad.  My task was to find the most interesting rotten teeth. 

(Photo by Kendra Ratliff for Movmnt Magazine.)

We are at our second location now.  It’s my favorite rotten tooth: a fence blocking off a torn down building.  There is white and pink graffiti on the brick wall behind the fence, which one of our models is currently climbing over.  Getting him over the spikes at the top may be a challenge, but my biggest hurdle is to frame the picture in such a way as to make the beautiful brownstone, whose ornate stairway banister juxtaposes the gritty nature of the lot we are shooting in, disappear from existence. 

After our previous set-up—shots containing all six performers jumping in and out of frame—anything seems easy.  I’ve found, over the past six months, that I struggle most with group photos taken from a distance.  With six people involved, the most important thing in the photo is the people, while the environment acts as a backdrop on which they exist.  The fewer people in the photo, the more I am able to use the camera as a tool to highlight the subject’s interaction with its environment; through interesting uses of focus, light and framing.  This fence has quickly become my best friend for that very reason.  Now the performers not only have something to interact with, but I am able to use this stationary object as the third subject in the photograph, a source of tension, angles, contrast, and much more. 

I can be quieter here.  I’ve yet to get used to the amount of multi-tasking involved in a shoot like this, an immediate contradiction to my solitary walks around the city, or photographing in the back of the theater, where I trigger the shutter whenever action is presented to me, choreographed by forces in the world or a director on the stage.  Here, I must be director and photographer rolled into one.  Not only do I have to modify technical problems from frame to frame, but I must give a constant flow of instruction and feedback to the models, as well as bring any hair, make-up or clothing problems to the attention of their respective departments.  Each instruction must be a tightly packaged, clear artist’s statement rattled off with the ease and directness usually reserved for informing one’s spouse of the week’s grocery list.

I can sense the performers becoming more comfortable as the day stretches on.  They begin trying things without me prompting them, and continue to explore different shapes with their bodies, even as the wind blows a chill over the proceedings.  The outfits they wear in are more suited for a spring evening than a winter day, yet despite a few shivers, they don’t seem to mind.

  (Photo by Kendra Ratliff for Movmnt Magazine.)

We are fighting the sun; we are winning.  One thing that has struck me in the past few days of shooting with a crew is the amount of time allotted to the preparation of the shoot far outweighs the amount of time allotted for shooting.  Hours are spent perfecting curly tendrils of hair and contour underneath a man’s chin; when it comes time for me to capture those things through the lens I am expected to do so as quickly as possible.  Of course, when you add in a factor like sunset, there isn’t really an option. 

The girls have finished, and now all I have left is a group shot with three of the guys.  After two hours of shooting in multiple locations, with multiple arrangements of people, my brain is beginning to fail me.  I have one shot in mind for this location: a view at pavement level of two Sharks preparing to attack one of the Jets (whose legs I will be framing the image through).  Unfortunately, this requires me to get on the ground.  I decide to use one of my reflectors, a giant metallic circle that is as round as a jet engine, as a blanket to cover the dirt that resides on the curb. 

I get the shot exactly as I want it.  We are almost done, but to be safe—meaning to give enough options during the layout of the magazine—we decide to try a few more shots further down the block before we wrap for the day.  My energy is flagging (apparent by the fact that I keep choosing to sit on the ground for each angle), and none of the final shots amount to anything worthy of excitement.  Fortunately I'm happy with the rest of the day's shots. 

I turn around and notice headlights illuminated down the block.  The glare of lights in my eyes is replaced within seconds by another glare: my reflector/blanket resting comfortably beneath the tire of the car, whose owner has parked and disappeared within the course of a minute.  Our shoot, which we thought was moments away from wrapping, suddenly has one final hurdle to overcome: removing a rented reflector from beneath the weight of a Mustang. 

We try everything.  We attempt to pull the flexible fabric out from under the tire; we attempt to lift the car using the force of ten adults; we try to push the car down the block; finally we find a jack in the back of the rental van and begin raising a stranger’s car off the pavement of 15th street.  The crime portrayed in West Side Story, and reenacted today for the camera, suddenly isn’t impossible to grasp, as anyone pushing their strollers through Chelsea would be right to question the group of brightly clad men desperately trying to remove a shiny object from beneath an even shinier car.  Officer Krupke would feel vindicated. 

Just as the car begins to raise, inch by inch, underneath the force of the jack, the dirt on which the hinge is resting (the same dirt I was attempting to avoid by placing the reflector on the ground in the first place) shifts and the car collapses, pounding into the pavement and squishing the reflector as effortlessly as a shoe on an ant.  For a moment, blinded by exhaustion, I wish I was underneath the car and could just lay down and take a nap while everyone packs the vans full of clothing and equipment.

This is quickly replaced with a new determination to get out of the area as quickly as possible, and a determination to leave no piece of our shoot behind.  We all gather at the back bumper of the car and start rocking it forward.  With each inch, the reflector starts to slide out from beneath the rubber, until finally I yank it out, sending me stumbling backwards as the car continues moving forward before stopping a few inches ahead of where its owner parked.   

The true end of the shoot has come, and despite my exhaustion I feel confident in the power of the photos I took today, and even more confident that I gave the cast some insight into their characters.  Who knows?  Perhaps I’ll get a credit in the Playbill.  Probably not, but I’m happy with a credit in the magazine, and the experience of stepping out of my comfort zone, and out from underneath the tire of aimlessness.  This feels like the right place to be. 

Ready. Aim. Fire?

I am feeling aimless right now.  Even as I sit here in this Soho coffee shop I have little on my mind other than returning to my couch and inserting a DVD of Mad Men into the player. I want TV.  But I need structure and a purpose to get me out of my holiday stupor in which I did little more than drink egg nog, eat fast food, and watch every movie with even the slightest chance of garnering an award this season.  After months of working as a freelance writer and photographer, I have hit a wall like a sticky rubber hand out of a vending machine and now, to say nothing of the type of dirt and hair said rubber hands attract, I am not sure how to peel myself off.

For a while I thought the answer was to leave the city.  When I returned to the buzz of New York after a tranquil summer in the mountains of Montana I felt as if I had been dropped into the middle of a pinball machine and it was only a matter of time before the iron ball rolled me over.  I wanted out.  I called my parents and informed them I was coming home in the winter for an indefinite amount of time and I was going to start school.  I made the announcement to my friends over multiple dinners, giving them an ever-shifting percentage of the likelihood of my departure as I watched them sip margaritas.  Eighty percent sure I will be gone at the beginning of January, I would tell them. 

Today is January 16th and I’m still in the city I’ve come to call home.  Yet without the fix of going to school—at least not until the fall—I am living each day without any type of structure; and unfortunately I’ve never been good at self-imposed structure (or at least not as diligent as I want to be).  This is probably because I spent my whole life enacting the schedule put up on a bulletin board at school and work, one that would delineate each hour of my day not only down to the room I was in but to the type of shoe I was wearing while in it.   

Those days are gone.  They fell away two years ago when I came down with Epstein Barr Virus and replaced a healthy work ethic with a couch tenure of epic proportions, one where chicken noodle soup was as essential as water and bagels became their own group on the food pyramid.  Through the discomfort I redefined my sense of normalcy.  I adjusted to the habit of enacting one task a day when my body allowed, and resolved myself to waiting out the virus and creating a life where my brain and creativity could coexist with the illness.

When I look at the past two years rationally I am able to give myself credit for persevering.  When I look at it with my dancer brain intact, the brain where eight hours of rehearsal would be followed by the gym, I feel utterly lazy.  But life changes.  Captain Obvious hand delivered that message to my door each time I popped in a new movie from my Netflix queue. 

The list of movies may be never ending but as each day passes I feel my life is returning to a true sense of normalcy where I can not only execute jobs to make money, but go out and socialize with my friends over the occasional glass of wine; the highlight of my week is no longer the eager anticipation of opening my mailbox and seeing a new disc of Battlestar Gallactica. (That’s just an added bonus.) 

But this transition back to a healthier life is proving just as confounding and difficult as the loss of my health in the first place.  I feel like an inmate on parole, always nervous that one mistake—whether pushing too hard with physical or social activity—will land me back behind bars.  To live with a chronic illness for any period of time makes the idea of living without it unfathomable.  Without the weight of the illness sitting on my shoulders like two grand pianos I have so much more opportunity; I can pursue photography with more fervor; I can enter a more intense school program; I can hopefully get to a point where dance is a part of my life again; and I can continue to be mindful of my ongoing recovery. “I can” is slowly replacing “I can’t.” 

Most importantly, as my incredible sister reminded me yesterday, I can give my permission to be aimless for a while.  It’s time to rebuild and understand that I have to lay out the foundation brick by brick because I can’t reach the top floor of the building without first creating the ground floor.  And if I have to watch an episode or two of Mad Men along the way, so be it. 

While writing this post I was reminded of the lyrics to one of my all time favorite Stephen Sondheim songs: “I Know Things Now” from Into the Woods.  I first discovered this song when I was five but the lyrics continue to resonate more with each passing day. 

Mother said,
"Straight ahead,"
Not to delay
or be misled.
I should have heeded
Her advice...
But he seemed so nice.

And he showed me things
Many beautiful things,
That I hadn't thought to explore.
They were off my path,
So I never had dared.
I had been so careful,
I never had cared.
And he made me feel excited-
Well, excited and scared.

When he said, "Come in!"
With that sickening grin,
How could I know what was in store?
Once his teeth were bared,
Though, I really got scared-
Well, excited and scared-
But he drew me close
And he swallowed me down,
Down a dark slimy path
Where lie secrets that I never want to know,
And when everything familiar
Seemed to disappear forever,
At the end of the path
Was Granny once again.

So we wait in the dark
Until someone sets us free,
And we're brought into the light,
And we're back at the start.

And I know things now,
Many valuable things,
That I hadn't known before:
Do not put your faith
In a cape and a hood,
They will not protect you
The way that they should.
And take extra care with strangers,
Even flowers have their dangers.
And though scary is exciting,
Nice is different than good.

Now I know:
Don't be scared.
Granny is right,
Just be prepared.

Isn't it nice to know a lot!
And a little bit not...

 

OMG! The GMG!

I have always had this idea in my head that I get along better with girls than with guys.  Perhaps it’s part of the gay gene.  I spent my whole adolescence identifying with more “feminine” hobbies like ballet and acrylic nail painting, therefore eliminating most of my common ground with fellow sixth graders.  The time I feigned interest in throwing a football across a field has long passed, and just as the Packers ball we played with used to hit me in the face, so did my realization recently that my friends are for the first time overwhelmingly male.  With the beginning of the GMG it’s safe to say they are overwhelmingly gay, too. 

I guess this non-discovery hit me last weekend.  Typically when I’m on 34th street I am doing anything in my power to keep my head down, shoulders broad—as to pave a clear path for myself through the throngs of people meandering in front of Foot Locker—and iPod firmly in place as I dart to B&H Photo, which has become my only reason for entering the neighborhood ranked far above Times Square on my list of most despised New York locations.  Only, last weekend I stopped dead in the center of the street.  It was there I began my trip to Philly as I threw my arms around Benton, a southern belle with curly hair as unruly as his love for sweet tea.  We made our way to the Bolt Bus, which makes the Chinatown bus look like a Port-a-potty in comparison, and quickly united with five more guys (Michael, Max, Darren, Chris and Nick) and one fantastic lady, Jessica, the mastermind behind the trip. 

Much to the dismay of the other passengers, we roped off a square of eight seats in the back of the bus and began planning our surprise attack on Amos, the friend whom this entire trip had been planned around.  After living without him for several months due to the fact that he actually procured a steady job in these unsteady times, we decided to go catch him in A Chorus Line before he flew away to another part of the country to which the Bolt Bus doesn’t drive.  Little did we know that getting to Philly was going to be just as difficult. 

Within five minutes of departing from the mock station in front of Hammerstein Ballroom the bus driver, a portly woman with a winter coat zipped all the way up to the lips she was using to do her stand up comedy routine over the loud speaker, tried to take her first difficult turn onto the highway.  Only instead of turning, she drove straight into a stationary object: a fire hydrant.  And, in the process, almost drove us straight into another: the window of a Subway sandwich shop.  While I am as guilty as anyone of wanting a Five Dollar Footlong, I also possess a little self-control.  Seemingly un-phased by her blunder, she got out to make sure the damage wasn’t causing gasoline to leak out of the bus, thus making sure we weren’t in the middle of a Speed-like conundrum, then returned to the driver’s seat and completed the turn onto the highway. 

As five other gay boys, one token straight boy, a lovely lady and I began analyzing the ups and downs of Beyonce’s career, we also began to bask in the glow of a weekend away from the city.  Then we hit a bus.  Only ten minutes into the trip, and five after our last accident, the driver managed to do the unthinkable: hit a stationary bus in the middle of the entrance to a tunnel.  And this time she cracked a window. 

After a whir of activity that brought the police to the highway, and caused our driver to plea with passengers at the front of the bus to fill out a form saying she wasn’t responsible for the accident (“It was the weed, I swear!”) we were informed all it would take was a quick change of  a bus at Exit 15 and we would be on our way to Philly.  Only by this time we were forty-five minutes behind schedule, craving cheesesteaks, and dangerously close to missing Amos hold up his headshot before doing a few quick pelvic thrusts while decked out in ‘70s jazz pants. 

It was time to conserve excitement/rage.  But seeing as we had enough energy to power a circuit party, this was hard to do.  Still, we managed to all close our eyes for a moment beneath the breeze of circulated bus air and dream of a time when we thought it was still possible to make it to our destination on time. 

Whether through the collective power of positive thought or divine intervention, our bus driver was able to drive the entire two hour trip without getting into a third accident.  Had I been my sixth grade self I would have decoupaged a memory box as an award for her accomplishment, but seeing as I can’t really afford the materials for such luxuries these days, a dirty look while we were exiting the bus had to suffice.

All glares and negative energy shifted the moment we were greeted by Jessica’s lovely parents, Betsy and Ted, who had offered to turn their house into a gay bar for the night, and also offered up their immense knowledge of Philadelphia history as we hauled ass to the theater.  Past the liberty bell; down the streets modeled off of the Champs Elysees; and just beyond the steps Rocky ran up.

When we finally got there and saw the A Chorus Line marquee, Max felt so excited by our unlikely arrival he proceeded to do Michael Bennett’s opening combination while navigating through other patrons on the way into the theater.  (Why walk when you can 5,6,7,8?)  As if his excitement wasn’t contagious enough, we entered into the lobby and saw a placard with Amos Wolff’s name on it, notifying us of his appearance in the show (he was swinging in for this performance) and bringing our hysteria to new heights. 

From the moment the lights came up on a stage full of dancers we all located Amos and stayed glued to him throughout.  Fortunately he was unaware of our presence so there was no pushing to his performance in order to please us; instead we got a fantastic, natural show (including the best Cassie I’ve ever seen) with the equally fantastic promise of a surprise at the stage door.  

We all waited, stuffed between the brick walls in a narrow alleyway beside the theater, to pounce on our friend as he emerged from the theater.  He didn’t emerge.  He bounced down the alleyway like the concrete was a trampoline.  After all of our stress on the bus ride, the end result proved to be well worth the hassle as we smothered him.  But the night was only beginning. 

Once completing a brief stop at a local pub filled with burly frat brothers downing beers at the bar as, creating an entertaining juxtaposition, the entire Britney Spears catalog boomed from the speakers, we traveled to the suburbs with the gay to straight ratio now at 7 to 2.

I think it was around the time when we started comparing leg hair while a Disney megamix blasted from the speakers that it hit me how nice it is to be old enough to not have to filter around my friends—gay or straight—anymore.  Throughout childhood I often filtered myself at school.  I talked about football when I had no knowledge of the sport; or I sat quietly while the other boys talked about messing around with girls in their parents’ hot tub.   In this kitchen I was free to be myself around people I am passing into adulthood with.  At times, this comfort comes from something as seemingly superficial as talking about love interests.  But I think there’s an innate understanding with people who were either literally or figuratively hit in the face time and time again with a football as a kid; kindred spirits of sorts.  Not so much brought on by sexuality but by the struggle, however large or small it was, it took to get us to the point where we are all together. 

We stayed up all night.  When I reflect on it I realize we didn’t really do anything other than rock back and forth on the tile floor while devouring pita chips.  We made it to the hot tub once.  We even handed the token straight boy, Chris, a medal (invisible) for enduring a weekend that far surpassed any of our fellow experiences in a group of gay men.  (Expect for Benton…I think he’s been to Fire Island.) 

On the bus ride back we decided to keep the positive energy going by creating the GMG: Gay Mail Group or Gay Men’s Group depending on who you ask.  While not the most creative title, it’s already proved to be a nice outlet for us all.  We email each other interesting things we read or experience.  It’s like Oprah’s book club only with the occasional added bonus of shirtless hot celebrities.   And to think it all started when that bus driver almost crashed through a building.  Maybe I should decoupage her a present after all.  

  

Just Another Citizen

I didn’t expect to make my return to the stage so soon.  Or in quite the manner that I am about to.  Yet here I am, standing next to my old colleagues in the wings at New York’s City Center, preparing to walk on stage in jeans and a sweater.  Stage left at this particular theater has to be the most cramped backstage I’ve ever encountered—less than four feet of space before a wall of ropes—and as I wait, anxiously tapping my Converse on the ground while other dancers file in around the light booms, part of me wants to grab hold of one of the ropes, release its hook, and fly up into the rafters. 

All evening people have been asking me if I’m “going to do it.”  The piece going on right now, Citizen by Lauri Stallings, had its world premiere earlier in ABT’s season.  I was sitting in the audience during the dress rehearsal when various stagehands, dancers, and children wandered on stage behind the ballet’s performers (at the direction of the choreographer) and stared out at the audience.  I didn’t know what to make of it when I was sitting out in my seat, and now I am about to become one of those stragglers, whose population has been growing with each passing show.  It will be the first step I’ve taken on stage during a performance since April 2007. 

Everyone around me is making jokes.  One boy is stripping down to his boxers.  Another has a kilt on.  Someone even has a video camera to capture all of the action.  For them, it’s just another night to try a new and outlandish way to draw attention.  To me, it is a reentry into a world I left without choice.  I feel myself falling back into my perfectionist-micro-managing dancer mindset as I ask all the particulars about our entry: when do we go?  How long do we stay?  What do we do? It’s less than thirty seconds on stage, I tell myself.  One of the newer corps girls, a face that wasn’t on the roster when I departed from the company, is kind enough to answer a few of my questions and explains to me that we walk out and stare at the audience “when the dancers freeze, and the orchestra hits a loud, prolonged note.” 

The pace of the people around me is quickening, as they make last minute adjustments to their outfits.  I align the Velcro of the bag on my shoulder, which holds the camera that has become my true companion over the past year; it reassures me things are okay.  It’s coming. “It’s soon,” the young blonde says to me.  I see my friends on stage, dripping sweat down their costumes of shimmery fabrics and sequins as they execute the frenetic choreography, wrapping arms around each other and propelling their bodies into splayed positions before freezing in a tableau.   

“Now,” she says.  Strings swell—always my favorite sound out of the orchestra pit—as dancers, technicians, and bystanders emerge from the wings.  I feel my posture change; my neck extends, head cocks, and my breath escapes me.  The audience is barely visible, as the lights lining the front of each balcony in the auditorium shine in our faces, and I am suddenly a performer again.  Part of me wants to sit on the stage for the remainder of the ballet and feel the energy rise up from the floor and into my body.  Part of me wants to take a picture.  And part of me wants to scream. 

Instead, I back into the wings with everybody else, walk out the stage door, and take a breath of the autumn air.  Just another citizen.