When I was five years old I was in ballet. My favorite book, which I still have in tatters and bound with brown tape, was Little Ballerina. I had a collection of tutus which I modeled shamelessly. Well, for whatever reason, I stopped. I think I asked to stop or maybe my parents couldn’t afford it anymore. For whatever reason…I stopped.
Skip to high school. One of my closest friends, Tori, was a ballerina. I went to a couple of her recitals and ballets. I was so inspired by it. I signed up to start taking lessons again. I never made it to the first one. I couldn’t afford it and I lived about a 45 minute drive away. I was 15 at the time and couldn’t drive yet.
Skip to college…well my third college (long story). I was a musical theatre major at Columbia College. I had to take ballet and jazz. I had to go shopping for a leotard as a grown woman which was a little frightening. I got through it though and I really LOVED barre work. It’s just you and the barre working on technique together. What I did not love was when I had to go “across the floor.” Those words make me shudder. Basically that means everyone takes turns going from one side of the room to the other doing some sort of combination of dance steps while everyone else watches. Horror. That’s the stuff of nightmares I tell you.
I used to DREAD class because I knew that after my beloved barre work that I’d be required to “go across the floor.” I remember one day I was crossing Roosevelt Avenue downtown to get to class. If you’ve never been to downtown Chicago, you’ve missed out on the lovely wind tunnels that the sky scrapers create on certain streets. Roosevelt is a REALLY wide street, and when the wind is really going it can be really difficult to cross. You really have to bare down and make yourself as grounded as possible. One day it was so windy that my feet were barely staying on the ground. A bunch of ballerinas that were walking with me GRABBED ON TO ME. Their fight or flight reaction was to grab the STURDY one. “Her stocky legs will keep us from blowing into Lake Michigan!” I’m not sure why I just shared that story. I suppose I am still incredibly bitter about it. 
How dare they!?!?!?!?!?
Jazz class was almost all floor work. I would feel myself hyperventilating and breaking out into hives while crossing the dreaded Roosevelt wind tunnel to get to class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then as soon as class was over I started dreading the next one. I wasn’t even the worst person in the class or anything like that. I just had a phobia of people watching me GO ACROSS THE FLOOR. ACK! Anything but that! Needless to say I became an acting major after the first year. I’d love to say that it’s due to me wanting to focus more on my acting. And to be fair, that was the majority of it. BUT I’d be completely full of it if I didn’t admit that part of it was my floor work phobia.
If I have these kind of issues in dance class, you can imagine how I feel about DANCE CALLS. hahaha Okay, honestly my phobia is way less debilitating than it used to be. I can make it through a dance call and not need a xanax instantly. I have also been in dozens of shows at this point that I’ve had to do some sort of choreography in. I’m not completely hopeless, but I know that I will never be a real dancer. I can fake it till I make it, but that’s about it.
I have so much respect for dancers. It’s hard to even put it into words. I think it’s so beautiful to tell a story completely through your body. It’s amazing and I’m always in awe of it.
The Aida dance call (which I was FACILITATING not dancing in) was REAL. The choreographers, Kevin Iega Jeff and Gary Abbott, are the Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director respectively from the Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. The dance they put together for the dance call was so beautiful and passionate. There were moments of yearning, moments of anger, and moments of grace all worked into this 32 bar cut that they choreographed. I don’t know how Aida is all going to come together yet, but I can say completely confidently that the dance portion of it is going to be PHENOMENAL. I seriously can’t wait to see what they do with it. I continue to be inspired.
