THE DANCE...Choices
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Its funny how choices that you make as a youth, and maybe in arrogance can affect the more mature insightful you.
As a child I was always precocious. I knew what I wanted...to be the light of my family and itty bitty island....and even more to dance. I wanted papers
(education)...and exposure to all the culture that was available to me, but The DANCE was my life.
I've done jazz, ballet and modern dance for most of my life .It was my life ...Everything else was secondary.
Were my pointe shoes broken in, would I be ready for my exams, no way the tall girls can make it across that floor before I did, why were my demi plies sooo not right....lol...My life.
I lived for my ballet exams....Rehearsing my arabesque for hours on end...anywhere...in the halls of my high school..., in the supermarket waiting to check out, dreaming of that day when Id be able to make it into a company.
Making into the almost immediately defunct National Dance Company was the highlight of my life...beyond my O'level results or job placement.
I never felt more confident than holding onto that barre.. feeling my body correct itself...or having Roxanne hit me with her stick to correct it.
" Tuck in that butt Clivia...no butts needed here"..
Ballet is the one forum where an African butt is not praised...
Strange my body issues came from outside the DANCE...not in..
They always told me that my body type would have to be in one of the more "ethnic" companies like Faison or Ailey.. compact, curvy....not lithe and slender
Faison. Ailey....That was good enough for me... Amazing.
Coming to America was only a temporary segue.....Something to fall back on....
and then LIFE happened...lol
So here I am...Watching others live the dream that had fed me for most of my life....
the spirit is still in me...It happens when I see a performance...a straightening of the back or a pointing of the toes...
I don't think I have ever felt more confident or powerful than being on stage and performing...
But LIFE has a way way of making things that were once your only focus and turning them into a ...a dream...deferred? lol....IT forced me to acknowledge other talents...other creative ways of sending my energy out to the world...writing, singing, design
You can still do it...you know.. I hear now and again...but the energy and drive that I once had for it has been devoured by....my day to day existence.
Mind you, I'm not upset at the direction my life has taken....Life is about dealing with the cards that you were dealt...but a dancer's spirit is still in me...maybe Ill find an avenue to pursue it .,..in the Life I'm NOW in....Or maybe not...
either way...
I Live...and isn't that the point?
As a child I was always precocious. I knew what I wanted...to be the light of my family and itty bitty island....and even more to dance. I wanted papers
(education)...and exposure to all the culture that was available to me, but The DANCE was my life.I've done jazz, ballet and modern dance for most of my life .It was my life ...Everything else was secondary.
Were my pointe shoes broken in, would I be ready for my exams, no way the tall girls can make it across that floor before I did, why were my demi plies sooo not right....lol...My life.
I lived for my ballet exams....Rehearsing my arabesque for hours on end...anywhere...in the halls of my high school..., in the supermarket waiting to check out, dreaming of that day when Id be able to make it into a company.
Making into the almost immediately defunct National Dance Company was the highlight of my life...beyond my O'level results or job placement.
I never felt more confident than holding onto that barre.. feeling my body correct itself...or having Roxanne hit me with her stick to correct it.
" Tuck in that butt Clivia...no butts needed here"..
Ballet is the one forum where an African butt is not praised...
Strange my body issues came from outside the DANCE...not in..
They always told me that my body type would have to be in one of the more "ethnic" companies like Faison or Ailey.. compact, curvy....not lithe and slender
Faison. Ailey....That was good enough for me... Amazing.
Coming to America was only a temporary segue.....Something to fall back on....
and then LIFE happened...lol
So here I am...Watching others live the dream that had fed me for most of my life....
the spirit is still in me...It happens when I see a performance...a straightening of the back or a pointing of the toes...
I don't think I have ever felt more confident or powerful than being on stage and performing...
But LIFE has a way way of making things that were once your only focus and turning them into a ...a dream...deferred? lol....IT forced me to acknowledge other talents...other creative ways of sending my energy out to the world...writing, singing, design
You can still do it...you know.. I hear now and again...but the energy and drive that I once had for it has been devoured by....my day to day existence.
Mind you, I'm not upset at the direction my life has taken....Life is about dealing with the cards that you were dealt...but a dancer's spirit is still in me...maybe Ill find an avenue to pursue it .,..in the Life I'm NOW in....Or maybe not...
either way...
I Live...and isn't that the point?
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