payday

Yes, today is payday, but this is not about money, it is more a look at what has happened to all my angst of the last few months. Well, some of my angst, I realize I have way too much angst. Moving along.

Pictures from the last production arrived the other day. They were taken during the Sunday matinee, our last show. I was very happy with the shots of me. Let me enumerate:

(yes, if I could live my life by enumeration, I would. and if I could write my novel by enumeration, I would too. It sits in my offline journal, with all the events outlined, just waiting for me to get my groove on)

1. It validates my dancing and hard work. I am very worried about pictures of me dancing because more often than not, it calls me on my technique. Photographs capture things that you might miss from watching the movement - a leg not turned out enough, a mispointed foot, looking down, mostly bad technique. It is evidence, and very telling evidence.

These shots didn't display any bad technique that I would be worried about. It in fact showed really good technique as my lines were all clean and beautiful and I had to look again to check if some of the shots really were me. (Then again, who else had a yellow costume?) I usually don't get copies of the pictures made, but now I think I have to.

2. It's evidence that I had done important dancing. I know, I know, I've done important dancing before this. But strangely, if you do not hit the big time with at least one of the three major companies, you don't go down in ballet history and what good is that? (of course, that's merely perception, I'm just arguing that since I had the idea of writing the history of ballet in the Philippines, an idea I've since thrown away because of all the intrigue that I would be burying myself into).

Anyway, I didn't even realize until the night of the show that I was the second lead in this ballet and seeing the pictures reminds me of this. In fact, as Lucas pointed out, it would even seem that I had a bigger role than I did because my costume made me stand out more than the lead. Making me grateful for number one because I would totally be embarrassed to be standing out while having pictures of me in ugly technique. It just says, I deserve this. Yes, I'm very very grateful.

3. It reiterates that I have nothing to feel bad for. If someone did go and write that history of ballet in the Philippines, I probably won't get my name mentioned. I'm thinking it's not at all important. As well as a lot of my angst the past year.

I am thirty years old. Ballet was my life for a very long time but, at 23, I had left ballet for a different life, one for which I'm grateful for living because if I had stayed in ballet, I probably wouldn't be the person I am today. In many ways, I knew it was good that I went back to ballet when I did, old as I am. But looking at my contemporaries who did continue dancing when I had left, well, they're either mommies and/or teaching in a ballet school and/or teaching pilates. I am so glad that it's not an option for me, that it's not my only three options. I can do so much more, whether I had continued with ballet or not.

And being in ballet this late in the game is not so bad. In the last production I was in, I was the second lead and many people enjoyed watching me dance. More importantly, I enjoyed dancing.

Fast forward to the next show. We're doing a short version of The Nutcracker, a ballet I had restaged three times in its entirety. I was the Sugar Plum Fairy for two out of three stagings for my dad's school. In this production of my ballet company, I am a Flute (in the baddest choreography I have ever seen, tsk tsk Gelsey, what were you thinking?) and one of the corps in the Waltz of the Flowers. In the olden days, I would feel bad about that. I was the second lead in the last production and a member of the corps in the next? Ah, my pride would be go nuts.

I realize that I don't care. And I like this realization. I hate dancing the Reed Flutes dance because the choreography sucks. I like dancing the Waltz of the Flowers better because it has more interesting steps. I'm happier dancing it.

I guess I don't feel like I was demoted because I was placed in the Waltz to fill up an empty space. And I think I'm always top of mind for the corps because it gets organized easier if I'm in it, since I work them hard because I don't like being in an ugly dance and I make sure the people I dance with look good. It's become a function of mine over the last two years, and now, I don't mind. I used to, but I was a different, more shallow person then.

I'm realizing that I have less doubt about what I can do as a dancer. I used to worry all the time about being too old and running out of time. I now believe I have all the time in the world and nothing to prove. I dance fabulously and although that's just my opinion, it's a very important opinion. Actually the most important. And I am happy.

Who was it that said, "Everything you need comes to you at the right time"? Props, dude, props.

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a note from the ditz: it's ellipsis not ellipse. ... oooh, is that blood falling from my ear?