I had a rehearsal I didn't enjoy today. Before you, my beautiful protective well-meaning friends, start going "Why are you still dancing if it's just giving you so much grief," let me explain.
I've been feeling very blah lately. I know it's hormonal but I keep asking myself what am I doing, what do I want to do? Recent dramas between myself and my father had been forcing issues about why I'm the only one teaching ballet class and my feeling of inadequacy because nothing I do seems to satisfy him. He points out that he's very hard on me so that, in the future, when I take over the school, I'll be okay.
Ah, the future. Thanks to Daddy, it has become the Concern of the Moment.
And then that thing with my Research prof came up. Because of her little speech, I start to feel inadequate about myself, as if my entire lifetime I did not train to dance ballet, to teach ballet, to restage ballet, to analyze ballet, to criticize ballet, to understand ballet. Beyond feeling inadequate, it's also feeling guilty that I had been trained to do all that and I have nothing to show for, except my undergrad thesis which doesn't count, as implied by my professor who wrote her entire PhD dissertation in Tagalog, top that. Which is why I feel it is my duty to uplift ballet to a higher status in this country. Because I'm the only one who can (among the other dance majors I went to school with, I mean). And, apparently, if I don't do so, nobody else will.
Which brings us to today. Like I said, I was trained to be the all around ballet expert. And yet, when I go to my ballet company to dance, I am just a dancer. I know how to construct entire ballets and teach them to six years olds to perform onstage, forgive me if I get pissed off at bunglers whose idea of teaching a dance is talking amongst themselves what the steps are, marking them and expecting you to get everything from that.
But I am not anybody in this ballet company. I am just a dancer.
I look at my life and think, what had become of "the smartest dance major" after she had gone to join the real world? I know that it's just major PMS, but I never imagined that I would end up an inconsequential back up dancer, a graduate student who's in denial that she's in over her head, a teacher dreading the day she'll "take over."
I know it will all work out eventually, some way or other. I hope I never have to feel this badly about a rehearsal again.
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6 comments:
just think how much worse it would be if you were _50_ and only _then_ started thinking these things! yes, it's all PMS and angst, but it's a good thing to take stock of your life, don't you think? ako din, i have issues like that. here i am, almost thirty, and i'm still teaching little brats how to sing show tunes! granted, i had that huge setback in grad school, but i am beginning to feel too old to still be a starving artist. but then again, would i be happy being a part-time musician and full-time something else? not even if my life depended on it.
marga
yeah, beats selling fruit on the street.
I'm nearly 30, and am still not playing jazz in NYC. Used to anguish over that. But it's pointless to compare myself to young cats like Brian Blade, Jorge Rossy, Susie Ibarra, or even Koko. However, I _can_ say that I'm a far, far better Mikah today than last year's outdated model. This is what matters most to me now. I'll get to NYC or London or Amsterdam or wherever at the ideal time.
i figured that from when you texted me that the transformers outside your house exploded. i can imagine how you feel, i heart the internet too much. yes, i need estro. i'll see you broads soon okay? love love :)
and mikah, thanks. i really like the new models every update. :)
oh for pete's sake, get a room! ;-)
marga
yiheeee.....
um. i do believe we were talking about his mind/frame of. get yours out of the gutter, sweetie. ;P
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