The 40th Season is off to a roaring start with an ambitious ballet-a-week tempo. Our bruised bodies are struggling to slip into the rhythm, like sun kissed cheeks through turtleneck sweaters come cool nights.

Vrebalov and Dvorak swirl their dramatic strings through the studios, comforting Mozart tempers mighty Magnificat. Ten thousand steps carve pathways in my mind, boot printing seemingly arbitrary aisles from one ballet to another. As I fall asleep at night, the hard lift from The American makes its way into Minna Shaw’s movement; But this Widow is grounded.

I’m an enlightened, distressed, heavy, heavenly creature in one studio, a wild flung tango temptress in the next. Counts and breaths and corrections seep up every pocket of my being, consuming me with the challenge that I love most of all. I am tired and sore. I am happy and whole. I am stepping into Week Three. Ready. Set.

photo by Tasnima Tanzim.

Dancing in a small company has its advantages and disadvantages. Increased opportunities during the season often means a smaller contract. The season is short, layoff is long. Transitioning back into ballerina after a summer of wearing every other hat is never easy. I learn this lesson the hard way each year, and yet still, an easy solution evades me.

While I’ve vowed to intensify my search for summer companies and semi-affordable professional programs next year (recommendations?!), this season I’m relying on a certain proverb I lived through in Boulder…

Confucios said, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

One hot, sunny day, at the climax of a long hike, M and I crossed a steep plane of boulders to gaze out at the valley below. We sat to rest our legs before the descent, sharing an apple and patting ourselves on the backs for surviving the altitude yet again. False confidence fueled foolish movements and in an instant my phone was knocked down below the rocks. I could peek down through the cracks and see it sitting there, just 2 feet below me, but heavy boulders blocked my futile rescue attempts. M started picking out small stones from their wedged positions between boulders. We tossed aside one dusty rock after another, until one boulder wiggled and shoved aside. Then another. We carried on wiggling and prying, with the help of a passing good samaritan, and then not.

An hour later the phone was a bit smashed but back in my hand. I wanted to give up multiple times throughout the rescue mission. M persevered. The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. We cannot expect results immediately. It cannot be done all at once. Piece by piece, day by day, I am chipping away at my own mountain. Moving small stones back into place. Sealing the wiggling joints, solidifying my stance. Reaching toward my peak…

first photo by Tasnima Tanzim.

It has been a long, sweet summer, but this lady is (beyond) ready to get back into the studio. After essentially 4 months off, all parts of me feel twitchy for movement; my too-soft toes, fidgety body, aching mind…

The other night, M and I were driving home from New York, listening to the only reliable thing on the radio these days: classical. To pass the time on road trips, we often elicit fun conversation by asking each other questions about childhood or the future or otherwise potentially controversial fodder, but somewhere west of Worchester M wondered aloud,

“What do you think of when you hear music like this?”

From the speakers flowed a quirky sort of symphony, robust at times and hauntingly singular at others. I had already been passively picturing choreography for the past 30 miles.

“Oh, I always see ballet”, I responded nonchalantly.

Saying it out loud then- and noticing M’s visible bewilderment- I realized that maybe this was not an entirely normal condition. “I always see ballet.” Ever since I can remember, when classical music plays a miniature ballet unfolds in my mind. It just does. Sometimes it distracts me, imagined movements catching my physical self and lifting a random hand off into allongé like smoke, other times it just plays on like traffic rolling along in the rearview.

Sunday morning I was listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted Talk about the “elusive creative genius”. In it, Gilbert outlines the progression of society’s explanation in regards to creativity. Specifically, she notes the shift from ancient Rome’s description of creative genius as an outside force brought to the artist from a “divine attendant spirit” to the modern and arguably far more dangerous assigning of this creative genius to humans themselves. Gilbert suggests that this deviation in thinking is actually quite destructive, and maybe even responsible for the death of many brilliant, overwhelmed contemporary artists. In her gentle invitation to consider the thoughts of ancient philosophers, Gilbert recalls meeting 90-year-old poet, Ruth Stone. Apparently, as a young girl working in the fields of rural Virginia, Ms. Stone could “feel and hear her poetry” like “a thunderous train of air coming at her from over the landscape”. Stone described the poem as this physical entity, chasing her as she “ran like hell” to the house, trying to get to a pencil and paper in time to write the eager words down. The writer in me- and the dancer- can totally relate.

This idea of having work surge through you with a fervor from some unknown source is not only relatable- it’s freeing. While, as Gilbert notes, it may not always happen that way, sometimes the little bits of creative energy passing through find you when your pencil is within reach. Sometimes thoughtful bits of movement latch on to your bones when you are in the studio, flowing. Other times you are seatbelted into the passenger seat on the highway. We may not know just when or how creativity will strike, but noticing its uneven tide and appreciating the existence of any stream at all- that is the point.

photo by Tasnima Tanzim.