Today I fell in rehearsal.  I fell biiiig.  Don’t worry- it wasn’t the injury inducing kind of fall, just one of those cartoon-like, feet-out-from-under-you, now-the-world-is-sideways spills that announce themselves what seems like decades before you actually hit the ground, providing ample time to ready once’s self for impact.  With two photographers poised behind their lenses at the front of the studio and one of my favorite principles running rehearsal, it was my ego that bore the bluest bruise.  Mortifying!  But they say if you’re going to fall, fall big, right?  I think that’s what they say…or what someone has said once…at some point…or maybe it was me who said that…just now…but I digress…

Two July’s ago, I saw NYCB principle Ashley Bouder perform at the Nantucket Antheneum Dance Festival (also known as the time T and I met Sasha Radetsky and Benjamin Millepied) and something she said during the Q&A session following the show stuck with me.  An elderly audience member (as most of them were, actually) asked if she had ever fallen on stage.  Instead of reliving the humiliation of a traumatic center stage tumble, Bouder casually informed us that she falls several times per season.  There was audible shock among the audience as she joked about how her feet often have too much energy for the rest of her.  They dance right out from under her, she told us, knocking her off her balance and into a less than cozy stalemate with the stage.  Can you imagine?  Principle dancer with one of the world’s most distinguished ballet companies, and she eats marley on the regular.  If that doesn’t make you feel a bit closer to the alien-like beauty/enigma that is “The Prima Ballerina”, then I don’t know what will.

photos by the lovely Jim Turner