What It’s Like to Dance—by Joel Levy

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DANCE

BY JOEL LEVY

—

Beads of sweat fly off my forehead as my head snaps around to spot the audience and the red spotlight above the lighting box.  They glitter as they hover and catch the stage lights before falling.  My right leg slices the air in a saute en seconde en tour.  My left leg piques my body into arabesque, then my upper body pins to the right to battement jeté.  With rapidity, precision, and finesse that can only be achieved by a professional ballet dancer.

 In my experience people like to mold all dancers into one.  As in, dancers are all this way or another.  As people, we are all very different.  We each have our own interests outside of the art form we share.  As dancers, we all have one thing in common, an almost unhealthy obsession with the art form that we perform.  However, I can only speak for myself when I describe what it feels like to perform.  There is a weird calm in my mind, despite everything going on around me.  A calm that I only otherwise experience when in the presence of my family.  I know everything will be ok, because I am doing what I should be doing, I am where I should be.  When I perform I have come home.  I belong on that stage sharing what I have been trained to do and embodying the character, whether traditional or abstract.  Over the course of my career, parts of my drive to perform have changed.  While I have always felt the drive to dance to the best of my ability, when I was just starting out as a professional dancer, dancing was very egocentric for me.  It was a head rush where I thought I could do no wrong.  It has morphed several times, however.  Now instead of delving into a character or thinking more about what other people want to see me do, or how great I must look doing it, I think about what I want to see from myself.  Or to put it another way, what I would want to see, were I in the audience.  That in itself is a very loaded statement.  As a performer, and especially a dancer, one is one’s own harshest critic.  This starts from a very young age.  But there has to be a line.  Delving into characters so deeply that one’s portrayal of them becomes strained and impersonal is not believable.  While dancing for one’s own vanity is no better.  Over the years I have learned to let things settle, to become what they may.  The music will influence my performance, the other dancers on stage will influence me as well, along with a host of any other factors.  Dancers may not ad lib in an obvious way, because, on a whole, hiding mistakes has been tirelessly drilled into us, but it of course happens.  To err is human.  To let your humanity become part of your performance can elevate a dancer to a level where they can touch each audience member with their performance.

Before the lights go up.  Before I start to sweat.  Before I have to start to control my breathing, worry about being on the music, or stay in sync with my fellow soloists; I think about what has gotten me to this point.  I go back in my head over rehearsals, over mistakes I’ve corrected.  Such as the angle of the turnout of my left foot on a particular jump, or the syncopation of a now familiar phrase in the music.  I do this as I slowly warm up my body.  Starting with the joints in my toes and ankles, slowly moving through exercises that will carefully warm up my entire body and prepare me for the onslaught of cardio and technique that is Balanchine’s Allegro Brilliante.

Warming up for a performance is a very personal act for a dancer.  There are many things to think about, like that crunchy ankle you tweaked in rehearsal the other day or how you slept oddly on your neck the night before, and now it’s a little stiff.  Warming up allows you to feel everything all over again before going on stage, and hopefully, keep it from getting worse.  A lot of dancers mark their makeup as the real transition from rehearsal to performance or from pedestrian into character.  I’ve always felt that way about my warm-up.  Perhaps my dancing is slightly more athletic than artistic or perhaps that is what my body or my psyche needs to think in order to self-preserve.  As I warm up and begin to think of each body part one at a time I recall all the different choreography which will affect the muscles, tendons, and bones which I am currently warming up.  From the knuckles in my toes to my hamstrings, or my spine and shoulders, all those parts of my body have to be weighed and equally attended to.  Warming up is a daily ritual for a dancer, and I’ve heard it referred to as our sacred ritual.  I tend to think of it in terms of necessity.  It becomes the meditation that will allow you to move towards your next step to enlightenment.  I need to dance therefore I need to warm up.  It becomes all consuming; a meeting of the mind and body. A dancer thinks about their body while warming up, so they can think less later and experience the full joy of performing.

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As I begin my warm up, I start to think of the performance that will come.  Moving at this speed is not for the undetermined.  Balanchine described this ballet as everything he knew about classical ballet, squeezed into 24 minutes.  Tchaikovsky’s energetic and joyful score fuels the breakneck speed of the choreography.  I think of how daunting it seems now, how thrilling it will feel during, and how short-lived it will feel afterward.  I will remember flashes of the lights from the wings in my eyes.  I will remember aching in my legs as the five men stand at the back of the stage and wait for the women to finish their section.  I will remember coming off stage and collapsing in pain as my legs and feet begin to swell with blood.  Most of all I will remember the feeling of duality while performing.  The feeling of serenity and adrenaline, nerves and ecstasy at the same time.  The anxiety of approaching a particularly difficult chain of steps and the cool calm frame of mind that attacks and performs with precision and an appearance of relaxation.

I always get a little emotional before I go onstage.  Like a child waits for Christmas morning, a dancer will anxiously await an opening night, or a performance with much meaning to them.  I can’t wait to get out there, but I know it will be over all too soon, and there is a definite come down physically and mentally, that if not treated correctly can actually take a toll on a dancer.  It’s never good to become so emotional that you may falter and not be able to think clearly in the moment.  However, a little bit takes you away from daily life, to the ballet you will perform.  Once again, delving too deeply into a character or a performance can alienate a dancer and make them unrelatable to the audience, but just the right amount produces a character who is human but also inhuman.

Although being onstage usually feels like home, sometimes it feels like trying to get home.  Sometimes one must strive to find the place one belongs.  Like an old t-shirt comfortable and worn in, some ballets just fit, while others despite being worn will never feel quite like your vintage MJ t-shirt, fashionable yet comfortable, they may not make you feel attractive and at home no matter how many times you perform them.  Which is why it is so paramount that a dancer learn to let things settle.  To let some of the chips fall as they may.  Of course, you cannot totally give yourself up to fate.  That would go against everything that we have been taught; to carefully and physically control every moment on stage and otherwise.  However, when a dancer gives up complete control to ego, character, and technique, that dancer can begin to bare their soul to the audience.

With my warm-up finished I head through the stage door.  I pause in the wings and look up to the catwalks above.  I see past the catwalks and, I think of my parents who have aided and encouraged me to achieve all my dreams.  I think of how much I have given up to be here.  I think of how much I have always wanted to be here.

Though I feel this way now about my art, in another few years I will feel differently.  I will continue to learn and continue to push to become better than I am now.  This process is never over for us.  It’s imperative that we continue to push ourselves.  Things in this world never stand still, a dancer shouldn’t stop moving, growing, and learning.  I may perform a ballet one way one night and a different way another night.  Not only because it is a live performance that will stand alone untouched only in the memory of those present, but also because we all have to try new things in order to become better.  Borrow a little bit from one source of inspiration and a little from other sources, combine them to see how they fit.  Then shuffle them around.  Think to the past, the present, and if you can, the future.  Try to figure out how they best compliment you and the performance as a whole.  All the while trying to show the joy of dancing, through characters depressed, manipulative, or even abstract, when a dancer touches a role with some personality, the joy of our art form comes pouring forth.

Onstage we four couples stand at our marks, in a circle. The music begins a slow melody with a fast beat which will drive the tempo for the rest of the ballet.  A surge of adrenaline pulses through my veins.  I take three slow deep breaths, I tell myself I am only human.  The stage lights go up, and as the house lights go down a hush goes over the audience.  We begin dancing the first steps of the ballet.  The curtain goes up on us.  I have never felt more alive. +