In the shower and out of this world

I finally found something to use as a barre. (Yippee?)

I did some of my stretching today in one of the bath cubicles here in the dorm. As it turns out, the soap dish holder (what are you really supposed to call them anyway?) is installed as high as my ribs, which is the ideal height for barres. I have come to a point where the bars around the dorm halls (which are as high as my hips) are too low and I can no longer feel a stretch. And so this is an improvement of sorts. If I remember anything from my three month stint in ballet, it’s my ballet mistress urging us to push ourselves a little bit more than the last time so that slowly but steadily, you’d raise your legs higher or split lower.

So it’s the shower cubicle now. The small space limits the stretches I can do but it’s a start.

I find myself almost driven to a distraction by my, shall we say, dance urges. I slip away in class when a ballet suddenly shows up in my mind. When I’m walking around the campus, I find myself spotting steps with my hands, sometimes even with my feet.

I think the daydreams and the dancing in the middle of parking lots are tolerable. What’s difficult for me is the hollow ache. I really want to go back to ballet classes but it’s not a likely event. At times, it almost seems tangible, this desire and the pain of dissatisfaction. I have to dance/stretch/walk it off.

Look, I’m not aspiring to professional dance. I don’t think I have natural talent or grace.

There’s just something about dancing. You train yourself for, say, four weeks or more. You get embarrassed (I'm such a slow learner), you cry, you get so exhausted. You sometimes waddle ala Bridget Jones to classes because your legs are just so sore (the stairs at CAL and AS are particularly agonizing). And all that culminates in a five minute routine. But in that span of time, you fly. You forget about the past four weeks or so, the exhaustion, the embarrassment, the tears. You forget about whoever’s watching you or what they might say. You forget about why you’re even there, doing it. The world is suddenly simplified into just three things: yourself, the music and this amazing, sudden rush of life.

I may be getting overly dramatic here, in the vain effort to concretize my emotions and thoughts. But that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole truth, nothing but the truth of everything I feel and think right now.

Is this the price for passion?