365 Memories

Lifting, bending, touching, twisting. The sensuality of dance with a connected partner, with a man who knows how to move. The shifting energy of give and take, fluid in the open air around us. The expanding and contracting distances, the invisible cord tethering our bodies, so that no matter the steps taken in opposite directions, still we could only describe a set circumference, an orbit we could not break. I remember only once in my life dancing with a man in a perfect rhythm. It may be significant that this was not someone I was involved with at any time, romantically I mean, and this was long after I had abandoned as lost my almost-career of professional dance. That world—professional dance and ballet specifically—was one I left before achieving any training in partnering, in pas de deux . That was a milestone for us adolescent ballerinas in training—a symbolic awakening to the adult world of coupledom —and I often wondered what it meant that my dance pursuit ended before I could ...

As a daughter who enjoys a deeply bonded relationship with her father, a memory springs to mind now, on the eve of my wedding anniversary; a memory concerning a tradition I imagine might be perfunctory for some, but that for me was anything but: the father-daughter dance. I remember, in the months leading up to the wedding, agonizing over what song we should dance to. Whose idea was it, finally, to choose a song by Alan Jackson? By default, I assume it was my idea, but I can't remember the notion actually coming to me; it's possible he made the suggestion. Really, it seems just as appropriate (emotionally, if maybe not technically accurate) to say that we found the song together, both of us owning the idea equally. My father had been a fan of Alan Jackson since way back. I remember being college age when I first borrowed his album, Don't Rock the Jukebox , and heard Jackson's accented voice and his clever lyrics, humorous and soulful, for the first time. I appreciated h...

Detroit in the 1970s. My aunt (my mother's sister, the eldest child out of six in the family) had a finished basement in her house, and she would host large family parties there—often I think, although pretty soon after my birth, we left the Detroit area and so were too far away to participate in many of these celebrations. I think I attended two of the parties, but even to me, it felt like a ritual occurrence, such was the welcoming atmosphere, the instant acceptance of family. Jean and Louis (my aunt and uncle), plus their grown kids and my cousins once removed (who were closer in age to me than my first cousins), opened their home and their hearts, their basement and their kitchen to us all. I was very young, so I don't remember much, nor do I trust the memories I do have; they may just be associations. Mostly I remember two things, and the first is culinary. When we came through the front door of the house (or maybe it was a side door? I have an image of a set of two doors,...

Sitting on a stool in the school infirmary, shoes off, I'd roll the right leg of my sweatpants up to the knee; I'd take up the tights on that leg, too, courtesy of a slit I always cut in the sole. I'd look down into the metal vat of hot liquid wax and plunge my foot in past the ankle, soak for 20 minutes or so. I'd do this several times a week, hoping that this "one size fits most" treatment would do the trick. (Soaking in paraffin wax was recommended frequently, for a variety of complaints that we just shrugged and called overuse, maybe tendinitis, not caring much what it really was, only needing to keep it at bay.) If the treatments did what I hoped, then maybe I'd have less discomfort to dance through, because that was what we all did with our aches, pains, and injuries: we danced through them, Ace-bandaged and ignored them—at least long enough to perfect the choreography in that day's class or rehearsal. The wax was clear-looking in the vat, and al...

The crash-and-burn of my ballet career (which was in fact before the actual career part ever got started) may be summed up with two words: thick ankles. Such was the pronouncement about me made to my mother by my principal teacher at North Carolina School of the Arts at the time, whom I'll call (with liberties) Madame S. This was at the end of the Fall 1984 semester, my last at NCSA, which had contained nothing but grueling classes, casting disappointments, and rehearsals for ballets in which I would ultimately not dance. I remember the way "thick ankles" was said, with some disdain and a shrug of hopelessness, as if it didn't matter what other qualities I possessed—fleetness was best among them, as was the passion I felt—the genetic anatomy of a body cannot be helped. My fifteen-year-old dancing self of course translated this as code-speak for "fat," which I most definitely was not. Any photograph of me from that time period will attest to the opposite. Whe...

I should have been in lightweight, fine-mesh tulle, pink or white; costumed to evoke a Degas dancer (I did have a black ribbon around my neck), posing among the polished wood furniture featured in the print ad for a fine antique store. If my costume had been white or pale pink, I felt sure, I would have been placed up front in the photograph. (Though maybe it was my olive complexion, too, that was too dark; I loved the sun and did not yet cultivate paleness as a mark of beauty, though at the time, there were still many assumptions about what a ballerina's skin ought to look like: anemic, as if to belie any suggestion of her true athleticism.) As it happened, though, I was in a costume of coarser blue material, and when the ad appeared in Architectural Digest in the mid-1980s, I was in the background, next to a seated violinist, pretending to be more interested in following along with his sheet music than in performing any dance steps. Front and center was another girl, a girl with...

For any dancer of a certain generation (or two), there was only ever one "Mr. B," and that was Balanchine. He was ballet master extraordinaire, and before I was double digits in age, I knew enough to know that he was the surrogate father to please; the signposts of my nascent life read "NYCB or bust." Not that I needed another father—mine was wonderful—but Mr. B was the man whose vision shaped the ballet world, and that was the world I wanted to claim. I read biographies of Balanchine and autobiographies of dancers who were lucky enough (they must have been lucky, mustn't they?) to have inspired him to make ballets. I wanted, as did all my peers in the ballet world, to be the next Suzanne Farrell, the next muse, if only time and luck would be on my side. But it was not to be. Turning fifteen, attending NCSA (North Carolina School of the Arts), I already sensed that something about my dreams and my reality were not matching up. I saw the New York City Ballet, and...

Flats, pointes (Freeds not Capezio, unless they were your first few pairs and that pink color was what you needed to fulfill your little-girl fantasies), jazz and character shoes.  Words like box, shank, vamp.  They are not what you might think.  Oh, box and shank, how shall I break thee?  Let me count the ways: wet and wear them, do two hundred plies, bend them between your hands, crush them under your heel, place them in the space of an open door between the hinges and close the door on them, hit them with a hammer, roll over them with a car (no, that was another girl's lie, I don't believe she did it).  When thou art worn beyond belief, how shall I extend thy life?  With Future floor acrylic, of course.  And the feet in the shoes?  I remember the sting of blisters and the lumpy shape of my calloused, deformed toes.  I remember the smell of lamb's wool—fluffy when stuffed into the box of the pointes, a matted sweaty mess and sometimes bloody once you were done.  The balle...