Thursday, May 22

the end and the beginning

Ever have one of those hours, days, weeks when the world seems to be coming to an end...well, at least your world...but then it doesn't?

I had one of those last week. I was working on an audition video for Heidi Latsky. I just needed a phrase or two of choreography that would allow her to see how my body moves. I cleared out the living room, leaving a makeshift studio (with all of my furniture piled at one end). I moved around the space. I turned on some music. I just needed to condense my dance ability into a fifteen second video--no big deal. 

Except that for a perfectionist/artist, that is a huge deal--damn near impossible deal, actually. I was an hour in, hot and bloated (for other reasons), and I only had about eight counts of movement. Then I made the mistake of recording myself and watching it. Within ten seconds of recording, I was piled under an avalanche of horrible high school dance audition memories--not to mention thirty-four years of frustration with my own body, the way it moves and the way it doesn't move. I might as well have been onstage before the judges of So You Think You Can Dance with all of them grimacing and shaking their heads. 

I felt untrained, unprepared, and like a complete idiot for even thinking I could do something like this.

I sat down on the couch, now wedged in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. I felt as discombobulated as the room looked. This was only the tip of the iceberg currently threatening the buoyancy of my self confidence. I was already feeling like I'd made a huge mistake becoming a therapeutic riding instructor when I'm really interested in physical therapy--the night before I had to teach, I'd decided I hated my job and I've only been at it for a couple months. And somewhere within the same week, I decided I'd adopted the wrong dog, that she was too nervous and not friendly and needed more space. The end was in sight.

Nothing made sense. So I went to bed. I really did. I took a three or four hour nap. I woke up hungry, called Dragon Boy's Mama and Little Gen, and went out for sushi, leaving the living room in disarray.

Back in the 'studio' the next day, I reminded myself that I was making an audition tape for a woman who wants to work with different bodies. I also told myself that I needed to do it, at my current ability level, and get it over with, or I would assuredly be committed when I stumbled out of my apartment a week later, malnourished, naked, and mumbling something about Baryshnikov.

Over the next day or so, I finished some semblance of choreography that I could stand, sent off the recording, and put the couch back in place. Life had to go on...

And it did. A week went by and I heard nothing. I started to console myself, saying I'd done the best I could (though myself never quite believes that).

Then, this morning I woke up to an email from Heidi. The subject read: "working with you." There was one sentence inside: "I would love to so please call me when you can so we can organize this..."

OneArmGirl