Ballon Man

One of my fav authors, Kevin Tudish, used to be a dancer—ballet. How 'bout that! I’ve never known a pro ballet type. It sounds romantic and utterly intriguing. Naturally, I flooded him with questions, such as:

• When did you know you wanted to dance—where were you in your life?
• What inspired you to take it up?
• When did you stop dancing and why?
• Do you enjoy going to see dance performances now?
• It seems like a lot of ex-dancers become teachers. Every town, large and small, has at least one Miss Julia’s (or Priscilla’s or whoever) Ballet School. You took a different path—writing, animation. Why? What were your motivations to take those paths?

And he answered!

I was always kind of hyperkinetic as a kid. My third-grade teacher, in frustration over my reluctance to sit still, lassoed me and tied me to my chair at one point.

Really? Honest and true?!!!!!

I think she was only semi-serious since it was just a piece of twine, and she didn't secure anything with knots.

My family used to watch Dean Martin and Carol Burnett, and I was always fascinated by the dancers on those shows. I didn't know at the time that you could study dancing; that wasn't part of my world as an Air Force brat. I thought people were just born being able to dance, the way some people opened their mouths and could sing.

It wasn't until years later, when I was a junior in college. I went to see the Pittsburgh Ballet. I liked what I was watching, but didn't really know what was going on. I think there must have been some notice in the program that night that Point Park College was offering evening classes in dance. I thought that if I took some classes, that I would be a more informed audience member, that it would enhance my appreciation of what happened on stage.

I was a few weeks shy of 21 at the time I started classes—two evenings a week, after attending college all day. I was an English major at the time, and while I enjoyed literature, I found that I was enjoying dancing even more. A lot of literature is rooted in negative experience, and I was reading three masterpieces of the genre—Streetcar, Prufrock, and Death of a Salesman—while I was also learning about this new, happy medium. So much more joy in dancing.

And it was a very integrating experience. No mind-body separation, just full integration. Which was a nice break from having to think all the time about why Blanche DuBois was the way she was, or why Prufrock was stuck in such an abstraction of his life.

So, two nights a week, I'd drive into Pittsburgh, put on my new dance clothes, and try to figure out how to execute what the teacher was showing us.

I was awful at first. The teacher would laugh and say "You don't have any idea what you're doing, do you?" "No, but I'm enjoying it." I persisted.

In my naïveté, I thought that when I finished college I would attend a ballet school. I didn't know you were supposed to have started dancing when you were five. I started doing some research, and sent out some letters of inquiry. One school in Virginia, Tidewater Ballet Association, responded and asked me to send pictures. I sent the photos, and got an invitation to come for a weekend. I'd been dancing six weeks at that point.

Meredith Baylis from the Joffrey Ballet was teaching master classes that weekend. Because I was such a rookie, I made sure that when we started the barre, I had a whole line of other students ahead of me that I could watch. What I didn't anticipate was that when we turned to do the exercises to the other side that I would be staring at the wall with no one to watch. I was awful, but I had good legs and feet for ballet, and they saw some potential. And the ratio of men to women was really low at the time. They offered me a scholarship, which I accepted, starting a few months later when I finished my junior year at college.

The residence for the ballet school was decorated like a whore house in New Orleans (windows blacked out, Tiffany lamps, velvet furniture), and populated on one side by 20-year-old men, and on the other side by 14-year-old girls. The residence was upstairs from the main studio, which was an old movie theater.

I found a job on the maintenance team for a department store, where I worked from 7 am to noon every day, came back to the residence and took a nap, and then started my classes at 4. That first class was with 10-year-old girls. By evening, I was in class with other people my age. At least three classes a day.

My first performance was a character part that required no dancing. They wanted to get me onstage as soon as possible. I was terrified before the curtain went up, but once it did, I felt really comfortable.

I moved from that school up to D.C. to study with the Washington Ballet, again on scholarship. I got to perform at the Kennedy Center with the Washington Ballet, and also with American Ballet Theatre when they were in town (I was a spear carrier in Swan Lake). My scholarship was revoked when I asked to be paid for performances. Mary Day didn't like impertinent students.

I then went to New York to study with Finis Jhung. Most ballet classes were an hour an a quarter or an hour an a half. Finis' classes were two and a half hours. And they were amazing. New York was amazing.

And then my feet started giving out on me. The joint between the first metatarsal and the big toe on each foot got inflamed, and I developed tendinitis in both tendons that move the big toe. I talked to one surgeon who said he could shorten each first metatarsal by a quarter inch, and that might solve the problem. He'd also have to shorten the tendons that moved the big toe on each foot. I'd be in casts for six weeks, and no guarantees.

Since I didn't have an entire lifetime invested in dancing, I thought the bet on surgery might not be a good one. Along the way I'd known dancers who'd had more minor surgeries that not only failed to let them dance again, but had also impaired normal movement. Although I was totally in love with being able to dance, I thought about all the years ahead and how much I was also in love with being fully ambulatory.

The loss of self image was more pronounced than I expected. My image of myself had become wrapped up in the creative experience of my body as my instrument, my creative voice. I loved the experience of developing that voice, finding some fluency in a medium I loved. Losing it meant losing who I was, what I had devoted myself to.

I finally decided to find another creative outlet. That search took a few years, and was impaired by numerous numbing agents (OH, how I can so relate!), but I finally enrolled in an MFA in Creative Writing program. One of my fellow writers pointed out to me that dancing was fairly temporary in the scope of a life, but writing could go on until I was senile. That one conversation really helped change my perspective. Thank you, Mei Mei Evans.

For years, I couldn't watch dance performances. It was like seeing a woman I was still desperately in love with enjoying her life with a new man. I focused on writing, and made some visual art. The pain finally disappeared, and I started understanding the wonderful things I had learned as a dancer: what a beautiful instrument the body can be, how hard work and tenacity can overcome many things. I had had years fully immersed in an art form I loved.  I had seen some incredible, amazing things onstage. I had danced at the Kennedy Center. When I carried a spear in Swan Lake, I had the opportunity to be onstage with two of my favorite ballerinas, Cynthia Gregory and Martine Van Hamel.

I had a new art—writing—and wonderful lessons and memories from a former art.

Dancing still resonates in my life. My daughter dances. When I meet other people who have danced, there's an immediate common ground. And I'm way more flexible than almost anyone my age (60).

Thank you Kevin Tudish!
health, happiness, love, longevity, peace, prosperity, and safety: Surviving the luxury of Silicon Valley, is available on Amazon. It’s a can’t-put-down read too. I'm very much looking forward to his next book.