My solo

I've decided to document my experience of creating my dance for the December performance. I had a private lesson last night, just because it's a small class and it so happened no one showed up. So my teacher and I worked entirely on my dance. She is also a composer, and she showed me some awards that she won at a festival where she entered her music. This really inspired me, especially since it was a long uphill battle for this sort of recognition. Plus her marketing is fearless, and it taught me that as artists, we really aren't as we appear to the world - we are enigmas, not to be taken at face value.

She told me that we don't know where our work will take us and to start sharing my art, my passion. Just start! I told her that I don't even know where to start. We have always been encouraged to study a bit everyday, even just ten minutes. But when I watch ballet dancers on YouTube, I have been progressively getting really, really frustrated. When I was a bit younger, I could be a bit inspired by these professional dancers, but more recently, I have felt so inflexible, so weak, so mortal. I feel like I have regressed. So what's the point?

I felt so unmotivated, I told her that my time is up. I said if I make a *start* preparing my art for the world, I should do it with writing, what I know I am really good at. She said to write about my experiences in dance, and that I need to make a decision with the way I feel I am right now: it's up to me alone. She suggested I start with studying Degas, the famous painter who had a precise eye and love for ballet and lines, and to go from there. This really works for me, this is manageable.

It still seems a bit overwhelming, but I *feel* I am losing my art. This cannot happen. My weight gain that started at the end of August, doubled with not taking the performance class (where I forfeited choreography) makes me *feel* so far removed, I almost feel like I'm grieving, even though I'm still in class (in the studio) two times a week.

Last night it changed though, and I've been anticipating (hoping for) this change, but I thought it would come through a different form or discipline. The change actually started that morning, when I met with my priest for the first time in a very long time, maybe well over a year, and where I received guidance, and then absolution. Then I had a real rehearsal, by myself the way a principle dancer, the highest rank, does. I worked so hard, but I still felt so weak, and yet I knew it was my time to start again. So for the first time in a long time, I went to the grocery store and bought fruits and vegetables, and some dairy. 

I got home after a long day, I meditated as taught by my priest in our meeting, and after class and a full day of eating so healthy that my Irritable Bowel Syndrome didn't even act up, I lost a couple of pounds. I still feel injured and inflexible, but I have united with my craft once more. I *feel* back on track. I needed a miracle, I really did, and something really special happened: I am redirected.