While working with Isabelle on Fugen, we talked a lot about training. The work itself was concerned with training, the space between training and performance, whether training could be performed (or presented as performance). During rehearsals, I would mention things from my own diverse loves—cyclocross, climbing, of course ballet, dancing, movement—she from hers—again ballet, as a thing from her history, but mostly from Aikido and Ki Concepts (translating that loosely here as things in the realm of Qi Gong, Tai Qi, Shiatsu). We would train together as a warmup (not so much in this rehearsal compared to previous), I would add things from her training to my own, now an incoherent mass of yoga, Pilates, Qi Gong, stretching and strengthening from various physiotherapists … things I do.
Particularly with getting older, injury prevention, rehabilitation, general corporeal maintenance, training—a thing I do most days—preoccupies me. It’s a subject I talk about with friends often. Dasniya and I have made it an endless discussion over the last years. I’ve been wondering, particularly the last few weeks, why it’s not something I’ve been writing about, or at least writing here about it, that thing I do, which I seem to have given my life to.
Earlier this year, after returning to Berlin from my east and south wanderings, I returned to ballet. The previous years had been a cycle of chronic injuries, torn meniscus, patellofemoral pain syndrome, ankle sprains and tendonitis, hip and lower back problems, to the point where I wondered if I’d even be walking in the next decade. This is not however a positive tale of surmounting injury, though it did start with simple questions around injury: How can I get through a ballet class? How can I keep doing class regularly? Is it realistic for me to imagine still dancing, still training for decades?
What comes from these questions I’m not sure I can call answers. Let’s just say the only ‘answer’ of comparable length to the question is: There’s no one, single way. And that’s a banal pile of duh right there. This is practical shit I’m dealing with here, not that kind of vapid platitude. Another couple of questions then: Why ballet? Also, why cyclocross and climbing? And what happened to doing yoga every day?
Well, yoga was causing injuries, floppy loose joints and all, so I’m kinda iffy on it lately. Cyclocross, because it means I get to scuff through forests in the morning (when I live in Wedding), which is one of the greatest pleasures in life, especially on a bike—and cyclocross is one of those weird, dorky sports (it’s the Belgian and Dutch national sport, y’know) that doesn’t quite make sense when you try and explain it to people: “Yeah, it’s like cross-country running, on a bike that looks like a road racing bike … in the mud … in winter …” Climbing, because it feels good, also because it wasn’t dance and was the one thing I’d do and never analyse.
As for ballet, which I’ve over-analysed since the start, partly it’s the love of the form—I mean here of the training form, the process through the hour and an half of a class which has become something of a meditation. From a purely physical aspect, it’s the one thing of all that I’ve done which keeps me together, yet doesn’t introduce its own liabilities (predictable ballet injuries aside). It’s physically and psychologically challenging every single time, its complexity possibly endless.
This is not the time to have a discussion about how ballet is seen in contemporary dance, beyond to say there’s a discipline in ballet which fits my thinking, and while there was no question I’d ever be a professional ballet dancer, as a professional dancer I’ve found it indispensable for keeping my shoddy array of limbs in order. The muscularity, sweat, intensity, toughness, all also appeal, as does finding calmness and a kind of detachment, like meditation, in this. Ballet has this delicate precariousness, what works this time might not the next. It’s a function of the complexity of organising a body while moving in this way, or in any discipline which demands an acute opposition to entropy. For me, it’s this that keeps me returning, that there’s more to be discovered, that it’s not a single path to unattainable perfection, in fact ultimately it’s not about perfection at all. It’s a process, one where the part of the body which thinks in words is mostly along for the ride.
And having written this I realise I’ve said almost nothing of consequence about training, dancing, getting older, living like this.
