First Rule Of Dancing...

Two things I love more than anything in the entire world (besides beagles) are dancing and violent movies.  If Quentin Tarantino directed The Nutcracker and I got to be a machine gun wielding Sugar Plum Fairy with awesome dialogue and a yellow leather tutu I would instantly die because I would know that life could never get any better.

I LOVE dancing, and the only time I ever truly felt comfortable growing up was when I was on stage.  I shied away from attention in my day to day life, but when I was dancing I was starved for it.  I wanted to live forever and learn how to fly, and when my toes bled right through my point shoes I just salted and disinfected the wounds and then did it all again the next day.  I danced on dislocated knees and fractured feet and I loved a good battle scar.  The searing pain and stench of peroxide and rubbing alcohol on open wounds only made me stronger as a person.  Dancing was like Fight Club for girls, but with less anarchy and more swans.  It tested your limits and then pushed you past them, and when you wanted to scream in mental and physical anguish you just repressed the pain until the time when you could finally lie in the dressing room with your feet stuck up on the wall letting all the blood rush out of your torn up toes.  It was magical!

Dancing is deceptive because, even though it’s just as demanding as any sport, you can’t grunt like tennis players, make weird faces like runners, scratch your balls like baseball players, or hit people in the head with sticks like hockey players.  Dancers have to look graceful and make it appear like it’s the easiest thing in the universe despite our feet and shins simultaneously being ground into pulp.  Even in death we must be in perfectly turned out fifth position with toes beautifully pointed.  The problem is it makes everyone think it’s super easy so they spin around waving their arms like assholes in mockery. If you happen to be one of those jerkfaces who thinks that dancing is easy maybe you should try putting YOUR FACE in a pointshoe!  (Dear Quentin Tarantino, please feel free to use that idea in any of your future films.)

Thanks to my unfortunate exploding calf muscle I don’t really get to do much dancing anymore (except for how I’m always rocking out to Rihanna’s “We Found Love in a Hopeless Place” or doing the entire “All the Single Ladies” dance in the laundromat to the music that plays in my head at all times).  I miss the life of extended highcuts and grand jetees, and would do damn near anything to fouettee like it’s 1999. 

Moral of the story: This article is dedicated to all the dancers who know that a good dance wound brings with it the same sense of enlightenment as if Brad Pitt poured a bunch of pure lye on your hand and then made you watch it burn your through your own flesh.  And while I’m sorry to all my tendons and joints that now like to spontaneously suckerpunch me as punishment for pissing them off for twenty years, the fact is I would never trade my Cowal medals or spotlit moments on the mainstage of the National Arts Centre no matter how likely it is that I’ll need a hip replacement before the age of 35.  It was totally worth it!