Comparison Kills Joy

So, I just got back from my sixth ArtEmotion Adult Summer Intensive. This is a week-long, six-hours a day program that immerses the adult ballet student in the life of a professional; morning class, followed by either pointe, or men's variations, or jazz, modern, contemporary... whatever, followed by a three hour rehearsal dedicated to getting an original piece of choreography shaped up for presentation at a Saturday showing. Intense is definitely the right word.

Over 100 students gathered for the 2022 intensive!

 

 I am fifty-three years old. That probably puts me in the oldest quartile of participants, though there are certainly those older than I am. Mostly, though, it's younger people -- people in their twenties, thirties, and maybe forties. Some of them are former professionals or aspiring professionals or semi-professional or dance teachers, but others are accountants, librarians, nurses, physicians, attorneys, CEOs, PR professionals, university professors, and so forth. We range in ability and experience from total beginners to (as mentioned) former pros. We come from all over the country and even the world, and we come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. What's really cool about it is that as diverse as we are, and as brief a period as we are brought together, we really do gel into a supportive, slightly chaotic community, united by our shared love for dance. I know that sounds a bit corny, but it's true -- every year, on the last day, I get all weepy about how great it is to see all these humans who commune through movement.

Kelsey and me 

 

The story goes that Rex Tilton, one of the two founders, had this thought that he really preferred teaching adults to little kids, so if he and Allison DeBona, his life- and business-partner were going to run summer intensives to support themselves in the off season, they should include at least some opportunities to teach the grownups. They introduced the adult program in Detroit in the summer of 2016, and it was a success, so the next year they moved it to Salt Lake City, where they were (until they both retired this year) both company dancers with Ballet West. I joined that year, and we were a pretty small group of intermediate-to-advanced students. I was blown away with the quality of the instruction, and maybe a little starstruck to be taking class from (and sometimes with) the dancers who I admired on stage during the BW season. Our choreographer that year was Adrian Fry, who is a principal dancer with the company, and someone whose choreography is quite witty, quirky, and smart, which is kind of his personality as well. He did a fantastic job of involving us as dancers in the process of creating the piece, something that was possible because there were only a dozen of us that year. I left that week feeling like I had really grown as a dancer -- I had pushed myself in styles of movement that I was not as comfortable with, including contemporary and modern dance. I had survived a jazz class, my first ever. I had managed to make it through three pointe classes despite bruising my big toenail in modern on day two. But more than any of that, I had really grown close to the other dancers in my group, and even some of the people in the beginner group -- we were a dance family, and when I saw some of those folks at the performances during the year it felt like a reunion. 

The next year (2018), the program grew enormously -- this was great for Allison and Rex, but also tough, because they were expecting a baby, dealing with the challenges this presented for Allison's career on stage, and all the other implications of impending parenthood. Fortunately, they were able to call in their dance families (actual relatives, in their case) to support them. Thus, we took class from Rex's two brothers and one of his twin baby sister and his sister-in-law, and Allison's younger sister Delaney acted as the cruise director, keeping us all on schedule and in the studios, despite the much larger number of students; we were now three groups, beginning, intermediate, and advanced. It was a little harder to get to know people as a result, but the groups for the choreography section were still pretty small, maybe 15 people in the intermediate group I signed up for. From that year, aside from the fun, almost competition dance that Abby Tilton set on us, what I remember most vividly are 1) Allison's pointe class, which literally changed the whole way I thought about my feet and turnout and 2) an amazing modern class in the Horton technique from Justin Bass (at the time he was with RDT, though he is now working independently in Brooklyn and teaching at 92nd St. Y). Justin's class really inpsired me to take more modern classes that year, which led me to a master class the following spring with Alvin Ailey II, which was probably one of the most memorable classes I've ever taken, even though I was a total mess! That year, I also took an amazing hip hop class from Chris Fonseca, a British dancer who is Deaf, and teaches purely through movement. I don't think I would have gone out on a limb and tried these things if it hadn't been for artEmotion, honestly. 

In 2019, I decided I was ready to take the advanced level. This was ambitious, and perhaps a little stupid, but I really wanted to challenge myself. I had reconstructive hip surgery in the summer of 2017, so in 2018 I was kind of on my way back to full function, and I figured that two years post surgery I was good to go. It's always interesting to push yourself to the limit. I was about to turn 50 and kind of freaking out about that too. Anyway, it was a rough year for me; I really struggled to learn choreography, my body hurt constantly, and the much larger size of the classes and the choreography groups meant that I wasn't getting the kind of individual attention I had come to expect. On the other hand, the classes were really fun and super challenging. So. Much. Petite allegro. Rex set a very complex, multi-movement piece on the advanced group -- all of us had at least one moment in the limelight, and I had to do a double pirouette twice, which ordinarily is not a huge deal for me, but somehow, when one is front and center it's much more intimidating. I think maybe that was also the year that Patrick Cubbage, who taught contemporary, had us do all these weird improvs, which felt a little awkward but actually was quite liberating. Again, pushing oneself to the edge of one's comfort zone, and then going a little beyond it, is always beneficial if painful. Perhaps partly because that year was so challenging for me, and because the choreography was difficult, even though our group was quite large, I really felt that social bond forming with the other dancers in my group. It was probably the most intense intensive week I've experienced, but I also made some of the best connections with others, including the lovely Lisa Faye Strauss, who had better come back to artEmotion one of these days -- I really miss her sense of humor and her amazing dance skills! And of course the amazing Kelsey Wickman, my dance idol and good friend, a summer intensive die-hard who has been coming since 2016. Also, it was awesome seeing Allison, who was coming back from having a baby, being totally honest about her struggles. I think that helped me put my own challenges in perspective! 

The intensive, virtually...

 As one might imagine, 2020 was kind of a disaster for artEmotion -- but they managed the disaster gracefully, serving up to us dance-starved adult dancers an all-virtual workshop. My Cache Valley Ballet buddy Kacy and I were able use a room in the community center where we usually dance and stream the classes there, which was way better than trying to do it in my basement, alone. Because it was virtual, Allison and Rex were able to recruit many of their dance-world friends from afar to teach. So, we took jazz from Rachel Schur (whom I recently saw on Broadway as Roxy in Chicago!), character from Inna Stabrova (the queen of character), variations from Beckanne Sisk (Ballet West principal), and ballet from Daphne Lee (Dance Theater of Harlem) and Luisa Diaz Gonzalez (the only Mexican ballerina ever to have graduated from the Paris Opera ballet school). It was really cool to "meet" these luminaries, even if it was weird and sort of difficult to learn choreography on Zoom. It did convince me, however, to try more online classes, which really kept me sane and fit during the pandemic. Basement ballet is the worst, honestly, but it's better than no ballet at all. Low point -- trying to take a Horton class on the cold basement floor in December of 2020. But that's a first-world problem for sure. 

 The following year, it seemed iffy whether the workshop would take place in person or online, but as the date approached, I took the plunge and reserved an AirBnB with Kelsey, planning on spending the week in SLC. With vaccinations, masking for the unvaccinated, and frequent COVID testing, Allison and Rex were able to run the intensive face-to-face. It was positively joyous to be dancing in a studio with other people. We had great instructors, many of them Ballet West dancers, including some of the up-and-coming company members, e.g. Hadriel Diniz, Vinicius Lima, Jenna Herrera, and Noel Jensen. Noel was the choreographer for the intermediate group (I signed up for intermediate, since once again I was coming off a fairly recent major surgery, and also I remembered struggling in advanced) and he was just delightful, even when some of the people in the group became upset about the very modern style of the piece he was setting on us (understandably, some people would prefer a more classical piece, since it's the style of dance they're more comfortable with). I was super impressed with how calm he remained in the face of some pretty strongly expressed criticism -- I kept thinking, "this kid is barely an adult, the same age as my own oldest child, but he has this maturity that manifests as a kind of mellow surfer-dude chill vibe." And lo, it turns out he really is a surfer dude from San Diego. As a surfing fan (I've only tried it once, and it was really brutal), I feel like the sport really trains the mind to a kind of resignation and patience, mixed with courage and decisiveness, that makes for what appears, at least, to be Zen-like calm in the face of turbulence. Anyhow, I think we were all pretty emotionally tender, having just been through the first phase of the pandemic; there were lots of feelings all over the place, and that was fine, because one of the things dance does, at least when it's good, is connect us to our emotions through the medium of our bodies moving in space and time. Having a fabulous roomate who is both realistic and positive, funny and thoughtful was an enormous boon. Each day, Kelsey and I would loll about on the floor in the evening, stretching, icing, and generally trying to assuage our many pains, and kind of talk through the mental stuff as well. Previously, I had always stayed at a friend's house in the city, and been pretty much on my own. Having a roomie who was going through the experience too made a huge difference to the emotional load. I felt calmer and more capable of handling the ups and downs that are the inevitable business of doing something so physically challenging and mentally focused for six days. 

This past year, I've been dancing more -- four days a week instead of the two I was previously doing. So I think I've made some technical gains, and certainly my stamina has improved. But I'm also getting older, and things seem to break more easily and take longer to repair. I decided to sign up for advanced back in December, when I was feeling pretty strong and confident. Then I injured my foot in January and that took a long time of dancing in sneakers to heal. I could have changed to intermediate, and probably I should have, especially since I knew I was coming into the week jet-lagged and exhausted from two weeks in the UK on a work trip. Nevertheless, there I was, the last Monday in May, at the barre in my cute new leotard, taking class with Rex, and feeling... not bad! Then came pointe class with the lovely young Ballet West artist Lillian Casscells, who taught us the second-act variation from Raymonda with such brio and lightness that the really fricking difficult Balanchine choreography seemed almost possible. I was feeling prety confident and awesome. Our choreographer was Emily Adams, a BW principal whose dancing and choreography both have left me pretty much speechless with awe in the past, so I was excited and a little intimidated -- we were also a huge group of almost thirty dancers. She had chosen a very complex piece of Baroque music (Vivaldi, La Stravaganza, op. 4, Violin Concerto no. 2 in E minor, allegro and largo movements), and her style is very contemporary, with lots of interesting ports de bras and interwoven turns. I have to admit, the brain fog set in pretty fast for me, and I didn't concentrate very well that first day. However, since most of what she set on day one went out the window on day two, that should not have been a problem. Yet, perhaps due to jet lag, perhaps due to age, perhaps due to the fact that I'm not really an advanced dancer, at least not at that level, I continued to struggle all week, and never really got solid on some of the more complex enchainements. Oh well. 

The roomies and Allison, Saturday morning.

I think that I definitely began to struggle more and more as the week went on, exhaustion setting in. But I still had fun, and at a certain point, I just let go of worrying about the fact that I was clearly on the lower ability end of the advanced group. Something Vini said to us in class on maybe Wednesday really struck me. "Comparison kills joy," he told us, when he sensed that a lot of us were feeling frustrated that we weren't as good as the person standing near us at barre, or whatever. That really reminded me why I was there -- to dance, to feel that joy it gives me bubbling up from the ground into my limbs, into my head... Just dance, stupid!

The week ended all too soon, before I'd really had a chance to internalize Emily's wonderful choreography, before I had a chance to pick up the pieces of my pointe confidence (shattered by a really ouchy foot on Friday), before I had a chance to really spend some more quality time with all the friends I've made over the years of returning each summer to the program. But there is always next year, always another class, always another step. I'm going to hold Vini's little nugget of wisdom in my heart, and try to dance each step as if there were no other steps to compare it to, take each class as its own distinct thing, breathe each breath equitably, and just look for the joy in it all. Because otherwise, what's the point?