A Return to Love
After I retired, I stepped away from ballet for a full year. I wanted nothing to do with it. My heart and soul felt broken from years in the professional ballet world. By the end of my career, I struggled to access the original love I had for dancing that was buried under years of criticism and judgement. I knew I had to step away. Our relationships with dancing, our love and grief, are an ever evolving journey. That time away was important. I needed time to heal my heart.
After that year, my body and soul began to crave movement and expression. I began teaching and taking open class. I recently found a screen shot from many years ago on my desktop that read, “love is an expression of the willingness to create space in which something is allowed to change. The change may be in terms of growth or decay, evolution, transformation, integration, or other natural development that is in accord with the intention of the creator.” - Harry Palmer. What if we allowed our relationship with dancing to change in accord with the intention of the creator, ourselves? One of the greatest gifts of stepping away was reclaiming my own sense of self-worth. In the professional realm I struggled to hold my own sense of agency and power when I knew I was constantly being evaluated and asked to fit into someone else’s idea of what dancing, and art, should look like. Very often, I was asked to abandon my self over and over again. Stepping away allowed me the chance to reclaim my sense of self and authority over my relationship with dancing. I was able to evolve and more fully embody the status of creator in my life. My hope is that you too can be empowered to recreate a relationship with dancing that works for you. And perhaps eventually you can return to your original love. I cherish the words of David Whyte in his poem, Santiago,
“That every step along the way,
you had carried the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on
and that you were more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
then the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach.”
So beautiful. “That you were more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way…” Your soul, your heart, are on this journey of life. Our simple wish is to find a way. To find a way of expression through movement. To allow our hearts and souls be seen and acknowledged. To know that we are not alone on this journey of life. To share a vast and expansive emotional and physical expression of our humanity.
For me, reaching a “destination of gilded roofs” was never the objective, it was this original promise to art, to my heart, and to my soul. I am committed to never compromise this original promise. I trust that my love, my grief, my dancing will continue to evolve and change throughout life. I see that in one life we have the great opportunity and privilege to live many lives. Parts of us will die away to give birth to new and more authentic selves. There is mourning and loss, but also the joy of rebirth. The more we can surrender and even embrace this process the closer we can get to the whispers of our soul. These quiet whispers ever wondering if one day we will take notice. Wondering if we might hear what our soul is trying to say and if we will honor it’s truth. Its incessantly simple request to live authentically and fully committed to being wholly and beautifully you.