Carolina Ballet

I feel like I'm just barely on the other side of a wave, having rode the entire crest and am settling into the valley while looking ahead to the next one.  Yesterday was my final performance with Carolina Ballet, which was wonderful and bittersweet all at once.  Being able to look across the stage at all my girls and share the magic of a show with them one last time was a wonderful honor, and it's unbelievable to think that the next time I'll perform, it'll be in a theater that was built in 1736 in France.  I can't even picture that yet.

So now, I need to hurry through all the minutia of packing, enjoying the sunshine and the time with my friends here as we all pack up, and hope that all of these "good byes for now" are really just that, and trust that at some point down the line, we'll find each other again.  I've felt so wonderfully surrounded by love these past few days, and so perhaps too optimistic.  But I like hoping, for everything to go well for these lovely people, and that we'll one day find each other again, so I think I just might continue on that way.  Nothing like Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to remind us that even when we're surrounded by fog and the clanging of swords and the barks of hunting hounds, things have a way of working themselves out.  Sometimes you just need a little Puck. :)

baggage

Packing up your life is one of those micro-macro representation experiences.... You find that old ratty t-shirt that you hardly wear, but can't bring yourself to leave behind, you realize what pieces of your daily life you can walk away from, and which possessions make you feel at home, even miles away from anything you've ever known before.  I need to pack up the pages I tore out of magazines a few years ago, which I collage-ed into my dorm room wall at Columbia...  The models' faces are now familiar, and the light shines through trees in ways that make me smile, and it is no longer a stranger holding up a plate, where, written in ketchup, it says "MAKE LOVE".  Over the past few years pictures have been added, post cards from far away places and a card from old family friends of a little girl, running her fingers along a globe, wondering where she might some day go.  I still can't quite wrap my head around where we're all going next.

What can't we go on without?  When trips become too far to bring your things, will you be someone else without them?  Not because you are made up of your material things, but because each of them tells a story about you, reveals a brief glimpse into some faucet of your personality.  Do you become less faceted without your history?  Or is it ok to leave behind some of your old scattered explorations and focus yourself on who you are now,  who you want to be in this moment.  Can you really ever lose those pieces?  I'm more questions than I am answers today.  Maybe I'll go somewhere, away from here, where I can begin to answer them.  For now, though, I think it's alright to indulge in the old memories, smile at the little girl mesmerized by the globe, and send some fond wishes to my once-best friends who I haven't spoken to in months, but whose pictures I still have on my wall.  I think that that's more than alright. 

hubris

I had to go and invoke the gods, didn't I?  With all my talk of treasuring each of my last moments in the dance world, they had to swoop in and play around with fate a little.  I thought for once, I wouldn't have to make the hard decision, that the world would nudge me in a direction, and my path would become clear, and for two weeks, I almost believed it.  It was not to be.

Remember that little post called "decisions"?  When I thought I had my life figured out, enough to at least know my next step, where to send my bags, who was going to be in my daily life... Well... scratch that.  After I cannot tell you how much oscillating and discussing and imagining and re-discussing, I have a new decision.  We'll see if I can stick with it this time.

Next year, I will not be going to Columbia.  Instead, I will be living in the south of France, dancing with Ballet du Capitole, where I know no one.  But I do know how to dance, and that this place could make me a better dancer, a more complex artist, a more textured person.  I can spend a whole chapter of my life living abroad, dancing Balanchine and Kylian and Giselle, exploring a whole new culture and finding my place in it.  So, off on an equally exciting adventure, if you'd like to follow me across the Atlantic.  On y va!

osama bin laden

Today, President Obama gave the order for US Special Forces to attack and kill Osama bin Laden, which they successfully completed, and they took his body into custody.  Eight years to the day after President George W. Bush gave the Mission Accomplished speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, falsely declaring the end of major military operations in Iraq, Osama bin Laden has been killed.  President Obama, in his address to the world announcing bin Laden's death, made it clear that America's pursuit of justice for the 9/11 attacks had never wavered, despite the years that have passed.  Specifically and symbolically, justice has now, finally, been served.  US military might has been reestablished, and America has proved itself capable of enforcing the retribution it promises for attacks against us.

But.... As much as I think the world is better off without Osama bin Laden here plotting terrorist attacks, I don't think celebrations are exactly in order.  This is a wonderful step towards dismantling  al-Qaida, which is important, but our next steps must be in the direction of rebuilding, of finding ways to peace and understanding.  I mean this with respect to the most serious of national security interests; our next major goal must be to dismantle, not any regime or organization, but the idea that the West is the enemy of the Arab world.  There is change, hope, and energy sweeping across the Arab world.  Now is a critical time to shape that change, to steer it in the direction of peace, of democracy, towards building a global community.  We are safest when there are not groups of people so disenfranchised and impoverished and brainwashed that they are filled with consuming hatred of our entire nation.  Let's work towards not giving them reasons to hate us then.

When humanity is seen as the strongest common factor between all the nations of the world, then we actually have a fighting chance at tackling some of the challenges we face globally.  We have enough problems ahead of us without war being one of them.  Here is where some will laugh at the naivete of wishing for a world without war.  But I think I am entitled to laugh back, at the smallness of their limited imaginations.  Is it so hard to envision a world where humans do not kill each other?  We are the only animals who purposely kill our own species, and we do it on a frightening scale.  Can't we do better?  And more importantly, where will we end up if we do not at least try?

greek gods

It's been said that the Greek gods always envied mortals, because the very fragility of mortality illuminated every moment in a way the gods could never experience.  It's in that spirit that I enter into the last three weeks of this particular chapter of life's adventures.  In just 21 days, I will be a retired professional ballerina.  God that sounds crazy.  

There are moments when I am so excited to start the next chapter of my life, explore new talents and discover uncharted passions; and then there are the moments when I see the dead pointe shoes in the corner of my room on the floor, and I can't believe that they might not be coming with me to my next room. Even if dance is still a part of my life, pointe shoes, with true classical ballet, just... cannot be part of an amateur dancer's life.  The intensity required to be truly good at this profession cannot ever be achieved part-time.  I've made my peace with that (theoretically), but there are still twinges when I think of some of the best parts that I'm leaving behind.  Clearing making decisions is not exactly my strong suit -- I know a lot of people who could've told you that a long time ago.  So three weeks of fully indulging myself, throwing my arms down and my head up to the sky and letting all of the best parts of this life of dance rain down on me.  And then, a little bit soggy, I'm gonna pack up my bags, put my sister in the car next to me, and drive west until we hit Puget Sound.  Send me playlist ideas, it's going to be a long drive :)