The Body is a Sacred Garment

     The clothes that I loved most of all were the paraphernelia of my life as a dancer. Tights: with back seams, holes in the sole so you can roll them up, runs, dirt, and traces of light pink blood after pointe work. Leotards: delicate straps, low backs, graceful necklines. Chiffon skirts that sit just so, satin shoes and canvas shoes that take on the form of your foot. Elastics and ribbons you sew on yourself. Leg warmers worn up to the thigh, sweats rolled down low on the hips, knit sweaters that drop gracefully over a shoulder. Beautiful fabrics, dirty from work and sweat. The dressing of a dancer reveals the body it covers--something so beautiful, and strong but overworked, and strained, thin, exposed, abused even. I remember staring in the mirror during barre; I was wearing a new light blue leotard, not yet bearing any traces of the patina of class, and seeing my hips for the first time as they started to take shape, pressing the palm of my hands into them as if that would send them back a couple of inches, back to where they came from.
     Watching dance, I marvel at what the human body is capable of. And struggle with the cruelty inflicted on the body in the pursuit of art. La Danse, the filmed document recording scenes about the Paris Opera Ballet led me to wonder over the physical ideals achieved in dance: the men, true embodiments of the ideal male form. Muscular, tall (dependable for a lift). The women, desexualized, stripped of the softness of the female form. The same work creating virility in one and stealing femininity from the other. Strange that there's no real antonym for virility.  I think these disparate physicalities must have something to do with the nasty nature of the dance (ballet) world--one of the reasons I left it behind and moved onto dance forms that welcomed other bodies.
     Diagnosis of a Faun, a new ballet at La Mama, has gotten a lot of attention for having been choreographed for an actor (the faun) with cerebral palsy, a man who'd never danced before, and who, through this choreography and choreographer, has found new and different ways for his mind to speak to his body, making new movement possible. This ballet revealed its world in the handicaps of all of its dancers: an older man who never danced before performs a pas de deux with a ballerina, an actor dances for the first time, a dancer acts for the first time. The trappings of the world around them--high heels, doctors coats, pointe shoes and tutus--don't matter half as much as the fact that they all need each other to move in space. The old man's body shakes as he supports the weight of a tiny woman balancing en pointe, and she leads him through the steps, saying out loud what dance is meant to imply, saying what she needs and what he needs to do to help her. It seemed so beautiful to me to see in dance--a language of such physical strength--the kindness of one body to another, devoting themselves to one another for a common purpose. Why are you dancing?