But the injuries continued: a tear in my shoulder, a sticky rib, a trouble spot in my spine that persists, ankle sprains, back spasms. Ballet is punishing on most every body, but at 6-foot-3 I am not compact. My height and length can look impressive onstage, but my body doesn’t always absorb the impact of dancing and partnering well, making me — and my spine especially — susceptible to injury and strain.
It’s thanks to a fleet of physical therapists and movement specialists that I danced as much as I did. I spent hours each day doing exercises, taking preventive measures to protect my back and prepare my body for what I had to do each night. In order for me to dance, my body — its needs, aches and peculiarities — dictated everything: how long I sat, how I slept, how I traveled, how I dated, how I spent time with my family, how I relaxed, how I lived.
Relying on my body in the way I’ve needed to has meant sacrifices and pain. Sacrifices and pain that were frustrating but worth it because of onstage experiences like “Rodeo,” because I got to dance ballets I always dreamed of dancing: Jerome Robbins’s “Dances at a Gathering”; George Balanchine’s “Agon,” “Swan Lake,” “Diamonds.” And because of the dancers with whom I shared the stage.
Since late fall of 2019 I have had two new injuries — one in my ankle and one in my knee — that again kept me from ballet. Now that my dancing body has been going for decades, the recoveries have been challenging. I’m 34; healing takes longer than when I was 19, and when I am deemed ready to go back onstage my body doesn’t feel like it did before. I’m told it likely won’t again.
Martha Graham famously said that a dancer dies twice, the first time when they stop dancing — when the body can no longer do what it once did. It’s this first death, she said, that is more difficult.
And this is where I am now. No longer able to do what I once did.
With the latest injury, a patellar tear, I chose to dance until it proved too painful and so had months to prepare myself for the time off. I made plans, I gave myself projects, I had a loving support system. And yet while I was healing there was a part of me that felt like I was waiting for my life to restart. So much of my life as a dancer has been spent waiting to live, biding time or saving myself for when I am out onstage again dancing. Waiting for my body to once again be able to do what I need it to do to feel like me.
