Category: Dance

At the still point of the turning world

Since I can remember having some sort of conscious thought, my favorite activity has been daydreaming. I would love to engage more with it? Absolutely. Should I? Most probably not. I tend to use it as a way of escaping the weight of the days, even if, sometimes, it has helped me come up with brilliant, in my opinion, ideas.

Being still was not a problem when I was a kid. I enjoyed being alone and left to my own devices. Either forced by the inevitability of growing up into an accountable and acceptable adult or by the contextual speed of life, being still became a problem and, being present became something to be learnt again.

Talent or no talent , dancing— and choosing a form of dance as technically demanding as Flamenco — has slowly helped me regain a sense of connection.


Dancing unites body and mind through movement, requiring presence in a way that’s both physical and emotional. When you’re fully engaged in dance, you’re experiencing yourself as a whole being rather than fragmented parts. In the present.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

T. S. Elliot, excerpt from
Burnt Norton, (Four Quartets)

Happy World Poetry Day!

Why would you walk?

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“But ballet itself – it’s important. Dance is important. It’s that language that everybody understands. It’s a powerful tool to open people’s minds. It’s some subconscious thing, a connection we all have. Kids dance before walking. It’s our truest nature of being. It’s true spirit.” He pauses. “And then, slowly and slowly, as we grow older, we get more and more baggage and life changes you. We are more scared of things, more fearful. So how to eliminate that? We have to go back to how we were as a kid, because that’s our truest nature. And with ballet, that is how I’m trying to come back to this state of mind. Because that’s the purest state. Tribes dance. Every country has a national dance. In the clubs we dance, we dance at weddings. Dance is a language. It’s a language that we need, like music, to survive.”

Sergei Polunin interview Another Man Magazine

If you could be dancing

Photo: Street Milonga in Porto (2013)

Words move, music moves

rehearsal

Only in  time

Photo: Gianmarco and Jennifer from the Opus Ballet Compagnia rehearsing in Porto, June 2017

References: T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton (1935)

First ballet shoes

The pink of the leather turned out to be a lighter shade than I’d hoped, it looked like the underside of a kitten, and the sole was a dirty grey cat’s tongue, and there were no long pink satin ribbons to criss-cross over the ankles, no only a sad elastic strap (…)

Zadie Smith, Swing Time

I remember my first ballet shoes. After being accepted to the dance school, my mum took me to Porfirios in Rua Santa Catarina to buy the light blue leotard and skirt and that same kind of faded ballet pink leather shoes. I don’t actually remember the details but I remember the smell of those very first ballet slippers.

Scent is, in a way,  charged with history (…) the sense of smell is, as McLuhan stresses,” iconic”. In the same perspective, we could also say that it is the narrative epic sense. It brings together, weaves and condenses historic happenings into an image, into a narrative composition. 

Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time

Scent gives us back who we are by conferring some kind of stability to our own narrative, allowing us to make sense of ourselves by composing some sort of self-portrait. My childhood smells like new ballet shoes. This is a scent I have tried in vain to reencounter. New ballet shoes don’t have that exact smell anymore. In October last year, I bought new shoes. I prefer canvas to leather now and split soles and pre-sewn elastics. I haven’t been to ballet class yet. Life or some other excuse has been in the way.

It was also the aroma of possibilities, once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Learning to live with lack of talent

I spent my summer vacation at a Flamenco “bootcamp”; It seemed like a good way of spending a week’s vacation even if not a really good way to get some rest. I have started Flamenco lessons around October last year and have been struggling with it ever since. I do not have a natural talent for it. I love the music but I am both rationally and physically incapable of understanding time. The cante transports me to some fantasy southern living of disquiet but I am unable to feel connected to the raw, untamed earthly passions it invokes.
And the dancing? I feel like I have been through a week of awkward moments of pretense. Pretending to be a dancer, pretending to be able to perform intricate footwork, pretending to belong. Even pretending to perform. For a week I lived inside a bubble of passion and obsession so intense and fast paced it left too little time for any kind of reflection or soul searching. At a distance, it forced me to confront my lack of talent in a world where talent, or the appearance thereof, seems to be everywhere. It is also forcing me to surrender to the obvious. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.
Still, it was a way to live some kind of fantasy life, an item crossed off my bucket list.

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Rehearsing


Last time I was on stage I think I was around 14. It’s been well over 20 years. I was afraid then, I feel terrified now. I do an adult ballet class twice a week and although I never dreamt of being a ballerina, the fantasy of performing tends to be irresistible. And, when invited to be part of the final year show,  I said yes. Now, one month to go and after what has been feeling like never ending,exhausting  rehearsals, I realize, once more, that not all challenges should be taken on. The fear of being on stage will, at this point, have to be conquered. The certainty that I have not actually achieved the mastery that would transform it into some kind of second nature experience is making me feel like I’m cheating.