Lawyerish

Soapbox Derby

You know how sometimes Tyra Banks tells a contest on "America's Next Top Model" that she's "restin' on pretty"?  By which Tyra means, of course, that the girl is just sitting there dead-eyed in front of the camera on every photo shoot, but mostly she's gotten away with it because she's naturally drop-dead gorgeous?  Well, for the past several months, I was in a prolonged non-running, non-exercising-whatsoever period, during which, it's safe to say, I was restin' on skinny.  By which I mean that I was sitting on my kiester eating lots of brownies and letting my gangly Scandinavian genes do their thang.  And, remarkably, it mostly worked, and the scale didn't budge and my clothes still fit, and I've eased my way back into running without much fanfare or negative effects.  But that doesn't make it right.   

(Please note, I'm not by any means claiming to be drop-dead gorgeous -- HAHAHAHA, no -- or paper-thin, and I recognize that a woman referring to herself as "skinny" or possibly even as "thin" is a treacherous thing indeed, which kind of gets into my point here, so stay with me.)

The problem with restin' on skinny is that it simply isn't healthy.  I felt like donkey butt when I wasn't exercising -- physically and mentally fatigued, sluggish, foggy.  I didn't feel great about myself, either, regardless of the fact that I could still button my pants.  I felt flabby and bloated and just...blrgh.  But I couldn't talk about it, because most people (outside of Hollywood/the modeling industry) would consider me to be on the thin side, and therefore I have no standing to talk about wanting to work on my body or improve my diet, lest I be accused of having a raging eating disorder.      

A year ago, I wrote about the wacky eating habits of girls I've known at different times in my life, and I've alluded a few times before to my rice cake-eating days from when I was a dancer.  Well, in addition to that, last week Jonniker wrote a very smart piece about the tension between society's confused attitudes toward weight and women's bodies (i.e., don't get fat! but don't get skinny! don't eat too much, but don't be anorexic!) and how we often ignore the undeniable truism that eating less and exercising more are good for you, whatever your shape or size or goals.  I don't have much coherent to say beyond her point except, "Well...YEAH" (but I'm going to blather on for a while anyway).

These various ideas are connected in all sorts of ways that I hope are clear (because when I reread the beginning of this post, I have no idea what restin' on skinny has to do with anything, but there it is and I don't feel like revising this now), but my general sentiment on this whole topic is that (1) we women have got to find a way to move toward a happy medium with regard to our bodies, that medium being a place of liking ourselves enough to neither starve nor stuff ourselves; and (2) if we can reach that place, we can all MOVE ON and think and talk about other things, more important things, and we can, I believe, foment powerful change -- how about working toward universal health care, better child care options, lower carbon emissions, and a general ban on the Pussycat Dolls for a start?   

I really do think that all of this crap we're thrown by the media from the moment we're born -- all the images of perfection that are meant to make us feel imperfect so that we'll buy the things that promise to get us closer to the ideal that isn't even real in the first place -- is part of a general effort to keep women down.  (Yeah, The Man keepin' us down, yo.)  I'm not a conspiracy theorist in general, but I don't know how to look at it any other way. 

Sure, I am enough of a girl to enjoy beauty tricks and tips and fashion ideas to some degree (especially on the Internets, because around here I can turn to bloggers I like and admire for recommendations and tips that are well-written and smart, and I don't have to wade through piles of ads to get to them), but you know what?  We don't need to spend THAT much time (or money, cripes) figuring out how to look pretty.  You figure out what works for you and you run with it, and maybe tweak it every once in a while.  That is, if all we do is page through women's magazines, we might look cute but we're not going to advance any great causes or discover a cure for cancer anytime soon.  And yes, I'm overstating the case, but the reality isn't far off.

(I also don't mean to sound like a total killjoy and I'm sure you're all yelling "HYPOCRITE!" right about now since, as reflected in the general content around here, I enjoy pop culture to an extreme degree and I've been known to write about clothes and products.  And yeah.  That's right.  I'm a hypocrite, etc.  And certainly my choice to spend time watching "The Bachelor" is to the detriment of my own lofty ambitions of writing the Great American Novel and building a school in Vietnam and inventing the one thing that everyone needs but they don't know it yet so I can make a bajillion dollars on QVC -- but, you know, after all those years of overachieving through high school and college and in ballet, I am TIRED, and I want to watch some reality TV.  Thank you.  I'll save the world in a minute; for now, I'm just going to recommend ways for someone ELSE to do it.)

Perhaps more importantly, at least on an individual level, we control what images and messages we see and which of those affect us.  We don't have to buy fashion magazines; we don't have to compare ourselves to Nicole Richie.  Yes, the images are all over the place.  But they're not EVERYwhere.  They're not in the trees or the sky or the New Yorker or at the Met.  And we're less likely to be susceptible to them if we're taking the best possible care of ourselves -- if we're eating well (healthily, everything in moderation) and exercising (not obsessively, but enough to break a good sweat a few times a week), we're more likely to FEEL great about ourselves, no matter what our size. 

We can contribute to that feeling of goodwill by filling ourselves up in other ways -- volunteering or joining a professional organization or calling Mom or playing a game of Scrabble.  If we fill our lives up with things we love, especially things that connect us to other people and to a greater purpose, we won't hunger so much for a life -- or a body -- that isn't our own.    

Picture Pages

My mom recently scanned in some old photos while performing her duties as family archivist, so naturally I feel that I must share some of them with all of you lovely people.  At least the ones of me, since presumably you have no interest in knowing what my great-aunt looked like in the 1920s.  Or perhaps you do, but let's take a moment now to remember whose Website this is, mkay?  Fortunately, most of them are from either before or after my prolonged awkward stage (which is well-documented here, here, and here; whether there truly is an "after" to it, you be the judge -- me, I tend to think it will never end), although the first does relate to my all-consuming love of Annie. 

Witness this, the most enthusiastic gift reaction ever captured on film:

My face looks like it's going to collapse in on itself, such is the power of my ecstatic inhalation.  Once I recovered the ability to make sound, I believe my exact words were, "ANNIE DRESS.  I HAVE AN ANNIE DRESS."  This was my birthday, August 1982.  And my mom made that dress with her own two hands.  (These sewing/crafting talents, they were not passed on to me, as I believe I've mentioned.) 

A normal seven-year old would have worn the dress to play in, maybe, and then carefully put it away until, oh I don't know, Halloween?  Or such other occasion (Purim party (we're not Jewish, but hey, whatever), Annie convention), of which there are admittedly few in life, when wearing an Annie dress might be appropriate. 

Me?  I wore it on the first day of school.  I'll just tell you straightaway, a great way to start off the school year?  Is NOT to show up dressed as your favorite cartoon/musical/film character.  Let this be a lesson to you all.

Next up:  August 7, 1975; a hospital in downstate Illinois: 

You have to admit, that is a cute baby right there.  My dad is looking very handsome and exceedingly tan (we're usually so pasty in my family; I have no idea what was going on in 1975 for him to be Mr. Swarthypants, but it's possible that this was simply before any of us knew not to leave the house without SPF 45 covering every millimeter of exposed flesh), and he is rockin' some sweet sideburns.  I have no idea how they got that bow in my hair, unless there is a safety pin in my head.  I had that same amount of hair until I was about five, and to this day I have that same fo' (that's forehead for you all who are not down wit it, yo) going on that you see here.

(But come on, what a cute baby, right?  RIGHT?)

Here I am, all gussied up for my stint as flower-girl in my aunt's wedding.  She got married in this church with an aisle the length of the Queen Mary 2.  I thought I would be scattering yellow rose petals for the rest of my life.

Dad makes another appearance here, in the form of a disembodied hand.  He used to hold his hand out like that and I would clap both of my hands against it (how many times can I use "hand" in one sentence?).  I don't know where we came up with that routine, but we do it to this day.  And when someone goes to shake my hand, I have to restrain myself from clapping it repeatedly between my own.  Because, at my core, I'm still six.  (I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.)

As evidence of my Little House obsession (which is recorded on this site too many times to link), here I am on Christmas Eve -- circa 1983 -- carrying presents down to the tree in my Red Flannel Factory nightgown:

Not pictured: the red flannel bonnet that went with the nightgown.  A BONNET.  If I tried to wear a full-on flannel ensemble such as this now, I would die of acute dehydration; they would find me in the morning having disappeared in a pool of my own sweat.  Just looking at this makes me feel warm and itchy.

Also, why does my brother look so fresh-faced and apple-cheeked, while I appear to have just wrestled a grizzly bear?  This was before bed, so I had no excuse for being so disheveled.      

Finally, here we have proof that I was a dancer.  And that, at one time, I had no ass whatsoever.

I clearly had no boobies, either, although in this shot it kind of looks like I have some growing out of my back.  At the time -- this was taken, I believe, when I was in tenth grade -- I thought this picture made me look chunky.

(Let's pause for a moment of silent head-shaking at the folly of a fifteen-year old who weighed as much as a pillowcase.) 

I do think my hands kind of look like catcher's mitts, though.  My arms and hands usually looked much more graceful than that, I swear.  And my knees could be straighter.  I could have arched a little more.  Oh, well.  It's hard to be critical now, when I would pay someone NOT to photograph me in a gauzy costume and tights. 

Although suddenly I am thinking about going as Annie for Halloween this year...

Point(e) A to Point B, Part III

I started college with goals.  Big goals.  And a plan, a serious plan.  A plan to be a psychologist for dancers.  Clearly, there's not much suspense left, since I'm not PsychologistforDancersish, but, you know.  There's still a story to tell.

I entered Michigan as a freshman in the Honors Program.  Regardless of one's intended major, we had some core requirements like Great Books and those types of high-minded dealies where you talk about the Allegory of the Cave and postmodernism and whatnot.  I loooooved them.  All those ideas!  They got to me.  I liked the rambling, meandering class discussions, and I enjoyed writing papers that pontificated about nothing in particular, dissected concepts and argued with them, or found symbolism in the most obscure places. 

That first semester, I also took an intro biopsych course.  I loved it, too, and I did very well in it.  But I observed something that surprised me:  psych was regarded as a "gut" major -- an easy thing to study, a way to pad one's GPA.  It was popular among students who came to college to party more than to study.  In fact, it was the largest major in the liberal arts college.  Something about this disturbed me -- I didn't want to be seen as intellectually un-serious, and I didn't want to go to class every day with a bunch of hungover sorority girls wearing matching outfits.

Of course, this was a ridiculous reason not to major in something in which I had a genuine interest.  I could have majored in psych and made it as challenging as I wanted it to be.  I could have worked with professors and done research and positioned myself to follow my Big Plan by getting into a top grad school.  And I could have taken plenty of other classes to satisfy my paper-writing and ideas fix. 

But, I was eighteen and for whatever reason these considerations seemed real and important to me at the time.  I also faced down the prospect of many, many more years in school, followed by a not-super-lucrative training period, followed by an entry into a fairly competitive field.  It seemed...impractical somehow. 

Looking back, these were also not the wisest reasons to make life-altering choices.  The ultimate question of what I truly wanted to do, what made sense based on who I was and everything I'd done up to that point, didn't seemed to enter into the equation.  And that was a grave error.

Another grave error came between freshman and sophomore years, when I was visiting my brother at law school.  I sat in on a couple of classes and looked around and thought, I could do this.  My brother seemed pretty happy, and he appeared to have great career prospects that promised financial security and even prosperity.  That wasn't the mistake, though.  The mistake was, sometime during that trip, when I was paging through course catalogs, pondering my fall schedule and my impending major selection, I decided -- rather on a whim -- that what I wanted was to apply to the undergraduate business school.

The wha?  I know.  I am a paper-writing, idea-loving, conceptual and argumentative person.  Where does business fit into that?  (Not that there is anything wrong with business, not at all -- it's just...it made no sense for me, personally.  NO sense.)  Again, I think it was a matter of my ultra-practical side kicking in.  My dad was and is a business man, my brother had double-majored in management and communications, and they'd both done well with it.  It seemed like a level-headed, pragmatic, useful thing to do. 

Around that time, I remember law school entering into the picture.  I don't know exactly how, other than seeing my brother's experience; I just recall it being what I was shooting for, although I did think that business school would result in a good fallback plan, as it held the most clear path to a job after college, or so I seemed to think.  So I went back to Michigan, signed up for some history and English classes, and then -- oh God -- registered for Accounting and Economics, the prereqs for applying to the BBA program.  AND, because that wasn't enough, I joined the crew team.  What followed was the worst academic experience of my life. 

I nearly failed Accounting.  I just did not get it.  I'd always done well at math, even calculus, but this was something else entirely.  Econ was also WAY beyond me.  All these...graphs...and...lines everywhere.  No idea.  Lost.  Just lost.  After midterms, I knew I was doing horribly, the worst I'd ever done in school in my life, and at one point I went into the dorm room of these three guy friends of mine, sat down on their couch, and starting crying all over the place.  I wailed that if I didn't get into the business school, I would never get into law school and I'd screwed up my GPA, anyway, so I'd probably already ruined my chances, and if I didn't get into law school, I wouldn't be married at 26 and living in Connecticut with a white picket fence and a Volvo, and my life was now officially over.  (I kid you not.  Somehow, those had become my goals.  Sigh.) 

After snotting all over my friends' couch and moping about for a while and generally annoying everyone who knew me, I snapped out of it and took Accounting pass/fail and tried to get some help with Econ. It wasn't a complete disaster in the end, although my GPA did dip significantly that term.  And when the time came to register for classes for the winter semester, I finally made a smart decision and went back to liberal arts.  I was never so happy to write long-assed papers about nothing in my life. 

I had an idea for a while that I would be an honors major in history and English (honors meant that you wrote a thesis senior year), but between rowing and working part-time and taking a boatload of credits, I ended up just picking history, non-honors, because I wanted to get at least a teeny bit of sleep maybe once a month or so. 

As senior year loomed, I knew I had to do something job-related, to move decidedly in a direction, whatever it was.  I don't know that I was still cemented to the picket fence idea, but I did at least consider some options other than law school:  I observed the history grad students and didn't feel tremendously compelled to take a vow of poverty and remain a student for the next decade of my life.  I saw ads for recruiting interviews with the big investment banks, and...feh.  With my soul-crushing experiences in Accounting and Econ, I figured anything involving the financial industry was probably not my cup of tea.  I didn't want to be a consultant and spend my best years maximizing core competencies and putting up inspirational banners.  I didn't think about government jobs, nor did I consider the Peace Corps, possibly because I am lame, or maybe because the relevant information was not shoved into my face to make it seem realistic, attainable, and, of course, practical.  I didn't think of doing non-profit work or applying to jobs in the publishing industry, probably because I thought they wouldn't pay well enough. 

So what was left?  Why, law school, of course!  The high starting salaries, the clear-cut career path, the aura of intellectual prestige.  I didn't know the first thing about what lawyers actually did or what their days were like.  But...details.  Oh, it'll be fine!  I was sure of it.  I read "One-L" and thought, This sounds so...challenging!  So many ideas!  Won't it be wonderful?  Just like The Paper Chase!  And then I took the LSAT and did well, so I figured that was some kind of sign that I was doing the right thing, and then when I got into a good law school, I chalked that up to some kind of intention of fate as well.  And the next thing I knew, I was sitting in an amphitheater-style classroom, wanting to hide under my desk to avoid being called on in Civil Procedure.

So...pretty much...there you have it:  three posts' worth of the cascade of decisions and events that led to me being a lawyer.  Or at least, a law student.  I suppose there is the part about how I became a law firm lawyer when, in my pathetic, naive little mind, I thought that I could come out of law school and do anything, just anything, I wanted, such as become an in-house lawyer for a ballet company, even though there is no such thing. But that really is not particularly gripping.  It goes something like, "I paid a king's ransom for law school and cannot afford to do anything else.  The end." 

As you can tell, I have all sorts of things I'd like to whisper (or shout) in the ear of the sixteen- to twenty-one-year old me.  Not because I'm unhappy with where I ended up -- the whole satisfaction thing is another post entirely, but overall I am happier in the law than lots of other people are; it has the stability I crave and it appeals to my anal retentive nature in lots of sick ways and I can say, to my credit, that I chose a firm wisely -- but because I didn't always have my eye on the right ball back then.  You know? 

Instead of a Volvo and a picket fence -- neither of which I have, of course -- I should have been thinking about my inner self, the real me, the Laura Ingalls loving, ballet bunheaded geek who loves to write and wants to help people.  I should have investigated LOTS more options -- I would have loved to study abroad or volunteer or do something meaningful at some point, before settling on a career.  I shouldn't have let externalities enter into my decisions so much. 

I can't say that I would necessarily be happier on the whole if I were doing something other than what I'm doing now, though.  I think that being a psychologist for dancers (or a counselor with an MSW, which is something I didn't know about AT ALL when I was in college and would have been a perfect compromise, what with the far less time-consuming grad school program and all) and an eating disorders specialist sounds amazing and fulfilling, challenging and frustrating but deeply satisfying on a personal and professional level.  But I can't know that, because I don't live that life every day.  And if I did, I'm sure I would get irritated by all sorts of things and wonder what might have happened if I'd gone to law school.  Same with doing anything else.  Work, ultimately, is work.  Some jobs are probably better than others, but when it comes down to it, as soon as you start getting paid for something, it becomes work and therefore fraught with demands and frustrations. 

In the end, I look at lots of different points in time and wonder, what if...?  Sometimes I wish I'd danced professionally or written a thesis or gone to Yale or become fluent in Spanish or...or....or... 

But then I look at where I am and who I am, and I am so grateful that I didn't choose differently.  Because I chose to go to law school and to come to New York, I have a husband I can't imagine being without, a dog I adore to the point of obsession, an apartment I love coming home to, a family who will support me no matter what happens, and friends all over the planet who make me laugh and think. 

And sometime in the not-too-distant future, I'll have a daughter to add to this fantastic mix.  What I've learned from all this, all these crazy decisions and missteps (or not) and defining moments, and what I will teach her (or try to, anyway), is that all those platitudes people roll out in valedictory speeches really mean something:  I want her to be true to herself, to find what she loves and find a way to do it, to surround herself with good, honest, real people, and not to concern herself with what others think, but to do what she feels in her core is right.  With any luck, she'll follow this advice, or not, and the decision cascade of her life will end her up in as miraculous a place as mine has. 

Point(e) A to Point B, Part II

The day after my mom and I went on our campus tour and got the full admitted students' recruiting spiel at Michigan, I had my audition for the dance department.  I knew that the focus of the program was more modern than ballet, but I'd gotten the impression somewhere along the way that the emphasis was shifting and they were attracting more classically trained people.  Like me! 

Of course, at the time I'd heard that, back in the fall when I'd picked the schools to which I was going to apply, I hadn't much paid attention, because in my mind, I was either going to Princeton or dying a slow, horrific death by dehydration due to a fatal and unstoppable flood of tears.  Or, in a distant second, I would deign to bestow my intellectual and artistic grandeur upon Indiana or Butler.  But since everyone needs a backup plan, there I was in Ann Arbor, freezing yet somehow exhilarated.

The audition was to be a class followed by a solo performance.  I had prepared a piece of my own choreography to "Gabriel's Oboe" from the soundtrack to The Mission.  True to my bunhead form, I dressed in pink tights and a white leotard, with my hair meticulously pulled back and pinned and hairsprayed into submission, wispies be damned. 

Mom and I arrived early so I could warm up before the class.  I shrugged off my street clothes, pulled some knit shorts over my leotard, and sat on the floor of the waiting room to stretch out.  Another girl wandered in as I pointed and flexed my foot against a Theraband.  She was obviously there for the audition, but it was clear that she wasn't a ballet dancer.  It's hard to explain, but you can tell the difference between a modern dancer and a ballerina.  The modern girls' thighs and calves are a little thicker, their upper bodies stronger.  They generally appear...less uptight.  She looked at me and I looked at her, and both of us wondered which of us was in the wrong place.

Our unspoken questions were soon answered.  A middle-aged woman strode into the room and sat down on one of the couches.  She clasped her hands and looked at the other girl and then looked at me.  She smiled politely, but there was a pained expression lurking under the upturned corners of her mouth.  "I see you ladies are here for the audition," she said.  We nodded.  "Well," she directed her strained voice at me. "I should tell you, before we begin, that this is a modern dance program.  If you want a ballet emphasis, you are not going to get that here."  My eager-listening face vanished as I blanched with shame and disappointment.  I felt like a grade-A fool.  I stared at a spot on the green carpet and tried not to cry -- here I'd found this school that felt right somehow; but how could I go there, or anywhere, if I couldn't dance?

My mom regained her voice first.  "Is there anything that she could do here?  Do you at least have ballet classes that she could take, even if she majors in something else?" 

The woman looked at me as you would at a small child who has insisted upon wearing her fairy Halloween costume, gauzy wings and all, even though it's February and there's five feet of snow on the ground.  "We do have a former Joffrey dancer on the faculty here, and with her permission you could register for one of her upper-level ballet classes.  Of course, dance majors do have priority to get into those courses."  Great, I thought.  I'll have to squeeze ballet into my regular schedule, and I won't even be guaranteed a spot in their crappy ballet-for-modern-people class. 

More than anything, at that moment I had to get out of there.  I had no purpose on that campus anymore, and I needed to be gone from that room, from the woman's patronizing gaze, and from the campus that had seemed so promising just hours before.  Mom and I gathered our stuff and hiked back across campus to our hotel, and then booked it to the airport.  We were able to go standby on the next flight out. 

The following weekend, my dad and I flew to Boston.  While I'd been in Michigan, I had received a generous package from Boston University.  Generous enough to take a trip up there and check it out.  There was no dance program at BU to speak of, but the Boston Ballet was a T-ride away.  Dad and I had a nice visit and I loved being back in Boston, but after having seen such grand, traditional campuses at the Big Ten schools (and, of course, at Princeton), I was wary of the lack of some cohesive center to the place. 

A week later, the Ivy League schools sent out their decision letters.  After having raced to the mailbox every day for months, one warm afternoon I ran up the driveway and swung open the metal door and saw it.  A flat envelope with that distinctive orange and black crest in the corner.  It was cream-colored and...flat.  Extremely flat.  Bad news flat.  I slid my finger under the flap with growing dread.  Thousands of applicants...many highly qualified students...waiting list.  I was on the waiting list.  It was almost worse than an outright rejection, because I had to wait.  MONTHS.  To find out my fate.

The next day, I got my acceptance to Cornell.  Whoop-de-do.  I wasn't even enthused about it, because Cornell had, in my mind, been a given.  And...Ithaca?  (Why didn't I apply to the other Ivies, you might ask?  Because my parents aren't made of money, and they knew that, even if I got into one of those schools, they would be too expensive for us -- we were right in that no-man's land where you can't get financial aid but where the full tuition would have been a real hardship.  So they had me pick two Ivies, two dance programs, and two "safety" schools.  The dance and safeties being schools that we could also afford.)  Cornell, humorously enough, gave us some laughable amount of "financial aid."  Like $250.  I kid you not.  My dad actually chuckled drily when he saw the "award," as they dared to call it. 

Now the universe of my choices was complete (sort of -- thanks, Princeton!).  I could go to Indiana or Michigan, be in an honors program, get an uber-traditional collegiate experience with big-time sports and school spirit, and take dance classes recreationally whenever I could.  I could go to Butler and be a dance major and, well, squeeze in academics whenever I could.  Or I could go to BU and be a big-city college girl and take class at Boston Ballet whenever I could. 

I wrung my hands and made pro and con lists and agonized for a good while.  Indiana seems like it would be a clear choice, since at least I could take classes within the dance department, and maybe after a year I would be accepted into the major.  But I was pretty bitter about having been rejected -- so rudely, I might add -- and the whole thing seemed tainted somehow. 

I seriously considered Butler, but in the end, it seemed impractical.  If my parents were going to spend an assload of money on my education, even with scholarships, then I should get them the biggest bang for their buck.  And coming out with a BFA in dance didn't seem like the greatest use of a college degree -- I might as well just go to New York or Atlanta and try to make it as a dancer directly, without all that tuition. 

BU was tempting, if only because they'd given me so much dough.  But, again, after seeing Michigan with its sweeping, Gothic Law Quad and its towering campanile, and Indiana with its rolling hills and arboretum-like groves, the urban non-campus thing had lost its luster.  It seemed like choosing a concrete Communist tenement building over a quaint Tudor home with a grassy lawn.

After a great deal of keening and wrending of garments, I chose Michigan.  It's weird, because Indiana would have made a lot more sense in terms of taking really good ballet classes while getting a quality liberal arts education.  Here's the thing, though:  I think a part of me knew when I chose Michigan that I wasn't going to dance when I got there.  I think on some level, I chose U of M because I wanted to be a normal girl.  I wanted to spend time meeting people and gossiping and eating, for Chrissake, without the constant fear of how that might distract or detract from my dancing, how the slightest diversion might derail me from my military-like discipline.

Looking back, I'm sad that I felt the need to break with ballet so definitively.  Ultimately, I took three years off before going back to class at a local school near campus my senior year.  I'm sad because I did have talent, and it seems a shame to have turned my back on it.  Ballet wasn't me, of course, as I'd long felt, but it was a way that I was unique, it was something that was a part of me, and if I'd known better, I would have continued on with it even on a casual level, because it was damn hard to go back, and I never regained the level that I'd reached by the time I started college.  But at the time, I guess I needed to discover other ways that I could define myself, to find out who I was without being the dancer girl.

The day I left for college, I had a plan.  The plan was to major in psychology, go to grad school, and become a psychologist for dancers.  If I couldn't be a dancer, I would be around them and help them.  I would specialize in eating disorders, but I would also help dancers with the many anxieties and pressures that are unique to the profession. 

It seemed like a really good plan...but...

Point(e) A to Point B, Part I

I've been asked several times now how and/or why I became a lawyer, especially after starting out as, of all things, a ballet dancer.  The short answer (aside from the Guatemalan gypsy curse, of course) is...well, I have no idea. 

I've tried to figure out where to start, and the only place that makes sense is my senior year of high school.  Which I cannot believe was FOURTEEN years ago.  OLD.  I am old.  So, anyway, there I was.  Sixteen and in a quandary:  should I audition for ballet companies or apply to college?  Or both?  Or hide under the bed and wait for someone to make the decision for me? 

College seemed a given because of my academic performance and my family's emphasis on education, and lots of schools appeared to be ready to receive me.  It almost seemed too within reach.  Meanwhile, ballet had never come easily for me -- I didn't have natural turnout or extension; I couldn't touch my knee to my ear beginning at birth.  But for years, I had knocked myself out to get my technique to a high level and to overcome my innate physical limitations.  By senior year, all that work had paid off, and people were taking notice -- people who could get me a job, or at least an apprenticeship, with a ballet company.

Effectively everything in my life was directed at my dancing back then.  I can't explain how something that for lots of people is a lark, a nice little hobby for girls to develop their posture and learn poise, can be so all-consuming; but I couldn't imagine my life or even myself without it.  Nothing defined me like ballet did.  That's who I was -- the tall, skinny dancer girl.  I'd been that person forever.  There was no me without ballet. 

And yet...there was.  In school, I was encouraged by our AP English teacher to pursue writing as a career -- in fact, she told me I had to use writing in some way.  Ever the people-pleaser, I didn't want to let her or my other teachers down by neglecting my potential outside of ballet.  I also felt wooed by all the leafy colleges depicted in the brochures that crammed our mailbox, and the intellectual rigor they promised -- I thought they would be the antidote to all the years I'd spent in the insular environment of my hometown.  So I filled out applications and wrote essays and took the SAT one last time, then prayed desperately that I would get into Princeton.  (I'd pinned my hopes on Princeton because I knew I could easily take ballet classes close to campus, as I'd spent a summer there for a dance program after tenth grade -- and I was madly in love with the campus.)

Torn between these two divergent options, my only hope for compromise was a college dance program.  Exactly two schools had ballet programs that would be strong enough for my purposes:  Butler and Indiana.  Indiana seemed particularly ideal, since the academics were great, the university was big and diverse, and they had an honors program for dorks like me.

I traveled to Bloomington and Indianapolis that winter to audition for both dance programs.  At Indiana, I had a very bad audition.  I'm not sure what happened.  My muscles shook and I flubbed turns; I felt inexplicably fatigued.  After class, the teacher, who wasn't even the chair of the program, came up to me in the hallway.  In heavily accented English (he was French), he said, "It was...too weak.  Need strong.  More...heavy.  Sorry."  He turned and walked away and I stood there in the hallway, staring after him.  Wha...?  I was astounded.  Did he seriously just reject me?  Right here in the hall?  That's it?  I mean, I wasn't a world-class ballerina, but I was very good -- as good as the girls I'd seen in class there -- and...the hell?  I spent the rest of my visit on the floor of a stranger's dorm room, sobbing hysterically. 

The next day, I took a bus to Indianapolis.  I stared dolorously out the window, my eyes swollen from crying all night.  A girl from my hometown ballet studio was a freshman at Butler so, mercifully, I had someone to greet me there and console me over the Indiana disaster.  She introduced me around and told me about her classes and various ballet department dramas, and regaled me with tales of frat parties in which guys held up signs rating girls' bodies as they came into the house.  Overall, it didn't seem like the right fit for me for whatever reason...except the dance department.  The program there was fantastic; dancers actually left Butler and became dancers, which is virtually unheard of anywhere else.  But if I hadn't gotten into Indiana, what would happen here?

The audition consisted of two technique classes and some pointework.  Somehow, the previous day's failure had lit a fire in me, and I rocked the whole thing.  My balance was perfect; my turns were on; my jumps were high and light.  I felt great.  Sure enough, shortly after I got home, I got a letter offering me both a dance and an academic scholarship to Butler. 

Around that time, I visited some other schools, including Michigan.  I remember setting foot on the campus with my mom and just feeling like...awesome.  It was early April, and it was fifteen degrees and snowing, and I hadn't worn the right clothes or brought gloves; but...awesome.  I can't explain it, really.  Mom and I took a tour and the enthusiasm of our guide and the other students we saw on campus was infectious.  The place just seemed to have so much to offer, academically and otherwise (although, of course, I still thought it paled in comparison to Princeton; it was so beneath me and my hifalutin' smarts).  My dad had been the one who'd suggested I apply there, and I'd dismissed the idea out of hand.  Daaaad.  That's in the MIDWEST.  I'm going to an Ivy LEAGUE school.  (Yes, somehow I assumed that I wouldn't even have to decide about the college dance programs, because I was going to Princeton, and that's all there was to it -- there was just that one small detail...)  Nevertheless, there I was in Ann Arbor, and I loved it. 

But then, I went to audition for the dance department,,,

Good gracious, y'all.  This story is getting out of hand.  Could I possibly drag this out any more?  I thought I could wrap the whole college/career thing up in one fun-filled entry, but...apparently not.  And it's not even interesting!  Gah!  But now I have to finish it, since I cannot deal with a lack of closure, so I hope you'll bear with me through another installment.  I'll roll out some funny as soon as it's over, I swear.

Pissed Off

For two summers in high school, I spent six weeks at the Boston Ballet school.  I'd been going to summer ballet programs since eighth grade, but this was the most prestigious one I'd ever attended, and it was the first time I was in a big city on my own.  It's quite something, in a way, that each year, hundreds of teenagers are set loose in Boston without much, if any, supervision.  There were "resident assistants" in our dorms, college students who'd signed on to supervise a bunch of baby ballerinas in exchange for a summer's worth of free rent, but as far as I could tell their only duty was to make sure we were in our rooms by 10pm (11pm on weekends); other than that, I saw them basically never. 

We were housed in brownstone dorms that lined a pretty stretch of Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay.  The studios were almost a mile away, down on Clarendon, and each day we walked to and from classes, our dance bags slung over our thin shoulders, past the Waterstone's bookstore, past the Store 24, across the plaza outside Trinity Church, past the Hancock Tower, past the Hard Rock Cafe, through a residential area and then, finally, to the vast, modern, air-conditioned Boston Ballet center.  That first summer, there was always a guy across the street from the Hard Rock selling flowers, and each day he'd present a single rose to a different dancer.  I don't remember if he ever gave one to me, but I suspect not. 

Every day, after trekking to the studios, changing in the locker rooms, and stretching out on the freshly mopped floors, we started out with an hour and a half technique class, then we'd have pointe class, variations, and/or partnering, followed by modern dance, jazz, choreography, music, or character dance.  We danced at least seven hours a day; between classes, the halls filled with lean bodies swathed in warm-up clothes as we chattered and sewed pointe shoes and iced injuries and crunched on crackers and swilled Diet Coke. 

As you can imagine, a steady stream of lithe teenage girls power-walking through the Back Bay every day, and giggling our way around Newbury Street every weekend, attracted some attention from the locals.  People would stop us at Coffee Connection and ask if we were dancers, and occasionally you'd get a weird vibe from an older guy stopping at your table at Emack & Bolio's and asking, as innocuously as possible, where you were living -- it must be nearby, because I see you long-legged girls everywhere...  For the most part, though, we all went about our merry way, somehow feeling uninhibited and safe in this city, as we struck dance poses on the T and took goofy photos in the Public Garden.

And, somehow, we were safe.  Safe from any real harm, anyway.  Safe, that is, until something truly weird and unsettling and....just...ick...happened.

One afternoon, I was walking back to the dorms with a friend after a full day of classes.  We were both wearing shorts and t-shirts over our leotards and tights, which we'd rolled up to our calves, our bare feet laced into sneakers.  I'd met this girl the prior summer at Princeton Ballet, where we'd been roommates, and now we were in the same class in Boston.  We were reminiscing about something or another -- maybe about how, at Princeton, the dorms had gotten broken into and one girl woke up in the middle of the night to find a strange man in her room, stealing her wallet, so all of us dancers had thrown our mattresses together on the floor and slept for the rest of the time in one room, in a mass of PJs and pillows. 

As we passed the entrance to the T station, the one at the foot of the bridge that crosses over the Mass Pike, something showered over us.  Something wet.  Wet and warm.  We looked at each other, then instinctively looked up to see what had just splashed us, soaking our bags and tights and t-shirts.  As we scanned around us, we saw through the bars of the station a figure retreating down the stairs.  "What the...?"  Confused, we held up our wet arms and took stock of the situation.  My friend sniffed her dripping bag. 

"Oh.  My.  God.  It's pee!" she said, her face crumpling with revulsion.  I stared at her in disbelief.  "IT'S PEE.  OH MY GOD," she repeated.  "Someone threw pee on us!"

Too horrified for words, we took off running, both gagging and sobbing as we sprinted toward Comm Ave.  I raced up the five flights of stairs to my room, ripping off my shirt and holding my bag away from my body as if it were a plague-ridden rat corpse as I went.  In my room, I threw everything down and ran with my caddy of shampoo and soap to the shower down the hall.  As I scoured myself clean, I screamed periodically and shivered with the utter grossness of what had happened. 

My hallmates came into the bathroom to see what the fuss was about, and I told them the story as I toweled off, still wincing and gagging as I recounted the tale.  My friends shrieked and held their stomachs and feigned death from the horror.  They all went with me to tell the resident advisor what had happened; we ended up going from door to door at the other dorms until we found an RA who was around, as the one in our building seemed to have disappeared.  Naturally, he was upset and grossed out, but there wasn't much he could do since we hadn't seen the guy.  Still, he warned the other RAs, who warned everyone in their buildings, that a crazy pee-throwing man was on the loose and the dancers should proceed past T stations with caution.

The next day, the guy struck again.  Two more of my classmates got hit.  They were far enough from the T entrance that they didn't get much but a light sprinkle, but still.  Gross.  They also managed to glimpse the guy enough to describe him sketchily, so that night the police came to the dorm and took down a report of the incidents.  While the officers were there, someone mentioned that they'd seen a guy parked out in front of our dorms a few times on the weekends.  They hadn't thought much about it, but maybe it was the same guy?  We all shuddered with the heebie-jeebies about this...this...pee-attacker who was also possibly a stalker with some kind of dancer obsession.  Like, ew.

That weekend, the Pee Man became a little too bold.  A guy, a middle-aged dude, was sitting in a parked blue sedan in front of our building.  He was alone, and he was watching the flow of girls in and out of the dorms, up and down the brownstone steps, to and from the park in the middle of Comm Ave.  He was there for a long while.  And he was...well...he wasn't just sitting there, let's just say.  Someone told the resident director (who was, miraculously, around), who called the police.  A couple of squad cars sidled up to the sedan.  The cops jumped out and surrounded the sedan, and pulled the guy out with his hands twisted behind his back.  They drove him away with the lights flashing. 

Later, we found out that the sedan guy had admitted to tossing the pee on us, and to having spent every weekend that summer parked in front of our dorms.  I don't know if he was charged or convicted of anything, or what his name was or anything else.  I just hope, for everyone's sake, that he's off the streets or medicated or in intensive therapy.  I mean, I know it could have been much, much worse, but this is easily the most bizarre thing that's happened to me.  And in spite of all the great times I had at Boston Ballet, this is what I remember most. 

Getting to the Pointe

When you become absorbed in something new -- a religion, a sport, an artistic form -- it's amazing how quickly you assimilate the details of that new thing into your life.  You learn the jargon and acquire the equipment and put on the specially designed clothes made just for that activity.  If it's running, for example, you become accustomed to discussing "wicking" fabrics, cushioned insoles, and energy gels.  If it's playing the clarinet, you obsess over the right thickness of reeds and know the relative merits of every brand of instrument out there (no?  well, maybe that was just me in my Band Nerd days, which, thankfully, ended in ninth grade).  After a short time, those details become a part of you; they're as natural as buying new notebooks every fall for school or dressing up in velvet at Christmastime. 

When I was a dancer, the details required by ballet were seemingly infinite.  I was always on a quest for all the Right Things, the things that fit me exactly and looked how I wanted them to look.  Over time, I found exactly the right leotards (Mirella camisole style), the right tights (Danskin seamed mesh tights), the right ballet slippers (Sansha split soles, white).  What I never found, though, was the right pointe shoe.  No matter how great a pair felt in the store, I'd get to class and find that they inflamed my bunions or bruised my toenails or I couldn't turn in them.  When I did find a model that worked, invariably they would stop being made for some undisclosed reason.  It was an endless source of frustration.  Of course, it wasn't entirely my fault. 

If I tried to sell you a product that cost almost $100 a pop, and told you that it came to you unfinished, required extensive efforts to make it work properly and then lasted for one or two uses, you'd laugh in my face.  But dancers buy pointe shoes every single day, by the armful, and they're exactly that.  If you've seen Center Stage (which I could watch virtually every day, and twice on Sunday, despite the dubious acting, just because it's so...eee!), you know the scene toward the beginning where it shows all the dancers stretching out and putting on their shoes before class?  That's exactly what it's like. 

First of all, you get a fresh, gluey-smelling pair of shoes, and you have to sew on the elastic and ribbons that keep them on your foot (and, by the way, the ribbons and elastic are sold separately, as in you have to buy them for every single pair of shoes you buy!).  That takes at least half an hour (although for me, because I am, and always have been, a total spaz with a needle and thread, it was more like an hour per pair).  Then, before you ever wear them, you scrape the bottoms of the leather soles with, well, a scraper, to give them more traction.  You slam the toe boxes in the hinge of a door to soften them.  You hammer on the tips and the box to break up the glue and make the shoes quieter.  You rip out the insoles so the shoe will conform to your arch better.  You cut off the satin on the tip of the shoe to make it less slippery.  And, best of all, you light the ends of the ribbons on fire to melt them a bit and keep them from raveling. 

Then, and only then, do you put them on your feet.  (And, by the way, before you put them on, you have to tape up your toes with surgical tape to keep them from getting blistered -- although if you're me, they get blistered anyway -- and then you wrap them either in lambswool or paper towels or thick pads to cushion them.)

Once you have the shoes on, you wet the toe box slightly, either with water or rubbing alcohol, to break down the glue a bit more and make it mold to your foot.  You arch your foot and go up on pointe, then realize there's still something that feels off, so you scrape or hammer or wet them some more.  Then you warm up in them a little, try some releves and roll your ankles around.  Then you wear them for class to break them in, and maybe you get a couple of days of rehearsal out of them (after which you come home with bloody, bruised feet and plunge your raw, open wounds directly into a tub of warm salt water to make the open blisters dry up more quickly). 

And then, after a full day or two of classes and rehearsals, you throw the shoes in the trash because they are so soft you can feel every bone of your toes on the floor through the tips, and you can no longer balance or do anything in them anymore.  They are useless.

My father is not someone who angers easily.  As I've mentioned, his harshest words, usually reserved for fixing computer problems, are "nuts" and, if things get really bad, "blast."  However, he used to get infuriated by this ongoing pointe shoe saga, which over the course of my ballet career cost my parents thousands upon thousands of dollars. 

"Who designs a product that has to be broken in before it can be comfortable, grinds up your feet until they look like raw hamburger meat, and then can't be worn after just two uses?  IT BOGGLES THE MIND," he would lament as I sat on the couch with a black nail dangling off my big toe, a quarter-sized blister gaping just below it. 

After seeing this cycle over and over from the time I was ten on, my dad, a man of action, made it his personal mission to reinvent the pointe shoe.  He cut open an old pair of his running shoes and analyzed the layers of cushioning.  He did the same with a pair of my worn-out Freeds, which had lasted exactly one performance.  He drew diagrams.  He investigated high-tech polymers.  He had samples of foam out in his workshop that he hypothesized could be poured into the shoe to conform to the foot provide cushioning. 

I always told him that it would be impossible to revolutionize something so steeped in tradition; after all, part of the reason that pointe shoes are how they are is that that's how it's always been.  In an art form where dancers have been starting class with plies for hundreds of years, you don't come in and demand that everyone accept a class that begins with flying jumps around the room.  It just wouldn't sell. 

Once I left home for college, Dad set aside his pointe shoe mission, figuring that at least his financial support of the industry had finally ended, so he washed his hands of the whole ridiculous mess. 

As it happened, a few years later, someone did come along with a shoe that used sports technology and purported to be a more comfortable, longer-lasting shoe.  Naturally, it has been decried by some teachers and ballet masters as hideously ugly for its flattened box and imperfect arch and general non-traditionalness.  (Underlying this, of course, is the idea that dancers simply are not supposed to be comfortable.  How is it art if you are not suffering for it?)  Even I have to agree that I find them a little distasteful looking -- and I've tried them, and they do absolutely nothing for me; in fact, I find them even more uncomfortable than the usual torture device shoes.    But a few famous ballerinas in major companies have endorsed the shoes for their superior balance and support, and so, overall they have succeeded. 

If only Dad had stayed with it, he could have gotten there first. 

(God, I'm sorry for the awful pun in the title.  And I know this post is relevant to, like, four people out there.  But still.  You should know what you're getting yourselves into just in case your daughters -- even your future, hypothetical daughters, or maybe your nieces or...you get the idea -- ever take up ballet.  Which I think they absolutely should, if they show an interest, because there is truly nothing more priceless than the discipline and passion of a dancer.  Just make sure you've started an interest-bearing savings account to cover the pointe shoe expenses.)

The Stepford Dancers

Not long after I started acting (or, more accurately, trying to act), I happened upon an opportunity that seemed tailor-made for me.  A notice appeared in Backstage seeking tall (over 5'10"), blonde or red-headed female dancers to appear in a ballroom scene in The Stepford Wives.  The film was notoriously over budget and well past its original shooting schedule, and rumor had it that, although they had employed hundreds of extras for several months of shooting, Frank Oz wasn't satisfied with their waltzing abilities for the final scene of the movie; so he decided to spend still more money and time finding dancers who could give him the shot he wanted.

Because this required skill, it was more than just background work and the performers would be paid rather handsomely -- something like $1000 a day -- and they would be "Taft-Hartley'ed", which meant that they would be waived into the Screen Actors' Guild without having to do all the stuff you usually have to do to gain membership, like have a speaking part.  I was beyond thrilled -- this could be it, I thought.  Not necessarily my Big Break, but a huge on-camera credit and a chance to schmooze with some big names at the very least.  And, hello, make a buttload of money for not a whole lot of work.

On the day of the audition, which was a cattle call out in Queens, I got up super-early, dressed in a leotard and cropped black tights, threw a ballroom-y skirt and shoes in my bag, did my hair and makeup, and headed to the subway.  Although I wasn't formally trained in ballroom beyond a few classes here and there (plus a "cotillion" class that I took in fifth and sixth grade, which is a whole other story), I figured the waltz was a no-brainer, and my ballet background would pull me through.

The shoot was out at the Kaufman Astoria Studios, where "Sesame Street" is filmed and "The Cosby Show" had its home.  When I got there, hundreds of lanky dancers were draped around the lobby, stretching and putting on makeup.  I felt right at home -- it was just like my days of auditioning for ballet stuff back in high school.  I signed in, got my number and found a spot on the floor to get ready.  Just from glancing around, I figured I had a good chance of making it, since at least half of the girls had dark hair or were well under 5'10". 

As we waited, extras from the film wafted in and out.  They were impossible to miss, as all of the women were young, thin and tall, and had on shiny, sherbet-colored gowns with massive hoop skirts and frothy bouffant hairdos.  The male extras, on the other hand, were about a foot shorter and tended toward the paunchy and bald, and many wore chunky glasses and loud plaid sportcoats. 

When the production assistants told us to line up by number, the queue went out the door and along the side of the building.  As usual with these things, we stood around and swapped audition tales while we waited.  And we tried not to gawk too much when Christopher Walken came strolling out of the studio to go to the makeup trailer.  He had on a blonde wig and a lemon yellow tuxedo, but he was still Christopher Walken and still awesome as he squeezed by the crowds of dancers.  Shortly thereafter, Glenn Close sauntered by, a small fluffy dog (a Papillon, I think) cradled in her arms and a serene smile on her face.  Awesome.

Hours and hours passed as groups of dancers disappeared into the sound stage and the line crept forward.  One of the girls sitting near me was of a breed I'd come to recognize even in my limited time on the acting audition circuit:  the Delusional Self-Aggrandizer.  This girl thought she was God's gift to the acting world.  She went on.  And on.  And on.  About all the "work" she'd done which, of course, was not even impressive:  "I wonder if they'll do anything with our hair for this role.  I got my hair cut when I was in Mona Lisa Smile."  (She was an extra, if she was, in fact, anything at all in that movie.)  "Oh, Julia was so funny on set.  I love her!"  "We had to wear girdles under our costumes, and it was so uncomfortable.  But it was so funny!"  Ugh.  Even though she was well under the height requirement and had deep brunette hair, she was convinced she was a shoo-in for the waltz part:   "I haven't danced since I was ten, but whatever.  I'm so in."  I wanted to stab her. 

Finally, our group made it to the sound stage.  We filed into the enormous black box room and stood in a line facing the casting director and the choreographer.  They cut about half of the group right off for not having the right look.  And guess who was in that bunch?  Ms. Delusional Self-Aggrandizer, of course!  Ha!  Boo-yah!  You suck!  Uh...sorry.  The rest of us then learned the combination in about thirty seconds flat.  It was basically like, "and 1-2-3, turn-2-3, dip-2-3, swirl-2-3, slide-2-3 [etc].  And you're ready...go!" 

We formed a huge circle and took the partner closest to us -- with the height differentials, the guys were basically nestled in the girls' boobs, which added a certain humor to the proceedings.  No one seemed to know the combination all that well, but when the music started, we swirled and dipped and slid around, turning and turning as we moved around and around the circle.  I was sweating and dizzy by then, but I was getting the steps decently and managed not to dismember my partner in any way.  After we went around several times, they cut another group.  I made it through again!

This time, the casting director paired us up herself.  I got a partner who was definitely too tall for what they wanted, but he had dorkified himself so well that they didn't seem to mind; he had on horn-rimmed glasses with tape around the bridge and a musty thrift store tweed jacket with elbow patches.  We learned more of the combination and soon we were off again on another sweep around the room.  And around and around and around.  The choreographer and casting director stood whispering and scribbling notes as we went gliding and perspiring by.  They stopped us and called some more numbers, including mine and my partner's.  We'd made it through another round.

Now it was getting down to the end.  We were asked to fill out casting forms and have Polaroids taken.  We'd been there for more than eight hours, but it seemed like it might pay off -- a thousand bucks a day!  Membership into the union!  A chance to work with Frank Oz!  My partner and I practiced the combination until we had it perfectly.  After another long wait, our group was called back in.  We joined all the other groups that had made it that far, and they told us we would do the combination again and then they would make the final casting decision. 

My partner and I took our places in the circle.  We executed the steps just right despite the racing tempo of the music and the sweltering heat of the room.  Our numbers were called.  We did it again.  Our numbers were called.  We danced once more.  Then my number was called, but my partner's wasn't.  I squeezed his arm and thanked him and he collected his bag and left a little dejectedly. 

They paired me up with another partner, a much shorter one.  He was a terrible dancer.  He stepped all over me, tried to turn me the wrong way, and generally sucked.  I dragged him around the floor, trying to look placid and composed as sweat ran down my face from the effort of forcing him to at least appear to be dancing.  It was like leading a dead body.      

The casting director and choreographer consulted for several minutes, making tick marks on their clipboards and nodding.  They called the final list of numbers.  Mine wasn't one of them.  I slunk out, my bag sagging on my shoulder. 

My chance to be a part of one of the worst movies ever made was lost.

So I Wish I Could Dance

I’m watching “So You Think You Can Dance,” which, as we know, has the capacity to make me cry, and I want to know this:  where can someone like me, a 30-year old dried-up former ballet dancer, get my butt into a class where I can learn to move like Allison? 

Y’all.  For real.  At first, I really didn’t think much of her, in part because I am a Ballet Body Snob.  I like my dancers long and skiiiiiiinny with prominent sternum bones and over-arched banana feet.  (I grew up on Balanchine – what do you want?)  (And, NO, I am NOT saying Allison is fat or even the slightest bit overweight!  Do not yell at me!  She has a beautiful body!)  I’m just saying, if you saw Allison walking down the street, you wouldn’t necessarily guess she was a dancer.  With her flowing hair and her cherubic cheeks and her freshly-scrubbed sweet face, she kind of looks like A Nice Girl who may have just wandered onto the set after her candy-striping shift ended.  And until last week, I thought she was good and all, but something was a little eh about it for me. 

But then.  That solo.  In the light blue dress?  It wasn’t the hair-thrashing, incoherent series of aerial tricks or the one-minute, full-body Method class that most of the contestants hurl around the stage when facing elimination.  She was stream-of-consciousness in motion – every step slid into the next as if there were no other conceivable step that could come after the one before it.  When she dances, you don’t see the counting or the choreography or the concentration or the strength or the effort.  You see the music, only better; music that is enhanced by a body that does not know the boundaries of gravity and muscles.   

Even at the peak of my training, when I could whip out triple pirouettes and developpe my leg up to my ear, I could never have danced like that.  I couldn’t Let Go, because Letting Go might mean loosening my grip on Exactly How It’s Supposed to Be Done; every cell in my body was focused on Doing It Perfectly.  Of course, ballet isn’t really about letting go; but even in my other classes, my movement was restrained and polite.  I thought about things too much.  (Clearly, not something that has resolved itself even now.)

Now I know that I should have trusted myself and my finely-honed technique.  I should have allowed myself to let it all out.  The foundation was there, and you don’t have to hold on so tightly when you have that strong of a base.  Because dancing, like love, and like life itself, is a leap of faith.  You have the answers inside, in every fiber of your being.  Your body knows what to do without the brain getting in the way.  You just have to throw yourself into the void and be free. 

(By the way, everyone?  Brian Freeman’s Favorite Man on the Show is Benji.  And if Brian’s necklace (??) (!) got together with Benji’s Broadway, um, flair?  Well.  I don’t think we’d be able to see anymore, because…SPARKLE!!!!!)

(Note to Ashlee:  Please get off my TV.  You stink.)