sea, sea puede

Yesterday was madness. Ciara had two ballet performances, then crossed to another building to sing Une Cantate de Noel. She was in better shape than I was - at 8 pm, I was ready to fall asleep before the symphony band began to play! But now, for a month, there is catching up on life to be done. It will go much faster than I like, I know, and there is so much I need to accomplish! But at least I don’t have to go anywhere most days…

I do passionately want to get some writing done… in amidst unburying our home from chaos, decorating, readying for the winter rains (which have finally arrived; it has already rained, snowed, slushed and hailed today), mailing holiday packages, preparing insurance forms, working on must-do contracts, and traveling to Seattle in ten days.

Then again, perhaps I am as mad as that schedule yesterday!

Ballet. It can be the height of gender-ification, and it can bend gender. It can be rigid, coiffed, and aloof; it can be sensual, exploratory, evocative. It can break the feet and it can tone the body. It can steal shape or give it. It can be a nightmare of cliques and cattiness; it can be an exercise in shared girl power.

It is beauty and flow, it is starvation and fear, it is desire and release. It is too precious to simply throw away, and too dangerous to dance unwary. Trying every day to find a ballet that is full and hale and powerful and kind, to ease out every killing notion, leaving only the joy and the leap and the spin and the skin and the warmth, at the end.

A full bodied, full spirited, full-footed dance. It may well mean abandoning toe shoes, dressing boys in tutus, and changing our concept of line. I do think there is enough in ballet that it can evolve. That we can weed out the pain, and the prejudice — and ballet will not be lessened, but reborn.

And so, I have plunged into new waters this week - joining Facebook and beginning a blog.  As a web designer (e.g. see Humboldt Folklife and Marimba One), I have admittedly been resistant to the blog trend, but I have to confess that it is easier to journal in this format than in a more formal one… and too often, the obligations of life leave me little time for anything but journaling!

Thanks to Carolyn, who offered the final nudge to get me to begin a blog proper. I hope that you will find it worth the nudge!