Introduction to Former Dancer: Keeping the Dancer Inside Alive

The motivation for this blog is to share some reflections on my striving to keep the dancer inside me alive, even though in some ways the dancer I was died after my body stopped dancing. I spent 10 years from ages 6-16 training for a career in professional ballet. Today, about 50 years later, I no longer set foot in a dance class or on a performance stage. My body is aging, getting heavier and less flexible. I can no longer move with elevation, power, and grace I once could. And yet the dancer inside me remains. This blog, and all my writing I will do from now on, is a way to nurture, reawaken and reanimate that dancer.

The posts that I share here will run the gamut of the way that I express myself in words. This expression, like dance, will contain moments of repetition, fluidity, restraint, explosion, circularity, emotional resonance, and rest. I will try to post every few days but this will vary depending on the week. I will invite comments of your own reflections along the lines of the topic of each blog. I intend for this to be a constructive, collaborative, sharing rather than a critique of my thoughts or of others. Please enter this space with the sort of attitude needed to dance with partners that you care for but do not yet know. The photo provided is of me as a child, a long time ago in a second-floor walkup studio next to the old Loews’ movie theatre on 86th street in 1970s New York City. Photo by family friend, Doug Magee.