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Keeping the Dancer Inside Alive

  • Two Salsa Poems by Joshua M. Hall

    Random Saturday at Salsa   No more docs for half a year, nor loves till who knows when.   But there’s always room to dance through abyss’ gift of emptiness.   And if nothing else be creatable ex nihilo, let there be swift joy   between last week of sorrow and next week of sorrow.…

  • Poems “Walk Gently” and “Reading the Body” by Ann Moradian

    Walk Gently…   Walk gently with feet that listen tenderly. It is my body you mark with each step.   Know yourself by the feel of the air as it breathes through the pores of your skin. It is my soul you breathe in your lungs in your blood in your heart.   Regard the…

  • Imagine You Are a Dancer

    Do you know where you are? Can you feel your backside pressing into the surface on which you are now sitting? Can you feel your head sitting on the perch of your neck, head swiveling gently so your eyes can survey your surroundings? What do your eyes take in? Can you see colors? Are they…

  • Senses in Ballet Class

    Sight: I see myself in the mirror and my extended body in space. I see the other dancers moving around me in lines, planes and circles. Smell: I smell the dusty, powdery air of rosin and old buildings with sooty window frames. When changing for class, I smell hair spray, the hot smell of blood…

  • What’s in the Rosin Box?

    There was always a rosin box in one corner of the dance studios I took classes in as a child. Ballet dancers rely on white, powdery rosin on their shoes to keep from slipping and sliding on the floor. Getting the amount right amount is part of the art. Too much is too sticky and…

  • Getting Out of the Race

    I once had a near-meltdown because my favorite coffee mug was broken. Worse, it was broken outside of my range of control by someone else. I haven’t had enough therapy in my life to quite unpack why this event was so triggering for me. But I do think that in some way this desire to…

  • Dancers and Horses

    Last Saturday was the 151st Kentucky Derby where I live in Louisville, KY. I don’t know that much about breeding, raising, and training racehorses or how they are treated or what their lives are like. So that won’t be the focus of this blog post. Instead, I want to make a loose analogy between top,…

  • Dancing Queen

    I went to the wedding this past weekend where the bride was a Louisville Ballet dancer and many of the guests were her friends from the Company. The bride glided gracefully down the aisle in a perfectly fitted white dress, surefooted and with no performance anxiety whatsoever. She led, without seeming to lead, the first…

  • Unreasonable Diets

    Dancers, especially ballet dancers, have to be strong, flexible and (typically, for the aesthetic norms of the form) lean. Extra weight also provides added stress on joints (especially during jumps and on pointe) and can impede partnered lifts. For many dancers, particular during adolescent body changes due to hormones, this need to have low body…

  • On Dance Moms (Not the TV Show)

    When I was a child and teen in dance, I had a mother who cared about and who was invested in helping me to progress as much as possible as a dancer. But I did not have a Dance Mom. A Dance Mom goes beyond ally and facilitator and takes on the role of personal…