At night I used to walk down 55th Street (in high school my after-school classes were at Ballet Arts at City Center) in the cold with my hair slicked back to the sides of my sweaty head. The feeling of the wind slapping against the side of my head, knowing I should be wearing a hat (my bun wouldn’t fit in one), would lash my head and cheeks, and burn my ears and chest when I breathed.
Waiting for the crosstown bus to the East side, one of two that would take me home, I would feel exhilarated. My after-school ballet class ended with the “big jumps” combination that would take us diagonally across the floor from the back left corner to front right. The piano accompanist would bang out a “coda with motivation in it!” and our blood would pound as it raced through our legs, torsos, and outstretched arms.
This was the final, ecstatic, cumulative big exertion of a day that had started before school with relevés and stretching, passed through one ballet class and one modern class, sat through academic work, hauled a bookbag over my shoulder, and hooked a dance-bag over one forearm. I had caught two buses to after-school ballet, done my wake-up sit-ups before class, and the hardest part was finally done. There was still homework to do and stretching before bed but none of that was the kind of exertion that brought sweat.
Summer sweat happened during the long days of summer in dance studios with large fans rotating in the corners of dusty rooms (no, there was no air conditioning). Summer sweat would pool and puddle under us at out places at the barre and leave us so lightheaded that we craved salty pretzels from a hotdog stand or soup. That sweat was like axle grease (but what would I know about axle grease?) – lubricating our joints, making our stretching looser and our turnout easier. Even our injuries hurt less.
Summer sweat, too, created a kind of euphoric high. There wouldn’t be the slapping cold wind or burning ears, but after sweating through the coda I’d feel so light that I could float. No heavy bookbag with textbooks, no heavy coat, no worries about upcoming tests or not-enough-hours-in-the-day. Extra weight was easier to take off and keep off in summer too, somehow – it melted away. I loved my hair slick with sweat, then, and when the sweat poured down my body it cleansed me in a way that made me feel light and free.
I don’t sweat in the same way now. I wish I did.