I never got to be the Dying Swan in Swan Lake. What would that have been like? To be able perform the role for an audience. But also, to be a ballet dancer who was that good. What would it have been like to have realized this life-long dream in my own, actual (and not just imaginative) life?
Here’s the thing I know about dreams and dream-realization. The moment of realization, the moment of “I can’t believe this is actually happening,” is the moment. The afterglow may last a few days or weeks, but the moment is the thing, the thing the years of sweat and toil and work is for. Having to live in that space of realization, having to maintain it, with all the unrealistic expectations people have for you as a result of the success (“What next? What will you do that is even better? Who is coming next to knock you off your throne and show that you weren’t that great after all?”) is a lot of hard work.
But perhaps this is rationalization. “It’s not that great to have a lot of money – wealthy people are unhappy too. In fact, they can be more miserable because they have to think about money all the time and worry about people just liking them for their money.” Bullshit. When people say it’s not an advantage to be beautiful or smart that’s bullshit too.
Here’s one true, good thing about dream-realization. Those moments of achievement, those pinnacles, get to stay with you forever, if only in memory. They are yours, part of your unerasable history, and no one can take them away. If you have won at something you actually care about, the winning also opens doors into more choices, more opportunities, more power. It means you can say “no” to things that are less expressive of who you are, things that are mere drudgery without reward.
All this talk of dreams and dream realization is, after all, a high-class problem. I was a full, adult grown-up before I really understood that many, if not most, people do a job that is just that – a job. Not a vocation. Not part of a dream. Not something that makes their pulse race, heat flood into their cheeks, adrenaline drive them forward into being “the best” in that domain.
I get it that there is no shame in doing a job that is just a job – just a way to pay the bills. This is one kind of way to live, and it is not without all reward. Often people who do a job merely because it is a job are not really living in their workspace but somewhere else – in their family lives, in their hobbies, or in their religious communities, for example.
But this is not true for dancers. Dancers live in an alternate reality. For dancers who are serious about dance, dance is not a hobby or a side-gig. It’s everything. Everything else they (we) do is the side gig, including (I’m sorry to say) family life, day jobs, and whatever else is not dance. Dance is what’s real, it’s what is prioritized, it’s the thing for which all other things are done.
So, what would it have been like to be the Dying Swan? It means that I would have had the justification, the ultimate justification, to do what I wanted to do anyway. Dance. Just dance. And nothing else. With all the glory and sacrifice that implies.
Perhaps all dancers are, in some way, dying swans, dying from the moment they become dancers and dead at the moment they stop dancing. In a larger sense, perhaps we all are dying swans.