When you’re a dancer the first thing you do upon awakening is a body scan. What is sore? What is tight? How is my energy? What do I need to eat? How should I begin to move today?
You may know right away that more stretching and a gentler lead-in than usual will be needed. Or more food and water. Or that all systems feel right and it’s a day that you can push harder into the challenge and improvement realm.
Your body is your instrument but it’s also the place where you live. Your body carries you and moves with you. It is something you command but it also has a mind of its own. When there is a conflict sometimes you need to override its pushback. “No. We are not stopping now. You can do one more.” Sometimes you are right to do this. Sometimes wrong, and then your body gets overused, overstressed, and injured.
You body is also the place where your energy moves and flows. Can you extend it with one leg in a développé that ends high above your head through the tip of one toe? Can you elevate it off the ground in a grand jeté? Can you spin while spotting so you don’t get dizzy? Can you expand and contract with grace and control. Can you decide when to elevate, when to descend, and when to balance and hold. And hold. And hold. And … now! Come down by rolling through your foot so there is no sound?
You feel the music — the beat, the tempo, the melodic line. You can dance within it, like a fish swimming in a stream. Like a fish you can let the current carry you along. You can swim with it, cognizant of the other bodies around you. Or you can swim against the current. Unlike a fish (perhaps) you can also have a conversation with the music. You can dance on the downbeat or on the upbeat. In a syncopated rhythm. In conversation with the music. What you cannot do, unless intentionally, is ignore it.
You are always watchful, always checking. You check the mirror in the studio to see if the positions you feel are the positions reflected. You check where the other dancers are. You are attuned, constantly, to the dance teacher or rehearsal director and what they are doing. You mirror, interpret, and match. You mark the steps and components of a combination with your mind but also with smaller half-dance-movements of your body. When you are dancing you are in sync with the mirror, in sync with the combination, in sync with its relationship to the music. You make constant adjustments, correcting any missteps or marks outside the lines with repetitive practice.
At the end of many hours of practice, you are hungry. You are fatigued. You are sweaty. You are sore. You do what you need to do to be able to start the work again the next day – if you go to school you do that. If you go to work, you do that. You take a hot bath to soothe your muscles and clean anything that is sweaty or raw. You apply ice where needed to mitigate injuries. You talk to other people sometimes, nondancers, but these are all on the periphery. Your life, your real life, is as a dancer. It is not a hobby, even though it is something you do. It is who you are.