dances

I wanted to be a ballerina when I was little, because I loved The Nutcracker, and then I realized that I was too clumsy and awkward and undisciplined to really do that kind of thing. That kind of otherworldliness meant a short stint in community theatre, which was disappointing to me, in part because everything was so cutesy and not nearly so wondrous as the pictures that informed my imagination.

One of my friends is a dance teacher and it's fascinating to watch her choreograph and work movement through music in a way that I can't even comprehend. She also had catalogs full of costumes that we'd go through looking for things that would work for the kids she teaches, and most of them were hideously ugly and extremely disturbing when seen on tweenage girls that made them look like tiny hookers (for what it's worth, one can't obtain such catalogs unless one is a dance instructor probably due to its being pedophile fodder). Another once danced in Europe and told me that the world is brutal, and not as beautiful as it looks onstage.

But what gets me is not necessarily the flaunting of bodily form but the lack of beauty in its exhibition. It seems like so many of them are stuck in some kind of quasi-1980s MTV netherworld of flourescence and fishnets, and while I like some of what I've seen in modern dance, I don't understand the sartorial choices either, especially in comparison with these...

backstory here...