splinterswerve: Posture by Michelle Bodnar

asking my mom if I could take lessons, and shortly after, I remember being manipulated, confused, into a leotard and tights for the first time. Scratchy, tight, dry and everywhere. My mother had to help me, pulling the tights up into places I didn’t know I had at the time. I was a grown-up three-year-old, and wondered if I had made a mistake.

My father took a picture of that first day, where I am standing, uncomfortably, up against the living room wall, my bobbed hair curled under severely, black patent tap shoes tied with ribbons shining on my feet. The leotard was an awful pink, like old cotton candy, and rippled with my unceremoniously stuffed baby fat.

It was a few years before I realized I had thinned. Perhaps a couple more before I noticed the muscles in my calves when I stood on my toes, the wicked ease with which I was able to hold a pretty pose for as long as I wanted.

Lessons were occupied mainly by stretching, sit-ups, push-ups, isolations and barre work, all pitting opposites against each other, all working to build the whole. Hamstrings and quadriceps, abs and lats, biceps and triceps, counter and balance, everything working towards position, always amassing strength.

Worried about appearance, dance built in me flawless posture and a confidence of carriage that could even have been deemed as intimidating. Concerned about social propriety, dance was a reasonable interest, and its rigours ensured I would never be embarrassingly uncoordinated in gym class. Techniques became so difficult I didn’t blame the boys for not trying.

And after all the stretches, push ups, sit ups and muscle isolations, we were finally allowed to dance. We had finally earned the right. And then we pirouetted, split-leaped, switch-kicked and fouettéd ourselves into oblivion. After a few consultations our bodies would react expertly. We could coax ourselves into anything. It was thrilling.

Distractingly, but more and more often, odd and endearing, sweet eccentrics began to arrive, suggesting different things about dance and meaning. I, and others of some talent, were suddenly slipped into tailored bodysuits adorned with sequins and fringe, and thrust, smiling, onto stages larger than our homes to be judged for somebody’s sake. I ruined most of my mother’s make up creating a flawless mask.

It was all a beautiful distraction, I thought. I was simply preparing myself for the real world. Respected persons could not dance for a living, but the dedication I had applied and consciousness I had learned would surely prove assets for the future.

It happens to be now, however, and I am slouching in front of the computer. Years later, and I am disappointed by the results of my conservative optimism.

Disappointed in myself. By how easily I traded one self for an other, saddened that I thought it wouldn’t matter. The beauty of strength, the idealism of form, the comfort of owning a reactive machine – all of that deemed unnecessary as I determined practical experience the most important.

It had taken a lot of time to build support for my spine, which at this moment seems easily bent by a heavy, heavy world.

I think of that picture and feel the same way as I did then. Clad in an outfit that doesn’t represent who I am, wondering if I’ll ever feel right in my clothes.

A YouTube video comes up first on the search list. I am stymied. There was something I had been expecting, but it had nothing to do with YouTube. Frustrated, I exit the page, but quickly go back and click on the link. A 48-second video plays of a lithe young gentleman from the Philadelphia Ballet standing perfectly at the barre. With legs that look gorgeously capable, he performs the venerable plié in the first, second, third and fourth positions with liquid precision. Every movement is impeccable. Absolute.

I stand up and grasp the back of my ergonomic chair and ready myself for movement.

I bring myself up to the height I was used to, using what Joan Crawford referred to as “the Hook”, and I feel a soothing warmth in the back of my neck, and then my brain tickles familiarly. I stand in the second position, the simplest, and find my centre.