There are many different types of dance of course, but the three that I do are ballet, modern, and hip hop. Since I have moderate cerebral palsy, I often feel like I need to attempt to attain the ultimate epitome of a dancer's physique to compensate for the lessening of technical [kinesthetic] skill that I have due to my poor motor control. Over the course of my teenage years, I have had to learn to realize that this is pure overcompensation that is far too excessive by all means. But I still sometimes wonder if it is accurate. After all, ballerinas and modern dancers are inherently regarded as superior if they have skeletal sides, but I try my very hardest to combat this line of thinking, not only for myself, but for other dancers as well. Yet, facts preference for dancers with flat stomachs and visible shoulder blades, collarbones, and ribs are still extremely pervasive as much as we like to shut our eyes and blindfold ourselves into a eutopian bubble that states otherwise.
--Example of a Ballerina Body (Olga Kurraevva)
My teenage years were rough because I became a woman, not a skeleton anymore; I started to lose my frame of a body, my fairy body and that scared me in all honesty. So, then I started putting more and more pressure to maintain that dancer body whose mind desperately wanted to maintain a girl who could wear belly shirts and low-rise sweatpants and crop tops without something under or over it and leotards and tutus and articles of clothing that only thin people could possibly wear.
When my eating disorder had reached it's very worst, I started to wreak havoc on my body in ways that I'd prefer not to discuss. But essentially, I lost some weight, but I was never able to keep it off. My body had made me eat eventually due to my history with low blood sugar. So I started depleting virtually every ounce of my energy with dance itself. I stayed the same physique, much to my dismay and I did not attain the desired and pernicious effect of seeing my flesh turn to bone. I yelled, I screamed, I cried and came to the disappointing realization of dreadfulness that subjecting myself to a succession of a stomach pratically made of water, an ill-tempered demeanor, unwanted persperation, and dizziness was serving me no justice than little add-ons of control and the [unhealthy] release of endorphins. I hated this harsh reality more than anything.
Nothing about me had the qualities of an elite dancer -- I was klutzy by default, spastic, gimpy, tight, and most of all, in my eyes, not skinny enough. Dance is about a beautiful body, and my eating disorder convinced me that unless the Teddy Grahams bearwas gorgeous, I was certainly NOT considered so either by any stretch of the imagination. I was nowhere near close to having the sexiness of Nina Sayers from Black Swan or of my most looked up to dancer, Olga Kuraevva or my hip hop dance all-star acquaintance, Kate. So I had no passion, no drive, no desire for sex, dance, or the pursuit of happiness anymore. Here I was -- a dancer always claiming to herself that dance had been her eternal passion... here I was -- a dancer, who in all senses, happened to be the ONLY one who was [directly] pressuring herself to lose weight. No one had ever told me to lose weight, especially not for dancing purposes, so it was subtly ludicrous that I was doing so myself. I guess I want to be perfect, I guess I wanted to be sexy, I guess I wanted all the exacerbated pain and fatigue from dancing my ass off to actually MEAN something for once in my fluctuant life -- I guess I didn't want to be ostracized from the elite anymore than I already was, I guess I wanted my CP to not matter nearly as much anymore. I guess I wanted to go to NYU or Julliard. I guess I wanted to feel good.
Now, I guess I do feel good in SOME respects about it, feeling good and vital about my presence as a dancer again. I have regained my passions, my strength, my carthartic acts, and my artistic visions within my dancing in the fields of ballet and modern dance and have tried very hard to be able to look in the mirror and see arm exercises that show healthy bones - and ultimately a dancer with drive, swagger, soul,, grace, strength, and all things in between without the detrimental and disproportional omission of a body worth celebrating even in belly shirts, crop tops, sweatpants, leotards, and tutus. And I guess I feel not 100% good, but alright to maintain myself.\
Olga Kurraevva - Contemporary Ballet Improvisation
Built on Stilts Dance Festival 2009 with Kate and Evan - Hip Hop Performance
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