There are so many layers of irony at play here, no doubt referential to the depth of my regret. For the bystander, there is one layer: 'Oh no, the injury had to happen just before your show, what a shame." To close friends and family, it perhaps goes a little further: "Oh babe, you'd been training so hard for it, so determined to nail it..." But to myself, the irony is: "Just when you had stopped being afraid of failure, just when you had removed the last few bricks in that wall which had stood forever." Anyway, what does it matter how ironic something is? As my choreography teacher often chooses to answer me, "it is what it is."
So this is the bit where I pull together the scraps of positivity that I can find, or that I've been given, so that this feels less like a Loss and more like a No Big Deal or even better, an Unclassified Happening.*
Yes, so I don't get to actually taste the satisfaction that I've been carefully baking for the last few months. I don't get to actually experience the scene that I've imagined countless times, each time with more detail. The sweat trickling down my back, arms and eyelashes, as I smile to the applause of the audience, pride and relief flooding through my adrenaline-throbbing body, accompanying the warm affirmation of self-worth, evidence I can use to thwart all that toxic, lethargic self-doubt that lingers otherwise on the morning bus, sometimes while I'm dancing, often when I go to sleep and always before I've begun my warm-up. April doesn't get to feel like the sweet, sweet reward to an intensely disciplined and dedicated March. In between both today, I'm not sure in which I belong.
Oh right, the positives. It's an insignificant, short-term injury that if I rest, will have no long-term consequences, and I even get a hunky-hero scar. It's just not short-term enough. Karen the A&E nurse reckons I'll be up and dancing in 7-10 days time. And, I don't have to archive away this level of fitness and stamina. Perhaps I can change my understanding of performance preparation so that instead of 1 month at 170% capacity followed by a period of rest at 20% capacity, I maintain activity at 80% capacity, performance or no performance. I’ve never worked on my pieces this much; surely they can only get better, once I do perform them? I worked through a huge mental block this month, ending in newfound confidence. Perhaps I can hold onto that confidence, and direct its validation to myself, rather than the audience that I was otherwise reliant on to provide it. Surely I’ll benefit from such an exercise in insecurity-eradication. Maybe I can re-focus my attention during the troughs of training to the moment; to the experience of striving at its most present, rather than stepping stones to a performance, that ultimately may never come. And maybe that last re-negotiation of my relationship with training will make all the difference to my career as a dancer. Maybe.
* Wise old Chinese man Sai learned not to classify things on a binary good-bad basis, through his horse. Read a very curt rendition of 'The Lost Horse' here.