Dance
Written 29/1/00
by Kat Lai
(Lights come up on KAREN, dressed in tank top and leggings, doing dance warm-ups in an aerobics room. She is not doing them with any visible grace or flexibility. At the back of the stage, there is the door. To one side near the front of the stage is a table on which sits a CD player and a pile of CDs in their covers. Sarah McLachlan plays slowly and seductively in the background. KAREN finally stops and folds her legs to her body in a meditative pose.)KAREN:
Ever since I was little, I've wanted to be a dancer. It's like a hunger inside me that eats at me until I can satisfy it, no matter how temporarily. Yet every time I try to pursue that dream, I walk away disappointed. No, not disappointed, but more like a feeling that my entire world and all my insides have crashed down, rammed into the ground like a huge pile driver had struck me on the head and buried me six feet under.
The truth is that I can't dance. Never could. I tried ballet when I was five for about 6 months; by the end of that period, I was the only student still not able to tell her left foot from her right. All the girls in that class danced at least two feet away from me. Their toes were much too precious to be flattened week after week by the great albatross of the class.
(As she speaks, she pliés a few times awkwardly, then attempts a jété, twisting her ankle in the process. She swears, limps over to her bag and puts on an ankle brace as she continues reminiscing.)
Then, there was tap dancing when I was 10. I started those lessons with an eager heart. To softshoe with all the dexterity of Gene Kelly, and be counted in the ranks of Ginger Rogers and Judy Garland: that was the great aspiration of my heart. (She clunks a few steps and ends with a "CHA!") Of course, I still couldn’t tell my left from my right, and the impact of tap shoes hurt much worse than ballet slippers. (She sighs.) Little Jeannie Moyers, who always stood next to me, even came in with shin pads one day. I think I cried. Either that or I tried harder to kick her. Or maybe both. Mrs. Geppeti did take me aside after class, gave me a hanky and told me that karate class was at 4 not 2.
Well, my dream of being the next Ginger Rogers ended after about a month. The day sticks in my memory no matter how hard I try. It was the day of my class’s first dance performance. I was the last in a row of rosy-cheeked tulips, tripping along to some bright springtimey tune. Tripping is an accurate term for what happened that day. I ...almost... had all the steps down.
(She dances a little off-balance, and calls out the steps, á la Mrs. Geppeti.) Fa-LAP-ball-change, Fa-LAP-ball-change, fa-LAP-ball-change, step, step, turn, wait, wait. Shu-ffle-HOP-step-fa-LAP-step, shu-ffle-HOP-step-fa-LAP-step, shu-ffle-step to-the-side, shuffle-step to-the-front. AND step-kick, step-toe, step-kick-step-toe-step-KICK!
(pause.)I knocked down all ten little girls like bowling pins. The promising dance career of Mrs. Geppeti's prize pupil was cut short that day thanks to the laws of inertia and the metre drop off the stage into the orchestra pit. How could I possibly face any of them ever again?
After a two year hiatus from lessons of any sort, my mother urged me to try jazz. I actually managed to stick that out for almost two years. And this was not without the fierce conviction of my teacher, Miss Swansen, that she would mold me, the "unrelenting penguin" as she called me, into a graceful swan. She always did regard me as a challenge. "Karen," she said when she first saw me dance, "we'll make a dancer of you yet. Yes, we will. Even if I have to sell your pretty soul to the devil." After my first group class, she decided I would be better off taking private lessons. More for the safety of the other students, I think, than for my own instruction. A year and a half and several wall collisions later, there was still no progress in sight. I decided then that it was never to be. I came away with the basics, which I could barely manage, and a more ... resilient... body.
Even now, so many years later, I still can't quell that urge in me to dance. I've proved to myself over and over that I can’t do it. Yet still, every night, I take my stereo and a few CDs, and come down here to the studio. I put on Sarah McLachlan and do the warm-ups that Miss Swansen drilled into me, stretching my inflexible body until it cries mercy. Miss Swansen would beg to differ, but I've always found Sarah McLachlan to be the perfect music to warm-up to. She thinks the music is too depressing to start out with, but hey, if you're about to face an hour of unrealistic dreams, it's the best thing there is.
(KAREN walks over to the CD player and turns off the music.)
I don't know why dance is so important to me. It's not like I saw Karen Kain in Swan Lake one year and became so choked with emotion that I felt I had to do it or die. Heck, I've never even seen Karen Kain dance, and I found Swan Lake to be a positive bore. But every time I hear a lilting melody or a pounding beat, I just feel an incredible, magnetic pull. It's like every pore in my body is screaming, "Please, please, let me dance with you! Let the rhythm course through me just this once!" At home, I devised all sorts of awkward routines, breaking lamps, dishes, tabletops and dad's prize flowers. (She pauses) I still remember that day when mom had to call the firemen to the house when I put my leg through the drywall in the in hallway and couldn’t get it out. (She shrugs, then chuckles.) The look on their faces. (She sighs and changes the CD as she continues speaking.)
Everything I did and still do is centred on my need for graceful movement, the need to feel one with music, the need to be carried away on the wings of sound and harmony. And in every movement, every object that gets in the way and breaks, that need is denied, trashed, crushed, flattened, repulsed.
(Frustrated, she pounds the play button. New Age music like Mike Oldfield or Beautiful World - majestic, powerful, beautiful - begins to play.)
I always put on the most inspirational music I can find and try to let the music sweep me away. But nothing happens. I sit and sit, and listen and listen but there's nothing. No ideas, no oneness with the music. I try a few tentative gestures, steps, figures (she does them clumsily and out of synch), but they are banal and absurd. Just a bunch of half-formed jumps and stupid turns. (She stops dancing in frustration.) Nothing that could ever wow an audience on stage. Unless I fell off; now there's a way to create a show! (She sits.) Yep, I have the soul of a dancer, but all the grace of Preston Manning speaking French and all the creative power of a rock. Yet sometimes, it's almost as if I could just close my eyes, and...
(The music swells. KAREN lies down, legs in the air. In time to the music, she moves her legs around in a large circle a few times. Then, eyes closed, she gets up gracefully and begins to dance, her movements reflecting the motion and the meaning of the music. Suddenly, she runs into the table with a resounding crash, and the music stops. She opens her eyes as if startled from a dream, and walks dejectedly over to the CD player, checking the time on her watch.)
Well, my time is up.
(Through the next speech, she turns it off and takes the CD out, and puts it back in its case. Then, she puts a T-shirt or sweat top on over her tank top, puts on her shoes, and packs up her stuff.)
I don't know why I keep coming down here night after night. I don't know why I keep begging for the muse to come and visit me. I know I'll never get a reply. But still, it's something I have to do. Something that I just need more than anything in the world. So I just keep coming down to the studio and I just keep on trying. Night after night after night. Maybe I believe that perseverance will pay off one day. And maybe it will. I dunno.
(KAREN picks the stereo, and the rest of her things. She moves towards the exit.)
In the meantime, I'll just have to dream that my body can respond to every move I want to make, and that I can choreograph masterpieces. In the meantime, I'll just be the albatross with the dancer's heart. (She opens the door and pauses by the light switch.) After all, the albatross is still graceful in the air.
(She switches off the light and exits.)
Home
Stepping Stones
The Fountain
sKrATch Pad
Dec. 6/89
© Kat Lai, 2002.
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