There is Life Outside Dancing
January 27th 2009 22:41
Sydney Festival in the Domain 2008
- Don’t move that arm.
When the x-ray guy said that my mind went: “Houston, we have a problem!”
I fell off a horse at the beginning of the year and injured my arm. It was getting better everyday but then, it stopped improving so I went to see a doctor.
X-ray done: it is fractured; had been for 15 days. Waiting for the specialist in the waiting room I had tears rolling down my cheeks while I was thinking “my salsa congress! My performance!”
I’m a dancer. Any doctor will tell you the worst patients in the whole wide world are in this order:
1) Doctors, they do not admit they are sick;
2) Dancers, they know they are sick but will not miss the rehearsals, “give me something fast I have to heal in the next hour” attitude, and they always have bulimia or anorexia in different degrees;
3) Sportists, same as dancers but not necessarily bulimic or anorexic.
The doctors at the emergency room were looking at me as if I was a freak. (No, I am not). The first doctor asked quietly:
- Have you been dancing?
I smiled a cheeky smile and said:
- Yes, but only with one arm. To prove it I showed my good arm, though I didn’t seem to have impressed him much…
He seemed robbed for words. Didn’t say a thing. I think he was considering calling psychiatry on me. Fortunately “they” didn’t show up. I could have been committed if they did.
The nurse kept looking at me and tsk-tsking, then she asked once:
- Didn’t it hurt?
What they don’t get is that dancing does never know total absence of pain. You always have at least a blister, or a painful muscle, a few bruises from the tricks and dips, etc. Not counting the accidents, the falls, the hurting feet after dancing eight hours straight. So a fractured bone is painful but bearable, as all those other pains are.
Anyway now I have this broken wing and after my fair share of crying decided to get the best out of it.
I will have to understand that there is life outside dancing.
The other day I went out with some new friends. We were at one of their houses. I hope I wasn’t looking too stupid because it’s how I felt. They were playing this music trivia game. All I could think was: “I’m an alien!” I had no idea. There is a whole universe I don’t know about! It was if they were talking another language. Complete gibberish. I seldom recognised one name of one group or artist and I had no idea which Motown act scored the most different #1 singles in the same year. I only know what Motown is because of a choreography I saw…
Oh, I love music, I dance them, I listen to them, but in my ipod they are always listed as track 1; track 2; track 3. I don’t get it, what’s the point in buying the original CDs if the songs still appear as track 1; track 2; track 3? I’m probably doing something wrong here, but never have time to sort it out before the next rehearsal.
What stroke me that night was the thought: “These are normal people, not dancers. The kind that go out for other than dancing and have other interests and have lives full of other… things!”
I cannot imagine my life without dancing. I had to stop for a few years and I remember that page of my life as my “dark age”… none the less I can only believe now that this fractured bone has come to show me that there is something else out there!
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