time is a flat circle

[ID: a black and white photo of me, in a ballet studio, sitting on the floor in a straddle-split stretch, with the words “time is a flat circle” in green type above me.]

CW: This post is about ballet. There is discussion of illness, injury, body dysmorphia, and the generally unhealthy atmosphere that ballet culture creates especially during the late ‘90s - early ‘00s.

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I started my first blog when I was 16 years old. In a rigorous pre-professional Vaganova-style ballet program, I’d found out earlier in the year that I had bone spurring at the back of my ankle, and after finding a surgeon who worked with ballet dancers and NBA players, scheduled surgery to remove the spurs so I could dance pain-free. Cooped up and doing PT, my mom suggested I start a blog as a creative outlet. At the time she was active in an online artists community and had a blog of her own. So, I did. I’ve written about what blogging meant to me in those years and the years following - but not much about ballet.

I recovered well from surgery and returned to training - and kept blogging, a necessary outlet and avenue for making friends when your whole life is ballet, and the atmosphere in your studio doesn’t create friendly peers.

I ended up not dancing professionally for a ballet company. At the time this felt like a cruel joke of the fates and poor timing - I was incredibly ill during company audition season, and after recovering, in an effort to stay fit long enough to hopefully not be “too old” at 19 next audition season, I ended up truly messing up my hips and back while dancing for a Horton-style modern company - a movement style focused deeply on movements opposite from the turned-out nature of ballet. What was supposed to keep me active and prepared to move back into ballet, kept me from pursuing it.

I went on to teach (cliché as it is, I love teaching) - and then the world outside ballet, and financial survival took over. I kept ballet in my back pocket - substitute teaching when I had capacity. My life in books began. My health got weirder. I moved on.

It is, all in all, a net positive I never joined a ballet company. Sometimes I tell myself I’d have never gotten a job anyway, that I wasn’t very good, that I was “too big” (laughable at my then redacted weight that was malnourished due to undiagnosed celiac disease and underweight, but the atmosphere was deeply unhealthy and I was considered a “bigger” dancer, and I often bought into this lie) - but at my core I don’t believe these things. I was capable and strong, I had deep technical training, I certainly wasn’t amazing, but I was good-enough corps de ballet material for a number of companies. But, we tell ourselves half-truths to dull loss and grief - especially when survival takes precedence.

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Despite the long term damage ballet causes - emotional, physical, mental - I’ve found that it keeps a firm grasp on you nonetheless. No matter how negatively impacted, I’ve yet to speak to another product of intense ballet training who truly hates ballet. Only those that grieve it. That wish to see it bettered. That have an idealized and “safer” version of ballet in their minds eye. Myself included. If anything I’m hopeful at how many victims of the ballet of years past there are that focus on creating better ballet for everyone. One that’s focused on injury prevention as well as excellence, that faces its racism and makes reparations and repairs for dancers of color, that faces its misogyny, its homophobia and transphobia, its borderline or outright child abuse, etc. etc. etc.

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I started writing this months ago, long before ballet made headlines with Timothee Chalamet’s deeply uneducated remarks about ballet and opera being “dying” art forms that no one cares about. Remarks, that upon learning that the women in his family, for generations, have been involved with NYCB, reek of potential misogyny. The reaction to these comments has proven him wrong - so many people value ballet and aren’t trying to “save” it from anything, they’re actively pushing it into the future, a future it was never in danger of losing. Misty Copeland, after retiring recently, and getting a hip replacement late last year, performed at the Oscars. Ballet is not dead or dying.

No, I started writing this in November. When I got some really really shitty news.

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[ID: an x-ray image of my ankle, yes MY ankle, on a grey background, with the words “sometimes we don’t get the answers we want” in green type off to the left. can you see the bone spurring and lack of cartilage? i can… ]

A few years ago, while working at my bookshop job, I noticed my ankle was starting to REALLY bother me. I’d had joint issues, and the introduction of this acute pain along with other factors ended up leading to my psoriatic arthritis diagnosis. We knew something more was wrong with this ankle, but there was no inciting incident to speak of. We monitored, but doctors didn’t really have much to say other than I needed to focus on “low-impact” exercise - even though this impacts far more than that. I can’t even do squats (or their ballet counterpart plies) due to the mobility issues this has caused in my ankle flexion. I’m not a dancer “anymore” so how much do I really need the range of motion? etc. was the line I was being constantly fed. But the pain persisted, and got worse, and even my ability to walk properly has been increasingly impacted.

So, in November I saw an ankle specialist, I got an MRI. I thought that maybe I had new bone spurring in a different area, that I could remove these potential spurs and get back to life as normal like I’d done more than a decade ago. I’m teaching again, I’d like to be able to demonstrate jumping, which I cannot. I’d like to be able to do a demi plie properly - perhaps the most pathetic ask I can possibly imagine as it’s the simplest and most foundational exercise, but I mechanically can no longer do it properly. I’d like to take a full class. I’m done with being told that I don’t “need” my ankle in the ways that I did when I “was” a dancer. Heck, that I don’t “need” my ankle to operate properly enough to walk without a limp, which I do now. It all started feeling deeply condescending. Now that my energy levels are better, that my arthritis is being treated, I feel like being active in a way I haven’t had the capacity to be in ages - but my ankle is preventing this - and so far, doctors don’t seem to want to actually do anything about it.

There was obvious (even to me) cartilage loss and bone spurring in my x-rays. So my theory started giving me hope. I can get those spurs removed. I can’t fix the cartilage loss, but it will help and I can move more etc., but the news was not as hopeful. My MRI shows not only more spurring in multiple places, and worse cartilage loss than the x-rays, but the bones of the ankle (tibia and talus) are starting to wear away, forming holes in which “pocket” cysts have made their home. The answers: I need an ankle replacement. The insult: I’m “too young” to get one due to the lifespan of the replacement joints and insurance companies hold on who gets what treatments regardless of need.

I have cycled through various stages of grief. I up until that point - despite probably needing to on numerous occasions - had never broken into tears in a doctor’s office when receiving bad news.

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What now? 5 months later?

I’m no closer to knowing what to do. My options are fuse the joint now - which I truly want to avoid - or wait until I’m nearly 60 and replace my ankle. I have calls in to other specialists, but in researching I don’t see a lot of hope for finding someone who will replace my ankle, and even then there are many things, jumping included, I will never be able to do again replaced ankle or not.

When Misty Copeland had her hip replaced, and leading up to the replacement - doctors told her not to dance again. This was bad for the pre-op hip, and bad for the replaced hip, but Misty is a ballet dancer. She danced before and after the replacement. There is, for those that trained so hard and for so long, an inherent drive to keep dancing - or in my case to keep training. I was never a fan of performing. I have reconciled myself to the fact that I will never jump or go en pointe¹ again - but I have never found a form of exercise that compares to ballet barre.

I know that as time goes on the grief will dull, and that I’ll adapt and find new forms of movement, find new ways to incorporate what I can keep from ballet. But that doesn’t change how I feel now. As I reflect I think a lot about Sins Invalid, absolute visionaries in the world of reimagining dance and movement for disabled bodies.

I don’t know where I’m going from here. It feels so weird to be so invested in a form of movement and exercise when I never “went pro” but that doesn’t change how intensely it shaped my entire life through to my early twenties. Doesn’t change how I feel. Doesn’t change that I likely will never move in the ways I want my body to move again.

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Sometimes I dream a pirouette en pointe so vividly it feels like I’m actually executing it - I wake from those dreams sad, but wanting more of them so I can keep this muscle memory alive in some way, so I don’t forget how that feels.

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Time is a flat circle. I began sharing my thoughts online because my left ankle betrayed me - and here I am again almost twenty years later, doing the same thing.

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Some ballet related links:

• The Dance Data Project is really cool, and gathers a lot of data on the dance world including related to gender equity etc.

• Ballez is a company I learned about when reading Turning Pointe. A queer ballet company that is truly a bright spot in the world of ballet and the future so many of us imagine for it.

• My “Essential Ballet Books” list. A mix of technique manuals, teaching aids, and dictionaries, as well as non-fiction books on ballet and ballet dancers.

1. fun pointe fact! your ankles support up to 12x or more of your bodyweight while en pointe.

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