On dance... and taking a break

Dear Pole,

We need to talk.

I think it’s pretty obvious that things aren’t great between us; things haven’t been great between us for quite some time now.  I’ve been trying to convince myself for a long time that it’s just a rough patch, that if I just keep working harder then I’ll get through it and things will suddenly become wonderful again.  But I think I need to stop lying to myself.

Pole, you and I used to have something amazing.  When I first met you, I was a nervous and bored young woman who had very little upper body strength and a yearning for something more in my life.  As soon as I met you, I fell head-over-heels in love.  In you, I found confidence, strength, ambition, and beauty of movement that I had never experienced before.  I was driven to improve myself, to learn, and to seek challenges.  Most of all, I had fun.  That first lesson, almost four years ago, when my four girlfriends and I walked into the studio at Parramatta, looked at each other and said, “oh dear lord, what have we got ourselves into?” was the start of a hilarious and joyous love affair.  We puffed our way through Zahra’s warm-up (while thinking that here was clearly one of the coolest chicks in existence), giggled our way through class, which mostly consisted of us just trying to hang on to the poles, and left the studio feeling exhilarated and energetic.  Over the following year we improved rapidly, made new friends, learned new moves, and had a fantastic time along the way.  Different people came and went for their own reasons, but I stayed true to you, believing that here was a passion that would never fade; here was a dream that would define the rest of my life.

I don’t remember exactly when things started to go sour.  It was certainly long after I started competing and performing; I remember the first shows – an equal mixture of terror, hope, and giddy excitement.  I remember my third show, walking off backstage afterwards and whispering to myself “Oh my god, they loved me; I nailed it!!”  I had never felt this sort of wondrous satisfaction before, or indeed, since.  Neither was it when I struggled to move up from Intermediate 3 to Advanced Intro – although that was a long and difficult task.  It wasn’t when I was rejected for showcases and competitions, or when I did less-than-stellar shows, although these were almost certainly contributors.

No, I can’t pinpoint it, but at some point a slow descent began; a slide into a painful place, where instead of pole being a light in my life that radiated joy and satisfaction, it began to become a light that shone on all my faults, and highlighted my own self-doubts.  Of course there had always been dancers at much higher levels than me; there will always be; but I started comparing myself to them in a way that, rather than motivating me to reach higher, only served to magnify how lacking I was in so many ways.  Instead of merely admiring a beautiful slim dancer, I would notice how much fatter I was than her.  Instead of simply marvelling at a dancer’s strength and grace, I would berate myself on my comparative weakness and clumsiness.  And, most of all, when I would hear praise being heaped upon so-and-so because she’s only been dancing for x number of months and yet she’s already in advanced, I would fly into a rage at myself for being so far behind.  If these girls could all become incredible dancers in such a short amount of time, why on earth couldn’t I?  Of course, for a long time I assured myself that every dancer is different, but eventually the negativity overwhelmed me and I became convinced, irrationally, that my differences were due to laziness, to heaviness, to an innate defect of propensity to failure that I could only beat out of myself through hard work and dedication.

Not surprisingly, this worked, for a little while.  Ten+ hours per week of dance is bound to see a leap in strength and skill, at first.  I was ecstatic that I had apparently found the answer, and I was prepared to sacrifice, if not everything, at least many hitherto important aspects of my life in pursuit of the ultimate goal – To Be As Good As The Other Girls.  But as the months wore on, and turned into a year, and then two, my body began to give up.  I’m lucky that I’ve only ever had relatively minor injuries from overuse, and that I’ve (hopefully) not done any permanent damage due to my unachievable and ridiculous schedule of training.

Of course, my predictable response for a long time (and even up until recently) was that I must not be working hard enough.  It didn’t occur to me that the reason I’d plateaued and even gone backwards in some areas was because my body was exhausted.  I piled on more classes, sought out private lessons with many different teachers, and continued to focus on my failings.  I started to cheat myself, and instead of continuing with a move that I was too fatigued to practice, I would simply remove it from my repertoire and hope it never came up again.  The result of this has been disastrous – I’ve ended up in advanced class, as I can technically do the required moves, but my overall skill level is patchy and inconsistent.  Instructors and peers assume that I can dance at an advanced level, but I can’t, and it’s an awful feeling when I see that they realise this.

My final resolution came to me after class tonight, although it’s been building for weeks.  Due to work and other personal commitments, I’ve not been to a class in almost 3 weeks, and I was alarmed to find that I enjoyed the time away from pole immensely.  I arrived at class tonight determined to work harder than ever, and I did.  I powered through the warm-up and stretches, I completed the technique exercises, and I tried my hardest on the combination we were taught.  But at the end of class, our teacher told us that we would each be required to get up in front of the class and perform the combination for assessment.  My heart started pounding and I began to feel physically sick.  I wanted nothing more than to be far away from that class, as I watched all of the other dancers execute the moves, not perfectly, but competently and with no major problems.  All received smiles and a happy little applause from their classmates.  I waited until last, hoping that the teacher would forget to call me.  She didn’t.  Ten other dancers had done this combination competently.  Then there was me.  A dancer of four years, much longer than most (if not all) of my classmates.  I stood up, stumbled my way through half of the combination, was told to do it again, and still couldn’t complete it.  I trudged back to my place and sat down, feeling utterly humiliated.   There was no applause for me, no smiles, and I didn’t deserve them.  I could feel the other dancers looking at me, and I imagined them feeling sorry for me, wondering how I had been dancing for so long and yet still couldn’t do a straightforward combination, and feeling so glad that it wasn’t them.  I half-heartedly practiced a few more moves and then left as soon as the clock ticked over to the end of class.

I cried tonight, not only for my own embarrassment, but because I finally realised what pole dance has become to me.  It’s shifted, slowly but surely, from a positive force in my life to a negative.  It’s become a source of overwhelming stress, rather than stress relief.  It’s no longer something that I look forward to all day, something that I leap into with gusto, something that brings me joy.  I can no longer watch my advanced friends dance without feeling ashamed of myself for not being at the same level.  I can no longer hear praise from friends and strangers without immediately telling myself, “they probably just feel sorry for you; that performance could have been much better”.  Pole is now something that I measure myself against in the most negative way, leaving me feeling inadequate and uncomfortable.  It’s become a weapon of self-harm.

So after many tears, and at 1:30am (though I’ll sleep on it), I’ve come to a decision.  Pole, I need a break from you.  I need to step back and understand truly what it is I want to do with dance.  I want to pursue ballet and lyrical dance further, away from pole, and I want to devote more time to other joys like writing, reading, and music.  I want to spend more time with my long-suffering and ever-supportive boyfriend, who has quietly put up with the drama, the spending, the glitter, and most of all, the absences, for far too long.

I need to heal my body and my mind, and that’s going to take a little bit of time.

I will not say goodbye, pole, because I will come back.  You’re a part of my life, and I never want to remove you from it completely.  I just need to step away for a while, and find my own strength, so that when I come back, you can once again be a light in my life.

Suzie, Amber, Stacey, Bailey, Belle, Pixie, Amarli, Zahra, and many others – thank you for being such inspirational and incredible teachers.  My pole friends, you are all amazing – keep on being so.

Back soon :)

with much love from the lit dancer

artemis xx