No Ugly Dance

I'm seeing more female/male duets in pole dance. The dancers all have young perfect bodies and they are filled with advanced pole moves. Beautiful work. At the same time I'm sure that the simple one I danced in was an honest blend of passion for pole dance with deep roots in the contemporary ballet pas de deux. It hasn't been easy dealing with the complications and broken friendships associated with that dance but I'm proud of it and the story we tried to put into motion.

This summer in Vail, Colorado on August 6 during the Vail International Dance Festival  Christopher Wheeldon premired the entire ballet Five Movements and Three Repeats that inspired me. I watched the tape. Wendy Whelen and Tyler Angle danced the final pas to This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight. We tried and I think partially captured the soul of everything Wendy and Tyler did and added pole dance. I hope this is my last tear over it. Every time I see a pole duet I will always be proud of our dance. Nothing will ever stain it or make into something ugly in my heart. The body never lies. Ever. Like all dance, our dance died in the moment. But it lives in my body and my soul.

Excerpts from Five Movements and Three Repeats begin at 2:11 in the YouTube link I have added. The Wheeldon pas danced by Wendy and Tyler is at the end of the clip. The whole Wheeldon ballet is an awe inspiring work. My apologizes to people who were led here by Google thinking this was about Christopher Wheeldon, Wendy or Tyler. I loved the music. I loved the choreography. I love the passion and beauty in both Wendy's and Tyler's dance. I love everything about ballet and what it brings to my soul in the pole studio.

9/1/12 Apparently you can't link to the Vail International YouTube videos. If you still want to see it search for this title:

NOW: Premieres - 2012 Vail International Dance Festival

Petals

Last night night I opened the door back into the room where my home dance pole resides and danced. Last nights Facebook status update:

It's been forever since I danced alone. Tonight the moon was shining through the window, the room was dark and I could faintly see my lines in the mirrors. I danced them all. My little shop of horrors: Trey Anastasio: Let me Lie, Seether: Broken, Widowmaker: Harsh Realm, Thomas Newman: Any Other Name, Dinah Washington/Max Richter: This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight, and Hole: Petals. I really liked the way I did arms from Fifth to Second on spin pole to Petals. "Tear the petals off of you..."

Beginnings

This afternoon someone told me that I was saying things that needed to be said in the pole world. That my writing added something special. Then I got a post on my Facebook page from a friend at Midwest and she said that my ears should be burning because she and a world class pole dancer (one of my teachers) were enjoying a conversation about me and my crazy life. Sooo... I give you my day and a beginning.
 
Today the alarm went off reminding me that I had ballet class at 9:00. I didn't shut it off and go back to sleep. I took a shower and went to class. It was tough. Picking up the pieces of broken dreams and friendships is painful. Looking in that mirror again hurt. So many memories. So much invested and lost. But every now and then I hit a line or move and I noticed how much I had grown as a dancer.

In my graduate school program you got two tries to pass your comprehensive qualifiying exam for the doctoral program. When I took my MS comps I passed first time with the second highest score in my class. The first time I took my PhD comps my overconfident ass failed. That hurt. Twenty years later and I'm still doing research. When shit goes bad we can sit on the floor, cry and quit or we can figure out what we did that caused the failure, pick our damaged butt off the floor and try to walk.

So I danced today and now I have blogged. I haven't touched a pole yet. I'm probably going to have to sit on the floor and cry a little bit before I grab it and pull myself up off the ground.

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~ Hugh White 

P.S. My father is Spanish and my mother is Italian. I have a temper from hell and sometimes I can be emotional. Maybe that is why I dance. Dancers show emotion. We have a story to tell.

Endings

The past week has been life changing for me. I have suffered an enormous loss.  There is no way to cut and paste a Swan Lake. Without that friendship this blog has no meaning. Sadly I am ending this blog. I can't leave an edited shell. Thank you all for reading my journey. I treasure the friendships I have made and I hope that I have shown you all a little about the magic of dance.

8/25/2012 Note: It was a huge hurtful task but I found a way to keep myself and not lose the soul my friend put in this blog. So the blog stays. Life goes on. Doors close. Doors open.

Sooner or Later

I have a good friend and scientific mentor that I reconnected with a few months ago on Facebook. As many of you know I can be a real porcupine at times. I am just as vocal about my politics as I am about dance. Today in conversation my friend mentioned that after I retire from my job as a research meteorologist I should start a blog. In response I posted the link to this blog. So if you came here from the blog of a well known research meteorologist and storm chaser this is it. You just fell down Bob Zamora's rabbit hole into the wonderland of what I do when I'm not thinking about the atmosphere. I'm a dancer, and ice hockey player.

My friend is an an awesome photographer and he can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Pink Floyd. Einstein loved to sail and play violin. Dick Feynman was one hell of a bongo player and artist. He signed his work "Ofey" because he wanted Ofey to live a life outside Quantum Electrodynamics. They tell me Kerry Emanuel is quite a pianist. I know that Fred Sanders (How I miss that man.) joked about sailing and running aground on his own beer cans. Society tends to think of scientists as these one dimensional people who wear white coats and fill chalkboards with equations. Some of us are more than that. Some of us are not. I will always be first and foremost a scientist but I have always loved art, history, and music.

I am coming in touch with a very spiritual side of my life. Not everything I want to say can be expressed in words and mathematics. I could say that I am becoming a dancer. But that would be wrong. I have always been a dancer. I just didn't know it. The older I get the more I am convinced that our muses choose us. I was born to touch the wind and I was born to dance.