30 Days 30 Stories Installment 9, The Teacher

She was a dancer. She danced in the best of the best stage productions; Swan Lake, The Fire Bird, Sleeping Beauty, the Nutcracker. She was vetted and contracted. She was completely in love with her job, with her stage, with her dance.

But her love did not stop the accident from happening. Icy roads and a fast car, a large truck - everything went out of control, and her life had not stopped spinning. She was unable to dance again. She would never dance again. Oh yes, she was lucky to be able to walk. She was lucky she was still alive. But that phrase was questionable. Because she didn't feel she was alive. Without dance, she didn't really exist at all.

She didn't know what to do with herself. 12 years of dancing with little else for experience. No other jobs, no other focus. Just dancing. Her world was dancing. Depressed, out of work, out of money. She had had insurance, thank god for that, because her medical was staggering. And she was still on meds to control the pain. They told her she would be until the day she died. Hah. Died. That day had come and gone; all this was just a walking death. Dance was air, and she had suffocated.

She moved to live with her brother for a month in upper New Hampshire. The snow was melting finally up there, but the ice was still treacherous. Every time she saw it the bitterness got worse. Her brother taught at the university - engineering. Everything was neat and possible in his world. The passion was in the structure, the mathematics, not the movement or the expression. He thought answers could be just the same. He got her a job teaching dance at the community college. She was to teach adult beginners. Adult beginners. The words didn't even sound right together. If you were an adult you could not just begin at dance. Dance was a practice, a religion. Dance was not to be picked up for sport, or for fitness. She curled her lip, said no, and then relented. She had to pay him back somehow for room and board. And it was this or the super market.

That first quarter at the community college was awful. The accommodations weren't horrible; but they were not the bright, well-lit dance studios of her corps. They were concrete rooms with mirrors on one side (only one) and wood floors that were actually plastic, not wood at all. She was aghast. She tried to teach. She tried to remember what she had learned first, what steps had been the first to be taught. Simple, simple, simple. Keep it simple.

The adults were horrible. They were rude, they were self-interested. Ballet was a sport of self-sacrifice. They wondered what they could 'get out of it.' Little girls in big girls' clothing who had 'always wanted to be ballerinas.' The word scalded her like hot oil. They burnt and burnt and didn't stop burning. Worst of all were her own movements as she tried to show them what they should look like. Slow and tortured, difficult. She was like a stiff-doll version of herself, and as she sweated, she saw they looked on and looked down on her. She knew it, they had to. How could they respect her as she danced with heavy feet, arms, legs?

Finally, it was Spring quarter. Only one more three-month hell until summer, and she would be free. She could try to find another job, forget all about this. It was a warm spring morning. She left the door to outside open. A little girl came in. Well - she was not so little, but she was young. And she was hopeful. Her movements at that first class were clumsy, but graceful. She was passionate, and she was committed. She wanted to dance.

After a class, her curiosity aroused, she negligently approached the little girl and asked her to dance to a piece of music of her choosing. She asked her to do a free-style dance next week evening, because she thought she had potential and she would like to see her dance. Yes, that sounded very good.

She was surprised the little girl showed up at next week evening, as promised. She had expected her to simply give up, forget about the request. But the girl came, and she danced.

She was surprised. The dancing was perhaps a little unpolished, but it was basically good. The girl had potential, just as she had expected. Her hopes soared. Her hopes became better hopes. Through the summer she tutored the girl for a small fee. She helped her with her stretches, her plies, she comforted her through bouts of frustration. She stretched with her, she moved with her. She didn't notice that she, herself, was getting better too.

In fall, she took the girl to try outs at the local academy. The girl was too old. She was not right, but she had potential. Together, they danced through the routine three times before they showed it to the judges. The girl mimicked her teacher. Her teacher didn't know she had danced it perfectly.

The girl made it. Just barely. Dance academy and in the evening, she still got tutoring from her teacher. And as she got better, her teacher did too. They learned the dances together, and for her it was relearning them, and on every step they both became more passionate, more sure. The girl did well. She did very well. Her teacher also. That spring, her teacher quit the community college to teach dance at the university. She staged The Fire Bird, and she set a promising, clumsy young student as the lead. Clumsiness was not a curse, it was where one started.