Thirty Years of Correcting Landings — Then, for Once, I Did Not Have to Stand Perfectly

After the Studio Empties

Some background: Wen Xubai, fifty-one, rehearsal director of a ballet company in Philadelphia. I joined a company at eighteen, danced nineteen years, and since retiring I have stood at the side of the studio watching others dance for eleven more. The wooden floor is polished bright by pointe shoes, and the air always smells of rosin and old leather. My count is steadier than the piano: five, six, seven, eight, each beat shorter than the last. The young dancers are a little afraid of me. Last month I stopped one girl three times in front of the whole company over a landing that drifted. Afterwards she cried in the stairwell. I stood around the corner listening for a while, and on the way home my chest felt tight. I was right. But my way of being right was too hard.

My knee stopped obeying about two years ago. Too many landings when I was young; the left one aches on damp days, and I hold the rail going up and down stairs. I have not told anyone at the company. What would it look like, the rehearsal director's legs giving out first? One evening after rehearsal I stayed behind alone to gather the scores, and tried, holding the barre, to lower myself slowly. Halfway down something clicked in the knee, and I stood there gripping the barre for a long time. Then I almost laughed. The woman who spent thirty years correcting how other people land needs something to hold on to when she lands herself.

A Room With No Mirrors

I found the place myself. I read the page through, and filled in the screening form more carefully than our season reports. It asked about old injuries. I stared at that field for five minutes, deleted, typed, deleted again, and in the end wrote it honestly: old injury, left knee, aches on damp days, please avoid it. After I sent it I felt steadier. My profession teaches this better than any: state your limits up front, and the other person knows how to receive you. On the confirmation call, they read that line back to me and said it was noted, and told me: the room has no mirrors; once the door closes, no one comes in, and no one will know I was ever there.

I chose a Sunday, a Sunday with no rehearsal. At home I changed outfits three times and in the end wore the most ordinary one, and checked the lock on my way out, like someone going to do a good thing that must not be talked about. On the way there I arranged the rules in my head: the pace is mine, the pressure is mine to set, and if I want to stop, I raise a hand and it stops. In the studio those three things are what I hand out to others. That day I handed them to myself, and just thinking about it, my shoulders dropped a little.

Handing Over My Weight

The room had no mirrors, only lamplight, and a faint sweetness from warmed oil. A Jian first wrapped a warm towel around my left calf, the steam climbing slowly toward my knee, and asked: I am going to hold your ankle — may I? I said yes. The second his palm came under it, my foot pointed itself by reflex. Thirty years of professional instinct: a foot leaves the floor and wants to become one straight line. A Jian did not laugh. He only said: no need to point. There is no landing today. My nose stung a little. I let the foot go soft, bit by bit, clumsily, wanting halfway to point again, but he held it steady, and I let it be.

Then I started counting. The palm moved up my calf, warm and heavy, and in my head I counted: five, six, seven, eight. At thirty-two, I dropped the rest of the count. My knee was wrapped in heat and the ache was loosening into it; exactly where it loosened to, I will not describe. What happened after that does not go in the rehearsal log. I only remember the last thought before I let go completely, and it was a hopeless one: so this is what it feels like to hand your weight over and not have to stand perfectly — soft underfoot, and strangely steady inside.

Monday, the Studio

When it ended, A Jian poured hot water and told me to sit a while, and not to load the left leg too quickly. I drank slowly, both hands around the cup, and when I stood I held the chair back, and felt no shame about it at all. Outside it was already dark, and windy in Philadelphia that night. I wrapped my scarf tighter, and only when I reached the parking lot did I notice I had walked the whole way slower than usual, and comfortably so.

On Monday, back in the studio, the girl with the drifting landing drifted another half inch. A week earlier my voice would have risen at once. That day I walked over and asked her first: did you sleep well last night? She froze, her eyes reddened, she nodded — and the next time through, her landing was steady. If you want to take the rhythm back into your own hands without being seen by anyone, the screening takes a few days and the private arrangements are confirmed in advance — hold your time early on the booking page; the speed, the stops, the going are all yours. I am fifty-one, and I have corrected landings for thirty years. From this month on, I keep one Sunday a month to practise not standing perfectly.