iDancer.
Each day I start over, it seems almost from zero.
Today the legs are stiff, today the knees are weak, today muscles are tight…Each morning is a re-appropriation of my body, reconnecting with how one limb moves in opposition to another, struggling to find verticality. Each day the sensations are slightly different, depending on what happened the day before. Each day adding to the passage of time, imperceptible yet inexorable, my back less and less pliable, my movement less and less accurate and refined, preparing for the final tension of rigor mortis?
Yes, each day the same, at the barre, 10 am, refining Pliés, Tendus, balances and coordination: I am Sysiphus.
But:
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (Albert Camus)
I am a happy Sisyphus.
Sources
Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays / translated by Justin O’Brien. – London: Hamilton, 1955