One thing I never imagined when I was dancing were the effects it would have on my body later in life. At the peak of my dancing career, my chiropractor said he hoped I could walk when I was forty. I laughed. But it stuck in my head. And here I am on the other side of 40 and I know if he could see me now he’d be singing, “I told you so!”
Dancing was a most glorious part of my life, although it was short-lived. I was healthy and took care of myself, and mostly dealt with sore muscles and fatigue. But while practicing a lift with my partner I somehow came down and landed on his shoulder. The lift was a hard one, because my sense of where I was in space was totally off. He threw me up so I was horizontal to the floor and then I was supposed to twist 2 or 3 times coming down. This was right before my graduate concert in which I was dancing three different roles, including a modern solo that involved a lot of jumping and crouching and rolling on the floor (I was a “sprite” or “elfish creature”). Another piece was choreography by my partner and had some corps dancers, and the last was the bedroom scene in Romeo and Juliet. This choreography was pretty contemporary and also involved some unusual lifts that made my ribs hurt on a good day!
We patched up my ribs with bandages that matched my skin and wrapped it around a few times. It was tight but I could still breathe. No one could see it under my costumes. Still, it was probably foolhardy to go on with the show, but as dancers do, we went on with the show! It was the last step before I graduated and left Arizona, and it had to be done. The show went fine but my ribs were sore for a long time after that. Continue reading “Bilateral Cheilectomy Facing the fallout from years of dancing en pointe“