"Il n’y a que deux endroits au monde où l’on puisse vivre heureux: chez soi et à Paris."

After a very long, very difficult roller coaster of a month--and a fantastic tour to Paris--we dancers now have a much-needed three week winter holiday. Some (lucky) friends of mine are going to warmer climates, others are going home to family; I, for one, am having a staycation, in the hopes of rediscovering the fun and goodness in Copenhagen. But for now, a photographic look back at a wonderful week in one of my favorite places on earth, a city I fall more in love with each time I visit...Paris.


The wonderfully Parisian view from my hotel balcony.


"Toutes les femmes": Our dressing room at Palais Garnier.


My favorite hallway ever.


The view on the way up to the class studio.


Seriously, I needed to give myself an extra twenty minutes to go up to class each morning, for picture-taking like this.


I'd let Chagall paint my ceiling.


Palais Garnier. Speechless.


Even the pigeons were fabulous.


Helping hands.


Reception after the premiere performance. I would go back to this moment in a second.

And for those who missed it, my very good friend and fellow dancer Charlie Andersen and I made a little project during our time in the City of Lights...

An Ode to the Royal Danish Ballet

I planned to revive my blog after the New Year--after taking a prolonged hiatus from writing publicly, I decided that one New Year's resolution I could gladly keep would be to bring back this virtual project of mine. However, current circumstances have inspired me to fulfill this self-promise a week earlier than planned, and with a more serious post than initially intended.

The present economic woes wreaking havoc across the globe have finally, unfortunately made their way to the little country of Denmark I currently call home. As you can easily guess, this means financial cuts in all professions...and big ones, as recently announced by the Danish government, in the arts. The most recent reports indicate that Det Kongelige Teater will be hit hard by sweeping government cutbacks totalling nearly 100 million kroner, to be implemented over the next four years.

I am not writing to provoke political change (for that is a ship already sailed), or to imply that an artistic profession is above any other. I only write this in the hopes of painting for you a picture of the kind of environment in which I find myself privileged to work, and why it would be incredibly heartbreaking to lose even one part of such a fantastic group of people.

The dedication and work ethic required to become a professional ballet dancer is pretty unbelievable. Most of my colleagues and I have devoted most of our childhoods, teenage years, and adult lives to this one art form. We missed out on normal educations, lazy summers, proms, normal boyfriend and girlfriend experiences. We spent--and continue to spend--hours in front of a mirror every single day, taking class and rehearsing, attempting to create with our bodies an unattainable physical perfection, an impossible beauty. We are the kids who fell in love with ballet and never grew out of it, in the best sense.

There are some people who would argue that ballet--perhaps all artistic endeavor in general--is a frivolous profession in comparison to law, medicine, science, etc. I know this for a fact because I am related to several people like this. I am not writing to declare that what I do is "better" than what anyone else does. I am merely here to say what I, as one corps de ballet member, believe, which is this: for me personally, my profession is not just a job. It is my religion, if you will; it is my hardest, most love-hate relationship, my reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Whether you believe it to be "important" or not is up to you, but regardless of your personal opinion, please know this: ballet is difficult, and not only physically. Other dancers have had different paths; personally, mine has not exactly been spoon-fed. For one, I was not altogether built for ballet (very few, very lucky people are!), and I had to almost work my ass off to get where I am today. I gave up school, much to my parents' and relatives' chagrin; I sacrificed my sanity and physical health for what basically amounted to a four year period in my mid- to late-teens; I matured very early in some ways (discipline; focus; sense of responsibility) and simultaneously fell emotionally behind in many others (boys; puberty; self-esteem).

As a profession, ballet is not an easy world in which to work. As dancers, we are paid very little for a lot of work. We spend most of our days physically and mentally exhausted. Most companies can be cutthroat or catty, and ballet can leave mental wounds as harsh as the physical ones. (Furthermore, we can all throw dreams of becoming foot models out the window.) But we all dedicate a good chunk of our lives to this art form because we truly, deeply, insanely love it. In my case, I know that what I do for a living may not cure cancer or discover a new planet. But in this messy modern world of ours, filled with so much hate and destruction, if I can make a theatre full of people forget their problems for a couple of hours by dancing onstage two or three nights a week with others to create some sort of beautiful escape among so much global ugliness, then I have damn well done my job.

The events which led to my employment at the Royal Danish Ballet were actually quite similar to what we dancers here are facing now; my previous company in America was facing a huge financial crisis, and in a rather unfortunately mismanaged firing process, I was one of the unlucky victims. I found it difficult to leave my friends there, but not impossible; as an apprentice, most of my closest friends from the school were also moving other places as we all found jobs elsewhere, which somehow made parting ways a bit easier. I packed up my life to move to a foreign country where I knew virtually nobody, and found myself with a whole new life notebook to fill.

I quickly discovered that the Royal Danish Ballet is unlike any other company I have ever worked with or heard about. This may read like a Hallmark card, but in my two and a half years here, I have found in my colleagues a second family. To be sure, we are slightly dysfunctional, but most of the best families are. I arrived in Denmark a severly underweight, insecure person with an impenetrably thick emotional wall built up around her heart; I wasn't exactly the type to let people in (or, for that matter, food). A mere two and a half years later, I am physically healthy. I have friends who are as close as, or in some cases closer than, family. I have somehow managed to build myself a veritable life here. I have found someone wonderful to love, and who--miraculously, wonderfully!--returns the feeling. And to top it all off I'm now probably one of the most emotional people working at the ballet. (As one of my good friends put it early on in the season: "Carling cried! The season has officially started.")

In the heart of the biggest city of this tiny, cold slice of the planet called Denmark, is situated a stunning royal theatre. This old building has become my second home, and is filled with a group of dancers unlike any other. I have never in my life come across people so brilliantly talented, warm, funny, creative, and incredibly loving outside my own immediate family. I lack a vocabulary adequate enough to describe how amazing it is to work here, or exactly why. I can only say this: I remember my very first company class, when I was in my worst place physically and a very wobbly second worst place mentally, thinking, "God, I'll never fit in here." Two and a half years later, I found myself in company class this morning thinking, "God, it would absolutely break my heart forever to leave these people."

And so, I would just like to say a deep, heartfelt thank you to the Royal Danish Ballet. I may be known as something of a cry-baby and perhaps not exactly one of the "normal ones". Despite this, you have welcomed me, and I have never felt more "at home" away from home than I do now. I can only hope that this post makes others realize how amazingly unbelievable and world-class this company is.  To be a bit more blunt about it, I hope it inspires the Powers that Be (you know who you are) to work creatively to keep together this lovely, fantastic workplace.

badass swedish coffee

So, sometimes your very best friend helps make a short movie for a clothing company that you think is really awesome. And the star of said short is an unbelievably badass guy with an earring and a farm, who clearly possesses a love of coffee that rivals your own. And on top of that, the clip has excellent tunes. Naturally, then, you share the wealth:

NORD Spring/Summer 2012 from NORD on Vimeo.

"why are you crying?"

I am a person who can occasionally be one who procrastinates--an eternal believer in the promise and opportunity of "tomorrow" (particularly when it comes to my absolute least favorite chore, cleaning the toilet!). But I broke my personal slowpoke streak and finally got developed the last batch of photos from my trip to Greece this summer. This is a major event.

You see, after a little more than a week enjoying the Greek "mainland," we took a boat trip out to experience island life. After a day and a night on the very popular isle of Santorini (complete with a rented ATV and black volcanic beaches), we took a friend of a friend's tip, and a calculated risk, and made our way to a very small, decidedly non-touristy island a couple of hours from the aforementioned tourist trap. The boat ride from Santorini took just a couple of hours, and suddenly we found ourselves on a slice of paradise with slightly more than 300 residents, but an ample amount of relaxation, sun, clear waters, and general loveliness. What was planned as a one or two day trip turned into a four day adventure, accidents and all.

We left the boat and found a room near to the harbor area--and pretty much everywhere else, considering the fact that walking the entirety of the island took 3-4 hours at most. After settling into the hotel room and enjoying the waterfront balcony view, we rented bicycles and set out with the intention of exploring the tiny slice of heaven we had discovered. Let me preface this tale by saying: I am by no means a very coordinated human being outside the confinements of a ballet studio. I trip over my own oversized feet on a daily basis; I have gotten my shoelaces caught in my bike pedals; most recently (and by this I mean two days ago) I stubbed my third toe into my bathroom floor landing and ended up mopping up blood off the floor for the next fifteen minutes, like something out of Dexter. So renting bicycles with hand brakes on a tiny island in Greece, when I normally teeter-totter around Copenhagen on a mostly-broken Drescoe equipped only with foot brakes, was taking a big chance to being with.

That being said, once we'd settled into the hotel and met the unbelievably genial man-about-the-island (whom we saw countless times over the next few days, performing all kinds of island duties), we set out with the handbrake bikes to explore the island. The sun was shining, the temperature was well above average Scandinavian levels, and everything was hunky-dory. Until I encountered a slight hill. I forgot the handbrake feature of the bike I had rented, and ended up falling sideways and upside down and every wrong way possible, getting sand and gravel in my lovely wounds in the process. In the middle of nowhere, with no one else around to help or witness my moment of extreme klutziness, we managed to find the island health guy. Who turned out to be an older, unshaven, barefoot, absolutely-no-English-speaking man wearing a red jumpsuit and driving a severely fender-bendered vehicle. Regardless of his personal hygiene preferences and his knowledge of my native tongue, the wonderful man with the beard and no shoes got me to the island doctor in less than fifteen minutes; I was literally hyperventilating and could not even faintly recall any of the 89 Greek words I learned during my trip, but my meeting with the flip flop-clad, early-thirties island doctor resulted in a strict prescription to "go in the water." I was dubious, but took a leap of faith. (And, to be perfectly honest, healed my gaping hand and leg wounds faster than I could have wished for!).

To calm my ballerina-related injury fears, the good doctor sent my best man pal out to the island pharmacy for some goopy brown cleansing cream. I waited by the side of the road, perched on a short brick wall, crying and sniveling and waiting for the aforementioned wound tonic to arrive. After half-heartedly petting a couple of (admittedly awesome) stray island dogs, a barefoot, bald man with sunglasses happened to be passing by. I tried to hide my tears, but as anyone who has seen me seriously cry before will attest, this is no easy feat. The man was not an idiot, and saw past my snot-nosed, red-eyed, hiccuping appearance. He stopped and came over to sit down next to me. As a native New Yorker, I just looked at him, raised eyebrows, boogers, sadness, pus-filled wounds and all. And then in broken English, he said, "Girl, why you crying? Look around you!" I looked around, searching for a doctor wearing closed-toed shoes and a white coat, but instead found only sunshine and happy people. He saw my face and continued: "Don't worry. You are in paradise!"

And from that moment forward, I swear to god, I became an island lady. I embraced the sunshine, the lone island ATM, the generally slower approach to life. I enjoyed the fact that internet was not readily available. I learned to love the long walks around the island, especially when they resulted in stumbling upon a tiny private sort of beach. The saltwater was good for my skin, my hair, my feet, and I (literally) soaked it up. The fresh fish on this teeny tiny slice of magic; the Nightmare Before Christmas sort of dead-but-alive plants; the goats and roosters peppered about the island; the hidden sea caves and water in more shades of blue and green than I ever dreamed of; the shocking magenta flowers that popped against the blue-and-white backdrop of the architecture...I loved it all. The idea of camping, of having a boat, of living this slow-motion version of real life, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, became so frighteningly appealing. I left this island with tight jeans, hands and a left leg healed from the saltwater, hair tamed into those seemingly unattainable beach curls, skin softer than I'd felt in years, and an attitude more carefree than I could have ever imagined. There was something about the laid-back, happy-go-lucky nature of the islanders that made me able to spend a good chunk of time on one of the beaches, lying there doing absolutely nothing, and completely enjoying it.

This particular teeny piece of paradise will forever have a place in my heart; both for the warmth and generosity of its people, and for its incomparable natural beauty. I have never before encountered such an unbelievable piece of Eden, and I will definitely leap at the chance to escape to this happy place of mine again. I lack the vocabulary (in any language!) to adequately describe the enchantment of this island, and so I leave you with a few pictures, which will hopefully suffice...


The island, from the dock.


Playing in the (incredibly perfect!) waters...


There were tons of these magic coves along the island.



Well-fed and windblown on "the deaf island."



Daily magic.

the elements of style, or: my meditation

There are many things people do to calm down. Some people take a walk, others count to ten, very practiced serene people meditate. I've tried all of the above, but none work as well as my own personal favorite: editing.

When I was younger, I read Strunk & White's famous guide to American English writing, The Elements of Style. The book outlines eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition," and "a few matters of form." William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White also provide a list of forty-nine commonly misused words and expressions, as well as a record of fifty-seven words often misspelled. It's not a perfect guide, and in fact has received criticism on both sides of the pond, but for my elementary school self, there was something beautiful and calming about the simplicity and purity of grammar laid out within its pages. In its first edition (1918), William Strunk wrote: "Make every word tell." I fell in love with this, and with the idea that the free, fluid art of writing did have structure and a set of rules. (I also believe that this sentence is the reason I very rarely use Internet short-hand. Acronyms do not have the same look or tell as properly written words.)

I have not read The Elements of Style in years, but the basic principles have stuck with me. And while some people can't stand a slightly crooked painting on a wall, or grow faint at the sight of one unlit bulb in a string of lights, my OCD centers around spelling and grammar. Give me a written paper, a red pen, and some time, and I am happy as a clam. There is something extremely soothing about correcting spelling mistakes, fixing punctuation, improving word order and the flow of writing, and amending errors in grammar. Once everything is in order, when every word of every sentence serves a purpose in an aesthetically pleasing and correct way, I can literally sleep better.

I do not often have the opportunity to edit. To be sure, I edit my own writing; most often, my biggest problem is following E.B. White's recommendation: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." I have had a couple of chances to hack away at others' papers with a beloved red pen. But sometimes, when I am very tense (or extremely bored), I will take an old pamphlet laying around or one of the magazines shipped over to me by my parents, and flip through, quietly putting the page--and my mind--in order.

Ελλάδα

The Royal Danish Ballet's 2011/2012 season begins on Tuesday, and while I am ready and excited to begin work again, I cannot help but look back on the wonderful summer holiday. After a month-long return to the motherland United States, an extra week with my one-of-a-kind family in New York, and a quick stopover back in good ol' CPH, I took a trip with my very best friend to a little place called Greece and escaped the real world for two whole magical weeks.

Forget the sun, the beach, the food, the drinks. There's something about Greece, something that I don't think I will ever have the vocabulary to adequately describe. The people are as warm as the summer weather; the language is as beautiful to listen to as the island waters are to look at. In the face of national economic uncertainty, the Greeks showed no fear, only a love of food, fun, and each other. As someone who has never had an easy time relaxing, and who spent the first two days feeling frantic for not having mastered a very foreign language before arrival, I left Greece with a face full of freckles, significantly tighter jeans, and a strong urge to 'accidentally' miss my flight.

There's "big city" beauty--the nonstop, neon allure of New York or Paris. I always considered myself a true, blue, concrete-loving city girl. I have lived in New York and Miami Beach, and spent summers in San Francisco. I have never met a neon light or a skyscraper I couldn't get along with. I spend most of my time indoors in studios, and my pale skin reflects this affinity for artificial lighting. I have never been camping. I get cold if it dips below summer temperatures, and I can tolerate sweltering temperatures in 10-minute increments in a sauna. I don't pee unless it involves four walls, a door, and proper indoor plumbing. I don't consider bugs to be a satisfactory source of protein, and unless it's one of the approximately eight spiders a year involuntarily swallowed by the average human being, I really try to keep a more-than-safe distance from most insects. In short: I am nobody's nature girl.

But Greece is different. To be sure, we saw big cities. Athens is massive, Thessaloniki and Larissa are true cities as well. But for the most part, I was confronted with a completely different kind of beauty, one with mountains and sand and swamps and stretches of nothingness. I saw dragonflies in shades I never expected, spiders the size of gum balls, more shades of green and blue than I could ever imagine. Each day, I awoke to a clear view of Mt. Olympus and a schedule filled with hours and hours of relaxation. At first, I admit, it freaked me out. I cannot ever just do nothing. And in Greece, the daily schedule read something like: wake up, breakfast, beach, two-hour lunch, nap, beach, snack, do nothing, two-hour dinner, sleep. My stomach was not built for this schedule. The letters weren't letters, and because I love languages (and am a very nosy individual who likes to understand what people are saying and writing) I found my inability to understand or communicate frustrating. I mean, in Greek, my boyfriend's name started with what appeared to be a triangle. That's a shape. Also, I am not a person who does well at the beach; my skin simply can't take the heat (literally) and my mind can't take the lack of activity. I wear contact lenses, so I don't enjoy saltwater, and after an unpleasant childhood encounter with a rabid jellyfish, I'm not keen on swimming too far out. Plus there's the whole existential freakout I have whenever I find myself looking out over a large expanse of water; it's a situation that goes on in my mind something like: "Saltwater oceans are 71% of Earth's total surface, there are over 6 billion people on the planet, Earth is one of nine planets in our solar system, which is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in space, which means I am very small indeed..."

A couple of days in, however, and I was hooked. By the end of the vacation, I was expressing a desire to "just bring a tent and camp on the beach" next time we visited the islands. The sun was my best friend; the saltwater brought my skin and feet back to childhood softness; my stomach learned to not only accept but thoroughly enjoy the seemingly endless plates of food involved in daily meals. The ancient ruins nestled among modern villages and cities, the freshest food I have ever tasted, the unbreakable sense of fun everyone I met seemed to have, the addictive sound and look of the language, I love all of it. And the daily small adventures made the trip that much more perfect. My first lesson in the art of drinking raki; the small but Olympic-fast turtle we adopted (until he escaped); running up to the Acropolis with just ten minutes before the last visitors were admitted; tooling around the hillsides of Santorini on an ATV; the small island whose one ATM ran out of cash, resulting in a 1am race onto a visiting ferry for cash; water fights at lunch--I miss the indescribable mix of whirlwind amid hours of leisure. It was infectious. I wanted to be like this, all the time. There was a sense of frantic humor in almost every situation, and I could not get enough.

Vacation cannot last forever. This is why, like Christmas and birthdays and any other favorite time, they are so special. Greece was something I will never forget, and something I hope to repeat very soon. Because for the first time in my life, I spent over an hour in the sun, on the beach of a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't feel the urge to do anything or go anywhere. I didn't think. I didn't worry about fitting into skinny jeans, I wasn't nauseous about the releve section in Etudes, I had soft skin and healed feet and no sore muscles. I found my happy place.

After I had a bike accident on a tiny island, I was sitting by the side of the road crying and bleeding while disinfecting supplies were fetched. A total stranger passing by stopped and said, "Why are you crying?" I held up my bloody hands and stuck out my swollen, bleeding and bruised left leg as an answer. He smiled and said, "It's ok, don't worry! Look around. You're in paradise." And so, with another long, busy season ahead, I look forward to it being a great one, with new opportunities and challenges. But in the back of my mind, I will try so very hard to keep that feeling of real, honest-to-god bliss I achieved this summer. ευχαριστώ, Ελλάδα. You taught this neurotic mess to turn off her brain and just enjoy life (and a whole lot of food).

rubber balls are time machines

Today, I smelled a rubber ball (being used as a prop in a friend's rehearsal), and suddenly I was six years old again. The powdery, uniquely rubbery odor sent me tumbling backwards in time, coming completely out of the blue. Everyone in the studio who smelled the ball had the same reaction: "It reminds me of childhood..." Maybe we all recalled different specific things, but of one thing we were sure. This seemingly unremarkable ball brought everybody to the same place.

It's funny how smells can do that. To me, this ball smelled exactly like the seemingly infinite collection of My Little Pony figures I had when I was little. (This was before the case of head lice that spread like wildfire throughout my kindergarten class, and resulted in all toys in with 'hair' being quarantined in garbage bags. Forever.) Others said the scent reminded them of pool floaties, or action figures. But for me, it was My Little Pony. I loved those stupid horses so much. I will forever hate head lice--not only because head lice is disgusting to think about, but because those revolting hair bugs meant the death of my Ponies.

The thing is, I hadn't thought about My Little Pony in years. (Anybody who knows about my affinity for unicorn culture might find this surprising, but it's true. The rainbow-colored little horses hadn't entered my mind in a very long time.) This ordinary rubber ball knocked me backwards into memories so far back, I can't even be sure I really remember them. In the middle of Det Kongelige Teater, I was suddenly a six-year-old playing with small, overpriced plastic ponies in our living room in Brooklyn. I didn't have a care in the world, except for figuring out which of these ponies, given the very girly pastel color scheme, could possibly be a boy. My Pink Little Pony needed a boyfriend.

Once I snapped out of my reverie, I realized why this orange ball had made me so happy and so sad all at once. When you're living out your elementary years, you don't recognize these smells as anything other than a faint odor accompanying a new plaything. The scent that escapes when clapping together chalkboard erasers, the distinct odor of Elmer's Glue, the fragrance of Play-Doh, that 'new notebook' aroma--you don't realize that one day, catching a whiff of any of these will become something special. You don't appreciate in the moment that one day, years from now, you will bring to your nose an apparently everyday rubber ball and be transported to another time and place. When you're six, nostalgia isn't really in your vocabulary--but when it is, you long for the times when you didn't know what the word meant.

It's not that I wish I was six years old again. Granted, there are things about being a six-year-old girl that I would love to recapture: the sense of innocence, of carelessness, of genuine everyday happiness, of having your biggest problem be fixing up two of your My Little Ponies. But I am well aware that a good chunk of the beauty in life comes from growing up and adding layers to one's childhood self. This being said, I do wish I could go back in time and tell the young me to love every small thing, to inhale every stupid odor, because one day a rubber ball will make you realize how wonderful all the smallest things are--and how difficult that feeling of being so very young can be to capture again.