Weekend Muse: Surya Bonaly

There could hardly be anyone more perfect to break my blogging hibernation with than the backflip-ing, warrior goddess Surya Bonaly.



(c) Xtraice Ecological Ice, CC Attribution 2.0

Once upon a time I had no idea Surya Bonaly existed and was clicking aimlessly around Pinterest (Oh, how I love me some Pinterest!) and I saw some comment about how amazing she is. What I found through some rabid searching was that Surya Bonaly shattered Olympic rules.

As it happens, Surya was a power figure skater, the kind that lands ultra athletic jumps and makes you want to cross train in skates. Expect she BACKFLIPED. On figure skates. She couldn't "legally" backflip on Olympic ice, though, because the rules require landing on one foot. But who really cares about rules in the face of super powers? Surya learned to backflip one ice and land on one foot. Yeah, and live.

The day she was on that hallowed ice Surya was having a bad time with the judges and her program so she pulled out her badass move. Commentary noted that it was all for the performance and the crowd... and that she finished with her back to the judges. They ruled the move illegal in the end, although landing it on one foot should have technically made it count. She was disqualified with dignity and the knowledge that she put one a performance true to her character.



At the end of the day, it has to matter more to perform for ourselves, competition or no. Coming off a drawn out pole, blogging, and stretching rut this message rings particularly true. I am hard pressed to find time away from my second baby (my daughter was nothing like this!) and coming back slowly is excruciating--as a dancer there is always that "audience factor." Do I measure up to my own standards is I were to watch myself dance? My friends'? The knee-jerk reaction is to say "No" and stay in that place but it's bigger than that. Dance is a living story. We need to keep telling it and we need to be true to our dancer's story.

P.S.

Did you notice the new name? "Weekend Muse" is so much more descriptive than "Weekend Crush," don't you think?

 

Weekend Crush: Sasha Cohen, Queen of Spirals

Today I need this pick-me-up: heavenly flexibility and the best example of emoting. Sasha Cohen is my inspiration by serendipity. I was checking off IB requirements--the hated CAS (Creativity Action Service) hours--around the time my mother's work gave her tickets to see the Campbell's International. Art and nerdiness were my game, not this. Not the physical expression of intellect and emotion. You can say whatever you like about her Olympic falls but no one has her amazing expressiveness or spirals that can make you cry. Can make me cry. This olympic season was bittersweet--yes, there was some technically remarkable performances and Julia Lipnitskaia was a flexible dream to watch but no one had that magic. And I doubt anyone will.



This Valentine's Day my throat hurts and my head is pounding; on top of that, my Valentine is out-of-state at his mother's wedding. And I crumpled my wrist typing and then sleeping on it. If you watch Grey's Anatomy, I am having the dark and twisties. When my days go wrong I catch myself going into my bad memories. If I can be honest about what I love, I can be honest about what hurts and I have quite the selection of torments to visit. Around the time I was checking off CAS hours and reflecting on Sasha's allure I knew in my heart my mother was covering up Brian molesting our youngest sister.

I also was sure I would never become anyone worthwhile; I believed so blindly in everything my mother said. I was a monster. I was like her ex. I was wasting time thinking about college. When Sasha Cohen skated in Turino she was my idol. She was power, grace, and beauty. She was tragic; brilliant but, as Scott Hamilton commented, "a perennial runner up." So much like a high school student that would get A's and suddenly all F's. The oldest sibling that failed her baby sister.

Those spirals are not impossibilities--they are dreams

I found love. I realized how intelligent I am and I stopped apologizing for being proud. And when I discovered the amazing sport of pole dance, I decided to become my own version of Sasha Cohen. My blog is about splits and back bends but also about finding inner power, grace, and beauty. Maybe I will never be among the ranks of competitive pole dancers but I will be a first generation college graduate and break the cycle of domestic violence in my family through motherhood. I will also figure out where my splits went and learn to dance expressively. Oh! Extended Allegra and that dance pose--needle--scale will also be mine. Somehow. Someday.

Weekend Crush: Yuzuru Hanyu

Before last Wednesday I had no clue who Yuzuru Hanyu was. And I would not have cared. Typically, typically male figure skaters hold little interest for me. Oh there are some I love--especially the sort that skate on wet ice or that push the limits of sexy. Maybe it's the difference in body type but there is definitely a distinct flavor, something about the faster jumps and the silhoutte they create in spins. Yuzuru? Still difffent, but clearly his own brand of amazing amongst figure skaters.

He turns BBQ eating music into magic.

Weekend Crush: Christina Aguilera

Christina Aguilar (c) Raffaele Fiorillo
CC Attribution 2.0 License

Yes, Christina Aguilera is pretty much the epitome of sexy song bird--but that's not the part of her I love. Her "Dirrty" days still make me cringe even if I am learning to love her over-the-top sexy boudoir look. But that's Christina Aguilera--always doing exactly what she loves and staying true to herself. That and belting out some ultra powerful songs. You know those songs that help you make it? The ones that keep you from falling the last few degrees down into insanity? Those are what make me adore her. Music and running kept me sane in the hardest times of my life. There is something pretty irresitistable about listening to songs that rebel against the things that make us "work a little bit harder" and gasping out "Fighter" while pounding the pavement. You just can't help but to believe in her as she belts it out--and to believe in yourself. Songs that make the best quotations like this are the ones sung as if the singer's life was poured out in them. Considering how passionate Christina is, I suspect that is exactly the case. As a fellow Latina, I love that she's representing with strength and individuality. It also helps that I got to play this song as one of the first flutes ahem... Proud band geek here. There is nothing like seeing the scoring that goes into the song for understanding it's depth.

Weekend Crush: Mirai Nagasu

Mirai Nagasu (c) The Skating Club of Boston
CC Attribution 2.0 License

There is something particularly serene about Mirai Nagasu.  Maybe that's why she tends to skate a pretty clean program, well at least compared to my first love in figure skating. Her laybacks are very elegant--there is definitely some flexy to love there! (See clip below from the 2013 Finlandia Trophy.)

Weekend Crush: Johnny Weir

Johnny Weir (c) VancityAllie
CC Attribution 2.0 License

I almost have to look away when I see Johnny Weir oozing pure sex on the ice. Almost. Except that this is completely impossible through an awesome combination of glitter, sequins, and crazy jumps. Then there's the flexy, oh wow is he flexible!

He's unapologetically himself. Period. I bet there are judges out there that wish they could nab him on an infraction--wardrobe malfunction, anything!--and scrape his sexy self off the ice. Even though he's typically covered head to toe, sometimes with a little extra as a showy collar cuff, he may as well be naked. This tickles me so much because figure skating has a history of being a bit dry. See the Debi Thomas rule for reference. (This banned unitards until 2005 because Debi was "showing too much" in her sexy little number.) I have to say Johnny far out-sexies her within 10 seconds of any given performance. As we pole dancers know wearing sparse fabric does not make the sexy--

Weekend Crush: Kurt Browning

That Skate 2013 (c) Queen Yuna
CC Attribution 2.0 License

Kurt Browning has been one of my favorite figure skaters ever since I saw an early video of him skating along to Singing in the Rain (we'll check it out  in a bit). It's impossible to watch him at it and not be drawn right in and uplifted; he has such a sunny personality on the ice. Even with my limited figure skating knowledge the level of difficulty of his moves are apparent, and yet all he seems to care about is entertaining.

He's dressed up as everything from the classic, elegant Gene Kelly to a circus clown. No matter what the look you really can't miss his awesome footwork. One of his videos and I'm off on a hours-long jag of video searches touching on my favorite from Sasha Cohen and back again to my pole loves like Anastasia Skukhtorova. In one word: inspirational. I don't care if you love figure skating, dance, pole, ballet, or anything else athletic and expressive; you can find something to love about Kurt Browning.

Then there are his many competitive accolades including being the first man to land a quadruple jump in competition. What I personally love the most

So Dancers are NOT Athletes?

I was watching an episode of Rizzoli and Isles when Frost makes a comment about contemporary dancers not being athletes! Rizzoli, who studied ballet as a child, says they are just as athletic as figure skaters--prompting an eyebrow raise from Frost. He affirms, however, that golfers and even bowlers are athletes.  I love Rizzoli's response: she says something like, "but a ten year old with a six pack is not an athlete??"

So dancers are not athletes??

Ballerinas, for example, devote their lives from a young age to ballet, building incredible strength, flexibility, and agility. It is a physically demanding undertaking, altering (disfiguring) their feet and subjecting them to serious injury. Those airy leaps? They take immense muscular strength and control. Not just anyone has the persistence and dedication ballet takes--which make it sound suspiciously like a sport, doesn't it?

"Kelli" (c) mkd.
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution License

Figure skaters, especially with the change in the scoring system, are required to perform athletic leaps and present program elements such as complex footwork sequences. Anyone who says figure skating is not athletic need only check out the muscle tone on then nearest figure skater. Have you ever seen a figure skater without incredible abs?

I get as tired as a piece of lettuce in the sun from hearing that pole dance is not athletic. Some spiritual yoga article or a person hearing about pole dance for the first time (for the first time out of the context of some sleazy show) is always making some comment about "draping on a pole."

But what does "athlete" imply?

To some degree, maybe we don't want to be called athletes. Take a look at how figure skating has changed since the scoring system went from a more qualitative system to a rigid quantitative system requiring certain jumps--some would argue (like me) that it has taken some of the art out of skating. I have heard some talk among pole dancers that the scoring systems are changing in pole as well, and in the same direction. When a dancer or figure skater has to fill a time slot performing almost entirely acrobatic stunts, when can she or he fit in the art? When does it go from an artistic sport to a twitchy, trickster display?

To me the answer is that we can be athletic and also be dancers. It's about recognition. We know our dance is special, emotional--and yes, athletic. It would just be nice to hear it too, rather than be looked down on. In the end all we can do is believe in ourselves and in each other and let the world decide to catch up.

Weekend Crush: Michelle Kwan

Ladies and gentlemen: the lovely and incredible Michelle Kwan. She is sheer determination and is completely unstoppable. What moves me about Kwan is she has so many amazing achievements and, with each one, the excitement and love of life is so clearly written on her face. You can tell how much it means to her. Just imagine all the work she has built into her performances.

Kwan is the ultimate athlete. She has accomplished what she has set out to do, consistently landing amazing jumps (more on this in a bit) and has shined in the spotlight. Like my favorite figure skater, Sasha Cohen, she also shows great care in the artistry of her programs. I like to wonder what a skater, with Kwan's drive and accomplishment, and Sasha's musicality and flexibility, might be like--actually how amazing would these ladies be in pole fitness...?! Well. That would be nothing short of spectacular to say the least!

Just Bend in Half and Tie Your Laces

When I started working on my flexibility, I could not touch my toes. If I had to sit with my feet straight out in front of me it required propping myself up with my arms so I could lean back. Yeah I did really poorly on that stupid hamstring stretch in high school too. That one with the weird half-box wooden contraption you have to push the slider on as you stretch forward. Point is, hamstring flexibility is one of my big goals.

As you know, the only reason I did start flexy training was for pole. I honestly thought I could stretch religiously for a month or two and BAM! I'd be able to slide into a perfect split. I imagined myself bending my back in a loop around the pole and executing amazing, figure-skating-esque spins and translating what I love about that sport into pole. Boy was I wrong--apart from leg flexy training doing little for back flexy--training for the splits can be hard work.

Flexy Spotlight: Sasha Cohen

"Sasha Cohen" (c) 2006 by Ryosuke Yagi
CC Attribution 2.0 License