How do you hold your head high when you’re among the last to finish a race, when other candidates outnumber you by leaps and bounds? How do you regain your sense of worth and dignity when the first impression so many elite dancers have of you is unfortunate? I hope I can answer this question in the process of writing about it.
We have all felt this way at least once in our lives; that we are so inferior to those around us that we shouldn’t even be in the same room, breathing the same air. When I was in the fourth grade, auditions were held for pianists to accompany the choir. At the time, she was apathetically enduring forced piano lessons. I felt nothing but confusion and dread of the piano and a primal desperation to please my expectant, controlling mother who to this day brings me to my knees. I thought she might like me to audition even though she didn’t have to. I wrote my name on the sign-up sheet and asked my instructor to help me learn the scores. Lady. Swanson told me directly that the pieces were too difficult for my level, but he proceeded to help me find the first bars. I got there. I didn’t even learn the entirety of one piece. The notes swam before me like swarms of insects, a language as overwhelmingly complex as Chinese and foreign as Swahili.
Any well-adjusted kid would have gone to school in the days before the audition, Mrs. told him. I managed to get his name off the list and move on with his life, but I was a misguided kid, so scared of angering or disappointing others that, for some reason I can’t make sense to this day, withdrawing seemed worse. In fact, I went to the audition, sat in a metal folding chair waiting my turn as candidate after candidate playing beautiful, full renditions of the music, my stomach so tight that for the first time in my young life I thought I might throw up. They called me and I sat down at the piano and played the first bars, barely, badly. I didn’t expect some miracle to happen, an angel to magically appear and channel the skills to play it. She was simply waiting for the torturous moment to end, her head bowed in shame.
The way he looked at me. He looked at me the way you look at the stinking remains of chewed up food that flood the sink when your garbage disposal breaks. She asked me, with her irrepressible disgust, what business was I wasting her time. I apologized, grabbed my things, and ran out of the room. From that day on, in class once a week for two more years, I cringed in Mrs. Cope’s presence, the heat rising to my ears and the giant rock returning to the pit of my stomach as if the nightmare were yesterday.
It just can’t get worse than that. It never got worse, but the experience with Ms. Cope will always make me wonder how bombing an audition is so much more than having a bad day that’s soon to be forgotten. Today, I had the feeling that allowing myself to be my most vulnerable at an elite pole dancing audition would alter the terrain of my outer social landscape. To be fair, I’m not even referring to an actual event of colossally awkward proportions; I didn’t fall off the pole or break the wind audibly at the apex of my solo. I just didn’t pull off all my tricks or move forward with grace and finesse, anchored in my body, in perfect union with the music. I got so lost in my nerves that I couldn’t even hear the music. However, I may not have even done as bad as I think I did. I may not even be officially out of my league, but just towards the bottom, which I think is fine, even if it’s not the most comfortable place to be, even if some people at the top of the league try to defend their positions by saying, without words, that those at the bottom don’t belong.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the difference between the open warmth with which the audition director greeted me and the tepid nonchalance with which she waved me back, or maybe this is all in my head. Perhaps I was so caught up in my own expectations of myself that I didn’t realize I was catching her at a bad time. While it doesn’t help me worry (that’s not to say I won’t), it will help me to be aware of the possibility that the next time I meet the director, her assessment of my competence today will influence the direction of the interaction, the level of expectation. And that will not only have to be okay with me, but accept it as an opportunity to prove otherwise. It takes courage to be a winner, but it also takes strength to be a loser, to tell the world, not just with words but with actions, that you believe in yourself and the possibility of your dreams before you have achieved them.
Hoping not to sound arrogant but utterly and utterly grateful, I’ll speak in contrast about being on top of my local league. While I am not yet an elite pole dancer, I am a gifted dancer, a pole artist with particular potential. With minimal formal training, I have been mistaken for a professional dancer. A physical assessment of my core and upper body strength without preparation reads off the charts. Strangers have asked to take photos with me after my performances. I have been showered with respect and admiration, support and love, many have told me that I am an inspiration to them, that they see something special in the way I move, phenomenal and rare potential, that my work brings them to tears. Women who are now dear friends of mine have told me that they saw me on the pole and were initially intimidated into approaching me.
I simply relied on all the ways, large and small, direct and indirect, in which I received recognition for my talent because today, every little thing that was ever said and done by others willing to truly see me for all that I have and wish to offer to the polo community mattered deeply to me when I was at the bottom of a larger totem pole. To everyone who has ever taken time out of their day to acknowledge my efforts, I am very grateful. Know that I remembered what you said today, when I needed it most.
I have thought a lot about what it means to be humble. If I were truly humble, would I dare to admit all these things in writing? If I were truly humble, wouldn’t I keep those compliments in the privacy of my head, so that I and I would just review them, so they would never come out into the light of day because they looked like walls, weapons? Women come together in contests to see who can show the most humility, the most deference to their peers. Women feel social pressure from other women to apologize for being great, as if their success prevents rather than inspires others to do the same. Am I not afraid that my peers will point me out as a braggart or that someone more excellent and competent than me will tell me that I am wrong?
Today I risk I am not going to erase the list of ways my work and potential have been seen and appreciated by others because today at the audition where things turned around, my recollection comes from a place of gratitude to others and respect for myself. I hope that by showing respect for others and myself, I can inspire the same in others. The part that still bothers me a bit is the part where I bring up how others have told me they were intimidated by me. Why would you get an ego boost from something like scaring others? Do I get off with the ammunition this admission gives me? At the audition, I spent a lot of time being intimidated by others, feeling the magnitude of their power and progress wash over me as I struggled to stay present and confident.
In the power of another grateful, does that have to mean feeling smaller in comparison when I’m just on a different part of my journey to greatness? Despite the myriad of cringe feelings I left the pole audition with, I’m so glad I went. I belonged there. He didn’t deserve the part, but he certainly deserved the chance to try. Auditions aren’t just about the person who wins, because if only that one person destined to win showed up, no one would come any closer to their greatest potential. While it was abundantly clear that I should have backed out of that piano audition two decades ago, I wasn’t wasting anyone’s time challenging myself to stick with the bar, to prove the focus and mental clarity required to compete, to boldly push forward when not everyone is smiling at you.
Looking back, even though I missed a few tricks I thought I had in the bag and revealed recovery hesitation, my trick-taking ability was by no means the slightest or least promising among the bunch. Despite the fact that I was neither the strongest nor the most flexible, despite the fact that learning choreography under pressure takes away my confidence, and despite my feelings of inadequacy surrounding my non-ballet background, which can always be my Achilles heel, if there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I can dance the way *I* dance, with vigor, fluidity, intensity, presence, sensuality, confidence, emotion and ultimate beauty, and that the way I dance alone stands out. At my next audition, I hope to be mentally prepared enough to show this. The scariest part of today’s experience was when I couldn’t hear the music, even though there was nothing wrong with the volume or my hearing. When I lost the connection of my body with the music, I lost the connection with myself, I floated on myself watching everything fall apart.
Today I was reminded that to perform at an elite level, everything must be like breathing. Butterfly an ayesha, from an iguana mount to a helicopter, to a cupid, to an iron X to a phoenix deadlift, that’s all very well, but I want, I need more than that. I need to do all of those things and more with the same ease with which I stay afloat, with the same ease with which I breathe, to enjoy losing my breath to the demands of these sequences as much as I enjoy finally getting it back.
Finally, I remembered that when you decide to do it, it doesn’t matter if you think the post is slippery or you feel bad or can’t focus under pressure, that your precarious self-confidence in the next league above yours is easily knocked over by complex energies in the room or the fact that you missed a few counts that already passed. All of these things are important parts of the test, obstacles that are mental and surmountable by those who should be at the top. No one is going to feel sorry for you and it would be a disservice to you if they did.
