How performing ballet live produces such great physical and mental stress that stability can only be achieved by regularly checking vitals!

Art.

This weekend past, I performed two roles in The Nutcracker, arguably the most well-known ballet in the world, four performances over three days, alongside my young daughter, who performed four roles, and only stayed on my dancing feet by regularly monitoring my vital signs, heartbeat, respiratory rate, etc.

Now, I was not brought up a prancing boy, never a lesson or a class, nor a child of the theater, looking out into the lights whilst delivering emotional lines, and so I came to the stage of the California Center for the Arts an extremely vulnerable adult.

Fresh. Uncertain.

In the way.

My daughter and I participated in two long dress rehearsal days at the theater prior to Friday’s opening and the amount of toil that goes into ballet is staggering, especially for real dancers. Oh, my two roles were not particularly burdensome. I was a “party dad” having to mill about on stage presenting to chat with my “party wife” and other “party parents” before performing a dance, leaving stage, returning to dance the “beer dance” with the party dads then exiting stage left after carrying my sleeping “sleeping” daughter, who played a “party girl,” off stage left.

While she would scoot off to get dressed for her soldiers act, I ran straight to get my Mother Ginger make-up done. Smokey eyes, fake eyelashes, rouged cheeks, lipstick smeared over mustache. After soldiers, while daughter was getting into gumdrops costume, I would wrangle my giant dress backstage and begin the painstaking process of getting into hoops then having those hoops layered with purple and yellow finery. Fake bosoms on next then a corset, pink gloves, blonde curly wig, ruffled hat, handbag, mirror and I was ready though had to sit quietly through multiple more acts quietly.

WHOOP registered strain up 101% from the previous week and I can’t even imagine what it would be for the real dancers. They would rush past me, young daughter included, hyperventilating from the physical art performed on stage while I sat quietly, readying for the little bon bons to file under my dress, the right Tchaikovsky chord to sound, and then there I was, back on stage, being pulled this way and that, scolding, camping and vamping.

By Saturday’s matinee, my heart felt like it was pounding so hard that I regularly checked my WHOOP strap to see if it was exploding. That gentle truth it whispered back, that my heart rate was normal, respiratory rate normal too, allowed me to continue on, knowing that the exploding heart was only mental weakness. By Sunday’s matinee, though, I had to regularly check my vitals to make sure my heart wasn’t exploding from pure pride at being able to watch the all the work my daughter had put in, the endless hours at barre, center, stretching, drilling choreography etc.

Becoming art her very self.