SENIOR ISSUE: [e]motion

By Navya Shukla

[e]motion

by fourth year Erin O’Keefe

The ritual begins. I pull on my shoes and carefully tie and tuck my satin ribbons. Rosin crunches, music starts, dancing commences. It is freeing because it is familiar. I like what I know because it's predictable. I find comfort in repetition; it makes me numb to pain. Piano keys twinkle like stars and the flourish at the end of the music is reminiscent of wisteria. Suddenly, I see those purple flowers that hang like earrings on the green limbs in my garden. They decorate something that is already beautiful, which amplifies the pleasure I feel as I look at the scene, the pleasure I feel as I cease dancing when the music flourishes. But then, I come back into my body, and it hurts. 

Visions of opulence fade into reality: the glassy mirror, the dusty floor. 

But I love the icy reflection, I adore the well-worn Marley. The mirror shows me my bruised knees and red cheeks. The floor shows me the marks of my pointe shoes and the sweat dripping off my body. I see my body moving through space. My memories are active; when I look back on these days, I see myself in motion, moving towards the moment I am dreaming of, the future I will soon attain. 

Embodiment is the realization of feeling through motion. The future is realized when action is initiated; it is embodied when I move forward, unafraid, into the abyss that lies on the other side of the proscenium stage.