On Turning

I was never good at turns.

My dance lessons as a child consisted of guided improvisations, yoga, and working with props. Our yearly performances were set choreography but it was simple stuff - raise your right arm, raise your left arm, skip around the stage in a large circle. Even as the performances became more complex, we were given more of a hand in crafting them, so each dancer’s role generally developed in proportion to our different skills. It wasn’t until the age of about 16, when I started contemporary and ballet technique classes, that I even realised turning was something that I was bad at. It had simply never been a problem before.

Of course, in hindsight, I must have turned my body throughout my dancing life. I must have taken several steps, neatly turning on a small patch of floor. I must have happily and unconsciously jumped from one foot, rotating in the air and landing on the same foot or both in quick succession. I must have looked toward the ceiling and turned once, twice, three times with ease. But what I was now being asked to do was to master a completely different skill, a whole set of skills. A turn in a technique class requires balance, a particular shape while in the turn, and landing in a specific direction, while also freezing in a shape or moving through a pre-existing pathway out of that landing.

Our turns in contemporary class felt okay. There were a variety of them, almost all half-turns, and executed moving down the diagonals of our wooden studio. Yes, we faced the mirror, but I wasn’t looking at it - I was watching my own body, or the corner I was moving towards… I was working on a particular skill because there was a variety of ways to succeed. A high jump that you didn’t land was commendable, a clear shape that only turned a quarter and slowly sent you across to the side of the room horizontally was still worthy. Perhaps most importantly, we were taught to roll out of our falls, across our hips, to keep our knees and wrists safe and to keep the motion going. That sense of motion recast turning as an action that formed part of our dance, not an activity which stopped that dance for an arbitrary skill check.

Not so in ballet class. When I started the following year, I was miles behind my younger classmates. It will be an experience familiar to some readers, but for those who have been dancing ballet since you were little, try to imagine me at the barre, at 16 years old: my hamstrings tight, my turnout narrow. The only boy left in the program, rendered immediately visible in the ever-present and oft-referenced mirror by the different colour and cut of my uniform. French words being fired at me in quick succession. Fortunately, my teacher and peers at Over The Moon studio were patient and generous, but we were fighting the weight of lineage, and losing.

Barre was my favourite part of class. With some of the variables stripped away, I felt I could actually engage with principles like alignment that everyone else was discussing throughout the whole class. My dread would slowly increase each week as we moved towards the centre. Sometimes, we would practice turns along the diagonal - my technique was poor and the skill of spotting evaded me completely, but there was that familiar sense of progressing through space and, critically, the relief of an end in sight. It was pirouettes that I feared most, that elusive signature movement of ballet.

There is something quintessentially balletic about the pirouette. It is a challenging, technical movement that looks pretty, at times impossible, and it does a lot of impressive things before ending exactly where it started. I’m sure ballet choreographers would disagree with my analysis, as turns are used to move performers 90 or 180 degrees, but I posit that they do so in the most overblown way. The measure of success in a pirouette is to do as much as possible while changing as little as possible. The gaze, facing, and shape of the body should end exactly where they began (or exactly transposed in a particular direction). Dancers are never allowed to feel that they have succeeded at a turn, because even if you nail the preparation, execution, and resolution, all that indicates in the ballet culture is that you are ready for more - to move from a double to a triple, and so on.

It was around this time, perhaps year 11, that I read Mao’s Last Dancer. Li Cunxin describes his own training in turns:

I couldn't turn naturally but my newfound inspiration with my jumps made me work harder and harder. I set impossible goals for myself. One night I had an idea. When everybody was asleep I went to the studio, with a candle and a box of matches. I put the lighted candle at one end of the studio and started to practise my turns. The candle threw only a faint light in front of me. It was hard, but I thought if I could turn in the dark, then turning in the light would be easy. I couldn't take the risk of turning the light on, of my teachers catching me staying up so late, but I continued, night after night, relentlessly. By the end of the term I had left shallow indentations in the studio floor where I had endlessly, repeatedly, turned.

I don’t think it was good for my wellbeing to read that passage at that time. While I’m glad Li went on to enjoy the success he had as a dancer, I’d like to put forward that it probably wasn’t so good for him either.¹

The purpose of this piece is not to make you feel sorry for little me - I have long ago come to terms with my lack in particular techniques (some I would still like to improve, many I acknowledge and dance on without). Rather, these ruminations began during a recent session in the studio when I realised how hard it was to dance without turning. In improvisation, now my main medium, turns are once again something that I do subconsciously, not always counting or preparing them but discovering them as they unfold. Often dancing with no front, turning becomes a part of the movement toolset that arises, rather than a challenge set up to brutalise me and then deposit me facing the audience again. After all, why should a turn conclude where it began? To do so defeats the purpose of a turn. Whenever we talk about a turn outside of dance, it is precisely the change of direction the we describe. An about-face, a pivot, a turn for the worse, a turning point. None of these means to repeat the same action and finish where you started. They mean to change, to move, to not know where you may land. In fact, each of those phrases suggests a certain degree of improvised timing in addition to the unknown point of arrival. Last week I was watching some footage of my dancing nearly two years ago, and I was amazed to discover a sequence of turns that I performed. Starting standing with my ankles crossed and arms wound up, I took off for a big jump with most of a full turn, landing on both feet. As I landed, I rebounded to jump on my right foot with a half turn, with my left foot lifted in what a near-sighted person might call an arabesque if the light was bad and they were feeling generous. The left leg landed at a harsh angle forward of me, and I used the weight of my head to launch into a turn over that leg, bending the knee to lower the whole shape. When my right knee made contact with the floor, I transferred my weight (and the pivot point of the turn), following it by flinging my left leg behind my pelvis and briefly placing my hands on the ground to turn another full rotation on my knee, finally rolling out perpendicularly across my back. The whole thing was improvised, messy, and from standing to lying down amounted to three-and-five-eights of a turn.

Because guess what? I love turning. I love to rotate 180 degrees and experience a new perspective on a shape. I love to turn backwards on one heel, feeling my sit-bones push through the empty space behind me. I love to spin round and round with my head lifted to the sky like I used to as a kid. I especially love to roll, which feels like turning in dialogue with gravity rather than in conflict with it. So while I may never be good at turns, I’m taking back turning and letting myself love the ride that it offers into an unknown new direction.

¹Cunxin L, 2003, Mao’s Last Dancer, Penguin Books Australia, Level 28, 2 Southbank Boulevard Victoria Australia, page 55