Читать книгу Body of a Dancer - Renee D'Aoust - Страница 11

The body of a dancer has shin splints up the front of the leg. She has a bunion from her years as a ballet dancer before she became a modern dancer. She has no toenails. Now as a modern dancer, she has floor burns up and down her spine. She has skin splits on the bottoms of her feet, and she wraps the splits with Elastacon, an expensive medical tape sometimes used on horses. The pharmacy on Eighth Avenue and 53^rd carries Elastacon for modern dancers and for all the Broadway gypsy dancers.

To this day, I can tell you the injuries of all my friends. I can tell you their physical problems more than I can tell you their family history. I can tell you that my friend Stef has trouble with her neck and sometimes with a knee. I can tell you that my friend Heather injured her calf muscle and that she was terrified because she’d never had an injury before. She didn’t know what the rest of us were talking about when we said a strained muscle hurt so badly. I can tell you my friend Mara had trouble with her lower back. I can tell you about another friend who had a herniated disk and spent six immovable months on her back. The doctors told her she would never dance again, and she told me she couldn’t imagine her life without dance. I can tell you almost everyone at Graham had trouble with their lower backs. I can tell you my friend Sandra occasionally has a glitch in her hip. I can tell you about a young woman named Kathleen who was slated for the New York City Ballet Company whose teacher ripped out the muscles in her right hip area because he forced the leg to her ear to show her she wasn’t working hard enough. That teacher was Perry Brunson. He was an amazing teacher. Placement, alignment, discipline. We lost him all those years ago. That was at the beginning of AIDS. We didn’t say AIDS back then.