What the hell happened in San Francisco?

By Emmaly Wiederholt; Photos of Pat Berrett

In 2008, I moved to San Francisco to pursue my dream of being a dancer. I was just out of my BFA in ballet of the University of Utah. I ended up sharing a small room with another dancer, my best friend Malinda Lavelle. We take classes every day at the San Francisco Dance Conservatory and, after a while, we began to dance for several choreographers throughout the Bay area. Finally, we moved from our little room to an apartment with other friends, all of which, of course, were dancers.

After several years, the reality of being a dancer in a very expensive city began to appear. As we approached our 20 years, many dancers in our circle, including ourselves, began to look for new paths that could offer more sustainability. Personally, I did what many people do when they don't know what to do with their life: I went to the postgraduate school.

Fast progress until 2021. I am living in Albuquerque, nm. Malinda and I are still in contact, but our paths have diverted. And yet, fortuitously, she and her husband end up moving only seven blocks from me and my husband. We are sitting together on a hot summer night, remembering the experience of living in the Bay area. Malinda sighs and says: “What the hell happened in San Francisco? We should make a piece about it.”

Last summer 2024, Malinda and I premiered our dance theater piece until night, What the hell happened in San Francisco? Yes, it took us for three years, but we had a lot of land to cover. We wanted to know: what was this experience of moving to the big city to pursue our dreams really? When was disappointment established? What was the cause of disappointment? Why this time in our lives still reverbera all these years later?

The piece is divided into five vignettes: the appearance, work, submission, sleep and rupture. Because I think there could be some universality and relevance for the experience of other dancers, let me share a little about each vignette and what we discover with the benefits of perspective and time.

The look is about that “that” factor that I remember not knowing if I had done it or not, or at least wondering if I had done it, since it seemed to be a mystical blessing that would occur to certain dancers. It was crazy; Some extra intangibles beyond the technique or art that some dancers inexplicably had, at least for a while, and others not. The appearance is also the facade that was felt prerequisite: from using the ugliest flannel and older socks as uniform, even obediently enumerating all companies and choreographers for which we had worked, as if someone less were maintaining the score. Finally, the aspect is about that feeling of always being evaluated by teachers, choreographers and directors, as well as dancers' companions. At the end of the vignette, a voice says abruptly: “Thank you!”, As if we checked us casually from the audition in which we were always.

The work is about the internal monologue that was studying perpetually through our brains as young dancers, a combination of mantras, health and physical conditioning objectives, obsessions of weight, comparisons with other dancers and topics of gratitude. Here are some lines of the voiceover: “I need to publish more. I need to let the rejection affect me … I need to stretch later. I just need to strengthen myself. Maybe cross training should start … I must start an anti -inflammatory diet. Do you see anti -inflammatories? This is art.

The appearance and work seemed dark to me. Despair, the sinking feeling that after all this training and dedication, maybe it was not good enough, I hurt to visit again. And yet, when Malinda and I made these vignettes, we often find laughter. I suspect it was the laugh of seeing a reflected absurd. Although laughter took me by surprise, I have agreed; It's fun. This line of thought and acting is fun, in a dark way.

Submission bowed more in that dark and fun world that we inhabit as young dancers. The power differential among all these young women (mostly), desperate for attention and validation, and the elderly (often) in the front of the room is one of the darkest sides of the world of dance that has begun to attract attention in the last five or six years from #MeToo, but was completely normalized at that time. We explore the look of the choreographer or director in the front of the room and the dancer's deep desire to express his artistic vision.

That was the vignette: Malinda was the choreographer, and I was the dancer. I did a brief phrase, and she asked me to do the phrase again, this time more interesting, now stop struggling so much to be interesting, now do it as if it were at a party, now do it as if it were windy and the laces of the buaseos were attached to my hips to the earth, now I did, now, I liked the time as time, as if they had resisted the time, as if they had resisted me, as if they had resisted me, as if they had resisted me, as if they had resisted me, as if they had resisted me, as if I had resisted me, as if they had resisted me, as if I had resisted. training. In the vignette, I obey, feeling more silly and more numb in my body while the choreographer observes, giving increasingly absurd indications, and increasingly looking at my lack of ability to perceive his nebula vision.

When Malinda and I rehearsed or made submission, I felt that “ICK” rose in my chest, that feeling that it would be asked to do something to be more interesting but without achieving it, that feeling of trying to be “better” in a completely subjective way. And yet, this section was the one that always made the public laugh aloud, it often also made us laugh. We even have this extract at the Funny Fiesta Albuquerque.

At this point in the performance, we take a break, so to speak. We returned to our mat that worked like our little apartment and had a dance party. One of the best things I remember about being a young person was the camaraderie. That camaraderie has led Malinda and me through more than 15 years of ups and downs. There was catharsis to put music at full volume and dance in our kitchen, or make unintelligible jokes until we cry, or we dress so as not to go anywhere. If our material was getting too dark, this was the exhaust valve. Yes, we were in control of a poorly paid professional search full of body dysmorphia, occasional energy abuse and without sustainability outside of teaching, but we had ourselves and we were having fun doing it!

Malinda and I moved to San Francisco to study at the San Francisco Dance Conservatory under summer Lee Rhatigan. Summer was the reason why most students in the conservatory were there. She was an incredible teacher and mentor with a special ability to give class corrections in such a way that they felt as philosophy. I have old magazines full of notes and comments of the summer. The reverence we had for the summer was the inspiration for the dream vignette. Like a dream sequence in a classic ballet, we create a complete dream scene with Crystal Ball where we ask Summer how we can improve our technique, where we must audition, when we can use the study and if the dance can change the world. She responds with an incorporeal voice with opaque corrections and words of wisdom. Our young anguish and desire to have a guide were not exactly parodied, but became a little silly. Now I can appreciate that maybe summer did not have all the answers, or at least it did not always want to be our Dumbledore, but at that time we are unable to make a serious decision without consulting it.

The rupture was the final vignette. We create the choreography by answering the message: make a dance about falling in love. I chose the ballet music Sleeping beautyof the Pas de Deux wedding in the third act. I made that Deux Pas in my final recital of the high school before going to my elegant BFA program. For me, music symbolizes a moment in my life in which my dream was in its way without recharge. I overlap the music with white noise that becomes stronger and stronger until it wraps the tchaikovsky. My dance follows the sound landscape starting obedient and content before getting more and more desperate and indomitable.

Malinda's approach for the love drop was to use a huge trophy box that her mother sent her while cleaning her childhood closet. There are dozens of trophies in all shapes and sizes. It is an incredible accessory. Malinda sits next to the box, takes out a trophy and says: “Thank you.” She takes another, and another, and another, who says obediently “thanks”, until he can barely sustain all the trophies and are weighing it, which makes it impossible to move.

We established our love alone next to each other. They were not supposed to be a contrast, but they ended up being powerful contradictions, as if the accumulation of Malinda trophies was my fault. In the vignette, I move freely but without coveted trophies. Next to me, Malinda cannot move under the weight of her trophies.

Performing What the hell happened in San Francisco? It ended up being therapeutic for both of them. I am no longer persecuted by the questions of what I could have done or if it were good enough. I loved my time dancing in San Francisco, and I'm glad it's over. Now I can see that the deck was always stacked against all the dancers, but we did it anyway. I am proud of my young dancer.

The piece ends with Summer's voice saying a line that once said in class: “Everything is education if we let it be.” At this current point of my life, when my body begins not to work in the way I want, and my time to dance must be balanced against demands such as my family and work, I can appreciate the lessons that I learned by having the audacity to pursue a dream as bold as a dancer, and by understanding that dreams are not always brilliant.

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