34 BY DASHA YURKEVICH PASS ING in dance FALL 2022 34
In 2021 I was hired as an artist in residence at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA), a San Francisco high school I graduated from in 2020. I was hired to choreograph a piece for their dance department, my first piece as a commissioned choreographer. I named the piece Passing . In many ways the title was a literal translation of what occurred on stage. The 35 danc- ers passed an imaginary ball in a series of cannons. As the piece progresses the ball turns into an energy, echoing social patterns, the passage of time and the sense of fellowship and interdependence within our communities. But with time I have seen that this piece is about more than that. It is a reflection of myself, my education, and my relationship with dance. M y parents enrolled me in rhythmic gymnastics once I was old enough to remember movement. I rehearsed routines packed full of tricks for months only to per- form them in some dingy gym in front of judges, for a score on a projector. I loved performing more than anything and I always scored the most points in the “performance” category. But when it came to the tricks I always fell short, leaving me further and fur- ther down on the podium as the years went by. It felt like an uphill battle, training for competitions I would never win. Finally, at ten years old, I auditioned for the San Francisco Ballet School. It was a class solely composed of my favorite part of rhythmic gymnastics: the performance. I promptly quit my rhythmic gymnastics dreams and began training at the school. My first years at the San Francisco Ballet School were bliss, there was no other place I would have rather spent my time other than the studio. I got to dance in the same studios, and on the same stage as my idols: Maria Kochetkova, Sofiane Sylve, and Davit Karapetyan. I was in a ballet daze, it became everything to me. All my friends were from the studio, all we spoke about was ballet. In the evenings after class I would run across the street to watch the ballet, and dream of life on the stage from the standing room of the opera house. My ballet teachers became gods, I would do any- thing for their approval, every word they uttered was gospel. Thousands of tendus with my hand on that wooden barre for the high of walking the hallways under the stage, the smell of the cakey stage makeup, the trill of the orchestra rehearsing, the curtain, the audience, the music, the lights, the stage. There was nothing else in the world for me other than ballet. As the years passed the classes got more and more technical. We learned how to partner, practiced fouettes and learned variations from ballets.
I watched my friends get kicked out and new, better, thinner girls take their spot. I squeezed my bleeding, blistered feet into pointe shoes. I did my plies, I worshiped technique. Eventually the teachers’ critique started to shift to things I couldn’t control. No matter how much I sucked in in the mirror and no mat- ter how many dinners I skipped, I continued to disappoint them. But there was nothing else in the world; I had to do ballet. It was my whole life and my whole future. My rela- tionship with my body became a battle that everyone around me was fighting. If only I looked like the other girls, then I could move to the next level. Maybe skip the hummus and just eat the carrots. Every mir- ror tells me something different. I cry holding onto the wooden barre. I don’t know what I look like. In the end my spot at the school was replaced by someone who could fit into their vision of a dancer. I would have never thought that two years later I would be the cho- reographer at the front of a room of 35 dancers. I had 16 rehearsals to achieve my vision. The first rehearsals were challeng- ing, there were so many dancers. Thirty-five bodies can be so intimi- dating, like a huge blank canvas, or a blank paper. What do I do with all these people? How do I make something that’s my own? I remem- bered how frustrating it had been to sit in rehearsals with 40 other dancers trying to get put in the front. I had empathy for my danc- ers, and wanted them all to be seen. Of course, this proved to be frus- trating and challenging. Many times I left rehearsals feeling defeated, but I was stubborn. I told myself I had a goal to achieve—as long as I stuck to it, it would work.
FALL 2022 in dance 35
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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