Jarkko Lehmus Diary

A Sledgehammer In the Splits

It's Monday night and I've just come back home from an absolute hoot of an evening attending the Glamour Idol 2008. Drunken orange girls strutting their stuff in front of a bunch of cringing judges is just what a man needs to kick off the week. At least I had some classy company to soften the blow.

Going out in Glasgow highlights the fact that I work with some seriously beautiful and talented people who take pride in themselves. The flipside of it that, since I don't like to piss where I sleep, it's nigh on impossible to find any even remotely interesting ladies in the nightlife of Glasvegas.

Here I'm moaning about the fact that I work with pretty people. I guess we all have our problems. What a numpty...

Sorry again for the brief nature of the last entry. The gods of cigars, single malts and computing willing, I'll try to fit a bit more into this one.

Let's start with a few wise words of hindsight: the past year has been a particularly stressful one due to my compulsive an escapist nature. I've felt the need to try to sort out stacks of historical issues with the company all at once, but since I'm not getting paid to do that I've been trying to fit it all within my lunch hours and tea breaks with some passable results in the fields of the pay negotiations, maternity issues, dancers' health and fitness structure and moving from the outdated Equity national agreement to an updated house contract and terms and conditions of employment. Unfortunately I haven't always got my priorities right and all the paperwork on my lunch plate has resulted in sleepless nights and underachieving in the studio. To compound the issue, I worked far too hard on what I thought the idea of ballet technique was and ended up packing in my right hip to such an extent that I've had hard time just walking, let alone dancing, for the past six months. I hadn't been able to find help to ease the crippling pain, but there was no way I was going off again in the middle of the Beauty tour or the creation process of Romeo and Juliet. Dwelling in the pain is never a good idea, but neither is ignoring it. I created a situation where everything was hurting so much that I was really unhappy and a real pain to work with and in my efforts to stick my head in the quicksand of partying and boozing I slowly started to unravel on a very deep level. Over the past months my behaviour has been erratic to say the least and that has unfortunately affected my work, the people I've worked with, the people I've met and possibly wanted to have relationships with. to make it all even worse I've also been ignoring my friends. Essentially I've dug my head so far up my own arse that I've been rubbish at work and trampled on some amazing people to the extent that some of them don't even talk to me anymore. It hasn't been big nor clever. All I can do is to apologise, learn from my mistakes and hope that time heals the damage I've done.

It all came to a head and I eventually broke down at work and I had to walk out of the rehearsal and stay away for a couple of days to let things cool down a bit. I needed help, was unable to find it myself and didn't want to inconvenience people by asking for it. Being physically forced to take a couple of days off gave my body and mind enough time to relax a bit to find the tracks again. I had a couple of private sessions with our ballet mistress Amanda to point me in a better direction so I could actually get something out of the company class. I've also given my abused liver a bit of a rest, hit the pool again and got a few very relaxing and informative myofascial release sessions in.

I'd succeeded in dealing with the situation a little better, but the physical problems still persisted until finally, after six months of bashing my thick head against a brick wall, I had a flash of inspiration and booked an appointment with a physio called Bill Taylor in Edinburgh. Every time I see a physical therapist I feel an immense pressure of purging all the convoluted information my body keeps screaming at me to try and reflect it all against someone else's experience base. Usually nothing much comes out of it and I walk away with a nice treatment, but no long term solutions. This time was different. Bill fit me in between his other clients and spent a good couple of hours figuring things out with me. He let me say what I needed to say, said what he thought and came up with a plausible diagnosis and a few simple exercises to give me the tools to fix myself. At last I felt like I had gained some control over my body, and my life, again. The mental, emotional and physical effects have been immense. I've had my neglected friends commenting on how happy and healthy I look.

Dancing still hurts, but at least I know I can do something about it now.

Ignorance is not bliss, knowledge is power and obsessive nature is a good thing when channeled properly. I've spent wast amounts of time and energy pushing the boulder up the hill I thought I was supposed to climb. Creating an environment where the ball can roll freely in the right direction has been the key to this particular success. Now I've just need to keep taking small but consistent steps on this new path and see where it takes me. So far so good. Yet another start of another journey. Maybe this one will have a happier ending.

One of the things I wanted to write about last time was the memories and emotions that we harbour within our bodies and how they get triggered by movement, music, touch or even smell. Where all that came from was revisiting Ashley's Acrid Avid Jam. It's a duet he created on me and Gemma Nixon, currently dancing with Rambert, in the autumn of 2000 in London. I was on my last year in college, Ashley was still with the Royal. I consider that process and the resulting piece to be the main reason I am within this company. It has had a great impact on me as a dancer and I've had the chance to revisit it at various time during my career: first creating it at the Royal Ballet studios while still a student, performing it with Laura Morera in a Royal Ballet choreographic evening in 2001, rehearsing and performing it with Lisa O'Hare for my graduation show, joining Scottish Ballet in 2003 to realise the piece was in the company's repertoire and rehearsing it with yet another partner, Diana Loosmore, and teaching it to various other dancers with wildly varying success levels and, most recently, rehearsing it again with Kara McLaughlin for Ross Cooper's Curve Foundation's tenth anniversary gala on last week. I've danced the piece in either rehearsal or performance with eleven different partners now and every time there's something new I have to learn about dancing and communication. It's a signature, a milestone and a cross-section all rolled in one. Every time I hear the music or dance the steps the memories of times past come flashing through my body and mind. How did it feel? how is it feeling now? What does she need from me? How can we make the best of this new situation? Where have I traveled and what have I experienced over these years and how do the new skills and experiences affect the piece while still keeping the essence of it true? Which new dimensions and possibilities will Ashley see in his piece this time around? It's a humbling experience to have traveled so far with one piece yet feeling like every step is the first one again. Letting that experience inform every single performance pushing the movement and the feeling ever further into the unknown realms of sensitivity, passion, emotion, technical perfection and fluidity for me is the zen of dancing. Being supremely introspective, an observer of my own reactions and bursting with energy, presence and projection all at the same time. This is where I am now. This is what I understand now. What will it be tomorrow?

All this meditation through movement and performance, my work, raises the question of how much clarity and understanding do I have of the rest of my life, the people around me and, ultimately, myself?

It is now 3.16 am. I think that is enough of introspection for anyone for a little while. Let's take a taxi back to earth. The Romeo and juliet tour is a it's mid-point with the company heading to Inverness tomorrow and finishing off in Glasgow next week. The reviews have been pretty good and the audiences have been excellent. Our first cast Benvolio and second cast Romeo, talented Mr Blyde, twisted his ankle in a classic last rehearsal call mishap on our production week resulting in Tama Barry, first cast Tybalt and third cast Romeo, been thrown in as the second and third cast Romeo and bumping me into a second and third cast Tybalt. Hasty rehearsals with new partners ensued. It's all settling down now with Mark Kelly having had his debut Tybalt last week taking pressure off Tama and allowing a more settled casting structure. I'm alternating as lord Capulet and Tybalt, which is not a bad place to be at all. As long as we can offer offer our customers a good return for their money, I can sleep easy.

Doing the scale of productions we do with the size of company we are is always going to ask a lot of everyone involved. The tight margins we operate within constantly remind me of the importance of maintenance, injury prevention and clear and well thought out organisation. I'd like to think we're heading in the right direction. Slowly... Softly... Don't force it...

Sometimes it feels like I'm trying to teach an old sledgehammer to do the splits. I'm talking about myself, of course....

Posted by Jarkko at May 27, 2008 03:36 AM