Jarkko Lehmus Diary

Reflections On The Battlefield

I was supposed to scribble something before we hit the road, but it obviously didn't happen. The hindsight view of the hardships of settling back into a routine, the shock of long days of partnering and the feelings of anxiety before going on stage for the first time for five months were all supposed to be documented in detail, but a few personal things took all the free time I could scrape together. The best I can do is to try to usher some of those feelings from the dusty drawers of my memory and jot them down before touching on anything else:

After months of seemingly endless time without a reason to get up or to go to bed the prospect of going back into full time work was a bit intimidating. I knew the rest of the company had been on stage performing and getting on with their lives off the stage. Who was I to jump straight back in the middle of all that? I'd had all this time in my hands, but didn't feel like I'd made the best of it. I felt like I'd lacked the drive to get anything proper done. Like the reason for my current existence had been stripped off me and I'd just been drifting along the stream and wasting an opportunity to do something else. I don't think I saw the big picture, though. For the first time for a few years I'd managed to have a meaningful relationship with a lady I even called "girlfriend". I had my reservations about how things would go after I returned to work, but while I had the time I was able to put a lot of energy and attention into it. It was a nice, calming feeling to have someone in my life, but nice just isn't my middle name. In the end of February I could feel myself gearing up to gather the momentum I knew I needed to hit the ground running once the day to get back to work earnest came.

The 5th of March came along and I starting paddling like a lunatic to stay on the wave. I didn't think I'd be partnering much until May when we'd start rehearsing for the Edinburgh Festival. Err... False hopes are punished with a public flogging. Since we'd done most of the rep already there was far too much time to just sit around and stretch the proverbial foreskin, so, to avoid a proverbial tumble caused by an overstretched dermal fold, Ashley started us on a heavy dose of 'Fearful Symmetries'. Fluffy ideas of pacing myself and taking it easy are in the part of my brain that shuts off when I see a girl in mid-air flying towards me. My new-found softness and internal ways of working got a true baptism in fire with fairly predictable results of old habits of relying on the strength of my limbs in fear of the fragility of the core trying to rear their ugly heads. Although I did my back in and had some serious concerns about the scarring in my abdominals, it wasn't all bad: I'd gained more space and support for my spine during my off-time and by slowly gaining the mobility and trust in my centre I could start to transfer the new ideas of movement I'd been working on on the gyrotonic machine into being a usable part of my dancing language. Even the ballet classes seemed easier and I wasn't constantly jamming up my quads. Result! All I need to do now is to explore this new way of standing, moving and supporting myself. I might, as I already have and undoubtedly will again and again, get a bit frustrated, but at least I won't get bored for a few years to come.

Being on stage again with all the other people, the set and the lights around me was strange at first, but mostly I was worried about my costume. How would it behave in the presence of all the other costumes? Would it go all wild and stray from the job at hand and go running around the stage sniffing other costumes' bottoms? My costumes had been nicely groomed while I was away, but they were a bit excitable to start out with, so I decided to nip it in the bud and rather than using the old art of "costume whispering" and introducing them slowly into the stage environment, I just put them on and gave them a full sensory overload to de-sensitise them from the off and I'm delighted to say that it worked a treat. They went crazy for a little moment, but soon calmed down and have behaved themselves impeccably ever since even in a very close contact with some very foxy female costumes.

On the prospect of being on stage topless with the physical anomaly that is Paul Liburd, I'd decided to ditch the spare tyre and dropped myself back to my old fighting weight of 78 kilos from a starting weight of 84. I haven't weighed this little since I graduated from the college in 2001 and on joining the company after a year in the army I actually weighed in a not so unsubstantial 92 kilos! I must have lost a bit of muscle in the process of restructuring and this ballet lark hasn't done much for my upper body, though. I used to spend half of my days upside down on my hands and after all these years in a ballet company I feel a bit weedy up top. Bring on the Beach Body 2007-program! It seems like the time's rife to dust off all the hard earned knowledge of weight training again and see what I can achieve while still maintaining the mobility. Mr Paul Thacker, if you haven't vanished up some little Lei-Lei's orifice while training those thai boxers, give me shout. Since I haven't mentioned his name before, Mr Thacker is the man I had the privilege of training with while in National Youth Dance Company. The man pointed me in a direction and slapped me on the haunches. Ever since I've been zig-zagging my way to a higher physical ability.

Talking about higher physical ability peeling the blubber off my waist has certainly lifted me higher. It's a bit like being a single dad of an 8-month-old with one of those baby-carriers strapped to your body at all times. I might have gained some extra wings, but, contrary to what some might say, I wouldn't make a great dad: I dropped the baby... Oops...

Up, up and away! Photo by Andrew Ross©

So that's the physical things being mulled over again. The shows have been pretty good with an increasing audience base that seems to be enjoying themselves. Even the Edinburgh audiences warmed up eventually. After my hiatus I've had a fresh viewpoint into the state of the company and it is moving forward and expanding in ability at quite pace. Ashley's vision of creating a company that is capable of performing as varied repertoire as possible as authentically as possible is taking shape. Through the thinking about injury management I've hatched up some thoughts about how to move the company even further, but I'll let the crystallise a bit before I'll put them on paper. In the meantime I'd like to thank all the people who have got in touch with me after my last posting. Especially I'd like to thank Paul Cameron for the chance to reflect my raw off a different surface and Helen Laws from DanceUK for all the material she has already supplied me with.

So all in all work's been pretty busy and I've really enjoyed to have that burning drive in my life again, but "What happened to the social life?", I hear you asking. I've found myself up to my eyeballs in the solitary life of a man who's married to his art, but having the experience of the despair of all those aimlessness days I appreciate my life even more. The time for other things will come, but now is the moment to dig into the old bag of bones I call my body and see what it's really capable of and how far can I push myself mentally, emotionally and spiritually over the few remaining years of my career as a dancer.