I ran one mile today at 11:20. Not too shabby! You people who are out there running 5 miles a day are probably reading this and thinking I'm never going to make any real progress if I don't up my time... and you might be right. But for the moment, I'm grooving on watching myself make baby steps.
Speaking of grooving... running has reignited my passion for dancing. I've always been involved with some kind of dance since the time I can remember. Ballet was my first love and, until second grade, when my body decided not to be anorexic and tall, I thought might be my destiny. I practiced ballet so hard when I was a pre-schooler that to this day I still naturally stand in "first position" with my heels touching and toes turned out. I had a ballet box for my shoes and tutu that I basically slept with; and for one particular recital, I had my ballet shoes spray painted gold lame. On that day, I was a star...
After ballet came tap and jazz, which I took for years. Then there was modern dancing, which suited my moody pre-teen mindset. By 8th grade, I was signed up for formal dancing at the Methodist church. A bunch of us from school took it together. We had to wear dresses and white gloves, and the boys sat on one side of the church and the girls on the other. Of course the boys were our friends we'd known since nursery school. They were shorter than we were - and awkward, which made the whole thing seem a tiny bit less exciting than I think it was supposed to be; but I loved the dancing - especially the jitterbug.
By the time I was a freshman in high school, some of my friends and I had discovered the local club scene. We practiced "moves" together at home. Rumona always had the best arm gestures going on! Anyone remember that? We regularly "borrowed" family cars after dark and hightailed it over to seedier neighboring towns that had dance clubs. We'd use IDs we'd had made in Manhattan to get in and dance the night away with slightly greasy but eager strangers. When I turned 17, a bunch of us got braver and began heading down to the clubs in NYC - places we heard mentioned on Z-100. Emerald City, Red Zone, The Tunnel. Sometimes we'd get pulled into VIP rooms there and meet interesting people like local sports stars, none of whom I ever knew... or at 5'1" could even have a conversation with. What? What? Sorry... you play sports? DUH! We'd stay until they closed the club down.
For me, my fascination with the club scene was two fold. One, of course, it was the feeling of escaping my high-pressure academic reality for a night and just letting myself get swept up in the amazing energy of good music; but two, it was a fascination about what this music and a little mood lighting could do to an otherwise ugly, empty space in some obscure part of town. We're talking about selling a product with absolutely no inherent benefits - by simply adding a little sparkle and marketing. Getting it right took vision and determination (and possibly a few payoffs, I later learned).
The club scene was the ultimate theater. The owner would pick what seemed at the time like the least strategic location to rent out an empty space, paint the interior entirely black, install some lights with gels, a smoke machine and 5' woofers. Turn the lights off and there was magic. People came from all over the place to drink watery sex on the beach cocktails in cheap plastic cups, sweat through their drop-waisted dresses, and rip their L'Eggs nylons on the dance floor.
Over the years I learned about the role of the club owner and promoter, and that I think sparked my interest in psychology, positioning, repositioning and the nature of feeling good. I threw myself into the behind-the-scenes side of entertainment - talent management, advertising, and later fragrance and spirits marketing. I've never forgotten what I learned in those early years though about making something out of nothing. All good things incorporate a bit of theater, don't they?
So as I prepare for this big show I'm going to audition for next fall - the Marathon - I'm being careful to manage the theater I am training in. I don't want any part of me getting lost on the way, leaving early, or forgetting to come back. There's a lot of promotion going on (like this blog!), reasonable hydration, and the DJ's got to have the latest tunes.
It's a strange thing to play dance music at 6:30 AM. Sometimes I feel like I'm just coming home from a night out, especially if I've neglected to take my makeup off the night before! I think I'm way too old now to go out to one of the real clubs in the city unless it is through a work promotion; but I'm really enjoying pretending for a minute that I'm a club kid as I step into that mirrored elevator in my apartment building... I just hope the camera in there is a dummy because it's a party when I hit that button going down to the gym on the 9th floor...
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