Chronicle I don't know of what...
WARNING: this is probably going to be a long and 100% autobiographical post so I don’t promise it will be interesting…
I must confess that for some time I imagined this post very differently than it is going to be. It was supposed to be the chronicle of a dream, a dream finally conquered… but despite not being the post I wanted I think the story is worth it… even if it’s just for my own relief…
It all started back in 2003, when this “naranjeña” came to UCR to study… for reasons I still don’t dare to confess, I took “Modern Dance” with Rogelio López as an “artistic subject” or something like that… the course was a success, you could say it was my first foray into the performing arts… it was actually an interesting shock, I had never been to the theater and I came across modern dance… at that time I was too busy trying to decide how to make a living and survive on my own to pay much attention… but something stayed with me.
For the second semester of 2004, I decided it would be good to take the course again. I felt like I didn’t take advantage of it the first time, and the stress of the university, among other things, had me frustrated. I needed some distraction, so I decided to take the course again… it was a very wise decision, I enjoyed the course a lot and even the professor noticed that I had “grown” since the last time I was there.
I would go out and sit on “el pretil” to watch the sunset, with a face of happiness that only I could stand, I felt light, I could leave the weight of the world aside and forget about it for a while.
And it was one morning on a Sunday in January… when in the famous newspaper of this country I found an ad that said… modern dance for beginners, professor Gloriana Retana… at that time, as a student, literally every one of my coins counted, but it was the most affordable place to dance and I managed to enroll.
And that’s how on February 15, 2005, at 7:30 in the morning on a corner of the Montes de Oca theater, I took my first dance class with the only hope of recovering that feeling of seeing sunsets on el pretil… and then “everything stopped and love was born…”
Since then so much time has passed, so many things… dance has become something fundamental in my life, from that moment on my schedules (of study, work, and life) were built around my dance schedules, there’s nothing I like more than dancing… nothing has managed to make me leave the weight of the world aside for a while more than dance… nothing makes my body feel infinite like dance…
More or less after a year of being with Glori… Gus came along… I took my first ballet class at the age of 21, with shoes given to me by a professor at the university with a lot of heart because I couldn’t afford them… all with the hope of improving. After Gus, I started going to intermediate classes in the same Saprisa building… Eduardo Guerra and later Luis Piedra.
More or less around then the tears started… the desperation to want more, but my body couldn’t take it… my body hadn’t learned since I was little… the consequences of a sedentary life…
Then came danzú… José Alvarez as a teacher.
By then, I was spending as many hours in university classes as I was in dance classes and then came the first sea of tears. I tried to join a group of dancer formation, right there, at the Montes de Oca theater, with the same Rogelio Lopez and with many of my dancer friends that I had met along the way.
I tried for the first time a more “real” training… as you can imagine, I didn’t make it… but it was good… I tried, we did what we could, there’s still a long way to go…
I kept training wherever I could. I met Andrea Catania, thanks to Merce… where I could dance with my friends who did manage to get into the program…
And so, dancing whenever and wherever I could, without abandoning Glori, Gus, or José, who always had their little space for me in their classes, taking advantage of everything I could learn from all the beautiful people I have met dancing. I made it to a second audition… this time at the dance conservatory El Barco… already well past my prime… they didn’t even let me finish the audition… days later, they called me for a 3-month workshop… an extended audition… but there was no room for me in the end.
Then I didn’t lose hope… at least I had one last chance… to try to get into Danza Abierta again… already with a weakened spirit and an almost broken finger that required intensive therapy… I auditioned once again… with that feeling of the eternal audition…
And even though I made it to the “second round” I didn’t make it to the final group. Not seeing my name on that list was a low blow… to my illusion, to my desire to be in a group with strong technical training, to my desire for a stage… to hell with it once again.
More or less like that, in summary, we come to today… I think this time I have to admit defeat… at least for dance in that way… I’ll keep dancing… yes… I can’t give up something that I love so much… but I think instead of looking for the stage, I’ll look for the sunsets on el pretil again…