It’s 3pm in the afternoon. We’ve just started our afternoon rehearsals, and currently in the sunny side of Spain in Act 1 of Don Quixote. And so for the third time today, kitri does her entrance, the whole company turns to the corner and we act out our surprise and excitement. For the third time.
Over my 7 year career with the company, We have repeated this ballet so many times I need 2 hands to count. And this time I have finally been casted as one of the Spanish girls. It took me 7 years of understudying this role to get here. I thought that I would be happy, but after 7 years, the excitement is long gone.
We have been rehearsing this act for a whole month every single day. One month done, two more to go. I cannot wait to finish this rehearsal, this day, maybe this year even, and it is only January. I was holding on by a thread, the days are repetitive and monotonous. I look towards my colleagues around me hoping for some encouragement, but they are in the same state as me. Faces blank and uninterested. It was a funny sight so I looked towards the huge full length mirrors at the front of the studios and took in the reflection of me and the company.
Seeing the configuration of dancers, with the music of Don Quixote blasting in the speakers, it brought me back to the first year of when I joined the company.
Don Quixote was also the first rehearsal and first ballet that I was casted as an understudy when I first joined the company. I was standing at the back of the studio in the corner, taking in the same sight with the same music. And I noticed a particular dancer. She had her arms crossed in front of her. Her face blank with a blasé demeanour. Like nothing fazed her, she was cool, confident and unbothered. In the beginning of my joining the company, I was awestruck and intimidated by her presence, she seemed like a diva, like the fictional company dancer that all young aspiring students had in their minds manifested into real life. But days went on and her attitude started to reveal more and more of her unhappiness. Her blasé attitude hinted at a deeper nihilism, and her confidence masked her growing indifference and boredom.
It kept me wondering why she felt that way, when we get to do what we love everyday. And why she was still there when she looked like she would much rather be someplace else. Her cynicism almost seemed to condescend my feelings towards the art form and I could help but feel somewhat offended as I slowly lost respect for her.
And now as I look at myself in the mirror and caught sight of myself. Seeing myself cocooned in the facade of that dancer, trapped in the scene of Don Quixote with its festive music contradicting the despair that I feel inside, I feel shame and disappointment washing over me as I realise I was becoming or had even become something or someone I had held contempt for. Till this day I do not know exactly how she felt, but what I do know achingly, was the feeling of guilt weighing in my heart, towards my colleagues, the company, my precious art that I held so close to my heart and for myself.
The Trigger of Change
It was in 2021, when the world was coming out of covid, that was when the company was allowed to put on more shows. It lead to a kind of “revenge working”. The company had so many performances lined up, we were working 7 days with only 1 day off for many many weeks. I was exhausted, everyone, including the backstage crew was exhausted. And although I was given a lot of opportunities, my body and mind couldn’t keep up. I was grateful, but it was stressful having to manage expectations of the company and myself.
There was also guilt put on us when we were feeling tired. That, we should be thankful for such opportunities, compared to other dance companies that had to close because of the pandemic. So we continued working.
And as the global economy was hit, there was even less funding for the arts sector, which lead to more and more repetitions of the same works. Therefore becoming something of a factory production line. Everyone stuck to their same roles, efficiency was most important, forget about individual growth, what was most crucial was output of the company, how many shows we were performing. And so, what I once loved doing was starting to become a chore, I was tired of encouraging myself and hoping for things to change.
And so I left the company, following my husband to France, hoping that a change in scenery would change my perspective. Relight the fire I once had for dance.
Of course I was wrong. The changing of landscape did nothing except to highlight my mistaken ways of working, spiralling further into burnout. Only when I was miserable and desperate that I started to accept that maybe I had outgrown this chapter of my life, and that maybe what I was hoping in the future was not a future in dance. Forcing me to make that difficult step into the unknown. And in hindsight, I had held on too long to a particular way of working that no longer proved suitable, and how I was unable to adapt to the changing demands of my job.
Burnout was a helpless feeling, It wasn’t an overnight occurrence; rather, it was something that had been bubbling slowly, finally spilling over one day demanding for attention.
It’s the slow grating underneath the skin and when we are spread too thin that we realise the existence of the friction that has been there all this while, slowly eating away at us. As described by Bilbo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings before he whisked himself away on his last adventure,
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Burnout can act as an invitation and reminder to slowdown and remember certain aspects of life we have forgotten while pursuing our ambitions. The ability to recognise burnout and have the maturity and compassion for ourselves to rest, could be crucial in order to keep doing the things we love.
Anxiety
The road to burnout tends to involve a kind of anxiety driven frantic way of working. In our pursuit of efficiency, either by taking shortcuts or by working intensely for long periods of time, gives us a false sense of productivity. And overtime it diminishes the quality of what we care about. Similar to life, we are seemingly always chasing someone or something, that driving force creates an urgency which easily takes over us. By working at a calmer, more forgiving pace, we not only allow ourselves, but our important work the space and time to develop.
Seasonality
Therefore embracing seasonality has been something to remember. How seasons come and go, we have forgotten this circadian rhythm of nature. As the world moves steadily along with its artificial lights and buildings, there is a reactive instinct to follow suit, in our arrogance of youth, in the name of passion and ambition. This intense love for what we do can easily get lost along the way. We charge ahead, thinking that we as humans have built machines, we can work like one. But as fatigue slowly builds up, the need for rest overpowers. Embracing seasonality allows us to align with the natural rhythms of life. To recognise that there must be a period of separation between sowing seeds and reaping the harvest, allows us to work more sustainably, giving us time to rest and recover our mental exhaustion and also remedy the monotonous nature of burnout. With a more natural variation within the year, we can create room for new inspiration and creativity.
Forgiveness
The ability to forgive ourselves for being human, and to have the same compassion for ourselves that we often offer to others. To accept disappointment in our flaws graciously, and not succumb to guilt working as compensation and punishment.
To forgive oneself, when we procrastinate or not get things right the first time. To keep reminding oneself that everything is a work in progress, so as cliche as it sounds, it is not about the results but the effort. Nothing can be perfect and the imperfection keeps us working towards something larger and better, taking us closer to a horizon that we cannot even conjure up in our imagination. Therefore learning to forgive ourselves can help of pace our energy levels, so as to not blow out the flame of our inner fire, because what we want after all is to keep doing what we love for as long as we would like to.
However, regardless of our attempts to prevent burnout, burnout can also be a misunderstood state of being. And though it can serve as a reminder to rest and slow down, it is also an invitation to change and evolve. It can be the moment that tips the scale, revealing the decision that has always been there behind all the noise of the world, hinting at us that our love for something has overstayed and it is trying to find a new medium to express itself. A psychological resistance, that eventually spills over into the physical world. And therefore perhaps much like how seasons come and go, this chapter of our life has to close before we can move on.
In Transit 
Leave a comment