The most important part of any dancers everyday life – the morning class – is one big routine, really. It consists of exercises which, if they are not the same everyday, at least they are built up on the same basic technique we all have been following since day one of our dancing lives. One can’t generalize and say all dancers are like this or like that, we differ as much from each other than any other group of human beings. That said, I’ve met my share of routine-dancers. Those who do the same, again, and again, and again..

Like Mie, a former colleague. Mie wakes up every morning at seven. She has her coffee, and goes to the theatre every morning at 8. There she gets changed, put on one of her leotards (I’m sure she keep them nicely folded next to each other on her little table), and enters the studio exactly at 8:30. Every morning. In her hands is her little cassette player. In the cassette player her one and only cassette – the recording of some pianist playing (rather lousy) music divided into 15 random tunes. For each tune, Mie has an exercise, strengthening one certain part of her body.

I worked with Mie for a year. We toured together, did performances, got drunk and sick together. Still there was not one day – not one! – that I didn’t hear the (shitty) piano tunes from the studio as I got changed in the morning. Once, our plane was late, and the director told us there would be no time for a class before our performance. Mie did her exercises in the airport…

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Mie is today a soloist in a very good theatre in Europe. She is one of the strongest dancers I have ever met, and she has a psychic strength that just keeps her going, even if the roof is coming down on her head. Maybe the whole robot-life isn’t that bad, after all…

Ta-ta!
H

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