No, it's not a gothic style nail polish.

It's the result of breaking in the new heavy shoes in less than two weeks before a feis and then competing with them immediately without a day of rest.

Ironically, if I hadn't done the dance that put my toes into this miserable condition, I would have probably danced much better than I did now. But then again, it was also the best succeeded solo dance of mine in the competition and the one that raised most recognition from other dancers; basically I owe my toes to that silver medal.

The feis went well and I am still in one piece, what with the black nails and painful walking and all, but still no parts of me have dropped off so far. I was not satisfied with my own performance, even with two medals on championship level, when I really know I could have danced better if my feet felt any more normal. My own fault of course, not to get the shoe issue sorted much earlier, but we all have to learn these things some day, don't we? I think I can take quite an amount of pain since as a dancer there barely is a day nothing hurts at all. But there is the ordinary pain resulting from too little stretching or wrong dancing positions which can be corrected and beared and then there is the humanly unbearable pain one cannot really overcome even with a huge amount of will power.

I will get over the pain issues soon, but before that I have to relate to a matter that makes this all a little absurd. I was glad to see my friend the German runner commenting on my last post, saying that also athletes are very familiar with the sore muscles and all, which is definitly true. I just speak about dancers because that's the only field I know. But what is the difference between athletes giving their best in a competition and dancers giving their best on stage? Ever seen the slow motion videos they show to make it clear who won a 100m competition and the runners' cheeks bouncing up and down and the faces they make when stretching their legs a little bit further still? Or ever watched a javelin-throwing competition and heard their roars? And then, ever seen a ballet - or any other dance performance?

The athletes and dancers both try and break the limits a so-called normal human being would not even want to try in their real senses. It's beautiful, it's sometimes even divine (why else would they call some people "the goddesses of ballet" or compare athletes to Greek gods?) and it's strongly, purely, tiringly physical. The athletes and the dancers alike sweat and feel pain, try to overcome gravity and push the limits of muscle endurance further and further. In the result of this the athelets are allowed to grin and roar and look even ugly sometimes.

The dancers however overcome the gravity with broken toes and smile on the top of it. On stage we are to make an illusion of ease, lightness, almost effortless motion that flows side by side with the music. Of course, it's art, and sport is sport. What we do is not as real as sport, so to speak. We are not forced to pretend, we WANT to create the illusion. This is admired and wondered but also leads to misunderstandings and disrespect towards the physicality of dance work. This leads to sports class teachers who comment "oh well, great that you got this hobby dancing but would be good to go for a run once in a while as well".

I do not mean to glorify dancing by any means, just pointing out some absurd facts about it. Just for fun, try running the marathon smiling all the way.

Back to the feis of last weekend. The individual Nordic Championship was won by a dancer who was definitly worth it, and the level of the open/advanced/championship dancers was so good I was honoured to be part of them and get my share of medals among others. However there was something beyond the solo succession: the victory of modern Irish dance I have tried to create, keep up and develop throughout my years within the dance form. "If Irish dancing could be said cool, this was it" - a great comment from an adjudicator who've seen and taught the dance for decades in the very traditional and sometimes a little stiff athmosphere it tends to have. My Damhsa dancers won the show category with a rockish style choreography I made and the faith we had in what we were doing was proved right - even though we never imagined winning the competition with this much brave effort to do something different. But we did it, and I dare to say we did it with a style.

All thanks to the great dancers who took my comments and corrections and demands with no limits trying yet their best and never saying a word of complaint when I made them dance the same 5-second piece for the twentieth time in a row. The perfect group for the perfectionist choreographer.

Keep on taping (those toes)

-Seeing that makes me want to quit, said a pupil of mine today (half joking, I must admit). And what did she see? My toes.

Five days to go. I wonder how my nerves let alone feet are when we are Thursday this time and I should be packing my pumps and dress together with numerous band-aid packages ready to leave early next morning. Today neither feet nor nerves were that marvelous but then again, there are days and there are days, especially in dancing. Yesterday I had a small victory over a dance I've nerve-wrackingly hard tried to get into one satisfiable piece for a long time and my spirits were unusually high for the past weeks regarding the upcoming competition. And why am I so late with my practicing? Well of course, I am a teacher. Like a mother, before myself I take care that my children (even though I really don't have any children dancing) know their hops and trebbles as well as they can. The perfect example was the biggest show I have so far made with a colleague a couple of years ago: we trained our group of dancers for half a year and throughout the summer spent hours and hours at the studios almost every day, yelling and pleading and all between trying our best to make them dance as we wanted. And then I finished my own solo in my livingroom in the middle of the last night before the big performance.

Even though I realise my perfectionist tendencies towards dancing, I would still sometimes need someone to push me and make me dance better, try harder, concentrate more. I can practice myself to half dead but not always I feel having got so much done even though I would have spent hours of time alone at the dance studio. However an intensive one or two hours of practice with a good teacher makes wonders worth of weeks' work. What can I say, it sometimes feels a weird joke to be a perfectionist flegmatist, though, just maybe it also saves my life and nerves at times. And I know I am not the only dancer to feel this way. We all need a little push from time to time to make us reach for more than the mortal way-too-easily-aching bodies we were given would reasonably let us. For the sake of art, move, beauty, passion.

Now I do have a sense of reality as well. I think rest is good, too, and lately, becoming older and wiser have genuinely realised my good night sleep is irreplaceable. But there are times when the so-called "normal" idea of something does not quite coincide with that of dancers. This is what I count on you to understand - or at least be willing to imagine - if you keep on reading.