by Zachary Kruskal
When I was eleven I had the opportunity to perform at Lincoln Center in a dance piece honoring the Hindu Goddess Saraswati. This was one of the most amazing art collaborations I have ever worked on and it took months to prepare for. As the day of the performance grew closer my fellow performers and I became very apprehensive as weather forecasts predicted rain. Since the performance was outside there would be no shelter to shield the dancers and musicians. We had two options: if it started to rain we would stop the show and go home, or we could power through the rain and finish the performance. We eventually decided that if the rain chose to fall we would all get soaking wet and continue dancing. In the hypothetical sense this sounded pretty depressing, but the act of performing, having rain ruin everything, and finishing anyway instilled in me a strong determination that I use everyday. So try and imagine a little brown haired boy in golden face paint. Bindi on my forehead, storm clouds above me. People have been panicking all day hoping that the sky won’t open up. Months of work might be brought to a soggy halt if the forecast turns out to be true, but we’re optimistic. And weathermen are often wrong.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t dance. Since I was three years old I’ve been a part of a dance organization called Spoke the Hub located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I’ve been learning about dance for most of my life and performing for an audience was always a part of my routine, but I had never worked on something this big before. Spoke the Hub, the little art studio in Brooklyn, was getting the chance to perform at Lincoln Center’s “Out of Doors” series in Manhattan, and so we rose to the challenge. My dance teacher and friend Elise Long had been working tirelessly for about a year on this project. She focused it around a Hindu Goddess named Saraswati. Saraswati is the Goddess of learning, knowledge, and art. She is depicted as a many-armed woman playing a stringed instrument and surrounded by swans and peacocks. The piece was called “A Garland For Saraswati.”
Being a part of a dance piece usually means knowing all of its pieces and parts so well that you can do it multiple times, but we were only going to do it once and the only person who knew what the big picture looked like was Elise. We were joined by an Indian dance group, a traveling Indonesian orchestra, and even a Tai Chi master who would be performing with us. If rain fell and we were forced to find a solution in the ruin of our art it would be very tricky since none of us really knew what the whole piece should look like. It was strange being a part of something much larger than myself and not quite understanding everything about it, but we dancers knew that whatever happened the day of the performance would be spectacular for as long as it could be.
Weeks of my life spent paper macheing giant six fingered hands, learning specific choreography influenced by traditional Indian dance, and memorizing strange chants were coming to a boil. However, the predicted forecast could make an already complex piece even more difficult to pull off. This dance had parts of it honoring water and rain, but if both were to fall on us while we were performing everything would literally fall apart. The art we had painstakingly created leading up to the performance was made out of cardboard, paper, and glue. If rain happened to fall on the day of the performance than all of our artistic creations would soften back into the delicate materials we had used to make them. I don’t think the weather was ever planned for, but being trained by Elise meant that I had an understanding that if things fell apart around me, it was essential to continue and keep the show going. The saying “The show must go on” never quite resounded with me before this show. Of course Elise had been teaching me to finish what I had started since I was three years old, but this event cemented that rugged determination into me because I was able to show to myself that trying is so much better than giving up. After years the message that Elise had been telling me was finally being heard and understood.
Elise Long is the most professional artist I know. Her ability to cut through the throng of parents with their endless problems and the bureaucracy of organizations with grants waiting to be claimed is inspiring. Not only does she survive on little to no profit, she thrives. Her teachings have affected countless lives which she has shown how powerful art can be. Her determination finally rubbed off on me during that performance when everything broke under the weight of the sky and the performers took on the persistence needed to overcome the rain’s damage.
I step out of the van being used as a dancer’s changing area. My friends and I are dressed in white with sparkling yellow faces. We are radiant. We are ready to dance. We begin with chanting in a glorious procession towards a huge rectangular pool with some strange sculpture at its center. A woman in white flies between the audience members. Leaping and shouting, she begins the dance. Brightly colored peacock masks are donned, strange gongs are rung, and we begin our patterns. My group and I are rolling on the ground acting as waves for others who are fishing among us. Everything is going smoothly when someone feels a drop of water and starts a whisper to the others. We kept rolling. The sky is now wet with rain. We kept rolling. The audience members are huddled close under black umbrellas watching me jump over coils of rope that echo a circular reincarnative theme of labor and pay-off. It is pouring and we keep dancing through the wreckage of our newspaper sculptures and cardboard tapestries. Eventually I am standing straight up in the rain with four other people waiting for our circle of dancers to assemble and begin the final song. I am oblivious to the cold and the ruined paintings under my feet. The audience knows that this was not planned for, but that at the same time it is beautiful. The shining sky is bathing us in the cold water of performance and we are all awake, all working, all objecting to this storm. I have never felt this pure in my soaked clothes with my fellow dancers. We end the dance and bow. The few people that were left clap awkwardly underneath their umbrellas as the sky clears. The bright wet clouds had stayed with us through the whole performance and now they are gone. I am electric, invigorated, reborn through this show in the rain. This profound moment tells me that I am right. That we were right to keep dancing. We were right not to give up on ourselves, but to adapt to the seemingly depressing situation. We were right and all was beautiful.
After the dance was over we were all wrapped in towels to rid us of the cold Manhattan sky. Almost everything had failed. We had repeated parts of the dance that were supposed to have been done once. We had cut short and melded together pieces that were meant to have gone on by themselves. Grand Master Choy had done Tai chi almost an hour over what he had originally planned on. The Indonesian orchestra abandoned their post and played for another act that had been left musicless in the rain. Everything swirled together into one big group performance. Elise had never intended for this to happen, but she wasn’t angry. We had pressed on and made something perhaps even more beautiful than the original performance through our dripping defiance. Surely we would never be invited back for the rain had made a complete failure of our vision, but I will never forget what we did that day for it was rich and marvelous.
Even today I can remember that strength and I apply it to everything I do. When I’m writing a paper that isn’t coming together I use the persistence that I found under the rain and push myself to make the best product I can. When I’m studying for a test and nothing is making sense I go back to the Zen of that day and do the best I can. I attempt to make sense out of disarray, and in doing so progress further than I would have if I had just given up. In high school I would spend hours on a my math homework attempting to understand why I wasn’t getting the right answer until I understood the concept and I am a better mathematician for it. The act of striving for the best possible outcome came out of this dance performance and it manifests itself into my life daily. It constantly pushes me to be a better student, a better dancer, and a better person.