Dancing while the world burns
Well, my country is on fire.
Vast swathes of Australia - an entire Switzerland of my homeland - have been lost to climate change in the last two weeks. Though the fires started in September, well before fire season is meant to begin, they reached an unignorable crisis point over New Year’s, when the world saw photos of both the Sydney Harbour Bridge lit up by its annual display of fireworks and of thousands of residents of Mallacoota, on the coast of Victoria, huddling on the beach under a blood red sky, taking shelter on the sand as the fire burned all the way to the water.
Sometimes, it feels like the world is figuratively on fire. This time, it’s very, very literal.
Thankfully, my family and all my friends are safe. Breathing heavy smog, or warding off spot fires near their houses, but safe. We’re very lucky.
But I’ve got to be honest with you, there have been times in the past week when I’ve wondered why the hell I’m spending my days, weeks, and months thinking, talking, and writing about, of all thing ballet.
Ballet, which, even when my country is not burning, feels like a luxury few can afford. Ballet, which, in our climate changed future might well feel like a ridiculous extravagance no one can justify. How can we dance - or write about dance - while the world burns? How dare we?
I don’t have a good answer to those questions. I have a few okay answers, that I kind of believe, and that I’ve tried to hold as I write, even though existential dread - the creeping certainty that all of this is going to burn to the ground and it’s not going to matter at all if this paragraph is a good paragraph or just a fine paragraph - can be rather distracting at times.
Here’s what I’ve got.
It matters how girls grow up. Millions of American girls take ballet and dance classes every year, more than do Girl Scouts and more than do soccer. It matters what those girls are learning, how they’re being taught to view their own bodies and their capacity for creativity and invention, how they’re raised to think about their place in the world. If those girls are going to live in on a planet made even more hostile by climate change - and they are - then it matters what they learn in the ballet studio.
And second, I know that ballet makes people happy. It’s hard to watch Tiler Peck’s unbelievably fleet feet, and the look on her face when she’s dancing, and not feel a flicker of delight or excitement or joy. Watch her. Tom Hanks sure feels it.
Joy matters. Joy, like pain, is how we know we’re still alive. Joy is worth making room for, worth stopping for, worth acknowledging in all the tiny and unlikely places we find it. Joy is one of the ways we survive upheaval and disaster. It’s one of the things that makes the upheaval worth surviving at all.
I don’t know what our climate changed world is going to look like, or if ballet will continue to exist in it. I know joy will.
That’s it from me this week. Thanks for reading. And if you’d like to donate to bushfire relief, I suggest giving to the Country Fire Authority in Victoria, or to this fund to help farmers and other locals whose vehicles were damaged when they volunteered to help firefighters with backburning and clearing.
That second fundraiser is for a town that’s home to a dear family friend of mine, and I’m giving away signed copies of Turning Pointe, once they exist, to the next five people who donate to it, in any amount. If you choose to give there, please send me your confirmation email and a postal address, so I know where to send a thank you card and, eventually, a book. If you’re not in a position to donate, I get it, and I appreciate your reading.