Strip (34 page)

Rachelle loves to say, “Your eyes have lost their… blankness”—one of her favourites, just to keep me humble, just to remind me that it returns from time to time. While my musculature went from tight to taut, my heart burst and broke and broke again. Kent knew the bigness of the dance world, more so than I. He feared I would be naive enough to think the world offered nothing, if not stardom. Stardom is for Baryshnikov and Kirkland. My dancers and I have a more important calling.

It is the stories in bodies, shapes and shadows that reveal themselves. I point my dancers and my intentions in a direction and tell them to fly. Sometimes it's careless. Sometimes the ground we tread is uneven and precarious. Whether the inspiration came to me in my sleep as a nightmare, or as the image of someone's reflection in the window of a bus that reminded me of someone else, a friend, living or dead, someone spiralling down a stairway, or loving an older woman or two men, or breaking someone's heart, or washing amongst the ebb and flow of tide and waves along the shore, or on a wheat field with the wide-eyed innocence of an adolescent, or the narrow squint of doubt that comes with age, set against a summer prairie sky or an approaching blizzard, it is true.

And sometimes a simple tune means absolutely nothing.

There's a space at the back of the bus, the back of a plane, the back corner of a café, or the back of my mind, that is my own rehearsal hall where my ideas expand—on seat backs, tabletops or scraps of paper. In the end it isn't about the dancer or the choreographer or the music or the applause. It is about the dance, a language we badly translate but seem to understand. The best I can do, the most comfort I can offer myself is to know I am a part of it.

From the moment I got those university girls into their tutus and onto that stage, to having a chance to dance my best Tybalt, from the moment I used all that I knew of the body and its static form, magnetic emotions, repelling electricity, wayward poles, short-circuited auroras, gleaming auras, fermenting stories and crippling genetics, to having a few dedicated people dance the story—from all of those moments—my dreams have come true. I can affect people, dancers, audiences.

For every Lisa, Marcel, Bertrand, Guy, Daniel, Patrice, Brittany, Nadine, Madame Talegdi, Kharkov, Rachelle and Kent, there is a dance.

They'll all be there, in the theatre. You'll also see me watching from the wings, spinning or tumbling across the stage, or hiding somewhere among the audience. I may be seated right beside you. I'll strive to show that love—however painful, overblown, dangerous, satisfying, obsessive or nurturing—is never wrong. Maybe a piece of the puzzle will fit back into place, and make things a bit smoother, or maybe not quite.

I'm dancing now.

Only for a moment, “Gloria” was my song, and the dance, my life.

 

 

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the
caring guidance once again from Nightwood Editions, Silas White and Lizette Fischer, for their kind support and attention to detail. I must thank the late great playwright and friend Elliott Hayes who took my early efforts and created the play
Strip
. Thanks always to Keith Maillard and Maureen Medved whose wise mentoring helped me to set out on this fascinating journey along the road less travelled. Thanks to those who read and provided feedback to early stages of this manuscript: John, Carol, Alaina, Donnard, Emily, Nilofar, Ben. And thanks to others who have yet to read it and are always there with an encouraging word, including Kim and Susan. Thanks to Louise and her feedback at the self-directed Estapona writing retreat. Thanks to my caring mother and father, for their patience and love, and thanks to my family, brother, sisters, in-laws, nephews and nieces as well as dear friends, for their love and support. Thank you to those amazing souls who have danced through my life and inspired the characters in these pages. And thanks especially to my partner Bernard and my muse Hugo, who challenge me to do my best, bolster me when I need it, and are here throughout.

 

 

About the Author

Andrew Binks is a
graduate of
UBC
's Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. His first novel,
The Summer Between
, was published in May 2009 by Nightwood Editions. His work has been featured in Joyland.ca and the Harvard Square Editions anthology,
Voice From the Planet
. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in
Galleon
,
Fugue
,
Prism International
,
Harrington Gay Men's Literary Quarterly
,
Bent-magazine
,
Globe and Mail
,
Xtra
and
Xtra West
, among others. His poetry has appeared in
Quill'
s ‘Lust' issue and
Velvet Avalanche Anthology
. Two of his plays received public workshops in Vancouver and Toronto in 2010 and he was one of the contributing writers to the Festival Players of Prince Edward County “Sounding Ground” audio plays.

 

www.andrewbinks.ca