One night last week, after her lesson and some practice time, Grace came running off the ice to find me. I was in the lobby of the rink reading. “Mom! Mom! Watch my sit spin! It’s awesome!” I moved to the observation glass and Grace went back out on the ice. She showed me a sit spin. Then she ran through her compulsory program…three or four times. Then she worked on backspins. Then she decided to run through all of her spins. Then she ran through her long program. Twice. Then she re-worked a jump sequence three or four times. By this time, she’d been on the ice for over two hours. I went to the gate and told her it was time to come off the ice. She groaned and reluctantly followed me back to her Zuca bag in the lobby.
Let’s see…when is the last time I’ve had to pull Grace from the ice after such a long skate? Hmmmm…I think that would be….ummmm…before we moved from St. Cloud to Lincoln, when Prescott was still coaching her.
This morning Grace came off the ice after her lesson with Jason and she was vibrating with energy. “Mom,” she whispered (as if speaking aloud would crack the world apart), “Jason started me on my double salchow! Oh Mom, I’m so excited!”
Let’s see…when is the last time I’ve seen Grace so thrilled, so beside herself with excitement about her own skating? Hmmm…I think that would be…ummm…before we moved from St. Cloud to Lincoln, after her very first ice show.
Grace has had a challenging couple of weeks. For some time, Jason had been talking with me about connecting Grace with an up and coming artistic coach he works with in Omaha. I’d watched this coach working with Grace’s super best skating friend and I was very impressed. It took us all a while, but just before Christmas we managed to begin scheduling regular twice-a-week lessons for Grace with James. While Jason focuses especially on the technical, athletic elements of Grace’s skating and pushes her ongoing, overall development, James focuses on the artistic, performative aspects of Grace’s skating -- on character development, artistry, attunement to music, and perhaps most importantly of all on presence.
This is HARD for Grace. As competitive as Grace is, as much joy as she takes from imaginative play at home and with her closest friends, Grace is a rather deeply situated introvert. Her joy, her passion for skating is driven, I believe, by the pleasure she takes from moving; she loves the feeling of flying that attends jumping, the feeling of speed that attends spinning. She loves the feeling of her body at the edge of what is physically possible. It takes work for Grace to think about and feel for an audience. The kind of extroversion that attends audience awareness, for right now at least, demands energy of her rather than feeding her with energy. So when Grace is challenged to skate a role, as emotionally connected as she may be with the character, she wants to hide herself, to tuck that self away deep within. Further, and complicating matters for Grace, is the fact that she knows she is a powerful competitor. She can pull out a performance on competition days and often relies on that ability. When she begins to believe that the purpose of practice is to prepare for competition, she can slack off, giving less than she is capable of giving in the moment in which she finds herself -- the learning, learningful moment.
James has challenged Grace to give of herself as a skater in ways I think she has not been challenged previously. He asks her to be present in her body with her whole self, to make visible the spirit that drives not only her skating, but her movement through the world as a unique, extraordinary being. In an email to me about his growing conception of himself as a coach and his work with Grace, James wrote, “You cannot teach students "presence" on the ice without teaching them the value of "the present." The present cannot be honored without Integrity. This is why I believe that artistry is in fact a byproduct of one's commitment to technique, discipline, compassion and awareness (both inside and out). Everything is connected. My goals for Grace have nothing to do with skating clean programs, winning gold medals, or going to the Olympics. My goal is to inspire her to be open to these ideas so that she may approach everything in her life, not just skating, with a focus (intention) that is "so complete," "so honest" that her work will be met with the rewards of self respect, clarity and most importantly - inner peace. If that isn’t confidence, I don't know what is. I want her to know that the moment to value most is not the moment that occurs four weeks from now in front of an audience and a panel of judges. The moment that must be paid due is the present.”
And Grace has resisted. She’s wrestled with herself and she’s wrestled with both James’ and Jason’s pressure to try, to push herself in these new ways. But as much as she has resisted, I can see her processing, experimenting, and even enjoying what she discovers is possible as she takes the most tentative steps toward what I would think of as generosity and what James frames as integrity in her skating. Grace has been practicing in front of a large mirror in our upstairs hallway. She’s been practicing in our living room and on the playground at recess. The other day she told me that she showed her classmates at school what she’s working on in skating, including her off-ice axel walk-through (an interesting choice given the level of difficulty of the move and the likelihood of falling down in public). This new way of thinking involves a very different kind of risk than the risk that Grace more naturally embraces in skating. James and Jason are asking Grace to risk revelation by risking presence as a performer.
What really interests me as a teacher and fills me with joy as a parent is the way in which this new set of challenges presented by Grace’s coaches seems to have re-energized Grace’s Bliss. Although things haven’t been easy for Grace on the ice this last month, suddenly she doesn’t want to come off the ice, and when she does leave the ice she’s vibrating with pleasure at what she can do and what she is learning to do. She is living the lesson that what may be hardest for us, what feels so terribly uncomfortable for us as we learn it, might also be that which brings us unimaginable joy. Now that’s an extraordinary lesson for a nine-year old to be learning on or off the ice!
Cool! Very cool!
Posts
The Ableism of The DOCX File Type
4 days ago
2 comments:
Is it terrible to feel jealous of her? To wonder when I will ever experience such opportunity for growth again? Whether it's even still possible? And also to be really deeply happy for her that she is able to begin to learn these lessons and to pull and push and rail against form, artistry, self, other, the now and the later and the then. And to hope that the loss of innocence that will invariably accompany such glorious moments is long,long delayed.
--Beth
Very cool indeed.
I think it's hard not to feel jealous, Beth. But your comment made me think of something else. We have a once a month gathering of comp/rhet folk at school where people share their work in progress. My colleague, Rob Petrone, shared a draft a few months ago that I thought was amazing. One of the things he was talking about was time and the endless deferral of the purposes for learning in high school and middle school...the kind of "learn this so you can do thus and so later" kind of mentality. I think about how steeped kids are in that mentality, how convinced they become that what they're learning now has no meaning in the now, but only in an imaginary future. For us, I wonder if nostalgia works in a similar way -- forcing us out of the present and into an imaginary past. On another note, I worry about the loss of innocence too. Need to think more about that before I write about it.
Post a Comment