On the worst day of my life, I balanced in arabesque longer than anyone else in ballet class.
Less than an hour later, I could not stand on two feet. I lost control of my body and all I could do was collapse to the floor. I heard screams of anguish, sounds I’d never heard before. It took me a few moments to realize that these sounds were coming from me.
It was October 27, 2016, and I had just received a phone call that sent a jagged tear through everything I knew, ripping the fabric of my life in two pieces: before and after.
At 2:00 pm the day before, my boyfriend Ryan had been killed in a motorcycle accident. He was 19 years old.
I was broken. I vaguely remember running out of the building where my class was held before losing control of my limbs again, collapsing onto the grass outside. I don’t know how long I stayed there before I was able to walk back to my dorm.
Nearly two years later, I saw these moments of my life onstage at Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion when Company Wayne McGregor performed Autobiography. I saw that arabesque balance and I saw myself collapsing on the grass. I saw other things, too. I saw Ryan and myself navigating traffic in downtown Denver when he took me to the Colorado Ballet for my birthday. I saw Ryan climbing the giant Moreton Bay Fig tree at the Santa Barbara train station; that was the only time I ever saw him scared. In this performance I saw myself, Ryan, my family, and my life reflected back at me in the form of the dexterous bodies and lithe movements of Wayne McGregor’s dancers.
Autobiography is not McGregor’s own autobiography, exactly. He developed the work by mapping his own genome, taking inspiration from the science that makes up our humanity.
The work is performed differently each time. The 23 sections are arranged in a random order prior to each performance. Each audience gets a different Autobiography. In this way, the piece is allowed to materialize before our eyes.
After losing Ryan, life descended into chaos. I didn’t know how to act or feel, and often my feelings betrayed me. Was I even allowed to feel happy? Why wasn’t I angry? Why wasn’t I crying enough? Why was I crying so much? I clung to any sense of order that I could find, which largely manifested as an intense devotion to my studies. Even though I was throwing myself into school with more dedication and ferocity than I ever had before, my emotions still kicked me in the knees until they gave out and I had no choice but to collapse.
In Autobiography, dancers fling themselves into each other’s arms, collapsing, body on body, for support. Sometimes they fall to the ground. At one point, a group of dancers form an amorphous heap on the side of the stage. In this moment, they are disparate elements that make up one unit. In them I saw the incongruous separation I felt in myself.
After losing Ryan, I would often have to run out of class to go cry. I would remember that my life wasn’t the same anymore and that felt like a weightlifter dropping a dumbbell right on my heart. I’d feel that collapse just like the first day.
In Autobiography, the ceiling comes down. Not the real ceiling, but a ceiling made up of metal formed to look like upside-down pyramids. They fall and stop just before piercing the dancers like stakes.
The dancers must learn to move in this new environment, their space and world transformed. Because of the improvisational quality of their movement, I felt like I was watching them learn. They were exploring the possibilities of existence after their world was redefined by no act of their own.
Sometimes Autobiography is uncomfortable. Strobe lights blare, shining in your eyes for extended periods. The electronic music is loud; you’re on the edge of your seat. But not everything in life is comfortable.
Ryan was fiercely strong-willed and beautifully gentle. He spent his life on the trail of adventure. He was a gentleman. His calm demeanor soothed my torrents of emotion. He showed me how to laugh at myself. I see him all around: when a certain song plays on the radio, when I catch a hint of his smell in the breeze, when I dance, when I watch dance.
Ryan was not a dancer, but he listened with interest when I spoke with fervor about why dance lights me on fire. When I saw Autobiography, I saw mine, Ryan’s, and our story together. I saw all this, reflected back like a mirror. Not a mirror that invites judgment, one that simply says, “I see you.”