A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  * * *

  PAULA’S ROOM WAS an open square with a wall of windows looking out to an enclosed balcony. It was spare and plain with no fancy machines that sparked awe. On warm days she would open the door, letting a light breeze carry into the space. Pilates equipment, weights, and small knickknacks for performing the most minuscule of tasks were neatly placed around the room. Tucked in the back of the sixth floor, it had a calm, nest-like quality, with no external noise. The dancers of The Australian Ballet were in their two-month end-of-year Sydney Opera House season. There were no dancers at the company’s base in Melbourne. I was grateful to have them gone. I couldn’t deal with the prospect of interacting with dancers. Although I was away from the constant questions from people I knew well in New York, I was aware that I would hear those questions again when the dancers returned to Melbourne. I wasn’t ready for that. For the next ten weeks, Paula and I could work quietly and diligently for hours.

  Paula had names for every exercise she taught me:

  Side lie (adductor)

  J-Lo (QF, hamstring, glute)

  Ins and outs (ankle)

  Fronts and backs (ankle)

  Tower (adductor)

  Air bender (upper body)

  Nobby’s landing (metatarsals)

  Among many, many more.

  In my daily sessions with her (three hours in the morning; two in the afternoon) we moved slowly, as she detailed each exercise and colorfully explained its purpose and how it should feel to me. She used analogies like “Think of churning butter” and “It’s like a rabbit hopping in the garden. Hop, hop, hop, hop.”

  We had a lot of ground to cover. The team’s initial and overreaching goal was to give me the education I needed to be able to troubleshoot any physical hiccup myself. I had no prior education in this regard. Like many dancers in New York, I had always expected to have someone else fix me. I felt for Julie and Peter at ABT when a dancer would hop on their treatment table and lie there idly scrolling on an iPhone while they massaged away. This “fix me” mentality also led to surgery. Americans view surgery as the fix. “Fix my torn ligament.” “Fix my scar tissue.” In Melbourne, the team’s philosophy was that surgery was practically never an option (they’d signed off on only five ankle surgeries in thirteen years).

  In their eyes, an injury could be successfully rehabilitated by proper, methodical strengthening and manual attention. Not by connecting the injury to a machine for relief or interfering surgically with the body healing on its own. Sue taught me the power of the body’s natural healing process. The body can rehabilitate itself when an injury is approached thoughtfully, and we can aid that natural process (i.e., strengthening) as opposed to interfering with it in an operation. She did believe in surgery, but only when nothing else produced results she deemed sufficient.

  Sue also hypothesized that, for me, surgery hadn’t been an inevitability.

  “Sure, deltoid ligaments are fraying with what you put your body through. Every athlete of your level has fraying ligaments, among many other issues,” she told me. “That’s why I don’t like to look at MRI tests anymore. They show you everything that is wrong in the area tested. It gives you an unrealistic picture. I like to decipher only by symptoms. Not by test results.”

  “So if I didn’t have surgery, how would you have rehabbed my foot?”

  “Exactly as we are doing it. No different. But what has happened in the past is gone. We deal with what is in front of us now.”

  * * *

  AND SO MY education started. I’m baffled as to why I hadn’t already known what Paula was teaching me about my instrument. I had expected my body, the vessel of my artistic expression, my livelihood, to function properly with little understanding of how it works and what I need to do to make it work.

  I learned all the body’s muscle groups through the exercises she taught me. Strengthening was not defined by the grunt it produced; I barely worked with any weights over twenty pounds. It was defined by an understanding of the precise activation of each muscle and how it served a purpose to offer support. I was taught to understand why I did a given exercise. Only then did I have the knowledge to use a particular muscle to its fullest advantage. For hours, in “side lie,” I lay on my side, foam mats and rollers propped up under my body, activating my adductor longus. Or, with one foot on a rotating disk and one leg propped up on a Pilates reformer, I hovered in between, activating my quadriceps and quadratus femoris. This was the “J-Lo” (named after the butt we would develop from doing this exercise).

  Throughout the work, following the team’s suggestion, I diligently jotted down my own interpretations of the exercises into a small yellow notebook, the act of writing helping me to absorb them more.

  I was happy to be where I was. Happy to be in isolation. Happy to take in the information Paula gave me. Happy to be far away from the life I had grown to loathe. These hours on end, coaxing the body into strength, represented a fresh start with a fresh outlook.

  * * *

  ON THE FOURTH Thursday in November, three weeks into our work together, Paula and Megan were troubleshooting an exercise called “Spanish seat belt.” With rope wrapped around my knees, hinged backward into a counterbalance, I paused as emotion suddenly overwhelmed me.

  “Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. And typically we go around the table stating what we are thankful for. As I’m here, far away from my family, I’m thankful for the two of you and Sue. I’m thankful for the care you have shown me.”

  I teared up, but Paula, who was not one to wallow in emotion, replied, “Okay. Now back to your Spanish seat belt.” There was work to be done.

  Later that day, as a token of appreciation, I gave them a pumpkin pie I had baked the night before using my grandmother’s recipe.

  * * *

  BUT MY THANKSGIVING was also a lonely one in the absence of friends or family. I was determined to celebrate it somehow. I researched restaurants that offered a “Thanksgiving dinner” and made a reservation for one (“Yes, one,” I repeated to the host over the phone). I’d been alone for many a holiday around the world. On this occasion, I was seated next to the waiters’ station and the water jugs at the bar. The dinner was dry meat, a sliver of “corn bread,” watery gravy. I looked around at the other Americans trying to force Thanksgiving in Australia. They shot pitying glances back at me, sitting alone by the water jugs.

  * * *

  I SPENT MY free time alone as well. In New York I would have been attending performances, dinners, events, openings. In Melbourne I commuted to the studios in the morning and headed back home when I finished.

  Previously, I thought that physical rest was a waste of time if I wasn’t dancing. Now I rested at “home,” in an apartment I was renting from a friend who danced with The Australian Ballet. I took my time with everything; coffee in the morning, walking to the train, arriving at the building for the daily work, taking the train home, cooking myself a simple dinner of meat, veggies, and potatoes. To my surprise, I was calm. I found a new sort of contentment. It was equally blissful and lonely.

  But I knew I had to heal alone. I had no energy to answer the usual questions of when and how: When will you be back onstage? When will you dance again? How did this happen? So I didn’t reach out to anyone from home. I shut off email, social media, most contact with the outside world. I stopped responding to messages and got an Aussie mobile number; my American cell phone became inactive. I committed to nothing but my rehab. I had no desire to see the latest play, or to be a tourist in Melbourne. I cocooned.

  As content as I momentarily was, the idle time did, as I anticipated, contain moments when I felt complete loss and despair. Especially when I had finished my rehab for the day. I would climb on the tram with the late-afternoon sun shining through the windows, sit down, and look around me.

  I would wonder, What went so wrong that I ended up here? How am I in this moment? How did I go from such heights and artistic fulfillment to this, begging on the floor for this team t
o give me an answer? This one last effort to see if I can ever get back from this never-ending ailment.

  Yet as the weeks wore on, the daily accomplishments began to outweigh the loneliness and unhappiness I felt at night.

  * * *

  PAULA AND I worked for three months straight. In that time, I gained a new perspective on the strength within my body. With progress made and strength built, I was finally given the green light to start a small barre. In New York, when physios would say, “Take a barre and see how it feels,” I’d had no idea of how much or how little to do. So I’d do what I was used to doing, and it would set me back weeks if not months.

  Now I was watched closely by the team, and nothing would be left to chance as it had been before.

  Those first “dancing” days were the most raw. I hadn’t been in a studio for months. Megan waited for me inside. A sense of dread came over me. And I was angry. I didn’t want to be there. Instinct told me it was all over. That what I was about to embark on—dancing again—was in vain. That it wasn’t going to work. I internalized all those emotions, bottled them up and hid them inside me. I wasn’t going to waste Megan’s time with my feelings. I was just going to get on with it. As angry and miserable as I was.

  She placed a long foam roller on the floor and told me to lie down on it.

  “First I want you to feel your deep rotators,” she said, “so put your feet on the ground and your back on the roller.”

  “Aren’t we going to do a barre?”

  She chuckled. “Not for a couple weeks.”

  My hopes had gotten the best of me. Instead of dancing, I was lying on a roller in white socks and tights, sliding my legs backward and forward to the sound of her counting. I did what I was told to do. I had surrendered from the beginning to their method of rehab, so I would not object. But I was crestfallen. And I wanted no one to see me in this state. Megan and I were in the smallest studio on the lower floor of the ballet building, away from the main traffic of rehearsals and ballet classes of the school. I was thankful that I could do this without people looking in and seeing what I was up to.

  In later sessions, we were at times on the building’s main level, along the long corridor of studios. I closed the blinds to every window and closed the doors. No one was going to gawk at my condition, remembering how I had been and comparing that to how I looked now.

  * * *

  MEGAN, A PETITE, intense woman with short brown hair, has a strong drive. She is resolute and focused in her commitment to help dancers, be they injured or healthy. She desperately wanted my rehabilitation to be a success and from the outset approached me with every ounce of energy she had. It was too much for me to digest. It was too full-on. I had moments when I thought it wouldn’t work out between us.

  I resented her. Her corrections irritated me. I was unwilling to drop everything I thought I knew about myself as a dancer. She touched my body where my weakest points were (typically just under my butt), poking for signs of activation. Internally I fought her words but knew that it wasn’t what she said that annoyed me most. What annoyed me most was my ego.

  I never verbalized it, but we could both feel the tension in the studio. I wanted to rip her to shreds. Anger oozed out of me. I wanted to scream not only at her but at life, my situation, my reality. She was having me execute absolutely everything differently. I did a relevé with my adductors and gluteus minimus instead of my feet. I did a tendu using the same muscles, activating the tops of my legs and not just presenting my pointed foot. She was challenging everything I knew. And I didn’t want to hear it.

  Megan assured me it would help me in the long run, creating more longevity and safety for my body. I felt like my ass was sticking out. I was totally turned in. There was no aesthetic anymore. No presenting of line.

  But deep down I knew that this was the only path toward health. I couldn’t dance the way I had previously. I needed to hear her words in order to properly rehabilitate my foot and return to the art it was my duty to portray. There was no other way. Well, there was one other way, the way out, and I had chosen not to take it before I got on that plane.

  Megan fought me fighting her. I would talk to myself, saying, “David, what you were doing beforehand clearly wasn’t working. Why are you fighting this so much? Give yourself over to her.”

  I had seen dancers before who never allowed themselves to be corrected by anyone. They are the stalest of artists. Always having an excuse as to why what someone is telling them won’t work. I refused to be this kind of artist. I didn’t know better than Megan. I did know that ego is the ultimate killer.

  And so, day after day, something inside me pushed on, kept me going.

  My parents called it courage; the courage to continue and believe in the outcome. I didn’t see it as courage at all. As it was when I started dancing, it was just what I had to do.

  CHAPTER 49

  In the beginning months, the work with Paula and Megan was mentally hard but not physically demanding. I finished the day with energy to spare but nowhere to spend it. I tried to avoid idle time, but I couldn’t run away from it entirely. I knew that I needed it to process the work and heal the deep wounds that still stung. But my weekends were entirely idle. I had no motivation to do anything. Saturdays and Sundays I was on “forced rest.” I wasn’t allowed to do class, exercise, or exert myself physically. In the early stages, walking was monitored as well. Sue would say, “Enjoy the weekend. Drink a few beers. Relax!” In other words, “Be happy!”

  * * *

  ON SATURDAYS AND Sundays I woke up at noon, if not after. (In New York I was up by nine thirty at the latest.) Bringing my coffee back to bed, I’d waste time online or on Netflix until around three o’clock. Feeling peckish and thirsting for my first beer, I’d finally head out to the pub, order a pint, and smoke a cigarette outside. After a burger and fries, and three pints, I’d stumble home, crawl back in bed, and watch more movies.

  I knew I was being self-destructive. And I didn’t care. I would spend whole days just lying there, or sitting outside the pub alone, in a daze, watching the traffic go by, drinking beer after beer. I would imagine running into someone I knew. That they would see me in this grungy state, in the middle of the day, that stereotypical drunk. I knew I was depressed. I knew I wasn’t helping myself with my mental health or recovery. Still, I indulged.

  I became a regular at specific watering holes, that American sitting alone at the bar. One was the Prahran Hotel, my weekend midday haunt. I’d head over there around three and order lunch and a beer at the bar. While I waited on the food, I’d go out for a smoke with a Carlton Draught, my beer of choice. Aussies considered it a cheap, trashy beer, but I’ve seen them enjoying a Bud, which they think is a high-quality import.

  Another haunt was the Flying Duck, a pub minutes from my apartment. I didn’t care that I was alone there on a Saturday night, when all around me were men trying to impress women in short skirts. Again I was that loner in the corner.

  On Friday evenings I’d go to a beautiful park where dog owners would take their pets for a run. Growing up with golden retrievers, I found joy in watching the dogs dashing around frantically searching for balls. I’d buy a six-pack of Carlton Draught and settle onto a bench and watch. I’d sit there for two or three hours, calmly sipping beer after beer until the sun had completely set and everyone had gone home but me. I became that man seated alone in the park until after dusk, drinking beer. The one whom everyone would fear and take pains to avoid.

  At the Flying Duck, it was seldom busy midweek so as I drank my beer alone, the staff would come over for a chat. They’d ask me what I was doing in Melbourne (my accent a dead giveaway). I’d fill them in. One thing would lead to another, and after a couple of weeks, I knew most everyone who worked there.

  Instead of “knowing” them the way I would in New York, which would only ever amount to saying a cordial “Hello,” “You good?” “Yes, and you?”, I made the effort to really talk with these people. The same
went for Alex, my morning barista. I didn’t have seven places to be at once, like New York makes you think you do. I set aside the urgency and self-importance that come with an overly committed lifestyle. In New York I would feel that I couldn’t be bothered speaking to people uninvolved in my everyday tasks. But in Melbourne, being in these places was my everyday task. It felt honest and true. And I liked stepping back and experiencing the people around me. It contributed to the rehabilitation I was just barely beginning to experience.

  CHAPTER 50

  Sue, Paula, and Megan saw that the way of working I practiced since I was thirteen years old had slowly chipped away at me and led me to injury. It wasn’t that I had been taught improperly. The exact opposite. I had had the best of teachers during my adolescence, led by Mr. Han. The body I was given made for a symmetrical and flowing line, but what gave me my line when I pointed my foot also gave me a certain vulnerability. When I landed from a jump, my foot could go in any direction. And if the foot isn’t well supported by strength above or around it, it can slowly wear down, or even break, as mine had at the Met back in 2012.

  Now that my foot had succumbed to injury, I was open to the strengthening exercises that Paula gave me. But ballet with Megan was different. I had spent my entire career perfecting my technique, and I didn’t want to consider new ideas that would change what I felt I had done reasonably well. I didn’t want to question or challenge. I just wanted to “get better.”

  The work became more focused and intense. Six months in, I was with Paula every morning and afternoon for two-hour-long sessions. After my first session with her, Megan was waiting to teach me class.