Movement.

{Wanda Wulz dances in Anita Pittoni's "gypsy-style" jute dress, ca. 1937. Photo credit: Marion Wulz}
 
Held to ransom no longer by one’s fears, is there such a thing? Surely, yes, we’ve got to believe so for there is something great about facing one’s fears and finding them not nearly as scary as you’d thought without the war paint and beneath the lights burning bright (or just as terrifying as predicted but you give yourself a pat on the back anyhow for trying and showing pluck). Facing one’s fears has been something I have been thinking about as I toy with the idea of enrolling in an adult ballet class after all these rusty, creaky years. I am terrified and inquisitive. I have cast aside earlier thoughts questioning what is the point of making art if not to exhibit, of writing if not to publish, of dancing if not for the stage destined, and I am dipping the toes in. I have enrolled at the local gym (on a ten session pass). I am stretching my way through pilates, and acquainting myself with rowing equipment and ski machines and other devices of similar ilk. I am sailing those uncharted waters so often told. Prompted chiefly by Louise’s timely telling of an interview she had seen on Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey, I am facing my fears head on and in black leggings! Though I have yet to see the episode on the ABC’s iview, I was inspired all the same by the story of an elderly woman who lived alone in a remote and abandoned village, a Greek Ghost Town, if you like, and yet was not afraid. Of anything, it seems, from the telling. (In fact, perhaps I will not watch that particular episode of the four lest it dampens my resolve. I’ll leave it as the delicious obscure final impetus that shoved me out the door. At last!) How marvellous to not be held back by Fear or neighbours Worry and Niggling Doubt. Plunge in and adopt those sporty slogans to Be and Do. Why not get a little fitter and from there perhaps, why not enrol in a class once more? Yes, this I can do.

(My fitness resolve has seen me try two different pilates classes. One that fitted me well and left me feeling challenged and stretched and red in the face, and the other that involved a giant unruly ball and fitted me not in the least. Such props I’ve yet to come at. I spent the lesson trying to balance atop my ball, out of step and balance with the music that blared. I hoped only that my ball would not roll away and thought, this, this class is not for me. Yes, to the first though I’ll stick, even if the breathing is the opposite of that in my yoga class.)

+ A new project with Milly Sleeping is taking shape