Anna Pavlova
(Russian)
:
А́нна Па́влова
February 12, 1881 – January 23, 1931
Pavlova's enthusiasm often led her astray: once during a performance
her energetic double
pique turns led her to lose her balance, and she ended up falling into the prompter's box. Her weak ankles led to difficulty while performing as the fairy Candide in Petipa's
The Sleeping Beauty, leading the ballerina to revise the fairy's jumps
en pointe, much to the surprise of the Ballet Master. She tried desperately to imitate the renowned Pierina Legnani,
Prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theaters. Once during class she attempted Legnani's famous
fouettés, causing her teacher Pavel Gerdt to fly into a rage. He told her to
... leave acrobatics to others. It is positively more than I can bear
to see the pressure such steps put on your delicate muscles and the
severe arch of your foot. I beg you to never again try to imitate those
who are physically stronger than you. You must realize that your
daintiness and fragility are your greatest assets. You should always do
the kind of dancing which brings out your own rare qualities instead of
trying to win praise by mere acrobatic tricks.
Accepting The Intolerable
Tolerating the Unacceptable
Sometimes we have to tolerate the unacceptable, we have to work around it, until we find a way to eliminate it or make it acceptable. First we have to recognize and acknowledge that a thing, something, is unacceptable, and this is a very difficult first step. The recognition process often begins with a nagging uneasiness which we attempt to shrug off; we have a hunch that something is not quite right but it’s all so confusing and we just can’t seem to sort it out.
A little further along in the process the nagging sensation becomes more of a physical presence like a headache or a blow to the solar plexus by an unseen fist that tries to knock the wind out of us. We are becoming convinced in increments that we are doing battle with an insidious and unrelenting foe that seems to be right around the corner. It’s all we can do to keep ourselves from pounding on the walls and shouting, “THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!” But what is “THIS”? Until we know what THIS is, we must keep our mouths shut and tolerate It.
At times we will find ourselves in the minority with the majority trying to persuade us, even pressure us, into believing that the unacceptable is acceptable. “Everything’s cool, man. Just relax.” Or, “Get with the program!” Sometimes the persuasion can be more subtle, we may not even be aware of it. When persuasion grows more aggressive it becomes pressure, and even then we are sometimes not fully aware that “the pressure“ is being applied, or we sense that we are under pressure, but are not certain of its source or who the real perpetrators are. We have things to do, we don’t have time for all the bullshit.
So we just throw it into the big bag of amorphous, unspecified angst and carry it around thinking that when the time is right we will dump out the contents of the bag and examine, identify and name each article; make a determination of what to keep and what to throw away, what to accept and what not to accept. But the time is never quite right for most of us, and so we tolerate, and therefore accept the unacceptable by default, which is a catch-all term for laziness, ignorance, denial, blind ambition, and fear.
