Fierce and Delicate: The reality of coping with dance and illness - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Kristen Lawson
Renée K. Nicholson spent her youth training to be a professional ballet dancer, only to have that dream derailed by a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. She pivoted, earning an MFA in Creative Writing and becoming an accomplished writer. Her latest book, Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness, dives into the dance world in an honest way that reveals both its beauty and its brutality.
The word “ballerina” conjures up an image of lightness — a princess dressed in white flying effortlessly through the air — an image Nicholson started seeing in her dreams when she was forced to stop dancing. In truth, as she knows too well, this dancer would be pushing their body to the limit, their costume drenched in sweat. The world of professional dance is equal parts dazzling fantasy and harsh reality. Yet she confides: “I still feel caught in ballet’s fairy-tale place, wanting to preserve that sense of magic that drew me to it.”
Nicholson’s series of essays takes us through her life in dance, from playing a mouse in The Nutcracker in North Dakota, to summer training in Soviet Armenia. “I gave a big chunk of my life to training,” she says — only to have a career as a professional dancer snatched away by disease at the age of twenty-one. Some pieces are literal, others more poetic, using Russian proverbs to invoke states of being.
Of course, there are many positive reasons to dance, including creativity, self-expression, discipline, exercise, and having fun. On the other hand, dancers may be expected to look and act a certain way from a young age, and may turn to strict diets and harmful substances to achieve “perfection.” Nicholson remembers how lonely she was as a teen, when there was so much pressure to compete that applause felt more important than making friends.
She reflects deeply on a dancer’s relationship with their body. It’s their means of self expression, strong and finely tuned through years of training. They push hard and never complain. When the body fails it feels like a betrayal.
As a dancer who also stopped working because of injuries, I identified closely with Nicholson’s experiences. Fierce and Delicate brought back bittersweet memories, like when she describes her reaction after receiving her RA diagnosis, one of the occasions when she switches from first person to second, distancing herself from a memory too painful to address head on: “Could you ever dance again? This was the question always on your mind. You didn’t ask. You knew better than to think you’d ever dance like you once did, but you dared to hope all the same.”
Writing about ballet helps her heal, providing a new creative outlet and allowing her to stay connected to dance. When writing about leaping she closes her eyes and relives that feeling, recreating the joy of dance on the page.
Fifteen years after stopping dancing, Nicholson became an American Ballet Theatre certified teacher, relying on her voice rather than her body. In this way she passes her love of dance on to budding new artists, helping them meet their potential in a way that’s positive and encouraging. She is also an associate professor and director of the Humanities Centre at West Virginia University.
Fierce and Delicate, published by West Virginia University Press, demonstrates that even when the reality of dance is hard, the dream can endure.