http://sangbleu.com/2009/12/14/painted-knees-of-a-moulin-rouge-dancer/

Sometime during the rehearsal I felt it happen.  I did a sudden snapping movement with my leg and my knee hyperextended.  I stopped and looked at it.  “That’s not good,” I thought.  It didn’t hurt, so I kept going.

It wasnt good.  I ripped both the lateral and medial meniscus and popped a big cyst out the back of the joint capsule.  My knee doesn’t bend. I can’t climb stairs.  One of my dancers watched the performance of my solo and said she wished I had included some movement on the floor.  I said that I would do that as soon as I could bend my knee.

My osteopath looked at me yesterday and said, “You are being tested.”  What is being tested?  My patience, my endurance, my resourcefulness, my tolerance.  And more.

In my studio, I tried doing some of the movement.  I noticed that I initiate much of my movement with quickness, which at the moment is unsafe for my poor knee.  Quickness is my “lane,” my “wheelhouse” in the language of American idol.  It is how I get my body places that it otherwise doesn’t know how to go.

The point of all this is that I have to find some new ways of moving while I am healing.  Linda Tellington-Jones always says “isn’t that interesting” when she encounters something problematic in a horse she is working with.  I am looking for that attitude – curiosity instead of frustration, willingness instead of fear.  Learning to try new things, looking for other ways of seeing and doing.  Being improvisational. Not waiting for the end point, but being in the journey, one step at a time.

In the meantime:

http://www.sonotaprincess.com.au/journal/2011/3/26/put-to-the-blush.html