A swan is born, light as a feather

In every generation of dancers, a swan is born. With fluid, delicate arms that emote from the shoulders to the finger tips, but also the impeccable technique and strength required for the most challenging of classical roles. With cool poise to hold the balances of the white swan and the fluttering battements serres of her love-lorn heart - and at the same time the sensuous hauteur of the black swan and her tempting renverses and whipped fouettés,arabesques slicing the stage with her sexual attraction.

The last time we witnessed just a fleeting taste of such a swan was with Ulyana Lopatkina's visit to Singapore two years ago with the Russian stars gala, when she danced the dying swan (not part of the swan lake repertory but which has influenced many contemporary productions of the ballet). The undulations of her arms were heart-rending. She taught me that this ballet was not some trivial story but undoubtedly connected in character and concept) of a melancholic prince trying to escape from dull reality. With her anguished articulations of the shoulder, elbow and wrist, the head thrown back, she told me that love was a dangerously powerful force in humanity. It could spark desire and uplift, but it was also a force that could destroy a human so utterly and profoundly. Lopatkina's earlier, technically flawless displays of the classical Swan Lake role can be seen on YouTube.

There was another such swan at SDT's production of swan lake at the esplanade this week. Coming to us after a comprhensive career at the Korean National Ballet, Rosa Park gave us a riveting rendition of the white and black swans Odette and Odile, in what must go down as an outstanding performance in the history of SDT.

Of a slight silhouette and marvellously expressive and supple arms, Park is a pleasure to watch. She seized the limelight with rare charisma and a wonderfully nuanced portrayal of Odette's chaste charms. She appeared indeed as light as a feather, skimming gracefully through the bourrees suivi steps across the stage, and floating with commmendable control through her adagio pirouettes. Her Odile was no less impressive, as she flirted ruthlessly through renverses and attitudes, and then whirled confidently and continuously through 30 fouetté turns - the latter impressive despite some substantial drifting across the stage, Park compeleted the traditional music just a touch short of the coveted 32 pirouettes, and topped off with a triple turn. It was certainly more impressive than any fouettes I have seen at SDT in years. Her spirited characterisations even elicited some sense of amorous feeling from Chen Peng as Prince Siegfried, in contrast to his usual dryly technical delivery that tends to have all the charm of an ornate wallpaper. Together, Park and Chen were well-matched and executed several examples of beautifully effortless partnering. I would hope that this is the start of a promising new partnership.

The leading couple's work was the highlight of the evening. While the corps de ballet danced credibly through the challenging group choreography, there were a few too many moments of unsynchronised and poorly-blocked dancing. It was perhaps a symptom of the transitions in the makeup of the company, which has seen the departure or retirement of several important dancers, and the introduction of at least five new faces in the past year - of which Ms Park is one.

-Swan Lake at te Esplanade Theatre from 17-20 Dec 2009. Alternate lead cast Chihiro Uchida and Wang Hao.

facets

I have never known so much about my body. The apparition of bones and muscles heretofore unseen: the sternum, the sacral ala. Facets of the vertebrae, tibialis anterior. The plantar fascia and levator scapula. I wake in the night wondering about the deep clack from the acetabulum, the balance of tensions at the cervical. For only aesthetic purposes, I would like to to teach an anatomy lesson from the sculpted contours of a dancer's back.

What a wondrous instrument the body is. How unique. In each achievent and each injury, it is my enemy, my teacher and my friend.

How long can a body last?

Humbled by movement

At the Musee de la danse project at Theatreworks, a choreographer (Boris Charmatz) invited me to hop on to one of four box thrusts that had been lowered to waist-level in the studio theatre, above the clutch of eminent artists lying on the floor and tackling the question of "what is dance in Singapore".

"Just sleep there" he said, and I lay down on the dusty shafts, and attempted to create a position. Boris was sceptical. "How can you sleep like that?"

He was right. I opted for something less contrived and more comfortable. Then I entered a zero-gravity world, dazzeld by the fluorescence of the worklights so far above. Floating as child on the sea. Helpless, and free.

We are so used to creating movement every day as dancers, striving for finer or stronger control. But movement does not belong to human beings alone. It is also the property of beings non-sentient, infitesimal. Planetary and microscopic. We are of the same family in our origin.

Screen Dance

One of the special things that I have seen recently is a British Council-sponsored series on "Screen Dance" in the UK. Contemporary choreographers are these days so enamoured of putting "multimedia" video projections into their works, but in Singapore there are far fewer of us looking into video itself as a performance medium.

Who needs lunch when you can go for a talk by the electrifying Liz Aggiss. She began dancing when she was 30, becoming a fearless artist and choreographer, and also a dance film maker and academic. In person and in some quirky on-screen introductions in the film, she pointed out the vast possibilities of film for directing and framing the audience's point of view, and also creating special effects to transcend gravity, venue, and sound. How nice to be able to keep a record of the work for posterity, that is made to be viewed on screen instead of inch-high blots for dancers on the wide-angle stage shot. It surely helps when generous institutions realise the potential and reach of dance film. The UK has the BBC, Channel 4 and the Arts Council England.

Singapore is just now falling in love with animation, computer graphics and film shorts. The most beautiful movement in Singapore is waiting to be shot and edited!

Performance Updates

What a hiatus! I confess! I have been very busy dancing, and thinking and making dances at quite a frantic pace. It has been wonderful so far, discovering a lot of possibilities that I never realised, learning about my body and my thoughts, seeing a lot of very innovative work (see the wildly wonderful calendar on the edge of my seat at right), and finding that my limits may be much further than I would have dreamed of two years ago before I started this programme! Wonderful, and absolutely exhausting at the same time.

Two of the exciting projects that I'm involved in right now:

The Third Space at the Esplanade dan:s festival
30-31 October (Fri-Sat), 7.30pm Esplanade Recital Studio

I will be performing a contemporary Bharatanatyam dance theatre piece by Nirmala Seshadri. Incorporating classical Indian dance and music with contemporary movement, theatre, video and chinese poetry by Singapore-based poet Dan Ying, "This and That" is an intense piece is about age, memories and unfulfilled dreams. It is one of four dances in this year's NAFA Third Space showcase, an annual exploration of Asian traditions and history through contemporary dance.

More details here. Tickets are available from SISTIC.

NAFA Music Department new compositions showcase
3 November, 4pm, NAFA Lee Foundation Theatre

A new collaborative work with Indonesian contemporary music composer Jenny Rompas, which I am choreographing and dancing with Tong Wen Yee. The showcase also includes new music/multimedia collaborations by other composition students.

moving like air

I had the privilege of taking an open workshop with Kuik Swee Boon and some of his dancers last night. It was an introduction to the style of T.H.E. and their current repertory Silence , a brooding piece that's going to be revisited at the Esplanade the week after next (see listings on the edge of my seat, on the right).

The workshop was slightly painful and mostly ecstatic - I thank all my lucky stars and wonderful teachers for the training that allowed me to follow it. Swee Boon's style is built on a ballet base of clear body positions and verticality, but has the beautiful, organic elements of interaction with the air and the earth. The phrases that we looked at pulsed with an urgent tension and fluid grace.

The best part was just watching him as he generously demonstrated the details, and explained their qualities in his gentle, eager voice. There is an amazing kineticism about him, a lithe electricity in his elastic relationship between verticality and the gravity of the floor, the flow of breath to muscle.

This weekend I shall dream of moving like air.

my favourite time of year

Time to get inspired!

The dan:s/dance festival is back from 23 Oct - 1 Nov at the Esplanade. The headline programme list has been unveiled with Paloma Herrera of American Ballet Theatre, Shen Wei Dance Arts (New York), a collaboration between Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (who recently showed Sutra at the arts festival here) and flamenco legend Maria Pages, and Australian group RAWdance (who also visited Singapore at the last M1 fringe fest).

I'm hoping that there will also be a good selection of local and experimental work at the theatre studio and other smaller venues.

Of course NAFA is performing too! I am scheduled to be working on a contemporary Bharatanatyam collaboration with Singapore-Chennai-based choreographer Nirmala Seshadri, which I'm very excited about.

Dan:s Festival Blog 2009

Three cheers for adults dancing in Singapore!

One of the main reasons that I began this blog was because so many people tell me that they love dance and ask me whether I think they could dance too, even though they've grown up and got careers and families. Yes, absolutely!

I am especially grateful to the bunch of radiant mums and professionals who I get to dance with at Attitude, who rush down to class after work or when they've fixed the kids dinner. We even have a grandmother in our class.

Mr B:
"I don't want people who want to dance. I want people who have to dance."

I find that this describes my friends as much as the NYCB ballerinas that Balanchine was thinking of! They teach me a lot about perseverance and passion, and help me to believe that dance is something that can stay with you forever, if only you can find your strength to stick with it.

The best part about dancing in Singapore is that there is so much interest and so many places where dance is happening. Every month I scratch my head over the arts calendar while I make difficult choices over the many local and international dance performances (not to mention attempting to squeeze in my other three loves, theatre, music and visual arts). Because of my indecision, I miss quite a few shows because they get sold out. But I really have to be happy about that too. At this point in time, we are blessed with audiences that are both faithful and adventurous. And I am constantly hearing about new schools and wonderful teachers. One board that I like to drop in on from time to time is at Dance Net.

I've had the chance to add some links at the sidebar for schools and classes that I hope you'll find useful. Please feel free to send suggestions! The list is focused mainly on schools for technique in ballet, modern/contemporary and jazz, and I hope to add a section on ethnic dance too, as I learn more about it. As I'm not as familiar with them, I haven't included the waves of social dance, latin, and line dancing that also have huge followings here.

Happy dancing!

Sweat

"Sweat, you know, is for most sensible human beings not quite nice. Not quite delicate, nor mannerly, and to be avoided wherever possible. But a dancer lives-I use this verb in all its implications and with all emphasis-lives in it, with it, around it, soaked with it, permeated by it, marinated in it." - Jose Limon

It has been a sweltering three weeks since the end of my first year as a dance student. Nice of the weather to make sure I still feel like a dancer even when I'm not in the studio! With a break from evening rehearsals, I've gotten the chance to catch a bunch of shows, including one while I was away in China. Here's one little write up to start!


Forward Moves: Body Swap/Joavien Ng and Dani Brown; Q&A/Danny K

Thank you, NAC, for once again commissioning local work with a mandate to prove that dance, too, can be intellectual. It can be conceptual. That it need not be just movement. Okay, there were a couple of walkouts, perhaps some of these people just not evolved enough to figure out what was going on. Where the dancing was. (The editors of the festival programme have my empathy. Wouldn't it be odd to have a section for "not just dance".) But the majority, like me, did stay to be constantly puzzled and thoroughly entertained.

In the first piece, the festival commissioners put ultimate faith in German dramaturg Jochen Roller to navigate the triple minefield of (a) the old trick of two people swapping into each other's lives, (b) intercultural collaboration, (c) collaborators who had never met and seemed to have little in common. I feared the worst when the show opened with two women lolling side by side on a rug conducting an aimless conversation about a flight to Dubai. The Chinese dancer clad in yellow, the American/German dancer clad all in white. Most of the piece was talking. Joavien and Dani excavated parts each others' histories, and took commercial break type segments to ask the audience if they thought that Americans bathed enough, or if Asians weren't expressive. Interspersed with some matter-of-fact video clips of their week of living uncomfortably in each others' families and sleeping in each others' beds (partners included). For the remainder, they wrestled each other energetically and finally swapped clothes that turned out to be too small on Dani and too big on Joavien.

What made it work in the end for me was that the collaborators gamely sized up the invisible beast in the room, and grabbed it by the horns. We might like to pretend that we live in a perfectly globalised world, where one artist can speak the same language as another halfway around the world, and we suppose, simply step into another's shoes with brilliant effect. But for these two choreographers, the body swap experiment made it very clear that at a fundamental level, another culture is simply incomprehensible. As a result, we inevitably fall back on stereotypes of race and culture, including third cultures (at one point the two blended bodies to make a series of Hindu-ish live sculptures, in response to Joavien's having learned a "Hindi Dance" as a child). Joavien and Dani executed their analysis with personable charm and focus, and none of the pseudo-lofty conclusions that a lot of other inter-cultural explorations try to foist on audiences. But I found that I wasn't quite satisfied. A conclusion seemed to be missing to follow from the observation that cultural divides continue to exist. I also would have hoped that in a dialogue on culture, both dancers could have gone deeper than the stereotypes and looked into the complications of their own multi-cultural identities.

The second piece by diskodanny was a delicious satire on the number-crunching approach to cultural planning, or the art also occassionally known as pandering to the masses. At intermission, ushers distributed a study that Danny had commissioned, whose thesis was that it is possible to aggregate and pinpoint the formula for the contemporary dance piece that audiences want to see so that "audience's satisfaction will be maximized when their expectations of the performance are met". He then showed a seven-minute solo of lyrically modern mush set to Madama Butterfly, which he had choreographed based on the numbers, namely that audience preferences were for:

i. movement travelling across space
ii. earthly lighting
iii. recorded classical music
iv. costumes revealing body form
v. simple or no set design at all
vi. multimedia unncessary

After taking the audience through the statistics while flouncing around in a series of fantastic costumes, Danny offered amiably to adapt the movement, costume and music to better suit the audience's tastes. The result of a show of hands vote on that evening was a techno-mechanical recasting of the piece, with the artist wrapped in yellow and black hazard tape, "if you like, like a censored Singaporean".

Why annihilate an artist's individuality like this? "Because," he declared flamboyantly, "the artist desires to be desirable". Bravo.

Forward Moves on 6 June 2009 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Survey results quoted from Q&A: A Performance by daniel k.

My performance updates!

Dear Friends,

Thank you for asking about my current projects! I will be performing in 2 shows in the coming months and would love for you to come:

8-9 May 2009 "Crossings" NAFA Dance Department Showcase at the Lee Foundation Theatre at NAFA, Bencoolen St
I am dancing in 2 contemporary items - Flight by Larry Clark, a new Cunningham-based piece set in a community of birds, and Red Bamboo, the story of Samsui women by graduating student Laura Tham. I am performing 2 pieces on 8 May and 1 piece on 9 May. It's going to be an exciting show, the other items are ballet excerpts from la Bayadere, Batulang by Yvonne Ng, and ID by student choreographer Max Chen.
Please contact me for tickets! $15/adults and $10/students.



17-19 July Ballet Under the Stars
"Flight" will also be featured at Fort Canning! Our showing date is tbc, I will keep you posted! Ticketing and more details at http://www.singaporedancetheatre.com/performance/2009/buts09.asp

Shoe bling

Cinderella, Cinderella. SDT's reprise of Cinderella didn't have the wow power of the Nutcracker but it was good bitchy fun. My teenage cousin's favourite part was when the ugly stepsisters buried Cinderella in laudry basket. My artzine review here.

oops

Oops! I had the wrong number for Frontier's ticket reservations previously, it has been corrected....

Beyond human

My best friend Y sent me an amazing link that I finally opened today. Thank you!

You too may have felt it. That moment when you or somebody you are watching or reading suddenly has a moment that is simply beyond human. What is that thing that makes us so? And how do we live with it?

Elizabeth Gilbert on Genius

blockbuster weekend

this was one of those blockbuster weekends for Singapore dance. Friday: Variance by T.H.E. Dance Company, Saturday: Interview with the Palace Ghosts by the Arts Fission Company. Next week, SDT in Cinderella and my kinesiology teacher (no kidding) in Imelda's Boys!

"There has never been an epoch as frantic for spectacle as ours. The rush of the masses toward the screen or the stage is an unending phenomenon...This frenzy, this craving for distraction at any price, must arise from a need for reaction against the harshness and demands of modern life." - Fernand Leger,1924

what the body remembers

You woke fitfully one day in your air-conditioned bedroom, and discovered that you were Chinese. Chinese in a worn Mao suit, of a Republic carved from the blood and sweat of the Long March and a grinding revolution.

Tongue's Memory of Home was a gritty experimental dream of China's youth grappling with the ordeals of their parents, a feverish sleepwalk of four writhing dancers and projections on an undulating toilet paper screen.


The group Zuhe Niao usually bills itself as "physical theatre" rather than dance. If you prefer to split hairs, you might prefer this label. There wasn't any complex technical choreography, and no breathtaking acrobatics from the cast, many of whom crossed over from other disciplines in their 20s. What they created instead was a combination of movement, text, videography and performance art that had a theatrical intensity and a disorientation that was infectious.

"I am provoked endlessly by hesitation" - concluded a poem by Shanghai poet Wang Yin on the paper screen. The four awoke in a phantasmagoric boot camp, watched enigmatically by a fat guy (the production's erstwhile videographer) in a raincoat with a coke picnic. Stripped of privacy, the dancers marched with brutal simplicity to have their mugshots taken, to desperately cleanse their itching bodies in enamel basins, and to wrestle each other as frenzied nightmares. Above them played wrenchingly obscure images of a shirt burned on a rope, string games, acted preparations for farm work, footsteps up a twisted log. As lost as the dancers, the pudgy stranger returned to snag the video punctuation of the dancers' dreams with a butterfly net. He didn't manage to catch any of his own projections, but instead produced a blinking remote control widget, that drew each dancer to stumble in states of undress down a diagonal of light, till a girl with a crew cut and piercing gaze was left frantically gyrating her arm and naked breasts. She was assaulted by her companions as bedsheet-clad nightmares. Another dancer attempted to assuage the spirits by planting joss sticks, but came under interrogation from her colleagues who gathered around her apparition-like, demanding, What now? Sleep, she said. Dance, eat, sing, regret. She began to steal mouthfuls from the joss stick urn - handfuls of viscous black jelly. Her companions joined her, and together they smeared the wet substance over their bodies, the floor, rolled in strings of soiled toilet paper. The dancers slipped through the paper screen at the top of the stage, just before the fat guy charged into the paper mass and ripped it all down, leaving only shreds and the theatre wall to reflect images of the performers' youthful parents.

The tongue? It made a brief appearance about 45 minutes into the show when the dancers huddled together and thrust out their tongues to explore the air. But tongues were quickly swallowed again. Not quite a satisfying cameo for director Zhang Xian's hypothesis that the tongue is a concealed "limb" of the body and a key to personal memories. In the post show dialogue, Zhang did however point out that for young Chinese, the best way to bring their modern history home is to through experiments in physical sensation.

So loosen your tongue upwards. Can you taste memories where your mind does not recall them?



Tongue's Memory of Home (Shetou dui jiayuan de jiyi) by Zuhe Niao at the Esplanade Theatre Studio on 8 February 2009.

Too close for comfort

As promised, Iodine was stinging and gritty. It was not as beautiful as it was powerful. These were dancers in another light, of a raw, corporeal intensity that we do not often see in Singapore. Full review at Artzine.

For the love of pain II

I just read a post about how many Singaporeans look down on male dancers as being "gay". Aside from the stupid homophobia that makes an equation of gay = perverted + weak, I was so cross that I wanted to belt out my blog tagline. Even though the irony would probably be lost on most readers.

So many people think that dancing is frivolous and easy. We dancers are to some extent a victim of our own successes, because the whole objective of most dance forms is to make the impossible look effortless. So the ordinary person won't blink when they see 32 fouettes, a 64 count Cunningham developpe, suspended jumps, a gorgeous lift.
Would it be as good if everybody knew how much pain and technique it took? If audiences not only realised the artistic intent but also appreciated how dance stretches the limits of human possibility?


Jock Soto and Wendy Whelan. Easy, right?

Anyway, while I'm building up my own little encyclopedia on pain, I thought I'd share it here for other dancers and anybody else who wants to know:

NYU Harkness Centre: Common Dance Injuries

On ankle sprains


On rolling in, arch pain, bunions

Cinderella had it easy.

My friend Jackie assured me sweetly that teachers tend to like dancers who fall in class. They are the ones going for it and not holding back.

So I should feel good that I tripped over my own jazz sneakers while doing some simple jazz progressions last week, and took a very contemporary hip-elbow slide across the studio. In the first row. My jazz shoes must be cursed. My last pair served me faithfully till I happily dusted off for my first hip hop class in years - only to have to retrieve them with a broom and dust pan after the rubber disintegrated in the middle of warm-up.

I've been told that a bad dancer blames the floor, while a good dancer blames him/herself. I am blaming myself for stubbornly sticking with some oversized shoes.

Shoes! It seems like a ridiculous predicament for a modern dancer. After all, blisters can be painful but calluses always fit.

But shoes have plagued me since the first pair of ballet slippers I bought for myself ten years ago. Having heard that a good shoe should fit like a glove, I bought the most snug pair I could squeeze my fat old feet into. They turned out to be so tight that I spent my first year of ballet rolling my feet to the big toe side (eversion) because it hurt too much to put weight on the outside of my feet. So how relieved I was when I discovered Sansha prolite extra wide shoes! I wore holes into a couple of pairs - until I got humiliated during an audition when I was told to take them off because my slippers were so loose that the panel couldn't see my feet. I've had RAD character shoes that wouldn't click because they were too loose and my feet slipped around and couldn't control the heels. Socks that sent me skiing across studio floors when all I wanted was to come to a stop.

It's when my toes are furthest from my head that I worry about them the most. I have long given up toddler ballerina dreams - as soon as I could write I wanted to be a novelist instead - but there remains something irresistible in the luminous line of a satin pointe shoe, and the precise elegance of pointe ballet. Never mind the perfect pair, I just wanted something that didn't hurt for some unusually broad, stubby-toed and low-arched feet. It doesn't help that in Singapore, the models available from two major brands can be counted on one hand, and there's no such thing as a professional fitting.

Not that fitters are always helpful. The confusion of the team of amateurs in a Capezio new york shop who gave me a pair of Tendu II so roomy that I could wear my toe-rings and dance, to my teachers' consternation. The disdainful horror of that Paris fitter when I slipped off my sneakers. "Vous avez des pieds tres larges", she said, wrinkling her nose. I ended up with a pair of 50 euro pietragallas which made me feel like my metatarsals were cracking each time I rolled through pointe. The exchange rate was over SGD 2 to the euro at the time, so I grit my teeth and danced on those shoes for an awfully long time. It's been a long journey, and isn't finished yet. I went for several unsuccessful fittings in New York, hunted down the dance enclaves of Bangkok and Beijing, and swapped with friends for models and makes from Japan to Russia and Brazil. For the record I'm currently in favour of the Grishko Maya and experimenting with the China-market Sansha Infanta.

Apart from the bruises to my anatomy and wallet, though, I'm grateful for all that my shoes have been teaching me about my relationship to the ground. It's where our lives start: when we push up into a crawl and then precariously onto two feet.

Some shoe fitting tips and links for anybody else on this journey too:

Soft shoes including ballet slippers, jazz shoes, jazz sneakers, ballet character shoes etc should fit LIKE A GLOVE but not a vice!
Capezio Guide for fitting ballet slippers

Unfortunately there is no easy equivalent rule for pointe shoes. Teachers, fitter,s trial, error, and hopefully some good luck.
Freed Guide for fitting pointe shoes
Gaynor Minden on Foot Types

putting movement into words

I once read somewhere that the most fundamental thing about the experimental theatre experience is that shared relationship of the artists and the collection of brave souls who will come in and sit for an hour or more, with their brains smoking away as they try intently to UNDERSTAND. Going without qualms on the uncharted journey that the artist has prepared, which could be ephiphanal, gut-wrenchingly bad or just a deep snore. Isn't that even more so for dance and performance art! And at every post-show that I have sat in here in Singapore, I am so happy to see that a good number of people do stay back, because they want to understand even more, hear about it and talk about it.

But of post show dialogues (and certain streams of criticism), why do people who are intellectual (with words) always seem to expect artists in other forms to be as articulate? I squirm during those awkward post-show dialogue moments when a supercilious, verbose audience member is trying to extract justification from a tongue-tied choreographer or dancer, or worse, try to insist on some profoundly simplistic point of view. I was at a session last night when the first question went something like "I sensed that the dance was about the struggle between the genders, and that the women seemed to come out as the more dominant." The choreographers gently attempted to say (some more articulately than others), that it was an interesting but unintended point and that the piece was conceived as being about family relationships in general. The lady continued nonetheless to try and push her point; the moderator was too timid to take the mic away.

Some of us may take things from an intellectual tack, but other times and for other people these things just can't be explained in words. One audience member complimented a dancer on her focus and presence, and pressed her to tell just how how she did it. She replied nervously that she just tried her best to get into the roles. I know this may not be satisfying to someone who wants to hear in words what it's all about. I wanted to whisper to the chappie who was just in front of me, give it up, she just does it, she's just incredible and that is the lesson, you won't find an answer here.

There are times when we say things with movement precisely because those abstractions or the shape of those feelings can't fit neatly into words. How I love those mysteries.

For the love of pain and nutrition

School's back in season! While we're giggling at each other as we limp back into the studio after a brutal jumpstart to the season (crazy placement audition and daily repertory), I have to keep reminding myself that there's nothing else I'd rather be doing, even if my creaky old body doesn't quite agree.

While arming myself with bandages, tape, pain spray, deep heat rub, cold packs and hot packs, my new year resolution is to ingest as many of these as I can hold down:

• water
• bananas (for potassium to relieve muscle aches)
• salmon (protein, calcium and anti-inflammatory omega 3)
  
• papayas and oranges (Vitamin C anti oxidants to help healing of muscle tears and formation of collagen for my squeaky knees)
• spinach & carrots (beta carotene makes vitamin A for tissue repair)
• nuts and whole grains (vitamin E anti-oxidant and protein, slow release complex carbs)
• glucosamine tabs (anti-inflammatory)

Handy nutrition information posted here courtesy of my lecturers and "Reboot Your Body", Dance Magazine Jan 2008.