| | Posted by Alex Wong

So, I am writing today because I just finished a peformance tonight and had a really funny feeling. I just did “In the Upper Room” today, and as you all probably already know, this ballet is such a marathon. However, today we performed it on a smaller stage (because we tour around florida) and it felt so much easier… now you would think that would be a good thing right? Well this is why I feel strange. Usually I am backstage, leaning forward, hands on my knees, out of my breath, wishing that I wasnt, but today I really actually wasn’t, and it just didnt feel right.

Normally, I am on stage, pushing with all my might, using that last little hair of energy I have left….using my breath to just keep going and hanging on to that… holding on to a cliff with all my strength, but today, it didnt happen for some reason, and I feel unsatisfied. I felt like I needed to be struggling to really FEEL what this piece was about. Since when do you feel better dancing when you are absolutely ripped to bits, dead and out of breath? I think this is what Twyla meant when she called the piece “In The Upper Room”. You get to a point where you are SO tired, SO out of breath, yet SO… high… in a crazy state of mind that you are just “in it”. Things become a blur and you ride along as the music is pounding in your ears, and you just go for it. And now I find that I am craving that feeling again… like a drug… that killer feeling when you are just pushing for it, when nothing matters, but yet everything matters, going for the finish line, that euphoric state of mind - so out of breath but so determined… it hurts, I can’t breathe, but yet I want it, and realize now that I love it, I need it and I want more. It’s a feeling of ecstacy that cannot even be explained in words.

I guess I really am IN The Upper Room”. I’m in it. THIS is what this piece is about. This is what dance is about. This is the real deal.

Jumping in #3.

Ballet in #4.

Stompers in #5.

#9…. this is where you start feeling it…

Almost the end of the ballet. I also need to say that without my fellow stompers Jeremy Cox and Daniel Baker, this feeling wouldnt be the same. When we dance, we dance as 1, I feel their energy and I feel connected to them in some crazy way.

Jeanette Delgado in #6

A picture of me in #9.

Thanks for reading!
-Alex