Wacky Cracker? Did I say that? (part one)

[parasitegirl]

Did I call her wacky? Awww.. I meant to say, Fucking Crazy-Pants Insane!

We will no longer be doing any sort of conventional yoga stretches or sports-like stretching before we dance…which I am going miss because I’ve always felt we don’t do enough loosening up and stretching before doing insane bouncing “warm-ups” and such things (which I blame for my last pulled muscle.) … We’re now stretching (insert forced grin) our emotions and bodies.

 We will now begin each class, in groups of three, doing slow, freeform, stretches while maintaining physical flesh on flesh contact with each other. I think the technical term is writhing together…. but let’s back up a bit, and go to what happened before class started.

In front of the studio I greeted and hugged my teacher for the first time since she got back, and then made Japanese small talk with her assistant. Thanks to having been warned by Opua about class, I had reason to be a bit on guard…but I disabled my guard as best I could. I had to know for myself.  

And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have a small but real history of unnerving teachers, which I may write about in detail some other time. The quick rundown: in 4th grade I make an art teacher cry with my critique (and a group petition) about how her teaching style limited us artistically, a similar thing happened in middle school with an English teacher (I kept trying to get out of her class without having to explain my full reasons…until she cornered me, I told her, and she broke down in tears) and in college there was the infamous “I know what’s wrong with this class” critique and my senior year thesis teacher professed to me he was afraid of me intellectually, afraid I had more control over the class than he did, and had a few small breakdowns in class which he blamed (unfairly in my opinion) in part on me and other students (on the days he wasn’t hiding from us)….this may explain my desire to not have an intense encounter with my current teacher. I had to be as calm and open as possible going into class because I know I can be a bit intense. 

Once inside the studio we started getting changed for the intermediate/improv class. My teacher told me she was sick and I, thinking this might be due to earthly reasons, mentioned that the pollen count was alarmingly high right now.  

Foolish me. Pollen.  

My teacher was quick to explain to me that this was probably not due to such mundane things. You see, while in India she went through a rebirthing process. Well, before the birthing process there was the umbilical work. For a week she and others walked around with cloth umbilical cords wrapped around their waists and worked on mother issues. And she was rebirthed, and ever since then she’s been slightly ill. 

I tried to follow her logic and so I simply told her, “Well, children have crappy immune systems, they catch everything.”  

“I wasn’t (re)born a healthy child, I was a cold, blue little baby.”  

Okay…what the fuck was I supposed to do with that knowledge? I just said, “Well, that can’t be good for your body…it might take a while for you to return to a normal level of health and immunity.”  

She seemed to feel I wasn’t being sarcastic, and I wasn’t (I was honestly trying to reply best I could.) I felt like I passed the first test for the day. I did not say, “Yeah, I heard you were crazy.” I did not encourage her to tell me more about rebirthing, which could have easily created a situation in which I might appear insensitive. I did not ask any questions like: What do you do with the umbilical cord after rebirth? Or, Is there a large cloth placenta involved in the rebirthing process? I did not attempt to relate the information to my own world by saying, say, “Oh, I know a boy who was born all blue and cold, but that’s because his identical twin was trying to kill him in the womb with a deadly headlock…. he’s fine now, physically….”  

Yeah. 

That, brings us back to stretching time. There were only 6 of us there for class, pretty small…smaller than usual…As the clock struck 11 she turned to us, this insane look in her eyes and asked…”Who hasn’t had a class with me since I returned?” and I thought, this is where the crazy begins. Three students had been to classes since her return, and they would be demonstrating the new stretching for us. All of us then had to take off our hip scarves because they would only get in the way. The three of us left watching were all dressed in black. Two thin Japanese girls in black yoga pants and sports bra-like tops, and me in my black skirt and black sports bra-like top. We matched! We looked like a sexy lil-mini-coven.   And so, for about 7 minutes, we slowly writhed around, breathing, touching, stretching. It didn’t feel bad, it was oddly comforting, but I didn’t feel very stretched. I felt silly. I’m sure it didn’t look silly. I’m sure it looked hot, sensual, soothing, and sexy. But sexy doesn’t protect you from a pulled muscle...even though the increased blood flow probably does warm you up.  
And all the while I kept thinking, oh teacher, you won’t let a guy who is serious about dance into your classes for fear of making the girls uncomfortable, but you will make us writhe together…I do not understand you.  

Afterwards things got a bit more dance-like and we worked on the choreography and watched an in-class solo and I was happy to see that our teacher is now beginning to talk about things each dancer ‘needs to work on” after solos because I think we’re ready for some critique…  

And I felt somewhat better. She was obviously a little crazy, but I could deal…and then came the second hour of class, where advanced and basic levels are combined…and that’s when things got bad.