I was so fat...

A few weeks ago, in between attending sports matches, I was asked to participate in a piece of choreography that would open the second night of Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week. This was amusing for two reasons: my dance career is long over, and I am far from fashionable* Nevertheless, I found myself in the Distillery District's Fermenting Building on a Thursday night surrounded by beautiful hipsters.



The hours leading up to the show became progressively more frenetic. When I arrived, there were a few sound techs on seemingly permanent smoke breaks, random dudes in skinny jeans listening to ipods, and dancers rehearsing.



Gradually the models trickled in. Through the door of the hair and make-up room drum and bass was underscored by the whine of hairdryers. Racks of plastic-sheathed garments created de facto dressing rooms. Along the back wall sat a row of stoic models - the bored centers of a cyclone of brush-wielding make-up artists.



The dancers were also subjected to the brushes.



There was a flurry of styling (both hair and clothes) and the bass got louder and the audience babble rose, and the stage manager's headset crackled constantly. The washroom was filled with nervous pee-ers and delicately painted lips were bitten.



The dancing was over in a second. I wasn't nervous so much as incredulous that I was actually performing again. Feeling my body lift and fall and be caught and spun. Glimpsing audience faces reacting to my presence, my performance. Suddenly thinking with my whole body. Breathing down to my coxis.

After, I stood in the wings watching the spectacle. I'd never been to a fashion show before,** and the progression of beplumed bodies reminded me of the elaborate marionettes sold under the bridge in Prague. In the hands of master puppeteers, the strings disappear into a blur of colour and angular limbs.



There were moments when I wondered if I'd somehow fallen through the rabbit hole into a world where gin and tonics flow like water, and everyone is well lit.



But, like the ballet, the glamour stays on the runway side. Once behind the curtains, girls break their languid gaits and scurry to the wardrobe room, shedding clothing and hairpieces with every step. Faces resume normal expressions as models gasp for breath and wince as they slip out of towering stilettos.

I had a blast.



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*unless you count a wardrobe of jeans, cons, black tees and hoodies fashion.
**unless you count the one in the children's section of the Orchard Park Sears in about 1987. I rocked that runway.