A chase for control, my contradicting need to express, and the havoc the battle can wreak on my life…

This piece takes inspiration from bloodied ballet dancers' feet. The notes of red painted throughout the ceramic hand represent the tension that tears the person apart who pursues the myth of perfection. The hand is delicately counterbalanced to stand upright, seemingly floating in space despite its weight. I learned how to weld to shape a steel base, whose rigid structure creates this illusion. 

There is a vibrant, long standing culture of perfection in ballet: beauty, grace, elegance, strength, passion, and commitment are all requisite virtues. Behind every gorgeous, pale, pink costume stands years of toil, dedication, blood, grit, and determination. 

Body image issues run rampant through the ballet industry. The shape and size of every feature is subject to critique. The illusion of ballet is to transform, and sometimes reduce, a human being to be feather-light. A fairy, intangible, inhuman, impossible. This dance, and the intense pursuit, is breathtaking. In every sense.

I’ve learned over the years, through trial and error, that there is a price to the strife for perfection. When I was young, I quit ballet after eight years to see what life was like without that chase. I’ve continued to chase that myth of perfection in other areas of my life.

Through compulsions, academic achievement—even my own hunger has been used to keep an edge, as a tool to grasp control of my body, and stay powerful.

Simultaneously, I’m afraid of boxes, rules, failing expectations—of proving to myself that I’m not worthwhile.

I hold myself to these impossible standards, and fear the whip. 

Still, part of me wants to dance.