I spent the week preceding Easter (17th - 25th March) in London, England. I had applied to a school there, and was subsequently invited to audition in person in front of the jury in London. This is the second of two schools that I have auditioned for and visited this season, as part of my ongoing search to find a university that is the right fit. The week in London was the second trip I have taken this school year in order to broaden my options in the event that I decide not to continue my studies in St Petersburg.
I've heard people talk about their youth with a curious mixture of emotions. Wistfulness for the bygone days of giddy, effervescent idealism. Embarrassment at some of the choices they made, at the company they kept, or simply at their naïveté, which, even after all this time, still provokes a grimace. While each has a unique story behind their missteps, and a lesson they took away from it, almost every one of the adults in my life has told me something along these lines: "I don't regret doing it, even if in retrospect it might not have been the best choice. It made me who I am. We all need to try things, even if they're not always right. That's how we learn what we like, what we don't, wrong from right, and how we fit into the grand scheme of things." Which brings me to the title of this latest installment of this 'public diary' of sorts: closure.
What matters is not so much when things end, but when we decide to walk away from them. Haven't you ever switched off the television before a movie is over, and not finished it, and yet not been plagued by the need to follow it through to the end? On the other hand, haven't you ever read a book cover to cover, and upon coming to the end, found that there is a hole inside you? Ever spent days waiting for something to fall into place and make you feel whole again? I've been the girl that leaves the party hours before everyone else, and yet not felt that I was missing out on anything at all. I've also been the last one there, helping to do the dishes long after the other dinner guests have gone, chatting quietly with the host over a last cup of tea before bidding her goodnight and slipping home through the soft night. It's not about when they end. It's about when you decide that they are truly over. They can send you to bed, put the light out, close the door; but every child enjoys the special pleasure of knowing that only they themselves can decide when they will roll over, shut their eyes, and dream.
I went to London with the highest of hopes, and an equally high level of nerves. What if it didn't work out? I wasn't so much worried that they would reject me, they had every right to do that. No, that's not the worry that was at the foremost of my mind as I sat in the tiny toy plane that flew us from St Petersburg to Helsinki, nor did it figure as I waited in line to board the plane to London Heathrow airport. What distressed me above all, was that my experience in England would be a negative one. For those of you that have known me for a long time, you'll no doubt remember my girlhood love of Great Britain - everything from the culture to the history, and especially the beautiful natural landscapes and the literature so dear to my heart. So it was with deep apprehension that I prepared to meet that which I had so long dreamed about, concerned that the ideal would far exceed the reality.
The week that followed was, without doubt, one of the happiest of my life. Everything went wonderfully. The audition was an incredibly positive experience, and the British people were kind, ever so helpful, intelligent, and so wonderfully cheerful, open, and light-hearted compared to the Russians. It will remain in my mind a glowing memory of a near perfect week in a country that I fell in love with immediately, and long even now to go back to.
So why, then, did I decide almost at once that even if I were accepted, I would not go to study there? Why did I feel like it wasn't the right place? The same reason we might go on a lovely date with a polite, kind-hearted stranger, and yet know deep down that something was missing.
I went to England, and I came back to St Petersburg. But somewhere in the interim, something inside changed. I began to feel differently about Russia, about the conservatory, about the people here. Maybe it's simply the idea of the frog being softly boiled to death in gradually hotter and hotter water. When first arriving in Russia after holidays in Seattle, I scald myself upon landing and spend a month in a funk or a state of semi-panic, and that, no doubt, has played some part in my fighting this past year to find a way "out" of St Petersburg. So perhaps it's simply that now that it's April, I've been in the bath long enough to not feel the heat so intensely. But, honestly, I don't think it's that.
I'm glad I went to England. And I'm glad I was able to let it go. Now I can stop running away, catch my breath, and slowly turn to face what's been following me this whole time.
I love dance. I love ballet. I love the Mariinsky Theatre. I love my pedagogue, a principal dancer with the Mariinsky and one of the most brilliant artists I've ever known. I love the Russian language, with its treacherous grammar and the breathtaking poetry it evokes in even the most common every day speech. And yes, I have even come to love this city. Moody, derelict, gloomy, stoic, but also profound, elegant, alive, and full of hope for a better tomorrow. Its indomitable spirit, oppressed and stifled for so long, has somehow kept its beauty and it's resilience. If that isn't the truest sign of Peter's humanity and goodness, I don't know what is.
Yes, it's hard living here and accepting things the way they are. Sometimes it feels impossible. But that's the way it is with everything that we love, and with everything that is important and worth fighting for. And so I ask myself: where else but here in St Petersburg would I truly wish to be?
And I answer myself.