"There's a lot of stereotypes saying that 'if you are a black dancer you have terrible feet, you don't have extension, you're too muscular, you're not graceful enough.' I want to be known as a delicate black dancer who does classical ballet." -Michaela DePrince in Bess Kargman's documentary First Position.
"[Michaela] said to me, 'Mom could you see my spots?' I said, 'No, not at all,' She said, 'Oh good...if you can't see my spots from the audience then I know I can be a professional ballerina" - Michaela's mother Elaine
Performing Marks
I come to this topic like everyone else, with a marked body.
For my purposes, I define a marked body as one that is marked by some kind of lack, whether socially, by birth, or by our own human design.
As a poet, writer, and thinker, I have always considered how I "write" onto my body, how others may perceive that "writing," and what others in turn "write back" onto me (and whether or not I have any real access to read that response) in the performance of everyday life.
Like many people, I have been performing my mark since I was born.
For my purposes, I define a marked body as one that is marked by some kind of lack, whether socially, by birth, or by our own human design.
As a poet, writer, and thinker, I have always considered how I "write" onto my body, how others may perceive that "writing," and what others in turn "write back" onto me (and whether or not I have any real access to read that response) in the performance of everyday life.
Like many people, I have been performing my mark since I was born.
These are my hands. We have been in performance in every single social and personal interaction of my life. What I mean is that I perform my mark; Richard Schechner tells us that "performances mark identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the body, and tell stories" (Schechner, 28). He also claims that a performance creates a sense of identity through 'twice-behaved behaviors,' or those "physical, verbal or virtual actions that are not for the first time; that are prepared or rehearsed" (29).
Maybe I have turned to stories and narratives because I am so familiar and aware of my own performance as a marked identity; my hands mark me in the same way that archived texts mark Sylvia Plath or the Italian castrati. I am marked by my own archived reference guide of "How to Behave When..." I perform my marked body as though it is hidden and does not exist. Though I perform a magic trick, a slight of hand to force people to glance over my mark, I know that at some point in my life I will unmark myself and live my life without fear or shame.
I ask my reader this: what will you do with my marked performance? If you know me, you have witnessed my performance as a marked body in hiding. Now that I have shared my mark, how will you re-mark? How can we unmark our bodies and begin to perform outside our own text that traps us into a static performance? How can we use our own marked bodies to better understand the marked body of the castrato?