Back in college, I ended up in a dance performance. Anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t call myself a dancer - outside of the occasional wedding reception.
At the time, I was a theater major and also pushing 220 lbs. Let’s just say I wasn’t getting parts because of my dance moves.
But an open call sheet went out to the drama department for non-dancers (check) who could count and move to music (mostly a check), so I signed up.
It was a workshop piece, a line of us crossing the stage and walking off in a set order. I was second to last. The guy behind me was supposed to be the final one off, the last person the audience saw. He was, after all, the star of the show.
There I am, counting the music as planned, when this guy blows right past me and walks off early, a good fifteen seconds before the song ends. Which leaves me, the not-a-dancer-at-all-guy, alone on the stage, finishing a piece I had no business finishing.
I get to the wings, and everybody is on me. You idiot. You upstaged him. Are you out of your mind?! Biggest idiot in Pittsburgh.
The director is standing right there. She calmly says, “Wade, your count was correct. Misha will be right next time.” Then she looks at him. He gives her a look, then pulls a silly face at me, and walks off. That was it.
The guy who blew the count?
Mikhail Baryshnikov.
How a not-a-dancer ends up there
The call sheet was nothing special. Non-dancers wanted, must be able to count and move to music. Most people skimmed it and kept walking.
But the very last line said the company belonged to Baryshnikov. Out of maybe 250 dancers and 300 actors in the program, four of us read that far.
Four. In a building full of theater kids who'd have sold a kidney to get near the guy.
I didn't do anything special to get this opportunity- I just spent 30 extra seconds to read the whole sheet. That half a minute bought four (again, only 4!) of us a week on stage with one of the greatest dancers to ever lace them up. Everybody else just didn’t give themselves a chance.
This isn’t really a talent. It's kind of a boring habit. But reading to the end has been one of my default settings for a while. And it turns out reading to the end helps with almost anything, not just an audition sheet.
As an intelligence analyst, that was most of the job. Run a search, read all 200 results, even back in the Ask Jeeves and AltaVista days. What you needed was almost never near the top. It was buried somewhere in a sea of search results.
It's the same habit that ends up in drawing and sketching. The words used to describe something tend to be the easiest part. Most people can write/draw words. What those words actually mean takes a little longer to suss out.
Sometimes it shows up on the board a minute or two after you'd expect me to be done drawing. Keep watching…something else often finds its way into my illustrations to bring it all together. The extra shading that makes it pop - while waiting for that last minute thought from the team that turns into an “AHA moment”.
It takes just an extra minute or so - staying a beat longer than feels necessary.
So I’d say just read to the end of whatever you are doing. See it through.
Because there’s a chance a Baryshnikov is sitting in the last line. So many others won’t stick around long enough to find him. What do you have to lose?
If you're lucky, he’ll end up right next to you on stage. And if your count holds up better than his, you might just steal the show.
Grateful you are here,
Wade
