This week I have returned to the studio, and it has been an utter joy. Nothing unusual you might say, Rosie Kay is known as a dancer and choreographer, surely, she spends a large amount of her time in a dance studio. Over the past 6 months I have not been in a dance studio, and I’ve hardly been in a gym. And it was not by choice.
After a long warm up, followed by a complex ballet barre, I felt myself again. Yes, my legs were lower, yes I was a little slower, but thanks to my incredible physio team, I wasn’t shaking and I felt alive and co-ordinated. Best of all, I remembered that I could dance!
I spent a couple of hours beginning to relearn my solo Adult Female Dancer. I work from video, and not the one of final polished show, but from the first version of the piece, filmed in a structured improvisation in 2020. Studying my performance, with the raw words of my spoken monologue explaining the highs and lows of a life danced and a body lived in, I recognised my position then and now.
The solo is structured in seven revealing monologues with seven short dance pieces to music that ranges from J.S.Bach to Patti Smith, each monologue a different aspect related to my body and my life in dance, including injuries, success, fame, and traumatic incidents in my life which affected my dancing. “Oh boy’ I thought to myself, “we are going to need to add a new chapter to this work!”. I felt inspired to tell the world the next chapter of my strangely private and public life as a dancer.
Last September I found a lump in my left breast, and along with a few other worrying symptoms around the skin of my breast, I went to the doctor and persuaded her to put me forward for some tests. The outcome of weeks of tests and waiting, unfortunately was a diagnosis of breast cancer, starting at my milk duct, and spreading deeply into the body of the breast. It was hoped it had not yet spread to my lymph nodes. Immediately, I was told, I needed a full mastectomy as soon as possible and then my options were to remain without a breast, to get an implant, or to get a breast reconstruction made from my own stomach tissue.
Sat in the somewhat stifling little examination room, the earth didn’t move me for me. My life did not flash before my eyes, nor did I break down and beg for my life. I felt quite annoyed actually. It was less than 10 years on from struggling with breast feeding my baby, with the memory of breast pumping and hot cabbage leaves still fresh in my mind, and now this was how these bloody breasts repay me! Fortunately, a friend joined me for this consultation, how she knew she had to come I do not know but I will be forever grateful. “But I am a dancer” I said- “what my body looks like matters. It is an aesthetic and political issue!”. She patted my hand and asked again what my options were, as the doctor reeled off information and ‘my options’ around radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and lymph node surgery. “I have a tour booked… I must perform”, I pleaded, almost to myself. The doctor and nurse gave me hugely sympathetic eyebrow movements. They must have known how I sounded. “Perhaps it could be time to take a little break?” my surgeon gently advised.
The most painful part was telling my husband and my son that evening in the garden. I was very practical, and I didn’t feel particularly emotional. I actually felt that somehow, I and my body, had let everyone down, and this was about to cause an awful lot of worry for them all. I tried to tell myself that this was another adventure; another strange physical experience, to add to the knee surgeries, the birth trauma, the broken bones and career threatening injuries that I’d racked up over my dancing life. This was just another stage, another experience, another hurdle to be mounted and crossed and won. But inside I felt utterly confused. Had I been ill for a long time before diagnosis? Why hadn’t I noticed? When did the cancer start? And the worse of all - had I caused my own cancer somehow?
Whilst feelings of guilt and shame are normal reactions to terrible news, there is something particularly strange about telling others about your diagnosis of cancer, and a deep stigma remains. Breast cancer used to be one of the deadliest killers of young women, but treatments now have transformed life expectancy. However, the treatments are long, difficult, invasive and hard on the body and the mind. I decided that this news was only going to go to my very closest of friends, family and my colleagues directly affected.
I’d known something wasn’t quite right about me towards the middle of 2023. I had felt extraordinarily tired, and began to fall asleep in strange places, which was unlike me. I’d lost my normal enthusiasm for life and began to feel extremely pessimistic and gloomy. I’d kept this hidden but began to think I was in some kind of depression, and the past few traumatic years of cancellation stress and rebuilding my dance company and my business were finally catching up on me. What I needed was a break, I thought, and to focus on my fitness, health and some family time. A fitness regime was begun, but immediately I got a terrible dose of flu which I couldn’t shift. We went on holiday but I was plagued by weird small cuts and insect bites that would not heal and became infected, swollen and inflamed. Something was definitely not right, and I began massaging my lymph nodes, instinctively at first, hoping to shift my lymphatic system to feel more energised. It was whilst doing this that I noticed the lump. My lumpy breasts, which had caused me pain and anxiety since puberty, and were not best loved by me as a dancer, were hiding seriously lumpy cancer cells.
The past three years have been particularly painful, first Covid and then Cancellation.
On tour in the USA as Covid lockdown rumours spread the world, I settled down to lockdown researching a new solo show and getting my older body back to performance level. It was quiet, daily work, and the introspective nature of the world and I suited this way of creating my first autobiographical dance work. As I danced and sweated in a small church hall, I often thought of my father, recently diagnosed with untreatable and incurable cancer, whom I was unable to visit or see in person. I danced for him, and while he never saw my solo live, he and his memory are embedded into so much of the deep emotion and honesty in the work. I felt strong, stoic even; I was using my art to survive and to create in the midst of nothing. Even after he died, I was strong at his funeral, at which only 12 people could attend. In my reading to him, I did not break down, I wanted to honour his humour and warmth as a dad, a man and a friend. I wanted to be the one who could cope.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was trapped. As I became more confident in myself; fit, physically and mentally articulate, honest and yet also raw from bereavement, those around me in my dance company were becoming scared, fearful, highly controlling and risk averse at a new and insane level. And the risk was me; my mind, my thoughts and certainly my work. I was making a solo about having a female body. Was this possibly ‘transphobic’? I was also working on a huge 5-year project on love, gangs and crime in Birmingham- my very own modern Romeo+ Juliet. Could this be potentially ‘triggering’. Suddenly, everything and everyone was a potential ‘reputational risk’ as the climate of fear spread in the arts.
My cancellation story you may know, and if you don’t, I can signpost you to a link. A cancellation attempted or successful is similar to a bereavement. The internal framework of your entire life collapses and collapses quickly and totally. The death of my father felt like a wall of my life had collapsed and I wasn’t sure what else that wall was holding up. When I lost my company, I discovered that the other walls around me collapsed too. One has to re-evaluate everything and everyone in your life, who is or is not a friend, who is an enemy, who distances themselves quietly, who may prey on your vulnerability, and who actively goes out to join in some kind of ‘pile on’ against you, as if for sport. It is entirely disorientating and dizzying. I was lucky to be enveloped by a small team of trusted old and new supporters. Friends who called and kept a check on me, knowing just how much my dance company meant to me, and new friends who helped me work out the strategy of going forward and hopefully surviving.
If the death of my father took away a beloved parent, cancellation took away one of the loves of my life- my job, my funding, my business and my name. I honestly didn’t think it could get worse. After a year and a half, I completed legally; my name was my own again, my work was fully and legally mine and my old company was officially closed. I’d not wish this on anyone, and yet I did battle through; I set up a new company, I got on with selling my work, and I relaunched as K2CO and with a tour of 5 SOLDIERS across the UK.
But cancer. What did I do to get this? As the very kind consultant explained my ‘care plan’ to me, all I could think was “I have the tour to plan, I have a young son, I have stuff to do!”. I’d fought through Covid, bereavement and cancellation- surely this can’t be fair? But health is indiscriminate, and I had to just accept that my life was out of my hands for a moment, and I was going to have to accept the treatments offered to me to save my life and my future.
It has been a long journey, nine months of appointments, and six months of surgery, nurses, consultants, chemo wards and chemotherapy hangovers. Now I have completed my course of chemo; I’ve started the hormone therapy recently and radiotherapy is to follow soon. It is a lot to deal with- almost a full-time job. Each department has its own politics, power dynamics; one must negotiate with receptionists, secretaries, nurses, registrars and consultants. Each has a different mode of speaking to you- the patient, the ‘client’, the ill and needy vulnerable body and sometimes I am the difficult dancer.
It has been hard juggling and then postponing work, it goes against an artist’s bones to say no, it seems so odd to stay home, lie low and rest up. It was with deep disappointment I had to postpone my 2024 tour, but the reaction and support from those whom I had to notify was life affirming.
I am extremely happy to say my 2024 tour will now happen in 2025 and Adult Female Dancer will be part of it.
I aim to use this Substack to follow my progression from cancer patient to performer over the next 12 months.
Finally, I want to explain to you why I am telling you this.
Well, because my body is my job. Because I plan to be back on stage again dancing with this body, telling you about aspects of my life. Because I wasn’t expecting this chapter, but I think it is important.
Because I want people to know that you can get through this and to get checked before it’s too late. That knowing your body, or thinking you know your body, is not a protection.
I’d like everyone to know, so that I don’t need to explain my silence. It wasn’t cancellation- it was cancer. I’d like to raise awareness for women pre-menopause about breast changes, the risk of births later in life, and to urge all women to please get your worries checked, you are not wasting doctor’s time. I’d like to share how inspired I have been by my incredible surgeons and consultants. I’d like to express how life has more meaning now than ever before.
And it’s wonderful to dance again. I’m stronger than I ever thought.
This Substack is going to be a few things- it will be a count down from today to one year ahead and the premiere of Adult Female Dancer and Fantasia in June 2025. But it will also be a place I write about dance, the arts, freedom of expression and current events. I really look forward to this journey with you.
Thank you for your support.
Best
Rosie