The Case Against Potential

Recently I was struggling to fix my out-of-whack double pirouettes to the right on pointe... which I have the potential to do perfectly, and am totally capable of landing cleanly, but which have recently been off-balance and inconsistent.  A couple other dancers were watching me and giving me technique corrections to keep me from falling off pointe three-quarters to a half turn too early.  As I took the corrections, working my way back to doing something that I've been able to do correctly since I was 15, I was frustrated by the thought that I knew I knew how to do it, but I just wasn't....  One of the dancers stopped giving me technical corrections like "hip down," "head to your left," "plié more," and just told me to stop making the turn work so hard -- to just float it and make it easy.  I did, and I landed it cleanly.  It made me think of something one of my NYU teachers this summer said in class: "I'm not a fan of potential.  Potential just means you're capable of doing something and you're not doing it.  So just do it.  Don't have any potential."

 

It seems like from an early age we're trained to think of potential as something we need to hold on to and maintain in order to grow.  In gymnastics, we had to take flexibility tests.  I remember one time I maxed out on mine, actually going beyond the measurement system they had, so I should have scored 100%.  My coach bit his lip, thought for a moment, and said, as he recorded my score, "Okay, 99.  Very good."  I argued back that it should have been 100.  He said that wouldn't leave me with any potential to grow.  I asked him if I understood correctly that 50% meant getting halfway to the objective standard that had been set, and if 75% meant getting 3/4 of the way there, measured in centimeters.  He said yes.  I then asked him to show me, in millimeters, what that 1% I wasn't getting on my score was.  He couldn't.  "You reached the goal."  Right.  So I should have gotten 100%.  I had no potential to score better on that particular test, as objectively set, and so they shouldn't impose some false obstacle keeping from me getting to 100 in order to preserve my "potential."  In fact, by saying I couldn't get that 100 now, he was actually saying I could never achieve the 100, no matter how well I did; so then by that standard, I had no potential anyway and nothing to work towards.  Had he given me the 100, I could then have clearly seen on my score sheet the areas I actually needed to work towards, like strength to compensate for my over-extension, rather than working just to work on something I could already do perfectly.

 

Potential isn't some glorious thing you need to hold on to in order to grow.  Achieve the maximum you're capable of.  Work towards what you haven't reached yet.  Score 100.  And then change the measuring system and go beyond your potential.