We've been having a lot of really intense discussions about dance lately, and I think I need to address them, because they are everything I am struggling with personally all the time.
Yesterday in class, we discussed the difference between being a technician and being an artist, and why there even was a difference. Shouldn't a dancer be both? One and the same? The unanimous agreement was yes, so why on earth isn't that as evident as it should be in the world of dance today? The companies accessible and available to public view are for the most part one or the other. Very rarely do you see a successful fusion of the two, and if you do, it's a glimpse. One piece in a repertory of dozens. Why?
The answer came down to training. Which led to another question. How do you train someone to be a technically wonderful artist? How are there enough hours in a lifetime? We didn't come to a conclusion.
It's like dancers are trying to be super-human. They are obsessed with being something bigger, more powerful and are therefore losing their humanity.
That one hit home. And she just came right out and said it. Point blank. Fact. Yes, that is what I'm doing, or at the very least, putting myself in an intense tug of war over. On the one hand, this project is functioning to preserve and draw out my humanity. But on the other, I am obsessed. I'm never what I want to be, or think I need to be, or could potentially be. Or maybe I'll never be it. So maybe if I run more. If I lift 60lbs instead of 30. If I dislocate my hip. If I overstretch my right side. If I push my shoulders down into the ground. If I stop sleeping. Maybe then I can figure it out. Maybe then I can do it.
Then improv this morning, which is quickly and surprisingly evolving into my favorite class, my professor came over to me to help me stretch. Everyone I know is determined to help me with my body. It's fantastic. And so frustrating. But, I could feel it. She bent my joints, told me that I had to learn to relax and release when I was stretching, ran her hands through my ribcage, reminded me of all the movement potential that was there, and helped me open my shoulders. Her hands on my ribcage was fantastic. Extremely personal for a normal person, but I didn't even think twice about it until she asked if it was okay that she was touching me. My body just needed it. It wants to figure all of this out more than my brain can even conceive, I think. And I could hold onto what she gave me for a few mintues, and then, as always, it went away, and I was trapped back in my same old body.
Instead of dancing right away, we discussed this wonderful book we've been reading. I can't even tell you how much I love it. I have trouble putting it down and that has never happened to me with a book that isn't fictional. She asked me to begin the discussion because I had thanked her for giving us the book and told her how much I was getting out of it. I brought up the section about addictions. It says, "In addiction, we obsess in order to avoid finding out something, or in order to avoid facing something unpleasant...In addiction we are folding inward, into more sameness, more dullness." I won't say I am addicted to dance because that diminishes it. I am and have always been very passionate about dance. Lately, I think I am addicted to my body, which sounds really weird.
Here it is though. I am constantly thinking about it - what's wrong with it, what I can do about it, how can I lose weight, how can I make my hips go away, how can I look like he does when he lifts his leg, what am I going to do when I go find out this is arthritis, if I eat this cookie what do I have to do to make up for it, is there a muscle that should be stronger but isn't? All day, those questions are pouring through my head. And I see people around me, living their normal lives, and I want no part in it. Not until I'm perfect. I think I'm actually addicted to perfection, which was something brought up and we found that a few of us are.
Which comes back to our training - where we were told we HAD to look a certain way and be a certain thing. From the time I was 2, I needed to be everything that a stereotypical dancer is. And the truth of the matter is, I am not one of those things, and I never will be. So, to compensate for that, in high school my teacher gave me a checklist to go through every time I danced, every time I started any exercise. There were about 10 things on the original list. Over the years, that list has grown to accomodate about 20 things. So now, every time I move, I am just trying to piece my list together and make sure everything is right, which is impossible. But I try anyway. And then, God forbid someone tell me to let go, I'll forget about my list for a second and my real body comes out of the shadows and man am I a disaster.
But maybe I'm only a stereotypical disaster.
Maybe in that moment, I'm finally really being me.
I have the physicality. I have the musculature. I can stand on my own two legs. I can do the movements. In that moment where I finally let go of my list, maybe I am just actually dancing the way I, me, Cassandra dances. And maybe, someday, that can be okay.
I said that today in class. All of that. And at first, Merian was really upset that I limit myself the way I do, that I can't let go. Then, I told her about my shirt improv, and how I think I finally started to in that one, that a friend had sent me a message to tell me how different I looked in that. It's because I didn't have my checklist that night. I threw it out the door and I finally let my body do what it wanted to do. And I hated every moment of that improv. I was positive I would never show it to anyone when I'd finished because it felt so wrong, but then I watched it and saw something. I can't even put words to it...but she saw it too.
And I'm sitting there saying all of this next to my main modern professor this semester. I can never tell what he thinks of me, and honestly, I'm scared of him. I just didn't look at him as I was saying all of this. I didn't want to see the "aha, I get her now," or the, "just stop whining and making excuses," written all over his face. Neither option would make me feel okay about what I was saying. And ya, I didn't have to say it, but then I wouldn't be living this project.
So I don't know what to do. I don't know where the middle ground is. I have to find a compromise. Neither part is 100% going to be the correct answer. It's somewhere in the middle. But where is that?
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