An important day

I feel grown up today.

So I may not be making oodles of money -- or at all, actually, though I am living off my own savings -- and I may not have a namecard. I have a postcard with my feet jumping out of the frame and my phone number is on there although my service has been disconnected because I haven't paid the bill since November. I have a performance venue in March for which to make and show new work -- OK, so it's at my alma mater (the benevolent Swarthmore), but why fight it? I have an important audition coming up in two weeks that's exciting because it's not only paid work but with four different new choreographers in a month-long residency project. For this I need to prepare myself, physically and psychologically. That's purpose. I am beginning to understand what it is like to truly create and define yourself -- to be a self-made woman, to be fashioning myself according to my personal desires. If I'm not directly saving the world yet I am definitely growing and developing maturity and skills with which to maintain a positive self, which is the first step.

Why today?

For the performer, life can be lived only for the purpose of four minutes.

I lucked out on a Monday morning to have one of Danspace Center's studios available for me to "stretch" and quietly work in, after doing my regular Monday, Wednesday deal of cleaning from 8:30-10:00am in order to get $4 class tickets (down from the regular $14!). I did various necessary and silly things the rest of the day, all the while manuveuring my way to getting my solo song onto CD and trying for the life of me to set movement to the entire four minutes, rather than just the 2 and a half I did for the Green Chair show. I went to the improv jam at the Children's Aid Society later that night and tried to stow myself away in a classroom adjacent to the gymnasium where the main activity occurs -- foot-crushed goldfish crackers on the otherwise inviting hardwood floor -- in order to continue pushing through the movements of this solo work, only to be found by various distracting jam friends (so I just went and jammed instead). But there I danced with Joe, an Oberlin graduate, who moved so fast and autonomously, it was a very different challenge to dance "contact" with him. But in talking through this style afterward, he instructed me on the contact of energetic fields, or distinct states of being, recounting in rapture a prime example of this in a solo of Bill T Jones.

"People don't remember your movement, they remember your energy," spoke Joe,
"Bill T Jones only used 12 movements, but as I was watching from the wings tears were running down my face."
"How long was the piece?"
"Seven, maybe eight minutes, even, but it didn't feel like it. Just 12 movements. It seemed that he could open and close his own pores upon command, that's how clear he was. Me, in my movement, and when I'm dancing with you, it's not about me trying to 'hear' what you are 'saying,' but for me to be clear in my directions and we will see where that takes us. I dance with old people as a part of my job,"
-- here I grin, recalling movement therapy sessions at the Caritas old people's home in Bytom, slightly afraid but loving witnessing the revelry possible in extended movements from limited limbs --
"and this lady the other day, she moved so simply, just like this --"
Joe closes his eyes, smiles, and pops up his shoulders: right left right --
"It's the energy that matters."

Thus it was that I could redefine the concept of my solo as the embodiment of an energetic state, for indeed, I had found only a few key elemental movements but was using them in the context of some heightened beingness. Thanks, Joe.

So I proceeded home, nervous and tired, strangely at peace in procrastinating, buying groceries, eating yogurt, tending to split feet, all the while waiting to lie down, finally at 2am, to listen to Iron and Wine Track # 2 over and over again. To watch myself, to find the logic and the journey in correspondance with my character and the music. I rose at 6 am to repeat this exercise, which was an interesting way to choreograph because I was trying to locate the correct energy rather than steps. I am reminded of how frustrated I would feel during Composition class with Sally Hess because I tried to force myself to "make" movement before I had clarified to myself the nature of the motivating energy. Up at 6, I listened to the music and my vision in it, I wrote the description required of the audition and listened all the more, I got up to have a little breakfast and yet another blessing occurred. Leonardo and his wife both left, and having fired the babysitter recently, left Fabrizio to his own devices. Ricky was still asleep in our room, and I was beginning to question how I was going to try out some of the necessary new movement without waking him or looking like a stretch-meister-idiot, when Fabrizio calls out and Ricky supplants himself to the other room to quiet the boy down. Isolation! Me, my tomatoes (which were to go under my dress and fall out before the actual emergence section of the dance), and a creaky floor as the only giveaway that I was dancing. Thank God. I left the house at a decent 8:45 to reach Dance Theater Workshop just short of 10 to make-up, warm-up, and calm down before my 10:40am audition slot.

So there she was: my protagonist in Study for a Portrait of a Young Girl (jumping out of her skin). This is how I am feeling grown up. She is no longer me, and when I dance her, I am "she" -- not "me." The performance act is not my heart on a platter, but a state, a force, not an exposition, but an almost allegorical figure. The choreographic question is HOW does THIS CHARACTER move, and WHY? The question of why people dance and why they need to dance will always be a perplexing enough one to ask. Does it have to be because there is no other way? Or because some rites must be seen and felt, not simply rationally understood?

"The piece enacts a female struggle for selfhood in an explosive yet detailed solo work. It journeys through stages of development by distilling and embodying energetic states. It is itself a rite of passage, a cathartic rite."

Was it "good"? Did I suck? Was it messy (a little bit -- cold feet, you know)? Was it moving? Did I fully engage that huge vessel of space? I am trying not to judge myself or over-analyze the reactions of the ten person deciding panel. They have another full day today and next Monday to think about all of us candidates in context and against each other. What it was for me was NE-CE-SSARY and at that point that's all that mattered. It was indeed a coming of age process to put myself and the quality of my ideas to the scrutiny of professionals, without disdain, without panic, yet without detachment -- bravery, not bravado. Of course it matters -- I would love to perform in their showcase in April -- and of course rejection will hurt, depending on what they say, specifically. But I feel defined, and am ready to move on, excited to keep creating. I'll be showing it again at the University of Utah's MFA audition this Friday -- just for them to see me, and to get a better idea of their program -- and She -- the "boxer girl" -- will come back probably more refined than ever. Six months after her first inception, this is the longest I've ever retained a relationship and I like the feeling that there are many places yet to go.