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Since then, the dance company has performed at the Inman Park Festival, began learning two new works, crafted another to be presented this weekend at the Modern Atlanta Dance (MAD) festival, throwing in a high school workshop and a round of "dragon" school shows. "Down time" has been dedicated to rehearsal, PT, work etc. (You heard the air quotes on that too didn't ya?) So in a moment of quiet I wanted to share one of those things that keeps me on task and mostly sane.
A frequent visitor to our class noticed my humming different tunes as I went through my prep for rehearsal. I explained that it was my "theme song" for the day. My doctor likes it that I have "motivational music" to help me stay up and moving. Some days, when I am facing an "adventure" i.e. life challenges, it's the theme from "Indiana Jones", over-scheduled days you can hear the Lone Ranger Overture. Multi multi-task days, the most common, I "insert Circus Music here". The idea is to move to the music in my head, keeping time to propel me forward through whatever sort of body issues are thrown in my way. I find when I can push along until rehearsal or any morning begins, in the end, I leave feeling better, even if it's a better sort of tired.
Theme songs set a tone, an emotional backdrop, for my mind. Thinking a happy tune can brighten your outlook, even if only to put a sarcastic spin on things. Venting via a hard bass line, or centering over a melodic one brings focus when my brain is racing with too many or even unconjoined thoughts. As a dancer, I seem to have the best performances when I remind myself to relax into the movement and let the music move me. My body knows the choreography; it's my mind that sets into panic.
I find, most of all, my daily tunes are good for the soul. That is why I advocate the practice to anyone. Use the old "mixed tape" format, on whatever music device you have (yeah, I still use actual tape) to put together a playlist as a way to start. Think of media characters, heroes or villains, as many come complete with a theme. Songs from childhood Saturday morning cartoons, opening notes from a family TV night, hummed memories of a grandparent. All these are the music that moves our spirits and our hearts, and can get us passed the chaos of street sounds or even voices of negative thought.
Before performance, there is a time to warm up and connect with the other dancers. In the wings, waiting in the silence, I remind myself to find calm, trust and have fun. When I can do that, the music in my head and the sound in my ears come together, and all I feel is, "I am a dancer….”let’s DO this!”
For a while, I'd been on the road, as it were, doing school shows for elementary aged kids in our state. The largest leg was in a mostly rural area in eastern Georgia. Running the program back to back, it is always interesting that K-6, they always seem to ask the same things during the Q&A. I assemble here the top 5 questions:4) Are any of the dancers from China….or Mexico?
I laughed at the child‘s attempt to frame the question in a politically correct format. One of our AB dancers is ethically Asian, and we used the opportunity to get them to find “Saipan” on the globe back in their classrooms. The smart alec in me wanted to point out our very Caucasian Bosnian and say “why yes, yes he is”…..but I digress.
2) Do you work out with weights?
For an answer, “All Abs” sports his guns to the thrill of every sighing girl and sexual confused boy in the audience.
The Follow-up question? Can he flex his muscles again?
Really, this question is asked at EVERY kid’s performance, sometimes multiple times in various forms. Their minds are suddenly opened to the possibility that what they perceive and what is actually possible might not be the same thing. So they guess that there is something incorrect in the perception. They note who can do what: Who can leave their chair and sit on the floor. Who can do a handstand. Who can move a foot. Surely if one can do THOSE things, then the chair isn’t a “necessity”. Even when our director thought to BEGIN the Q&A with the answer, it was still their number one query. I think their tenancy to wonder isn't so different than when adults do it, the real variable seems to be their reason for asking. Children wonder the why of things without real prejudice.
Sometimes the children phrase the question more along the lines of “Does it hurt?” It is the nature of a child to think that the unknown, in this case, being handicap, might be painful. We reassure them that we rehearse each move until we can perform it without injury. We also point out that like all dancers, seated or standees, sometimes we fall. And just like anything else in life, the important thing is to get back up and keep moving.
Unlike dancing in a club or otherwise for oneself, dancing as performance is what Gabrielle Roth once called the “Light of controlled Chaos”. When rehearsals transition into nonstop run throughs, the task is to get every movement exactly correct, all the while making it feel fresh and look spontaneous. However, it is surely then that things go awry. Roth also said, “Chaos has a shadow side, when it is not grounded. And that is just a panic”. Not really “stage fright” it is the added energy that makes dance going toward performance start to “feel different”. Making mistakes you've never done before, turning ways you can’t image, forgetting moves you done a hundred times. The only thing to do is breathe, turn nervousness into excitement, finding the balance, hopefully, before opening night. Prayer, lucky charms and kind words can go a long way towards that end.
Now in the week our director has given us off, I, for one, am using the time to catch up on my everyday tasks and much needed sleep. The knot on my noggin all but gone, my feared broken toes are still black across the ridge, but only bruised. I find I am getting antsy, ready to create again, eager for that wonderful “controlled chaos” that turns learned patterns into art, and simple counts into music of movement and life.
Moving hurts. There’s the added physical exertion of course, the boxing, transporting, cleaning, unboxing…. But there’s also the emotional side. Even when movement is a positive thing, there is a sort of awkward melancholy that a thing that was so much a part of your everyday is changing. Goodbye to old ways of doing things, arrangement of your things, even the view from your window. You feel disoriented, as by habit your body is interrupted from falling into old patterns. You have to stop and remind yourself where you are and the relationship between that and everything else.
Dancing can be that way too, especially when the WAY you are doing it is so different from what you were used to. Trained as primarily an actor, blocking is really just choreography without the music. I once rehearsed a show in a space that had a large support beam in the middle of center stage right. When we moved to the performance space, actors were still unconsciously “going around” the now nonexistent pole. It took several reminders before new patterns took over. I find that I have been wrestling with a similar dilemma on some interesting levels.
Though my means of conveyance has changed, the original equipment still exists and functions to one degree or another. (NOT reliably, which is a major issue is bi-pedal locomotion). Part of the time, I know I have to restrain my legs from interfering with the chair’s ability to move fluidly. Others I have to use old habits in a new way. When one goes into a front tilt, the torso should react in the same way it once did to “stand straight up”. However what I’ve been working through these days have been directions to NOT use attributes that I do possess.
In our troupe, “All Abs” can literally do handstands and cartwheels while strapped firmly into his chair. “Gimp with a Limp” does a move where he stands on his two feet with chair strapped to “shake his groove thing” in one piece. “Seasoned Pro”, tiny and light, is often lifted chair and all, and carried “crowd surfing” over the troupe. My body shape is none of these things, and my current chair not designed to do many of the things we do in dance, and I often feel frustrated. I internalize the issue as being seen as a character flaw: “You are not trying HARD enough”. I go home and practice tilts and leans till sides are bruised and straps have worn away skin, but too often this doesn’t prove out in rehearsal. Now I don’t want sympathy here, I am doing what I should and NEED to do. What the goal here is results, so I thought of what our director always says “ADAPT”
I have two feet, and when not trying to hold up unreliable hips and knees, they work pretty well. So it seemed logical that if adaptation is about using what you have, using them to overcome a chair built NOT to tip over into accomplishing that feat, that would be a good thing.
Yet, I can tell, in the eyes of my colleagues, it is “cheating”. Being schooled in a technique that doesn’t address the real issues of my body and chair do not produced the same results. But to say so in class is met with “making excuses”. Tones begin to show agitation that I don’t “just do it”. I understand that dance often requires uniformity, so where do I go from there? I don’t have an answer yet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. The physical hurt I can take, but the emotional pain is something to work out for one's self, maintaining that professional distant.
It’s been ten years and there have been some things medical science has been able to “fix”, and some that it cannot. I arm myself with knowledge and a regime to keep me mobile and self reliant. It isn’t my nature to forever grieve and there are things bigger and better in life than unencumbered walking. (Yeah, I said it!) If I have learned anything from life, it’s adapt and move on. Given the opportunity, I knew it was my chance to “dance anyway”. A year later, the title “professional” dancer is, by definition, correct, but I have much to learn to reached the skill level I see in the Company. Another day of mastering “tilts” in rehearsal today kicked up a familiar demon in me.
My orthopedist calls it the “fear/pain response”. Fear causes the body to hesitate, pain cause the body to “lean” away from the cause. Though it is “normal”, one has to constantly be aware that hesitation can lead to panic, leaning to inappropriate compensating and BOTH can lead to a heap of body on the floor. Falling has its consequences beyond bruises, but that is true for everyone. Seated dancers don’t statistically injure themselves more often than standees. We’ve all taken out each other’s toes and delivered a limb to an eye. I knew I wasn’t really afraid of the drop or even pain. I know falling is just a means to the end of gaining experience and confidence of what I CAN train my body to do. But….
“What if I never measure up, what if I can’t be as poised, as quick, as precise, as strong, as…..
ah, there it was……. Failure.
“Never giving up” doesn't always mean success, and practice doesn't always make perfect. These are hard truths in an optimistic heart. But beyond “try try again” is something our director often says, ADAPT! We are all pushed to the standards of the most accomplished around us, and we judge ourselves accordingly sometimes. Yet, if the boss sees it isn’t working, it doesn’t mean one is “out”. Like any artist, the laws of physics can be an inconvenient truth, but it is also a sign that he never thinks of us inside a box, off in a corner or “confined to a chair”. Sometimes adaptation is the mother of invention, and a close kin to imagination too. Now that is the kind of “inspiration” I can seriously get behind. So, setting up this evening on icepacks, I can at least know that today I didn’t give in to fear, took the fall, and have the proud bruise to prove it.
It’s been a week since I took off for one of my favorite times of year: DragonCon. Once, only a time to earn extra bucks working the dealers’ room, being a roadie for the band, or acting as escort and “My Girl Friday” to the likes of DeAnna Troi or the chick from “MythBusters, it has since morphed into a combination college class reunion and vital away time from “mom” duties. Sure I still bartend a bit or watch a booth from time to time, but after 26 years, it is mostly this girl’s time to R &R.
Time to let my hair down, literally. Being in rehearsal, dance class and the gym so much, my hair pretty much lives piled on top of my head. Con is the place to nurture my inner “pretty girl” with fancy dress, make up and real hair styles. It is also the season for dancing; club style, Irish gig, slow couple sway. I’d been shy to show my moves outside the Company, plush carpets and crowds with unguarded toes made it difficult to be inconspicuous on the dance floor. . I had already wasted the first night on the sidelines, nursing the old feelings of lost. However, my apprenticeship had taught me control in small spaces and built muscle in my arms to cope with tough terrain The music called to my heart, wine and friends made my bold. I took a deep breath, and spun out to the middle of it all.
I ignored the shocked looks and cell phones capturing what to them was an unusual sight. I focused on the beat, the smile of my partner, the feel of the floor. Soon the karaoke singers drew the focus, and I relaxed. The following night, at the Mechanical Masquerade, dressed in our steampunk finery, I danced alone, swung between two handsome men, and even the “time warp” with my gang. Resting between sets, well wishers whisked away by my entourage as their admiration was about to turn “inspirational”, I looked back out at the crowd. Ok, so now, “Dances with Wheels” might be a novelty, but repetition can breed acceptance, or at least a level of mutual comfort. That’s a good thing, cause I got my dancin’ shoes back on, high heeled and wheels pumped. My place on the bench is gonna be empty, and who knows, next year I hope to be joined by others who, not matter what life dishes out, are gonna dance anyway.
"titled "Dance of Pregnant," by Victor Bezrukov
As of Friday, the company is back in the studio with 3 new “AB” dancers, “abled bodied/standees or what I refer to simply as bi-peds. There’d been auditions before and during the summer months, and I did my part to partner as we put them through the basics. Besides dancing aptitude, “AB’s” have to also have a comfort level when working with us “wheelies” (or “seated dancers”). There is always the initial awkwardness, the run-over toe, misplaced hands, the look of confusion when told to “tilt” one of us.
Now here I have to confess, that I have my own odd sense of humor. I find the funniest moments are the first time they drop one of us. It happens to wheelies just like any other dancer, but when you are not used to seeing one sprawled onto the floor or flipped over backwards, an instinctive panic goes across the bi-pedal face. In rehearsal, we are left to our own devices unless the “safe word” broccoli is called. Yeah you heard me, “broccoli”. And it’s a challenge too, like kids who don’t want to be the first one to say “uncle”. I personally would rather unstrap myself from the chair and crawl out of the carnage, especially if my “assistant” doesn’t know what they are actually doing. “Helpful help”, is gimp rule number 5.
Anyway, each wheelie was partnered with the different candidates, as each of our body abilities differ. From the seasoned pro, the “all abs” and the self referred “Gimp with a Limp”, I fall into line as the apprentice who just earned her place on the floor. The “ab's" approach us in their own ways too. There were the ones who are so caught up in their own “audition” that it was hard to really connect to them in partnered pieces. Others so focused on not trying to harm us, they almost certainly did. There were the gems who both had good dance ability coupled with an open mind. One stole my respect with an air of “I’m just here to dance, and so are you”. I confess to my bias.
When one finds themselves “otherwise capable”, due to a sudden event or a slow digression of the body, those around us, whether friends or passing acquaintances, make their own adjustments. It came to me that there is a sort of “audition” for them after the initial awkwardness of our new “normal” and you never know if they will make the cut. Some wash out, they can’t let go of their own preconceived ideas and comfort levels. Others “try too hard” and miss that we don’t want to be “inspirational”, we just want to get through our days. The keepers are the ones who stumble with the changes at first, but stay connected with us as people. Pretty soon though, they are moving right along with you, they hear the music. Those are the folks I want to stay, and in that way, dance with, cause they are the ones that “get me”.
branchandrootnornoriel
