Lone Ranger

18 March 2016, 2.08pm.

Apparently I'm reconstructing my entire life right now.

I was re-reading my post about anger and motivation in my art and it occurred to me that the single biggest thing preventing me from going farther in the dance/choreography side of my art is the lack of a dance team. I keep telling myself that's because there are no committed dancers in this entire country (which is partly true), but it's also because I am literally too scared to ask the ones I do know.

I've become so used to working by myself, for myself for so long that the idea of working with another human being scares me. Human beings have differing opinions and human beings can hurt each other, sometimes deeply. And given the (lack of) acceptance I've felt about being an artist so far and the fact that I'm just coming off of the worst year of my life, emotionally, I want nothing more than to hide my fragile heart away. If just one more person dies or leaves us, my heartbreak may become irreparable and in a person with a history of depression, you want to stay as far away from that as possible...

Basically, I've locked myself in.

I never wanted to be a solo artist. I wanted a team to work with, a big, talented, expressive team that can do huge sweeping numbers in perfect sync while also showcasing the unique qualities everyone possesses. That has always been what I loved in dance and that has always been the sort of choreography I strived to create. But with no-one to dance it -- and with no courage to even ask around and risk the rejection -- it remains mere scribbles on paper. Poetry, music, and literature can all survive for centuries like this. But dance cannot. (I'm not going to get into lamenting that music has a more-or-less universal notation system while people seem to think that mere video clips are all that is needed for dance. You don't expect musicians to reconstruct an entire symphony by listening to a few garbled fragments...)

Point is, as of right now I'm a lone ranger.  I create by myself, for myself. And that's not who I wanted to be. But then who do I work with? I get the sense that no-one in the dance world has anything close to the same goals in dance and choreography as I do. In fact, as previously established, I don't even know what my own goals are. But I know what they're not -- they are to not be ugly, pretentious, and unrelentingly bleak, like modern dance.