30 May 2018

New Dance Video!

After nearly two full years of work (planning, practicing, shooting, editing), I have finished another tap video, much in the vein of Shades Of Green & Red this past Christmas.

While Green & Red was choreographed in a couple of days, filmed in two hours, and edited in a week, I have had this new one actively in progress since August 2016. Filming alone was five days.

This new project -- Rift -- has more personal meaning to it. The song (which I've discussed before on this blog) deals with emotional abuse, and I created this dance around the time my difficulties with my previous church were worsening. The institution that was supposed to love and care for me, my health, and well-being (emotionally as well as spiritually) was beginning to show their true colours and I did not like what I was seeing. I felt like I had been completely abandoned in my hour of darkness and I was angry. And all of that anger and frustration and loneliness went into this choreography.



From the outset I knew I wanted a stark, dimly-lit set. The fact that it ended up being shot in an old church felt poetic, as the church (as a general institution) makes up a decent chunk of who I'm addressing with this. Though the lighting in the venue was already terrible, I actually deliberately worsened it in post-processing to further create a cold, isolated, abandoned feel.

It's weird to be finished this project. It's consumed my thoughts and planning and practice time and downtime for so long that my life feels a bit empty now that I've released it to the world and don't have to think about it anymore, in any way. In total I probably put in at least a hundred hours on this project between choreographing, rehearsing, location scouting, sound recording, filming, and editing -- not counting all the hours of staring into space daydreaming about what I wanted this to look like and how to achieve that.

On to the next project, I guess... still trying to figure out what that is. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one.

17 May 2018

When The Circumstances Are Right...

I told someone once that my depression always dips a bit when a performance run ends. Rehearsals are over, I see my friends less, I don't have stage-time... if I don't have a job (as is the case at the moment), I have literally no reason to get up in the morning.

About a year and a half later, I was in a serious depressive state and this person said to me, "You told me once that you always feel depressed after a performance ends. So just get over it."

And that actually made things worse.

See, she clearly knew that circumstances were right for me to be struggling, but instead of using that information to come alongside me and comfort me and be there for me and encourage me, she weaponised it -- she used it to trivialise the pain I was in.

This incident, in this depressive state, was an extremely large factor in my suicide attempt not long afterward. She knew I was struggling, but she didn't try to help. She knew that conditions were right for something to happen but she did nothing to even try to help cushion the blow.

Don't do this.

In the same way you encourage your loved ones to watch a good film or go for coffee if they've had a stressful day or take a nap if they were up late the night before or bring/make them food if they've not stopped to eat in a while, take note of factors that may trigger or worsen your loved one's depression and take steps to combat it/soften the blow, ESPECIALLY if they have deliberately told you what those factors are, and ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY if the factor is something predictable (for example, the end of a performance run). We do what we can, but sometimes we're not strong enough, or sometimes we just don't know how.

In my case, a good way for someone to help combat my depression is to just spend time with me. We don't have to do anything expensive or crazy. We don't even have to talk (just please note that if you're on your phone it very clearly sends the message that you'd rather be talking to someone else right now and I'm not worth your time and attention -- which actually worsens my depression even more than if you weren't even there to begin with). Just sit with me or walk with me. If I want to talk, let me talk. But please do not say that you did not know. Don't pretend that knowing it's coming makes the pain any easier to handle. News flash: it doesn't. If anything it makes it worse BECAUSE you know it's coming and you spend two weeks dreading it before it even arrives.

14 May 2018

Snapshot - What's In My Head

I am exhausted.
I am discouraged.
Though I don't want to admit it, I'm sick too (recurring respiratory infection).
And yet I must not stop.
I keep pushing, practicing, working, trying, pleading with God, do it again, do it again, one more time, one more time.
Maybe one day, by some miracle, I'll be good enough to earn your attention.

But in a way I doubt it'll ever be enough for anyone. You always want more, better, faster, stronger, more flexible, everything except what I've already got.

Am I on a hamster wheel? Will the carousel ever stop? Will you ever be satisfied? If I were to collapse dead on the floor from the amount of practicing I'm doing, would that sacrifice satisfy you? Would that dedication finally be enough for you? Or would you still demand more, better, faster, stronger, more flexible, more practice, more work, 'why aren't you trying harder?'

Drain the blood from my veins -- apparently it's no good to me. Maybe that is sacrifice enough. Maybe then you'll be satisfied. Cut my beating heart out of my chest. Maybe then you'll finally have what you wanted out of me. Touch my cold, dead body and my rigid unfeeling hands. Maybe then I'll have tried hard enough.

Maybe when I've paid the ultimate price you'll finally want me.


(NOTE: 'You' in this piece is a broad, general reference to both Christians and the art world. I have tried so hard to do everything they asked, everything they wanted, and still they cast me out. Still they tell me I'm not good enough. Still they ignore me.
Part of this was also written out of frustration with myself and my own continued lack of improvement and traction in the arts. I feel very much like I'm spinning my wheels and I'm so tired now. I want to give up. I'm not actively suicidal as I write this, but I'm trending toward it. It's so hard to think you're worth something when your own still-young, well-nourished, well-trained body refuses to do what you ask of it despite endless, consistent, hard hours of practice and training and stretching. I'm doing everything right. What more do I still lack?
I see very, very few bright spots or rays of hope tonight. I'm reluctant now to even look for them. Hope is so fragile. Just when you think you've caught it, it melts away in your hands. I would rather live in darkness than waste my fleeting energy chasing a disappearing light.)