Day 23: National Choreography Month

Finished the Queen song and now I'm getting back to my choreographic roots with a large-group White Heart number -- specifically Heaven Of My Heart (1993).

I think this one comes out of some of the emotional background of Who Wants To Live Forever -- that weight of nostalgia, that longing for another world. I'm still so tired of being here. I'm not suicidal, most of the time, just weary... this breathtaking, soul-scarring, heartbreaking, physically heavy weariness, this bone-crushing, mind-melting nostalgia for something I can hardly remember or perhaps never experienced. I feel like I don't belong here, and I want to go somewhere where I do... home -- wherever that even is anymore.

Locked in a sky so blue

Is a land made for me and you

And we're going there, but until the dream comes true

There's a secret place

So full of love and grace

When the world spins and breaks apart

I'm going to the other heaven of my heart...

I've been realising lately that the theme of a lot of my work (not just choreography) is the theme of escape. Not extreme, altered-reality escape -- not detaching oneself from one's emotions; more like escaping into a better reality. I spent so much time in my head because that was where my better worlds were -- the worlds in my head that I unlocked and sculpted with my fingers on the keyboard and my feet on a creaking wood floor. Maybe this song best describes what I've been doing with my artistic output all along. The themes were about escaping because that's what I have always wanted, more than anything -- to be able to reach the goodness that exists only just beyond the curtain of the physical, time-bound world. I can feel it, I sometimes see glimpses of it, but it can't come here, and, until my time comes, I can't go there either. I guess this is why songs like Terry Scott Taylor's Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (among others) resonate with me SO strongly -- at least there is one other person on the planet who sees it too. It's not just me.

And escape is not just the theme of my work, it's often the reason I create. I can go forward to heaven, or back to times I had with people who I will never see again until I can move forward to heaven -- and in the past few years, creating art has often done both at the same time. Choreographing this song specifically takes me back to the time when I still had viable dreams of choreographing and performing, and the friendship of people like M and Brittney. If I could lock myself in any year forever, it would be 2012. There was so much potential and hope in my life then. Now I'm just old and washed up. Doing this piece has really made me realise just how critical M's very existence was to my creative process. There's a duet section in this piece, and I still see her beside me in my mind's eye, doing the beats and turns as I write them down -- her endless energy and bright dramatic eyes. She wanted to escape too, and she was lucky enough to get it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I've already choreographed a piece in her memory, but I think this one is in her memory too. No doubt everything I choreograph from now on will be.

I'm about a third of the way through the song now. It's a light, airy allegro piece, very ethereal, lots of arms and heads and a few floating turns... a lot like the music itself, energetic yet dream-like. I am LOVING choreographing the duet part (I still have a little bit of it to go), especially making them intertwine with each other and with White Heart's glorious harmonies. I can't put into words how much I wish M could dance this with me for real. I wish the curtain of time didn't seperate us.

There I go, trying to escape again.

National Choreography Month, Day 10

For the first time in probably about five years, I was NOT dying of a severe lung infection in December/January (thanks, masks!), which means I've actually been able to properly do National Choreography Month this year.

I've almost done my first piece -- Queen's 'Who Wants To Live Forever.' It's probably the first widely recognisable band I've ever choreographed to in almost nine years of officially choreographing.

I was introduced to this song by someone I knew from college during my final year. We managed to be in three different shows together and as such spent many hours carpooling and sharing music (something we were both extremely passionate about), and one day Queen came up. I was familiar with Bohemian Rhapsody, of course (and if I never hear that song again in my entire life it will be too soon), and We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions because hockey, but neither of those cuts inspired me to delve deeply into their work.

While I picked up Queen songs that I love and play much more than this one from these carpool conversations, this one caught my melancholy mind's attention.

At that time in my life, M's death was extremely fresh, having only happened some four months earlier. Her death sent me into an odd but extremely intense nostalgic state wherein in the nostalgia is so strong it's physically painful and since I can't go back to the places and events and people I'm nostalgic for, I often feel like I don't want to be in this world anymore. I'm tired of longing for a time that can never be again, and every second of existing under that vicious longing feels like a personal attack -- like I'm being slapped in the face with all I've loved and lost. This state of extreme nostalgia continues to this day (if anything, it's intensified in the past few months). This song captured it perfectly... who wants to live forever? For sure not me. It's too painful to live that long under the weight of memories that will only ever be memories.

This is only the third not-tap dance I've choreographed since before M's death two and a half years ago (and one of those was literally the week she died). I haven't taken any ballet classes since I graduated college in April 2019. I had already begun to accept that I might never dance ballet again. I was just too beat down and too burnt out, and I felt I could never enjoy ballet again, so I focused on tap. But lately I've been feeling this pull back to ballet.

This piece was VERY different from what I usually choreograph. It was extremely slow, with a heavy focus on arms and lines (and a good bit of emphasis on character/mood). My usual work is at breakneck speed and I'm lucky if I choreograph five arms for an entire piece. It was such a departure, but at a time when I am still feeling such heavy nostalgia, the song fit and I think so did all the port de bras and lines -- this is a pensive song of reflection and melancholy, not dazzle and fun or even anger and sass. Slow movements, like that of an old man, or one who knows she is not long for this world, fit the yearning and 'so be it' mood of the song. It's a rather cathartic piece to dance.

That being said, there is this one section of allegro...

My husband and I have now been together for a year and a half (total). In all that time, that relationship has never inspired me to create anything artistic. It sounds bad, but there it is. Until this song -- the lyrics 'Touch my tears with your lips / Touch my world with your fingertips / And we will have forever / And we can love forever...'

My husband and I will not live forever, and that is perhaps a mercy for us both. But the time we have together transcends time.

I haven't officially picked a second piece for the contest; all I know is I want it to be a LOT more upbeat (read: less slow/boring) than this one. While I appreciate the beauty and the lines I've created here and I'm fairly certain this will work really well on stage, I'm tired of having slow songs stuck in my head.

Music

If you've been around here long enough, you may remember the music-collector days, circa 2010-2013. However, five years of college and six of unemployment put a real damper on the whole 'buying obscure music from out-of-country' thing.

Now, for the first time in a very long time, I have both a relatively stable job and am not paying tens of thousands of dollars every couple months in tuition fees. You have no idea the financial freedom I have. I am working minimum wage, but I have more 'disposable income' now than I have EVER had in my entire life. I'm still not well-off by most people's standards, but I feel like I'm living a life of luxury. I can buy cheap muffins regularly now instead of only buying them on special occasions. There is a massive weight off my shoulders that I have not felt since before I left for college. Lecrae's sentiment that 'being broke made me rich' is spot-on.

Anyway, all this to say that now that I actually have a couple extra pennies to spare at the end of the month, I took advantage of a few Boxing week sales from a couple of music dealers who specialise in my obscure genre of choice. One such dealer was Girder Music, and one such deal I took advantage of was the Halo/Scott Springer remastered 4-CD pack. I've had my eye on both Halo albums (particularly Heaven Calling) for years now -- since before college, but there was always an album I wanted more... then, of course, there was that college-induced financial drought.

I didn't realise at the time I bought that CD pack that the purchase included full downloads of all four albums, so even though the CDs only shipped today, I get to listen to them at my leisure, starting now.

Due to all the aformentioned circumstances, I haven't been able to buy and enjoy any of these really rare albums for a long time now. And just sitting and listening to these included downloads from this obscure early-'90s band that nobody's ever heard of was such a powerful experience that it made me tear up.

This was the music of a time in my life when anything was possible, my mental health was at an all-time high, I was surrounded by talented, creative, fiery people (who were not yet dead), and my creativity was at its absolute zenith. Even the mere act of sitting and listening to music without thinking about how I should be working on an assignment instead was almost foreign to me. For just a few moments, I've been able to grasp hold of a thin thread of what my life used to be and relish that safe, secure, on-top-of-the-world feeling that I used to have without even realising it.

Hopefully I can do a more in-depth review of the albums once they arrive, but until then I just wanted to chronicle how much I loved simply listening to the music of my younger years after such a long drought.