Film, Musicals, And Teaching -- A Performing Arts Update

I suppose I should do an update about the thing that drove me to start this blog in the first place -- the arts. Specifically, dance and writing.

 

Right now, I'm actually choreographing my second full musical. This one has a much larger cast (50 people), so I finally get to do big group numbers, like I've wanted to do ever since I first started making up dances in my head in the early 2000s.

 

There's a certain level of fear that comes with choreographing for a group that big in real life. You simply are not going to please everybody. In a group that large is that the gamut of dance experience/ability is quite wide. This is further complicated by the fact that the show is double-cast... and they double-cast all the best dancers. Which means I can't rely on them, as they will only be in half the shows.

 

My husband and I were also in a short film, which was shot this past month, with a tentative release date of next spring. This was our first time on a real film set. It is very different from live theatre, and it does move a lot slower, but the other cast and the crew were all great people, and we had a great time. It's surreal to actually put a real film credit on my résumé after 24 years of almost-exclusively live performance credits.

 

Both of us also just finished up a live show this week, and I have a readthrough on Monday.

I'm also still working in the theatre industry (on the front end), and that has helped my mental health and peace of mind SO much... knowing that my career and my dreams are no longer completely out of alignment. The only wrinkle is that once this theatre's Christmas show wraps, I will be laid off until the end of March, when the 2025 season starts up. I have a very part-time/casual substitute dance teaching gig, but it will be once a month, if that.

As for my own choreography, I have a film in mind that I want to make and I've already cast the dancer for it, but I just have to carve out some time to actually finish choreographing the piece. This is a piece very much made for the dancer and her abilities (that is to say... way too complicated for my own abilities). I am considering having this piece be the first to bear the name of the dance company that I want to start.

There are some teaching opportunities that I am thinking about pursuing, and I have gotten wind of a potential dance space where I could rehearse pieces (lots of things still need to fall into place for that to work out though).

And still I am afraid. I'm afraid that I'll mess it all up somehow. It was so much easier to create when I was the only one taking the fall if it was terrible. But if I start actually choreographing for other people and start making bigger works, then other people's names and reputations are also on the line. It's so easy to look at myself, at my neurodivergence, and think that I have nothing whatsoever to offer this neurotypical world, and how dare I rope other people into this who could have better chances with a neurotypical creative, who has all her emotions in order and a more consistent stream of motivation and is not constantly sidetracked by worrying about money (because for some dumb reason we have to eat food, which costs money, to survive).

Dance Film, Part 3

The dance film is done!

I'm most proud of this one so far. This is the first film I've made that actually looked as good as I pictured it in my head while planning.  There are definitely some things I would have liked to do differently (like have the thing properly memorised, and have an extra camera or two for B-roll), but I am also completely content with how this one turned out. It's beautiful to look at and fun to listen to. I think this is one of the first times I feel that I've properly showcased who I am as a choreographer and as a dancer.

This is also the first time I've worked with a separate audio track rather than using the in-camera audio -- well, that's not entirely true, as the audio I used is from my B-roll camera. It was positioned closer to both the taps and the music source so both were louder and the sync was better. I've also noticed that my iPhone 13 Pro (now my primary filming camera) is REALLY LOUD. At first I thought it was interference from my tripod light, but even when I don't use the light, it still makes this loud white noise in the background. The sound from the taps was also extremely dead on this camera -- much more resonant on the B-roll (probably because I had an umbrella behind the B-roll camera shielding it from the drizzle).

So I split the audio track off the B-roll and synced it up with my edits as I went. I'm comfortable with sound editing from years of converting my dad's records on Audacity (and from designing the sound cues for Sottovoce), and I think that actually helped me slog through the hour of footage that I shot for a four-minute dance film.

It's a simple, fun piece, and I think the choreography, the location, and the editing all manage to support that. This isn't big or flashy, and I like that. I'm not a big, flashy person. I feel this piece is the closest I've gotten to displaying my heart and soul on 'stage.' I don't expect this to make me viral or put me on the map or anything, but it's definitely my personal favourite.

Watch it here.

Nachmo, Continued

On 28 February, I released my first long-form dance work.

This fulfils a LOT of goals I had -- both long-term and short-term ones.

Are there things I wish I did different? Absolutely. But is this a big milestone? Yes. This is something seventeen-year-old Kate would have absolutely drooled over.

On 28 February, I fulfilled a promise I made to my younger self. Everybody else let her down, but I did not.

Despite everybody who said I would never be, and especially despite everybody who went out of their way to sabotage me, I am a choreographer. I am here, and I am not going away. I went to the edge of the dream, and I did not turn away.

Presenting Sottovoce.

Nachmo, Day 29 - Pressure

I’ve officially booked a filming venue.

We shoot on 6 February at stupid early o’clock.

I have so much memorising to do.

Nachmo, Day 16 - More Fear

So, uh... the fear didn't go away after one week. In fact, we are minutes away from closing out Week Two and I'm still just as afraid -- if not more so -- than I was before.

The fear has shifted, though. I am no longer afraid that I will not be able to finish choreographing. I am now afraid that I won't be able to learn the choreography.

On one hand, this is silly. I used to be in (read: memorise) three shows simultaneously. As soon as one would end, I'd roll in another. I have memorised entire pieces in a single afternoon multiple times. My entire Instagram page used to be basically me performing stuff I'd only memorised ten minutes earlier. There's no reason for me not to be able to do this.

But on the other hand, it's been nearly three years since I was in the middle of three simultaneous shows. I have been diagnosed with ADHD since then. I went through one of the worst periods of my personal life and am missing literally two years of memories from that time -- and because I'm only just coming out of it, a lot of conversations I have now still include the other person saying, 'don't you remember...?' Which, of course, I don't. Hearing, 'don't you remember?' multiple times every day does not exactly instill confidence in one's abilities to remember any new information.

This is silly, I tell myself. This is film. You can cut and piece together as much as you need to.

But, whispers the fear, you having to re-memorise everything right before you shoot it will waste time -- and dollars -- on set. You need to get in, shoot everything in one, maybe two takes, and get out. Your sound, light, and camera people are not going to sit around forever for free while you dilly dally about memorising stuff that you should have had memorised weeks before.

And I don't have an answer for that.

This is exactly where I'm stuck with my other dance film. Choreographing the thing is zero problem. Actually filming it with any amount of confidence is a much different story.

Your stupid sparse sound design is going to strangle you, the fear says. You're taking away the one thing that could possibly help you.

Fear doesn't like to hear that if there's little to no music, nobody will notice if I missed a phrase anyway because the music won't betray me.

But you'll know, it says. You'll know.

I'm just so tired.

I'm tired of having to fight through this voice every single minute of every single day. Memory loss is hell. I can see why depression is so high among dementia and Alzheimer's patients: memory loss -- and how people treat you when you have it -- strips away every single ounce of confidence you might have ever possessed. When you tell people you forgot, they take it personally -- 'if you really cared, you would have remembered.' And once they get that thought in their heads, there is literally nothing in the world that will ever convince them that you really did care about the thing you were supposed to remember. And then they decide that you just don't care about anything, including them, and they abandon you. There are no 'correct' words for the memory-loss patient to say that will make the other person understand that it wasn't intentional. Those words simply don't exist. So we get cut off by our friends and family, one by one. By the time the memory loss is stopped or slowed, it's too late: everybody's already gone, and they're not coming back.

And as I know all too well, the fear of abandonment is crushing.

Filmmaker's Block

 I've had a dance film in pre-production for the better part of seven years now.

It's a duet, and the person I had originally wanted to do the duet part is dead -- that's how long I've sat on this. The person currently cast for the role is actually the third person I've contacted about this.

Everything is in place -- costumes are ready, storyboarding is done, we've been rehearsing... but I just can't pull the trigger on filming this piece. It needs to be shot outdoors in the summertime, and the window for that is closing fast.

It's not like I haven't done this before. I've produced two 'official' dance films, at least two 'rehearsal performance' films, and a sizeable handful of live performance videos. This shouldn't be that hard.

But this is a duet.

All the other videos are either solo or feature my siblings. This is the first one that features somebody that's not a blood relative of mine. We've worked together on other projects and she always brings competence and enthusiasm, yet I'm so intimidated about having somebody else perform my choreography. This has been my dream for literally decades. So why am I freezing now?

As much as I would like to blame college, I don't think they're on the hook for this one -- at least not entirely. They were extremely, conspicuously silent on any and all dance films I've posted so far (and I made the bulk of them while a student there, so they definitely knew about them), which, I suppose, is better than the 'you'll never be good enough/you're not trying hard enough/you're making yourself fail' BS that they usually drummed into my brain every single day.

In many ways, I see this as my last chance. I'm terrified that she won't like performing in it, but I'm also terrified that my husband won't support the travel I'm going to need to undertake to shoot the duet scenes, terrified that my in-laws are going to use this as one more reason to abuse me and manipulate my husband into lecturing me for several hours on end on a work night, terrified that my inexperience in film editing will make this look like trash and me like a wannabe who will never be, terrified that all the people who have given up on me (so, basically everyone) aren't going to respond -- at all.

There's so much to lose. There's so much to lose. And if I lose this time, I'm not convinced I have enough support around me to get back up again. If I lose this time, I'm scared there may not ever be a next time.

I have no community around me -- either in dance or in my location. I feel like I'm naked in the desert with a target on my back, surrounded by the guns of people who claimed they loved me. One wrong move and I'm gone. If this was a solo video, it would be one thing. But I don't want to drag this other dancer down with me too.

Semi-Annual Update

Thought I'd do an update on my goals for 2022. The National Choreography Month update is here, but for the rest, read on.

- 14 dances in 12 months.

Just finished the fourteenth dance yesterday, 1 July. My subgoal of this was to choreograph at least sixteen counts every single day this year. So far the streak is unbroken -- yesterday brought it up to 182 days. I'm currently trying to decide what song to do next. I still plan on choreographing sixteen or more counts every day this year, and now my motivation is to see just how much choreography I can do in a year at that pace. Sixteen counts is a challenge (but not an insurmountable one) for choreographing tap dance, and it's a breeze for a moderate-tempo ballet piece. I seem to be alternating between choreographing ballet and tap, which is keeping the challenge level up but also balancing it with some-lower brainpower times. I think (hope) it's keeping me from burning out. At least, it seems to be working so far.

- Publish the Patreon.

I had a launch date set and everything. I had even cleared it with my husband's caseworker, which I thought was going to be the worst part. And suddenly I wondered if I was ready... if I could justify asking people for money for something I have not properly done in years, if I could make it worth their money. I am now focusing on re-building who I am as a producer and artist, strengthening my work so they can feel confident that I and my work are things worth investing in, especially with the cost of living as high as it is.

I'm doing that by forging on with producing the dance film I want to do this summer. I am also currently performing in an internationally-known show, so I've been doing promotional posts for that on my social media, reminding people that I am back and I am still doing this.

I'm also praying a lot about this. My dad and I had a long talk when I last visited my parents about God's timing, and this has been a big factor in my decision to hold off on this for now. I'm not convinced I'm in God's timing if I publish the Patreon now. It may still work out, but perhaps not as well as if I wait -- however counterintuitively -- for Him. It's hard... I haven't listened to God in close to eight years, and I'm not sure I remember what He sounds like. I'm not quite sure if I'll know His voice when I hear it. I'm hoping He has somebody (who doesn't know I already have this set up) literally tell me I should publish a Patreon, otherwise I'm not sure I'll catch on.

- Take some dance classes.

In January, a well-known figure in the tap dance world (who I auditioned for an age ago and follow on Instagram) contacted me saying she was running a rep class right at my level and would I be interested? She was willing to work out a payment plan. So I got to participate in the class -- learned so much about both myself and the art form -- and have already registered and started paying for another class session with her (takes place later this summer). I would still love to audition for the ballet company in the closest city for the 2022-23 season, but the fees are quite high (I would use Patreon to cover this, but see the discussion above about God's timing).

- Make at least two dance films.

This was supposed to be done by the end of last month, but I chickened out. After the projected film date had passed, I contacted the dancer and asked if she was even still interested. She was, so I sent her the choreography and she's currently rehearsing it. My job is to develop my character's costume, buy a fill light, and pick a shoot day/location. I have a couple ideas for the second one, but I'm trying to really focus on this one first.

- Do a live performance of my choreography, somehow/somewhere.

This is kind of on the back burner for now. I would busk at the farmer's market, but that currently runs the same days as the show I'm in for the next month.

- Actually (re)learn some of my pieces. Make a rep-building schedule and stick to it.

Struggling with this one yet again, for the same reason. It's just not fun to re-learn old pieces (says ADHD). Haven't figured out how to make it fun yet. I've relearned Emotional Tourist and half of two other pieces in spite of myself though.

- Busk at the farmer's market.

See above. I NEED to learn rep for this to happen, but I just... can't. It's so frustrating.

- Do at least one theatre show.

I guess you already know how that one's going. This is my first full show since February 2020. It's been rough but mostly due to administrative issues. The actors are great, and the show itself presents beautifully. I'm proud to have my name attached to it.

- Continue posting on this blog.

A little disappointed here, but not overly. The lack of posting here is because I'm putting in so much work on choreography, performance, and writing. At least that time wasn't spent scrolling social media.

- Do NaNoWriMo again.

We'll see come November. I'd still like to do this. I'm thinking of some kind of space story, but I haven't figured one out yet. There's one in my 'story ideas' file, but I'm not sure that's the one I want to do yet.

- Publish a short story.

This is way on the back burner for now.

- Write a short story in German.

Also on the back burner. Still learning German, but I've taken the pressure of writing a story with it off myself for now.

- Actually finish a Kyrie revision.

Believe it or not, this might actually be the year. I am some 10k words deep into this thing (the farthest I have ever gotten), and have managed to put in at least a couple sentences of work almost every day since 30 April. Having a timeline of events have helped infinitely. (Also watching a good friend of mine publish her own book and wanting to have that experience is a good motivator right now too.)

- Be more intentional about reading the Bible and praying.

Currently in a dry spell here, but this was going decently well. I've found that walking to work is a good time for praying, so at least I pray a little on the days that I work. Still haven't figured something out for my days off though.

- Pick up an instrument.

Back burner. Mostly pending money.

- Save up a $1000 emergency fund.

Not quite halfway there.

- Make myself a sweater.

I think this might be a winter project. It's so hot here in the summers that the absolute last thing I want is a heavy sweater on my lap while I work on it.

- Make birthday presents for my siblings.

I am three siblings behind. One is in progress. One I have an idea for. And one I have no idea what to get her.

Overall, I'm proud of where I am, especially in terms of the daily choreography streak and the Kyrie revision. I'm happy with how I've prioritised this list -- there's nothing on the back burner that I regret putting there. Once this Kyrie draft is finished, I'll pull something off the back burner (maybe publishing a short story?) to replace it while I wait for beta reader feedback. That'll be a while yet. I am intentionally moving slowly with the rewrite so I don't fall into the 'quantity over quality' trap and have to rewrite the thing again.

Also, I think while writing this post I may have picked my next song to choreograph. Let the streak continue!

Fade

Originally written 13 February 2022, 12.31pm.

As I near the tenth anniversary of my first completed piece of choreography, I've finally overcome my mental block (college trauma?) enough to choreograph a large group again.

I took a couple of choreography courses last year that, while helpful, kind of freaked me out as I saw only too clearly how big the gap was between the ideal and my actual output. I let those simmer and continued doing solos. I hate choreographing solos and I always have, but in college, when I was trying so desperately to prove myself to literally every director and teacher in the province because none of them could be bothered to see the potential in me, I resorted to solos because they were quick to create, easy to learn, and easy to film. I put out an astonishing amount of solo dance videos because I felt this invisible whip on my back to prove myself, to show that I was, in fact, dedicated and a hard worker (things that I was consistently told throughout college that I was not). Posting myself dancing new choreography every 2-3 days with the difficulty level increasing exponentially each time seemed to be the only way to show anybody that I was actually trying (those words still threaten to take me to a very dark place even as I type them). I got good at choreographing solos as a result, but I missed the complexity, attention to detail, and the sheer elation that goes into choreographing a big group number.

I've since been banned from social media by my in-laws because I'm not happy enough (and yes, I told them about the 'unfollow' button. They figured banning me, a grown adult, from expressing herself was easier and made more sense), so in many ways, I've reverted back to that seventeen-year-old notating reams of pages by hand alone in her bedroom where nobody ever saw some of the brilliant things she came up with because they could not possibly have cared less and she knew it. This has given me time to focus in on unattainably big groups again. After all, if nobody's going to see it, why not lean into the impossibility?

This is actually bringing some level of comfort. At the time that I was choreographing big groups, before college, I had a whole list of songs I loved that I wanted to choreograph to that I simply never got around to. And now I'm revisiting that list.

Frequent readers of this blog (are there even any left or are they all dead?) know that the bigger the song, the more I like it. I love songs filled up with harmonies and '80s keyboards and big drums and deep, big feelings. Songs with one solo (usually mediocre) singer and an acoustic guitar about one's boyfriend are so small and boring. I like songs that take up space, sonically and emotionally. These songs are also usually suited to choreography that also is big and takes up space -- like big group numbers. Many of my very favourite songs in the world either are group numbers I've already choreographed or they've been languishing in the 'big numbers' queue for a very long time.

And currently I'm working on one that in my mind, ranks right up there with Daniel Amos' Sanctuary as 1. one of the best songs of all time, full stop, and 2. one of the first songs I ever wanted to choreograph to.

I've come back to this one off and on over the years, threw out some ideas, dreamscraped, scribbled bits of notation on envelopes and receipts, couldn't find the theme, threw it out, and repeated the whole process several times. Last year it started to really arrest my attention, but I still couldn't find the vibe of the choreography. I knew it was jazz dance, but I couldn't see anything beyond that.

Then one day while biking, I realised that this was going to be an arm-led piece.

I hate arms. They've always been my weak spot as a dancer, and that shows in my choreography. Many times I leave the upper staves of my notation blank or just fill in standard classwork arms because I hate choreographing them so much and spend as little time as possible thinking about them. My choreography is typically very footwork-heavy because my brain just doesn't think in arms. But this time, that was the exact realisation that snapped the piece into focus. I choreographed a four-minute twelve-dancer piece in a week and a half because I focused on the arms rather than the legs.

This is the first large-group piece since Nachmo 2020, and before that the last one was 2016. The 2020 one was tap, which is a very different animal since it's less about formations and lines and more about rhythm and musicality. 2016 was the last soft-shoe large-group dance I've written. That's almost six years ago now. I don't remember much of the 2020 one because my college-trauma-induced memory loss wiped out that period of my life, but the 2016 one is a four and a half minute piece for sixteen people and I choreographed it start-to-finish in eight hours. And I loved every single second of it. There's a level of satisfaction that comes with creating a large group piece that simply does not exist in choreographing solos or duets.

This project brought me so much joy. I was actually sad when I finished it. Of course there was that rush of accomplishment, but I miss the joy of figuring it out. Maybe it's because I know I'm not likely to ever see it performed in real life, so my time with that piece is essentially done for the rest of my life.

At least I can still listen to the song and see it all in my head.

Emotional Tourist - A Retrospective (2018)

This year, I lived.

Not as in 'survived,' I lived. From February-August I was either rehearsing or performing at least one show (An Ideal Husband, Pygmalion, Anne of Green Gables, Oklahoma!, and Mary Poppins), and then in mid-October I started rehearsing the next show -- hopefully the first of another good long stretch again. I have never known joy and excitement and the thrill of being alive like I did during the Mary Poppins run -- to actually be a part of a story I'd loved since I was three years old was truly special.

And I traveled. Quite a lot. I've never really thought of myself as much of a traveler, but I actually quite enjoyed it. I went back and forth between my parents' place and mine many times, I went to the city and explored a few times, I went up north for a wedding, I went to southern Alberta for an audition... and I took pictures of most of it on film, which somehow makes the experience richer even though 90% of the pictures suck.

I made friends with other performers. I stayed up till one in the morning talking and eating and dancing with these friends -- these people I might never have met. I watched them all grow and succeed and laugh and cry and look out for each other and stick together.

I made more impulsive decisions. Like driving seven hours to an audition in a city I have literally only seen twice in my entire life and then crashing on my dad's cousin's couch for the night. Or like going for coffee with one of the musicians I'd literally never spoken to before at 10.30pm after a two-show day. Or going to the city and shooting a whole bunch of film because I was bored. Or going to see local theatre productions because I wanted a night out. Or skipping two days of school to drive out to my dear friend's funeral. Or attending NaNoWriMo write-ins, for the first time EVER in my ten years of NaNoWriMo. Or doing a ten-hour round-trip to a three-hour wedding and only getting back in at 1.30am, surviving the dark, late, relatively boring drive only by the grace of God and loud driving music.

I began seriously rewriting Kyrie, and I actually got a bit of a system going. I've written some additional scenes, and rewritten a handful of pre-existing ones. I'm starting to figure out a more detailed timeline of events.

 I began writing original fiction again, for the first time since my cousin died in April 2015.

I began fighting for myself more. I began to realise (mostly through my experience with Mary Poppins) that I AM talented, darn it, and not one of you is going to tell me I'm not. I will prove you wrong. I've done it before and I'll do it again, with or without your support. I began enjoying life and giving less of a crap what people think I should be doing or can do.

I started learning Thai, mostly for the heck of it. I took a college class outside of my program for the first time since 2016 and I met some really great people there. I started learning piano and found that I love it.

Life is rich, and full, and sweet, and I tasted just the edge of it this year.

Remember... Remember... (2017)

This post is mostly for myself, so feel free to skip... I just thought I'd take a few minutes and note the changes that happened in 2017, the good things, the things that only a few short years ago I only thought about wistfully and the things that I never could have foreseen.

Overall, 2017 -- mostly just the past few months -- was a year of significant upheaval for me emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I'm still in the middle of it and I'm still processing a lot of it (it'll likely take years), but so far these are my observations.

- January: First posted an excerpt of one of my dance practices on social media. (This was actually supposed to be a one-off thing, but it set in motion almost literally every ounce of dance growth that would happen over the rest of the year.)

- January: Began a consistent dance practice schedule that would continue until the college Christmas break.

- March: My first comedic role (Person in Chair in The Drowsy Chaperone).

- March: Choreographed for a stage production for the first time (The Drowsy Chaperone).

- April: Finally admitted to another person just how much I was struggling mentally/emotionally.

- April: Began counselling. (This in turn set off the long, long process of beginning to deal with my friend's death, my cousin's death, my extended family's issues, the emotional abuse throughout my childhood and teen years, the neglect and mistreatment from my former church, and the perfectionism -- both forced and self-imposed -- that almost literally killed me.)

- April: Performed literally the hardest, most complex tap dance I could ever have dreamed of in my worst nightmares... and performed it really quite well.

- April: The tap shoe story.

- April: Began my internship (as director's assistant).

- May: Told a few close friends about my depression.

- May (ish): Found my head voice. This opened up a whole other world for my voice.

- June: Performed a high G for the first time.

- June: After years of crap, finally left the church I'd attended for ten years and began attending a different one on the recommendation of a school acquaintance. So far I enjoy the new church. (At the very least it got me out of the old one.)

- July: Finished my 2016 NaNoWriMo novel draft.

- August: A few college friends got together and put together a book of encouragement for me.

- August: Moved into a legitimate house -- not dorm -- on my own (well, with roommates) for the first time.

- September: Submitted a statement to my former church about my reasons for leaving their church, including detailed stories of the way the leadership at this church mistreated me.

- September: Landed a job for during the school year.

- September (ish): Began making it a point to dress up a bit more. (Up till this time in my life I was dressing almost exclusively in jeans and t-shirts.)

- October: Learned/performed my first opera solo (Stizzoso, mio stizzoso from La Serva Padrona).

- November: Did a 30-Day Choreography Challenge, involving choreographing a minimum of 32 counts every day and posting the day's output on social media every day.

- November: For the first time in my life it occurred to me that I might actually be able to separate the depressed voice and my voice in my head... that they might actually be separate.

- December: Filmed, edited, and released my first dance video.


I won't say too much more because today was a rough day and if I throw a pity party here after this list that I made to look back on good things it would pretty much negate the purpose of making the list in the first place. But there it is. Things did happen... they're just not going as quickly and improvement is not as dramatic as I had been hoping.

New Video!

After years of dreaming and overplanning, I finally bit the bullet and created a dance video.

I'd actually tried to film this piece last year, but couldn't get the lighting right. I set it on the back burner for school, then work, then school again. At the end of November, my roommate and I had a conversation that inspired me to move ahead and film one of my other overplanned limbo projects. That one proved to be more complicated than I anticipated, plus there were about a thousand other people trying to rent the filming venue at the same time. So I set my sights on something shorter and simpler (and quicker to film). I wanted one video done by the end of 2017. A friend and I cobbled together as many lights as we could find and shot this in about forty-five minutes the Wednesday before Christmas break. I edited it in the week between my return home and Christmas.

Here it is: https://youtu.be/27qAVyz8B7k

Enjoy!

Choreography Ramblings

13 December 2017, 5.46pm.

That thirty-day choreography challenge has been SO good for me. I am in a MUCH better place mentally and emotionally right now, and I have momentum and motivation for at least one aspect of my creative life (my writing is still pretty dead in the water -- one of the reasons I haven't posted here much lately). I'm starting to tiptoe into the next phase of my choreographic dream... I don't want to get into too much detail until I'm in the final stages of this phase.

This is probably the phase of this whole dream that intimidates me the most. It's the phase where I have to start getting other people involved. For someone like me, who has spent her whole life trying to be independent, trying not to be a nuisance, trying not to need other people for even a few seconds, it goes completely against over a decade and a half of self-discipline even just to ask if my friends would be willing to help with this. I feel more vulnerable asking my friends for help than I do filming myself doing brand-new (raw and unedited) choreography on my phone and then posting it all over social media.

I've already been planning National Choreography Month in January. I am more excited for this thing this year than any other year I've done it. I blame the thirty-day challenge last month for that. Usually for Nachmo (that's what it's called...) I do something like, 'choreograph X number of dances this month.' This January I was going to modify that to 'thirty-two (or sixty-four) counts per day,' but having just done that this November, I want something a little more challenging than that. I haven't settled on exactly what that looks like yet, but I have a few viable ideas.

The other problem is I don't do a lot of solo choreography. Most of the music that inspires me is more suited for groups (or at least two or three people). I used up everything that inspired any kind of solo dance in November for the challenge. So now if I want to show off anything I choreograph, I'm going to need to find other dancers. This terrifies me, for the same reasons mentioned above -- I hate imposing on people, to the point where I will go without if it means I don't ask anything of anyone. People have such busy lives now that asking for a mere ten seconds of their time is often intimidating -- never mind days or weeks.

Media Marathoning

Why are music marathons not a thing? We have Star Wars marathons, Lord Of The Rings marathons, Disney marathons, and heaven knows you can marathon any TV show you can think of (as long as the Netflix gods have deemed it worthy of their endorsement). These are seen as perfectly legitimate ways to either get away from it all (*cough* procrastinate) and recharge by oneself, or to have a party with friends and food and group selfies.

But why don't we do this with music? Why don't we ever invite the gang over to listen to the complete works of Steve Taylor? Why not spend a weekend listening to all of David Meece's albums in chronological order? Why not throw the entire Prodigal box set into the CD player and sit down with a beverage of choice or maybe some popcorn and listen to the whole thing straight through? Why not time travel through DeGarmo & Key's entire career? Why not listen to the complete ¡Alarma! Chronicles or Larry Norman's Trilogy on vinyl, for the heck of it?

Granted, for bands like Petra or Newsboys or the Imperials, this could get a bit long. But it's an idea worth considering.

Socialising In A Dark Silent Room

There's something I've been wondering about for a while now, and my hope is that you, dear readers, can explain it to me:

How is watching films a social activity?

I'm serious. It makes no sense. You all gather in a dark room and stare at an inanimate object for two hours while yelling at each other if anyone dares breathe a word. How in the world is this socialising? You don't even LOOK at each other, never mind interact. And forget meaningful conversation -- if you ask a question it's usually in a whisper and accompanied with a hushed apology, plus an annoyed 'just watch!' from either the questionee or the other people you're 'socialising' with.

I don't know about you, but when I'm with a group of friends and they say, "let's watch a movie!' my heart immediately sinks because that's when I realise they would rather watch a story they already know by heart than interact with me and share their own story or learn mine -- even after I took time out of my day to be with them. And it's even worse when the first film finishes and everyone says 'let's watch another!' because then it's not even a case of watch-and-discuss, it's a case of the-lives-of-these-fictional-characters-are-more-important-to-me-than-your-life. Films are a way of ignoring someone in a socially acceptable fashion and pretending you have a great friendship. But you're not only wasting your own time, you're wasting theirs.

My parents' generation didn't watch films. They 'had coffee.' They would invite people over, sit down at the kitchen table with some baked goods, and drink tea or coffee as each guest preferred. And they talked. Long into the night I remember my parents forging and strengthening friendships at their kitchen table and at the kitchen tables of their friends. It takes just as long as a film, but it's SO much richer. By the time you're done 'coffee,' you know the other person's joys and struggles, hopes and dreams, things that make them tick and things they're good at. And you've formed an alliance. Now you're in each other's corners, so to speak, and if that person needs help, you're not only more likely to notice, you're more likely to know how to actually help.

This is how we build community. When was last time you actually bonded with someone by ignoring their existence?

I'm not saying we should completely stop watching films together. I have a friend I watch Doctor Who with whenever we can, but after the episode is over there's usually a good long chat, not just 'well, that was fun. See you later!' In moderation, films can be a good kickstarter for a conversation that leads to friendship. But don't gyp yourself out of that conversation. That's the important part. The film is preamble. The conversation is what builds and sustains a relationship -- any relationship.

The film can be paused. It will always be there. But your friends, your family -- they will not. Trust me on this. Tonight could be the last time your paths cross. Don't spend all of it ignoring and shushing them in the name of 'hanging out.' The day will come when you would give anything to hear their voice again, to see their face again -- but it will be gone. Don't shush that voice or hide that face in a dark room while you still have it with you.

Dancing With Depression - Gene Kelly's Alter Ego Dance

I found this thanks to Operation Tap's Gene Kelly week on Facebook back in August. I had never even heard of it before.

1944. The height of World War II. PTSD is barely an acknowledged mental condition at this point, never mind depression. Yet Gene Kelly -- whether he intended to or not -- personifies the condition with more accuracy than thousands and thousands of modern dances for fundraisers ever have, even after depression started to be recognised as a legitimate mental illness. (I say this as a longtime sufferer.)

It's all here -- the whispers, the dark lonely alley, the feeble hopes, the self-hatred, the fear in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the careful drawing of breath, the double reeling him backwards on an invisible string, the double leading the dance -- controlling him, trying to wrestle it down but unable to get a hold of it...

It's the doppelgänger from the ¡Alarma! Chronicles stories. It's the ghost of the heart (wait, that's still ¡Alarma! Chronicles...). It's the Identical Twins, Paul's war on his own sinful flesh.

Words fail me. But this dance... it touched me. Very, very few dances do. But this was one of them (the others are Astaire and Charisse's Dancing In The Dark and Kelly and Astaire's The Babbitt And The Bromide).

Watch. Breathe. Don't focus -- not yet -- on the fact that it's 1944 and everything is rationed and money is tight yet Gene Kelly manages to film a dance with himself. Do that later. Watch the story, the feelings.

Title: Alter Ego Dance
Artist: Gene Kelly
Film: Cover Girl
Year: 1944
Columbia Pictures.
Watch here.

Even the very end illuminates how depression works (SPOILERS) -- he takes a trash can and throws it at the double in a last-ditch attempt to destroy it. It disappears, but there is shattered glass in its wake. (And how long is it really gone?)

Likewise, depression can be beaten -- but only temporarily, and often at a price. And the shattered glass left around us when we've managed to win one fistfight often sends us farther down into the dark alley, wondering why there isn't a way to beat this thing without completely destroying ourselves. Sometimes the trash can is alcohol. Sometimes it's drugs. Sometimes it's food. Sometimes it's suicide. But there are always pieces to pick up. It never just 'goes away.'

Snippets Of Now

I've been trying for a week to complete the last forty seconds of Sing Your Freedom. Today I finally got it down to 31 seconds remaining.

I was hoping to have You Are The One half-finished by now. I've only got the first four or five bars and those I composed back in January.

There's a Canada-wide publishing contest looming -- it closes 15 June. The winner gets their novel published and marketed for free. My mother has convinced me to try to speed-revise Reuben (August 2010). I've done the first three pages. I figure if I don't get it done by this June, I can keep working at it and have it ready for next June, as it's an annual contest.

I'm almost completely out of money. Today I doubled the inventory of the Etsy shop, but so far no-one's bought anything. At the moment I don't even have enough money to cover the cost of developing the film I shot yesterday.

I made up a daily schedule the other day that I plan to implement starting this Monday (9 April). I carefully scheduled in time for revising Reuben and time for composing choreography. I was rather surprised to find I had nine and a half hours three days out of the week that I wasn't really making the most of. I had no idea I spent that much time on the Internet.

Under terms of my new schedule, I will have at most an hour a day on the Internet (excluding Etsy shop upkeep -- I have forty-five minutes for that). I'd better learn to write blog posts faster and/or lower my impossible standards or I'm not going to post much...

I've recently become fascinated with buttons -- the little pin-back type. I searched for old Christian band buttons (Petra, White Heart, etc.) on eBay and Etsy, but yielded nothing. (However, I did find a lovely leather jacket from Petra's On Fire! tour in 1988.)

I hope to finish Sing Your Freedom tonight. I'm midway through page twenty-nine of notation.