Numbness and Rebuilding (Part I)

28 July 2019, 2.01am.

I've just begun the process of rebuilding... rebuilding everything.

In June I completely uprooted and moved to a city I'd only seen three or four times in my entire life. I had $200, no job, and only one show lined up. As alluded to on this blog, I was already not in a great place mentally or physically (college had sapped the last of my strength), and the anonymity of the unfamiliar big city gave me the chance to do what I'd always wanted -- to spiral.

I deliberately put on a brave face at rehearsal. I did more acting backstage than I ever did onstage for that show. Because I knew if anybody knew I was about to give up, they would try to fix me for about two weeks (a month at best) and then turn their backs on me, most likely with a cutting tirade about how I was 'too much' and 'not trying hard enough.' I already knew all that, I didn't need to hear it again. I've had this happen so many times I have the script memorised, even though the other person always thinks it's improv. Better to not even start the show.

By the last weekend of the show, I had almost completely stopped eating. The cooler I brought to the campground was mostly just a prop for the show of 'I'm fine.' I did a three-hour performance on a pizza pop and a container of yogurt -- as in, that was all I had eaten all day. At the cast party after the final performance one of my castmates literally had to carry me to the food line because I was so depleted I couldn't stand on my own. I wanted to tell someone but I knew no-one would believe me because I've struggled with this so publicly and I knew I was beyond help because of the sheer severity and stubbornness of my condition. It was my last show anyway, with no plans or hopes of any others on the horizon... this was the best way to go out. Just fade away into obscurity, like so many artists before me. Literally, physically, fade out. It was better than burning alive. And it was better than suffocating.

The only person I had even sort-of opened up to on that cast was that castmate who carried me to the front of the food line. Even he didn't know the whole story, but he knew I had a history of depression and he had figured out that I hadn't been eating. For two weeks -- probably longer -- he texted me every day, multiple times a day, insisting that I eat something. I literally only ate one bowl of cereal each day for at least a week, even in the face of his insistence. I was so depleted that I couldn't have made anything more substantial even if I had wanted to.

At some point, for some reason, I decided to rebuild my tap repertoire... it had deteriorated significantly since I had essentially stopped practicing in February. I made up a schedule, holding myself to only half an hour each day, just slowly and calmly learning a piece I had choreographed about a month and a half before. I gave myself two weeks to learn it. Just that, nothing else. No rush. No pressure. Just learning the dance.

The first (spoilers: only) day wasn't hard on my body so much as it was hard on my mind. The last time I had practiced dance consistently was at a time when I was trying desperately to prove myself, as my program director and I were clashing with greater frequency over my lack of ability and whether or not I was actually trying, as my carefully-laid plans to move to Regina and pursue my career there crumbled around me. I had largely forgotten all that -- not 'gotten over' or 'worked through,' forgotten... numbed by the ache in my hollow stomach and the fog clouding my undernourished brain. Dancing again brought all those old feelings back, all that barely-cold criticism, all that still-smouldering self-hatred.

But the numbness didn't completely go away. And I was able to hold onto that numbness through that practice session. The venom of the words that so many have spoken to me didn't bite anymore. The sharp sting wasn't gone, but it was dulled. I had accepted my fate of literally physically fading into nothing and as such I had nothing to prove anymore.

'You'll never be good enough. You don't try hard enough.'
Yeah, I know. So what does it matter to you that I'm stretching today?

The overwhelming numbness drowned out the answer.

Day 3 - National Choreography Month

Accidentally started working on DA's 'Mall (All Over The World)' so I guess that's what we're starting with this year.

As longtime readers know, Doppelgänger is one of my favourite albums of all time. It's a concept album largely about the sins of the church and their effect on society, which of course is something dear to my heart. I've always wanted to do a show centering around this music, and this year on my many long commutes between Alberta and Saskatchewan listening to this album I've started to piece it together.

I've already choreographed a couple of cuts from this album and I'm working at joining them into a cohesive whole. But my current piece is entirely new (tap) choreography.

It's an ensemble dance of course (large groups is what I do best), but I'm trying not to make it too complex visually. I'm taking some thematic inspiration from Steve Taylor's brilliantly incisive 'I Want To Be A Clone' -- repetitive movements, loud bashing, the march of progress and society drowning out any dissenting voices. Cloneliness is next to godliness, right?

However, I do need it to be aurally intriguing, and that's what I suck at.

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.

Artistic Update

I feel spread in a lot of different directions lately, but it's because a lot of things are finally starting to come together.

I'm currently shooting another dance video (which is eating 95% of my attention because I'm so excited), and hope to put together a rough edit before the end of next week.
I'm trying to piece together a costume for the college dance showcase and another video idea I want to do (hopefully soonish).
I'm preparing for an audition on Thursday night (two monologues, two songs, and a sixty-second tap clip).
I'm learning this crazy fast tap solo for the dance recital.
Also trying to get a bunch of future dance video pieces up to par so as soon as I'm done the current video I can start pre-production on the next.
Accidentally started choreographing Crumbächer's Terra Firma and it is seriously eating my life. It's so fast and it's so fun. This is the level I always wished my choreography was at and now I'm starting to taste it.

School? What's that?
Take-home diction final due in a week.
IPA transcription due tomorrow.
French song to memorise (should have been done already because I perform it next week).
Conducting self-evaluation due Thursday.
Voice recital in a week.
Choir concert this weekend.
Dance show next weekend.

It's hard to focus on school commitments/homework because all I want to do is dance. Between recital rep and personal dance projects, dance/choreography has been stealing all my attention. It's a lot of fun to work on so much, but it's also a little frustrating knowing I shouldn't be letting it run away with so much of my time while I still have schoolwork. My schoolwork has noticeably suffered in the past week because I'm distracted by all the dance inspiration I'm suddenly deluged with.

Please hear this -- I am not complaining. After nearly three years of crickets on the inspiration front, I am loving this golden vein I've hit. I just wish there were more hours of the day to dig into it.

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!

Summer of Artistic Maintenance

It's been quiet on here lately. It's not that I don't want to post, it's just that I'm exhausted -- I've been falling asleep around 11.30 every night (a far cry from the days of three and four am just a few months ago).

Things are happening though. I've been back to working full-time in Alberta (which is the reason for being exhausted), in an attempt to somehow pull the money together for college again this fall. My course load will be significantly smaller, hopefully allowing time for work (assuming anybody actually hires me this year -- they sure as heck didn't last year).

Despite work eating most of my days and bringing night to me early, I'm actually feeling like I'm making (some) creative headway. For the past two weeks, work has been taking us a forty-minute (one-way) drive away. Because I'm not the one driving, I've been bringing Lila (my portable word processor), and writing missing scenes from Kyrie during the commute. At night I transfer the scenes to my Scrivener document and make a list of two or three scenes to work on the next day.

I'm beginning to develop some of the characters more and I may have even managed to introduce a subplot or two. I'm still writing these scenes in a fairly NaNoWriMo-ish style (put your head down and type like the wind), but having a structure to fit these scenes in is actually helping a lot. It's like building a puzzle (only this one is actually kind of fun... I hate real jigsaw puzzles). One thing I'm really noticing is that there's more conflict in these scenes -- more actual tension. Usually my books severely lack conflict because my characters are all far too nice and everyone always tells the truth right away. Over the past school year I had done a lot of character development work, and I can definitely see the difference in the new scenes.

In addition, I've (more or less) managed to keep my five-day-a-week dance practice routine up. I made a playlist called Tap Shuffle (what can I say? I'm just that clever), made of songs that are good tap songs in terms of rhythm, and almost every day I've been putting on my headphones, setting the playlist to shuffle, and doing improv for five songs. This has multiple benefits:
1. Improves my stamina (you try tap dancing for five songs in a row without stopping),
2. Works my improv/transition skills (which are nil),
3. Ensures that I don't wimp out/get distracted before about twenty minutes (the rule is I can't pause the music),
4. It maintains my skills (if not growing them... see below).

I haven't been working on any tap choreography this summer, as I don't have enough space to really dream anything out, so this summer I've been focusing on cleaning my basic, Grade 1 technique. I realised recently that my shuffles -- the foundation of basically everything else in tap -- are crap, so I've basically devoted the summer to getting my shuffles decent. (They're still not.)

I also sort-of-accidentally started doing a stretching routine after practice sessions. For years I have been trying and failing to get splits. Despite being a dancer since age six, I have never in my life had splits down, ever, in any form. I'm also doing a lot of rises to keep my calf muscles in shape. I haven't done any actual pointe work since Beauty and the Beast ended in June, so I'm trying to make sure I don't lose too much muscle before I can really get back into the studio in September.

So there's an update on my creative life. I'm hoping I can be back in Saskatchewan for school again this year. The college was a real place of refuge for me last year, and due to everything I'm working through now from my past, it would be lovely to be there in that place of refuge again this year. My support network in Alberta has almost entirely disintegrated, so I might as well be in Saskatchewan where people still care about me anyway.

State Of My Choreography

The picture that inspired this post:

Full choreography sketch for a song, conceived/written in the time it took to listen to the song straight through once (three and a half minutes). This is a testament to how far I've come: less than a year ago the same amount of choreography would have taken me a full week.

Choreography, I've found, is part inspiration, but also part experience. The more experience you have, the quicker the inspiration comes (and really, this is applicable to a lot of the arts - I see this in my writing as well). You discover what you like and where you like it. You develop a sense of where things should sit in the piece. You get a feel for the art form and you start to be able to tell innately what does or doesn't work, even if you can't explain why. No amount of book-learning can do that for you. (It kills me to say this, because I love learning through reading.)

That's why if you want to be an artist, you have to be dedicated. You have to put in the years of work before you get good. You can find quotes from artists in any discipline to the effect that you have to write a hundred songs before you begin to learn how to write a song; you have to paint or draw a hundred pictures before you really begin to understand how to draw or paint; you have to put in ten thousand hours of work before you can say you have begun to master something. Choreography is no different. I've fully choreographed 78 songs (and probably started and not-yet-completed that many again, plus I have about a dozen that I'm actively working to finish) and I'm only just starting to feel like it's coming naturally. This has been fully five years since I finished choreographing my first piece, and I was choreographing snippets of things in my head long before I ever finished that one.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn't note that I was taking ten hours of dance per week last calendar year, that I was practicing tap every day except Sundays through this past summer and again since January, that I've been watching a TON of tap dance on YouTube in my spare time, that I have a subscription to Operation: Tap's online lessons and those have been invaluable in jump-starting my practice sessions, that my tap teacher at the college this year pushed me hard (because I asked her to), that I've been clapping rhythms to almost literally every song I've heard in the past six months, playing with different patterns. A lot of groundwork has been laid in my foundational tap dance technique over the past year and that has gone a LONG way in allowing my choreographic voice freedom of expression.

The next step is to figure out what exactly it is that I want to express.

The Easter Shoes

This past week, my tap shoes -- which have been steadily falling apart for some time -- finally gave up the ghost. I had hoped I could limp them along until I graduated college and managed to make enough money to replace them. Alas, this was not the case. This, of course, presented a few problems...

Problem 1: This was the only pair of tap shoes I owned/had access to.

Problem 2: I have a few commission projects in the next couple of weeks that I NEED tap shoes for in order to complete.

Problem 3: An entry-level (read: lower-quality) pair of tap shoes can cost $70-$100. A quality pair can run up to $400-$500 Canadian dollars once you factor in shipping from the States (and not all dancewear companies even ship to Canada). (You see why all dancers are broke.)

Problem 4: Kijiji, eBay, and Facebook queries in the area had yielded nothing (nothing I could use, anyway). I hadn't heard promising things about the selection in the (few) local(ish) dancewear shops, although I had planned on checking them out for myself over the weekend.

Problem 5: I have to pay the school $1600 on Tuesday for (required) voice lessons and my (required) theatre internship course this summer. I didn't (still don't) know if I'll even be able to make that payment in full. Plus I have to save every single penny I can for college next year (especially if I'm apparently not going to get a job ever... I've been trying for four months now and still nothing). I certainly didn't have enough leeway in my bank account to buy tap shoes (of any kind).

Conclusion: As cheesy as it sounds -- I really did need a miracle.

If it had to be, I was willing to settle for a (slightly) lower-quality (but less expensive) pair to get me through the rest of my time in academia, although it would mean I would have to replace them sooner (I'm VERY hard on my dance shoes). Ideally I would have liked my next pair of tap shoes to be very high quality (read: more expensive) so that I wouldn't have to replace them again in two years, but the timing, financially, was apparently not going to work out that way.

I had been half-heartedly praying, but I wasn't expecting much. There have been many unanswered prayers over the past two years, and I expected this would just be another one in a long line.

B Plot: So one of my hallmates' sister was coming to visit and my hallmate had asked me a few days ago if she could borrow my spare mattress for her sister to sleep on. I had said she could. Thursday night her sister arrived and said hallmate came to get the mattress. I helped her carry it across the hall to her room and ended up meeting her sister. One of them asked me what I had been up to that day and I told them about my broken tap shoe and how I'd spent all day researching tap shoes, trying to find quality on a college student budget. My hallmate asked how much tap shoes cost and I said entry-level is roughly $100 but a good pair can get up around $400 once you convert it to Canadian dollars and ship it here. We talked a bit more about other stuff and then I went back to my room.

Less than five minutes later, my hallmate came in.

"This isn't from me," she said, "but here." She stuck out her hand. "You can buy your tap shoes."

In her hand was a wad of cash. It felt thick when I took it.

"My sister said she felt she needed to pay for your tap shoes. But she was too shy to give you the money herself. So this is from her."

Four hundred dollars cash. From a stranger.



This morning, I set out on a mission to find decent tap shoes that I could live with for the next few years for $400 or less. There was one dancewear store in the nearest town, the next dancewear places were in the city an hour and a half away. I intended to hit all of them if necessary.

I went to the one in town first and tried on a few pairs, including Bloch's Jason Samuels Smith shoe (A.K.A. J-Sams or JSS). I liked it immediately -- no stupid rubber pad to muffle the sound, good thick sole, comfy fit -- but I was reluctant to pull the trigger on a $200 pair of shoes at the first store I came to. I told the girl helping me that I might return for them, but I wanted to shop around first.

I headed to the city.

The first place I actually found (I made a wrong turn in my attempt to get to a different store -- classic Kate) carried both new and used shoes. I asked to see the used shoes (for budget reasons) and the lady took me to a wall of shoes and let me examine and try on and try out tap shoes for a good half hour. I found two pairs I liked -- one black Capezio oxford-style pair for $65, and one tan Bloch Cuban-heel-style pair (called the Tap-On), listed at $80. At this point I was considering picking one of the used ones to hold me over for the next few weeks and then putting the rest of the money into Miller and Bens (which are some of THE best tap shoes available -- and the price reflects that). The used pair should, I reasoned, at least get me through the time for the M&Bs to ship and then through their break-in period. Then the Miller and Bens would almost certainly carry me for at least a few years.

I called my mother for advice (not that she knows the first thing about tap shoes, but she does know how to stretch a dollar and ask questions that I should think of but never do). I presented her with the aforementioned scenario involving the Miller and Bens, then on the fly I came up with an alternative scenario in which I could buy both used pairs and then go back and get the J-Sams. She advised me to pick just one of the used pairs and go back for the J-Sams. After some discussion and comparison, I decided the Capezios had a few tiny things that I didn't like (the heels felt mushy in a heel stand -- which may have been a size issue more than an issue with the shoe itself -- and I didn't like where the stress point was in a toe stand, as it was the same place my last pair blew out), so I bought the Tap-Ons and headed back to the first place for the J-Sams.

As if the providential money from my hallmate's sister wasn't enough, the lady at the store I got the Tap-Ons from looked at the $80 sticker on the shoes and said, "That's too much for a used pair of shoes." She rang them through at $40.

So basically -- I was gifted $400, and I ended up with two pairs of tap shoes (including one brand-new, fairly high-quality pair) for $250. I now have two very different styles and colours for different kinds of pieces, plus if one craps out, I still have another.

An Easter miracle for a nearly-forgotten artist.

Here they are:

Bloch's Jason Samuels Smith shoes (J-Sams).

Bloch's Tap-On shoes (used -- sorry, pre-owned).

Day 16 - National Choreography Month

Well, so far I have accomplished exactly one full dance this month. It's not even anything off the choreography-in-progress list -- this was a totally new piece, start to finish. It was one of those that you end up kind of sneaking up on, you know? I had a practice session planned at the local studio over the weekend, so while waiting I listened to the song, just for fun. By the time I had to leave for the studio, I had the whole thing figured out except the second verse, which I worked out during practice. The whole thing start-to-finish took me maybe two hours. It's been a long while since a dance came to me that fast.

Today I was in the studio again. (It's really quite a luxury to have easy access to a dance studio for my personal use rather than just for classes. I love it.) I still didn't create anything new, really, but I got rehearsal footage of a few dances I created over 2016 (Rift, Shades Of Green And Red, and Big Dreams), plus I tried a new thing -- improv. I've never really done improv, for two reasons: 1. lack of space, 2. lack of desire/courage. I don't know if I'm going to actually commit to finishing that improvised piece this month, but the song (DA's infectious The Man That Can't Be Mentioned) is just so much fun to dance to so I thought I would give it a try. I feel like I'm not mentally ready to commit to choreographing that piece. It needs to percolate a bit first. I've been doing this long enough now that I can sense when something is ready to be choreographed and when it needs to stay in incubation until further notice.

Haven't touched any of the pieces that were on my works-in-progress-to-finish list though. Maybe tomorrow... I hope to spend a lot more time in the practice studio this semester.

National Choreography Month Intro

Definitely forgot this was in January until literally the 28th of December. Then I spent all of an hour making a sort-of setlist for the thing that consisted of fourteen songs. Never narrowed it down to a manageable amount -- figured I would do that the next day. But I forgot about the whole thing again until 8pm on 1 January.

So I still haven't narrowed down that setlist, so I'm thinking I'll take one of two approaches:

1. Go hard on the entire list and see how much I can manage.

2. Require nothing more of myself than four sets of eight per day and see where that gets me.

Interesting thing about the list this year -- most of the dances are solos and duets. Solos are WAY out of my proverbial element, but that seems to be what I get ideas for lately. It saddens me actually -- I far prefer watching (and therefore creating) large-group dances. They're so much more captivating than one person on stage trying very hard and usually failing terribly to be 'relevant' (to borrow modern Christianity's vernacular).

So far I haven't created any original/new choreography but I have finished and notated a pointe solo that I started at the end of September. Part of my goal for this year includes finishing off the choreography-in-progress list that has somehow ballooned to eight (not counting Perfect World, the one I just finished). Maybe I'll just knock out all those and see how much month is left at the end of that.

For interest's sake, here's what's on the in-progress list:

~ Perfect Time (Maire Brennan, 1998)

Ballet trio. Literally all that's left is to choreograph one set of eight in the interlude, flesh out the bridge, and notate the thing. A good day (or two partial days) should finish this.

~ Bobby (Prodigal, 1984)

This is about one-third done (including notation). I really like this one, and that has intimidated me into a standstill. I'm consciously paying homage to a couple of different pieces I've seen over the years (from the ballet Sleeping Beauty to Refined/Undignified's Restart to my own ballet Scream from two years ago) and the subject of the dance is a child with a device addiction. It's going to be heavy, but I think it will be effective.

~ Elle G. (Newsboys, 1994)

This is the dance I am going to want at my funeral (this and DA's Sanctuary). This is also the dance from Kyrie (the novel). In terms of mood and staging, it's loosely based off of the Wylie scenes from the ballet Giselle.

~ Big Dreams (Steve Grace, 1988)

Tap solo that I was working on the same week I discovered I was going back to school. If it weren't for that, I would have finished this that week. As it stands now, this is roughly half-done.

~ Empty Orchestra (Steve Scott, 1994)

Ballet for eight (I think -- it's been a while since I touched this). An embodiment of how depression can take over a person's mind and twist their thoughts to believe the whispers from the dark. A demonstration of how the darkness stills the light.

~ Eleanor, It's Raining Now (Lost Dogs, 1993)

Ballet for four. Started this the last time I was at college (in a notebook that was subsequently stolen and I'm STILL not over that -- I'm starting to shake just typing this). I'd have to look at my remaining notes again, but I believe this is mostly finished as well. However, I suspect that I'll need to tweak it in light of what I've learnt about choreography since then.

~ Lux Venit (Michael W. Smith, 1989)

I have two different ideas for this piece and I've been trying to work them out simultaneously. This indecision has been slowing me down and I really just need to commit to one and run with it. My options are 1. a ballet solo, and 2. a ballet trio with one or two children.

~ Shades Of Green And Red (Phil Keaggy, 2010)

Tap solo. The entire first third is completely done and polished. It's the slow bit after that that I need to figure out now. I haven't even listened to the final third, but I may decide to tackle that next and fill in the middle/slow bit after.

Not-Resolutions

I've never been one to make a big pie-in-the-sky new year's resolution. What's the point in picking a random thing like 'eat healthy' when you either 1. know you're not going to do it, or 2. don't need to make a major adjustment in that area of your life?

But in the past couple years I have usually sketched out a list of goals. Most of them are usually dance-related and I only accomplish maybe half of them, but I suppose I could say, 'hey -- at least I managed half of them.'

Inspired by the Big Fun Scary Things forum on the NaNoWriMo website, I now offer you my 'Big Fun Scary' list of goals for this year.

- Finish writing scenes for Kyrie.
As I've been trying to revise it, I'm realising that there are a lot of things that need to be fleshed out. So right now I'm in the process of writing the missing-but-needed scenes.

- Put Kyrie back together (however temporarily) and get beta readers for it.

- Finish my 2016 NaNoWriMo novel.
I only have 11k left and I know where I want the story to go but I couldn't finish during November because although there was a point where I did not sleep for four straight days (right after the biggest show of my performance season and during the week of all the voice finals), it was solely for the purpose of writing academic papers, not my novel. My $72,000 undergraduate degree was at stake and I could no longer justify putting NaNoWriMo before my homework.

- Publish a short story.
I mean, I could include 'novel' in this category, but somehow I don't really anticipate that I'm going to be THAT happy with Kyrie by December. Progress on Kyrie is very much dependent on how busy I'm going to be with school (hopefully) and work (also hopefully).

- Choreograph one dance per month.
This can also be read as 'choreograph a minimum of twelve dances this year.'
(NOTE: Official National Choreography Month post will be written separately. Once I get my crap together on that thing.)

- Finish choreography works-in-progress.
Somehow I've accumulated nearly a dozen half-done works. I'm pretty sure the one is literally like four sets of eight away from being complete.

- Get some choreography into the school's year-end dance recital.

- Film at least three dance videos (of my choreography).
Believe it or not, the hardest thing will be finding a videographer. And locations. And scheduling rehearsals.

- Audition for at least one dance company.
Partly just to be able to say that I did. But hey -- you never know what could happen.

- Actually memorise the RAD Advanced Two syllabus.
This thing has seriously been the most frustrating thing in my entire life over the past four months (outside of the music history final and the modern philosophy paper). I'm physically capable of doing everything they ask, but after four months I still don't actually remember the exercises, which, of course, makes it impossible to execute them properly because you're constantly playing catch-up.

- Practice dance for a minimum of half an hour a day.
I did this all summer, but only managed one practice session over the entire semester after I went back to school.

- Operation Tap's Technique Tuesday challenge.
TTC V starts next week! Hopefully this time I can participate.

- Basic stretch and strengthen regime.
And by 'regime' I mean split stretches after dance practice sessions (goal: to be able to hold my leg above 90 degrees without 'help' of any kind, whether from a grande battement or developpé or my hands -- we're talking battement lent and hold), and run through the ab workout from class.

- Triple pirouettes, both sides, both directions, no hopping around, no falling over like a dead tree. Work up to quadruples.

- Ten fouettès on the right, every time, no exceptions, on pointe. Work up to twelve.

- Work up to ten fouettès on the left, every time et. al.

- Master wings on one foot.

- Master pullbacks, without relying on heels for leverage.

- Write at least two letters (whether to friends or family) per month.
My siblings' birthday letters don't count.

- Learn to French braid my own hair.

- 365 Challenges: choreograph a minimum of two sets of eight every single day, and write down three things I'm grateful for every single day.

This list actually freaks me out. On one hand, a lot of it (especially the writing and choreography things) are things that are usually on the list in some form every year. Yes, they're quantified, and yes, I frequently do meet the number goals, but the fact that pretty much the same sentence makes it on this list every year is starting to make me feel like I'm going nowhere. As a result, the list feels small. I feel like I should add more things. But at the same time, the list feels huge. All these little daily things -- and I just know they're going to go out the window during March when I'm writing six million papers and presentations and catching up on readings and listening assignments and stuff.

It's hard to know what's realistic because at this point in my life I honestly do not know what province I'm going to be in at this time next week and for how long. My life is very much in flux right now and fairly big things are changing at the drop of a hat as of late. This makes (realistic) daily-schedule-based goal-setting difficult. I hate myself enough already -- I don't want to fail so badly at these goals because of a major change in my circumstances that I have an excuse to hate myself even more for failing.

We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Things I Really Like About Being a Performing Artist

Note: this is, believe it or not, NOT a sarcastic post. This is a tribute to my reality; this life I love so much. I really do love these things.

- Doing makeup between scenes at rehearsal.

- Costume changes.

- Changing in random bathrooms (dancers know what I'm talking about).

- SO. MANY. GRANOLA BARS.

- Driving to practice/rehearsal/performances with one hand and eating Subway with the other.

- The smell of makeup and hairspray.

- Costume fittings.

- Photo shoots.

- Memorising lines.

- Dancing to other peoples' songs while waiting backstage.

- Lining up right before you walk out with the choir.

- Learning new blocking.

- Hearing the full orchestra for the first time.

- Water bottles.

- Trying to walk quietly in heels or tap shoes.

- The full-cast onstage warmup.

- The director's last words before showtime.

- Waiting in the wings.

- Helping others with choreography and costume changes.

- Monologues for auditions.

- That moment when your ballet/pointe shoes are finally warmed up and responsive to your feet (Canadians in winter... you know where I'm coming from).

- Wearing that one favourite zip-up sweater over your practice clothes and it totally clashes with your turn-of-the-century dress or your silver tutu but you don't care.

- The prop table. Holding my water bottle since 2008.

- Posting teaser photos from rehearsals on Instagram.

- All those circled notes and breath markings and arrows and underlined consonants in the sheet music.

- Legwarmers.

- That one last run-through of the section you always forget with one or two others in the wings right before your dance.

- Memorising the programme order before the show starts.

- Footlights. Actually, all of the lights. Especially how the lights cut through all the stage fog.

- Watching the set get bigger and more detailed with every rehearsal.

(More to be added as I think of them.)

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.'

Watching A Dream Die

The last couple weeks have been harder than I've let on.

Much harder.

Like to the point where I've had to Google the suicide help line. I stopped short of contacting it, but I Googled it and had the page ready and waiting. Even in my darkest moments when I was sixteen, I never got to that point.

In part, this is my problem: all I have ever wanted to do is dance, and failing that, I wanted to be onstage in some capacity.

One year ago this seemed like a very real possibility. I was just coming off of my musical theatre debut and had been personally invited back to the college's musical theatre program (I believe it's one of the strongest musical theatre undergraduate programs in the country, but I don't know that for sure). I was diving into nearly full-time dance training. Everything was going fairly well on the 'future career' side of things (if not the 'personal/family' side...), for the first time ever.

My invitation to the college still stands for this school year only. In other words, either I go back to college this year or forfeit my degree. And I can't go back again this year, because finances simply will not allow it.

In lieu of that (as it looks increasingly unlikely that I'm going to have enough money for even one semester of college), I'm piecing together a near-full-time dance training schedule, between two (possibly three) schools and personal practice. If I'm going to dance, I need to gun it. Now. I'm already old in dance years, and I'm not getting any younger.

The problem is this: I have no talent. None. The only way I've survived this far is because I've learned how to shine by comparison. I can pick stuff up very quickly in a class setting, so while everyone else is still going 'wait, which foot do I start on?' I'm already doing the entire sequence. So they think I'm good because I can figure out the footwork quickly and I can remember stuff. But that's where I stop. I realised this right at the end of last dance season -- as soon as I have the footwork down, I start doing it by rote. I don't play with it, I don't work with characterization, nothing. This was a bit of a blow, but I resolved to take just as much dance next season and focus on that -- on truly making my dancing the best it can be, not just 'better than the others.'

But in the meantime, to bring my tap dancing up to par (I only started three years ago, therefore my skills are SEVERELY lacking), I decided to practice every day, for minimum half an hour. It's not much, but I'm still working full-time too. I hoped to see some improvements by the end of the summer, if only due to consistency.

Every single practice session this week has ended prematurely, with tears. I am literally watching my ability to dance atrophy every single day. Once I had great paradiddles... now a 'paradiddle' is apparently defined as 'a stomach-twisting scraping sound with a foot that would make a banana look straight.' Once I could syncopate to almost any song in my music library. Now I play an old standby to improvise to and I'm lucky if I can keep straight time, never mind anything approaching syncopation. I used to be able to do a toe stand and chill out there, no problem. Tonight I literally spent ten minutes on one eight count phrase that includes step-heel, step-heel, step, step, scuff. And I wound up giving up because my feet would not do it, no matter how slowly I went, no matter how much I spoke the phrase out loud, no matter how many times I reviewed my notes and the counts.

I have to face it: I can't dance anymore.

Everyone around me is telling me to go for these auditions I keep finding, to follow my dreams, and I am watching my feet turn into concrete blocks at the end of these dysfunctional sticks called my legs. No self-respecting tap dancer would be caught dead going to an audition knowing she can't even consistently shuffle anymore. No company on the planet is going to hire a ballerina who can't turn to her left, ever.

So now I can't continue my musical theatre training (and heaven knows I do need training), but I also can't pursue my true love. My brain and my body have conspired against me and have given up. What else is left?

Googling reasons why I should keep living, none of which apply to me and all of which ring hideously hollow.

Summer Update

We'll see if I can write a blog post without complaining (that's why I haven't been posting lately -- literally every post I try to write has been a huge gripefest and I'm pretty sure none of you want to read that). Life is still very difficult though. Now it's that endless parade of little things that make you go, 'really? Really? There just had to be one more thing, didn't there?'

Dance is over for the season now and it's killing me. I used to be either at work or at dance. Now I get to go to work, but I don't even get the reprieve of dance afterwards. There's another month and a half left before the season starts again (it only ended two and a half weeks ago...), but in dance years that's a long time (in deciding-to-do-with-my-autumn years, however... it equals about two OVERWHELMINGLY STRESSFUL seconds).

I've established a couple of personal goals for the summer though, mostly involving tap dancing. I'm still very uninspired on the ballet front. While my technique improved a lot this past dance season, my brain is still not really latching onto the choreographic possibilities. So I've been focusing on my tap dancing because it's still dancing, but it's different enough that my brain is still willing to work in it -- at least a tiny bit. Also, it takes much less space to practice tap than it does to practice ballet, and I have exactly zero practice space in my life right now. So I've worked out a daily tap practice plan and I'm already seeing improvement in some technical things I struggle with.

One other thing is I want to get another one of my dances staged and filmed, both for my own experience, but also so I can start building a bit of a portfolio. There was supposed to be another piece staged this summer, but the venue backed out (rather rudely and without explanation) well into the process. This venue had previously been very supportive and to be shut down like that without cause (at least not any cause they're willing to name) was completely unprecedented. It's left me floundering because without them, I actually have nowhere to stage my dances right now -- I haven't gotten in anywhere else yet. This was quite a severe blow and I'm still reeling from it. Practice space is again a huge issue though, as I have nowhere to rehearse my other dancers -- as longtime readers know, I don't typically choreograph solos.

On the writing front -- I'm actually sort of trying to revise Kyrie. I'm not sure how it's going. I'm doing character development right now on the secondary characters and it is actually flipping hard. I used to be the queen of character development, but apparently not anymore. My three main characters are fantastic, but everyone else feels like they're made of air and if you look at them too long they'll disappear like phantoms. I think part of my problem right now is that character development keeps bleeding into plot structure, but I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to keep them separate right now until I get the stupid characters figured out.

I've also found myself writing short stories, of all things. I never thought I could. My brain doesn't make stories short enough usually -- it's generally either novel-or-nothing around here (and lately it's just been nothing). But I've written two half-decent rough drafts of short stories in the past couple of weeks and have plotted a third. They're kind of fun actually.

All this fills in the time between work. I'm considering going back to college, but in order for that to happen, I need minimum ten grand by the middle of August. The year I took off from schooling should have more than covered that, except the province's entire economy tanked and even now, jobs are hard to come by. I'm technically still employed (which is more than a lot of people have right now), but I'm getting very few hours. I don't know what will happen. I really don't know. And I hate not knowing. Tap practice is one of the very few things saving me right now.

And hey... I think I kind of managed to write an entire blog post without going on a rant! Now as long as nobody mentions Hillsong in the comments, we should be good.

Postlude: National Choreography Month

To recap: this past January I committed to choreographing a whole bunch of tap dances. I simply combed through my list of songs-that-I-want-to-choreograph-someday and picked out ten that I thought I could feasibly push my way through (see the pre-event list here). At the time, I knew ten songs was a lot to ask, but I figured the higher the bar was set, the more I would accomplish, even if I fell short of that exact goal. And that's exactly what happened.

I choreographed eight full dances this past month. While that alone is a feat in itself, what I'm really impressed with is how diverse these dances are. There were solos and a duo and a trio... and a piece for twenty-three. There were dances for elaborate stage sets and dances that were intended to be performed on very small platforms. There was sweet and adorable, there was dark and creepy, there was fun and ridiculous, there was tight and skilled, there was haunting and brooding. There were specific characters and there were stereotypes and there were simply dancers. I touched on most of these pieces throughout the month (read through the blog posts of January 2016), but I'll recap them here.

Surrender (ELO) - A story dance, the dark and creepy one. It's a story that has long since attracted my attention in dance, and this is the first time I've even been able to do a microcosmic version of it. I'm most excited about the use of 'extras' to set the scene. I haven't tried my hand at that very often, but here it was appropriate and I thought it turned out well. It really enriches the feel of the situation and frames the scene.

Love Divine (Phil Keaggy) - This was a duet, sweet and light. If Surrender was dark, bitter chocolate, this one was cotton candy, pink and cheery. My favourite part about it is how simple and joyful the song is, which in turn lent buoyancy to the dance itself.

Rattle Me, Shake Me (David Meece) - Easily the most ambitious choreographic project I've tackled to date. This one involved a myriad of specific characters as well as many extras, and each character needed to have their own specific style of tapping to differentiate them and bring life to the piece. I was also a lot more 'loose' in my approach to this -- it has a very big-band, musical-theatre feel to it.

On The Other Side (Michael W. Smith) - I'm not sure how I feel about this one. For years it's been in my head as a dance for six. I choreographed it as a solo this month. I've not yet come to terms with that. If I re-work any dance from this month, this might be it. However, I think pushing myself to think more outside the box with the choreography itself paid off.

Westminster Bridge (BBC National Orchestra) - This was a tight, fast dance, lots of synchronicity and lots of sharp canon. I'm very excited to see how this one actually looks on three real people at the same time.

Chase That (Ambition) (Lecrae) - I've always wanted to try my hand -- well, feet -- at choreographing a legitimate rap song and I finally the bit the bullet. It was difficult trying to decide whether or not to follow the rhythm of the beat or the rhythm of the lyrics or make a parallel rhythm to run alongside both. But I'm extremely happy with how the climax of the song turned out. This was choreographed as a solo and its travel footprint is small, to be performed on extremely small stages or platforms.

What Is The Measure Of Your Success? (Steve Taylor) - This almost didn't make it on the starting list, but I'm glad I put it on there. I think out of all the dances I choreographed this month, I'm most proud of this one. This one also touched my heart more than any of the others. It awoke exactly the kind of emotions in me that I hope it will awaken in the audience. It was choreographically very simple, but rich in food for thought and (I hope) in metaphor.

Independence Day (White Heart) - By this time I was starting to power out and you can see that, especially at the end. However, I was terrified to even start this dance, so slogging through it till the end is an accomplishment in itself. It's for six people, which is actually a really fun number to choreograph for because you can do a lot in terms of formations with six people. The transitions between formations were particularly fun. Also, this was one of the few this month that wasn't a story song (or at least clear-cut characters), and that seemed odd to me after writing so many different distinctive 'voices' this month.

The longtime reader will also notice that I managed to go for an entire month without choreographing something with Terry Scott Taylor's name on it. In fact, almost every one of the artists represented here were artists I choreographed for the first or maybe second time ever (David Meece and White Heart were the only artists I'd choreographed more than twice already and even White Heart had been a very long time ago). Perhaps that added to the diversity of the choreography itself -- I mean, Daniel Amos' work spans pretty much every genre ever by now, but even all that has the indelible DA style. Lecrae, obviously, does not have the DA style, which means his music and my choreography will interact differently. It forced me to figure out different approaches and plumb depths of my style that a steady diet of DA doesn't necessarily draw out.

In summary: It was good to do this again -- both because it helped me prove to myself that I'm not completely lacking in inspiration, I'm just lacking it in my typical avenues of creativity, and because when you do this much creative work in one genre (tap) in such a short time, you pretty much have no option but to improve. Last time I was able to participate in National Choreography Month (in 2013), I was working in softshoe disciplines (ballet and jazz), but I noticed that after that month the quality of my choreography in general jumped up exponentially -- simply because I did so much of it in such a short time. I learnt very quickly what worked and what didn't; what I liked and what I didn't like. Without giving myself permission to make a lot of potential crap and risk coming with with something workable or even half-decent for thirty days, it would have taken me years of plodding along at a 'normal' pace to gain the same experience that I did in one month. Plus, because during Nachmo you make time to choreograph every single day, not once a week (or whatever), the lessons you learnt yesterday are still fresh in your mind and you're better able to build on them. If it's a week between choreography sessions, you've probably forgotten that one observation you made and will therefore either have to relearn it or at least remember it -- both of which slow down the improvement process.

Day Twenty-Five - What Is The Measure...?

Just finished the choreography for Steve Taylor's brilliant What Is The Measure Of Your Success?

This is a pretty emotional song. I found myself almost crying as I choreographed the ending. It's so haunting and hopeless. Taylor very much gets his point across, and it hurts a little more each time I hear it. Because the nature of creating choreography requires that I listen to the same section of the song repeatedly to get the vision and then to solidify the timing, I don't just hear the climax two or three times, it's more like two hundred times, each one on the heels of the other. And every time that final verse left me a little more tight in the chest.

I think my own choreography is part of that strong emotional response in myself. I'd long imagined this as a trio and I've had the blocking in my head for years. As usual, all I needed were the specific steps.

The trio is comprised of the first-person verse narrator -- a businessman, and two others who are equal parts bodyguards, henchmen, Greek chorus, and greedy young executives eyeing this businessman's power and wealth. The choreography is really simple, and that was intentional. It's loud, repetitive, and monotonous, which also happens to be my personal view of the business world. The two dancers move in perfect sync throughout, at once commenting and conniving, while the businessman displays his prowess at the front of the triangle -- until he realises that although he has gained the world, he is losing his soul. And then the sinister side of the other two comes out as they simply continue dancing, not noticing or caring about the hole that is left. It's just another businessman who lived and died in a dog-eat-dog world and no-one misses him. It's a lot like how Ebenezer Scrooge's end would have been if not for the fantastic events of that Christmas Eve.

And maybe what hurts is that the businessman in the middle, flaunting his skill and the heights to which he has risen, is me.

Day Twenty - National Choreography Month

So after doing pretty much nothing for the entire second week, I went on a huge tear and choreographed three dances in two days. Two of them I covered in the previous post (Day 18), but then I started and finished another tap solo: Lecrae's Chase That. (This is what I meant when I said it was totally feasible for me to catch up on a three-days-per-piece timeline in the space of several days.)

Out of all the projects I had planned for this month, this one probably scared me the most (with the possible exception of Rattle Me, Shake Me), just because of the sheer volume of content in the song. Of course, being a rap song, it's packed with words, but that also means it's packed with rhythm and it covers a LOT of ground lyrically. Rap, as an art form, is adept at blending metaphors and imagery, using pivot words to take you from one mental image to another (this is also what I love about the songwriting of Steve Taylor), which kind of stretches your brain -- as it's supposed to. But it's also tricky for a choreographer like me who likes to match the mood of the movement to the mood of the lyrics. The music, being a canned beat (as is traditional with rap), isn't much help mood-wise either -- it's more or less the same loop for the entire song.

(Incidentally, this is why I'm not as into rap as I could be -- I love the style of lyric-writing, but it always kills me a little bit how uncreative the musical arrangements tend to be. Lecrae has been known to use violins -- Chase That is one such track, in fact -- and seriously that makes a huge difference, but as far as I know, he's the only one seriously experimenting in musical terms. That said, I realise that the main point in rap is the lyrical prowess and it would be difficult to keep a great arrangement from overshadowing the lyrics. It'll be really interesting to see how the genre develops and matures over the next twenty years or so as future rappers build on the work of artists like Lecrae.)

Anyway... the dance: Actually, I've done so much choreography in the past three days that I'm not too clear on which one this was. But out of all the musical climaxes I've tried to choreograph in various disciplines over the past four years or so, this was one of the ones I think I actually managed to capture in motion. I'm actually very proud of myself, particularly as tap isn't my first dance language. I'm noticing, too, that I'm getting better at this pacing thing -- not overusing things as much and thereby killing the climax when I use the overdone genius idea yet again (after putting it in every chorus).

This piece was intentionally a solo. Although my relationship with God is not great right now, this has always been my goal in my art -- to glorify God. And even though I've spent the last two days (in particular; the past year in general) mostly lashing out in fury that God isn't listening to me, there's a tiny part of me that still wants to give God the glory in my art. There's still a little piece that wants to chase His glory and not mine, and the chorus of this song is kind of an adopted mission statement (the story in the verses, obviously, bears little resemblance to my own story).

Day Eighteen - National Choreography Month

Written 18 January 2016, 3.13pm.

This month I've actually done a lot of dances that I've meant to do for a very long time and simply never committed to. I've wanted to do On The Other Side since before I owned tap shoes, and both Westminster Bridge and Love Divine were basically in complete sketch form and all I had to do was finalise the details. If I did nothing else this month, I cleared out a backlog of dances that really should have been polished off months ago.

One bit of glad news is that the month of straight tap has been doing exactly what I hoped it would -- focusing on always, only tap for almost three weeks now has allowed the ballet side of my brain to recharge and now some ideas for ballet dances are starting to creep back in. As tempting as it is to jump on them immediately and include them in Nachmo, I'm making a conscious effort to let then percolate. I'll pick them up again in February.

So far this month I've completed five dances -- Surrender; Love Divine; Rattle Me, Shake Me; On The Other Side; and today I polished off Westminster Bridge. That leaves another five still on the original list. I don't think I'll actually get all of them done this month, but even what I have right now is a huge accomplishment. I think I did like five dances total in 2015 (okay, it was actually more than that, but it feels like I've done more in three weeks now than I did all of last year).

Since I covered the first three a bit, here are some (sort of) brief reflections on the outstanding two dances.

On The Other Side: For years this was in my head as a dance for six. I only choreographed one rhythm line this month but I'm thinking I might expand it for two or six at a later date. This is less 'logical' and building blocks-y than I usually choreograph my tap stuff. I'm enough of a novice that I still tend to work in terms like 'two sets of paradiddles,' or 'one set of shuffle-ball change.' I'm not brave enough to take one of this and another of that, mess with the rhythm, and shove them in six counts instead of eight. Knowing that, and in an attempt to make my (tap) choreography less stale, I intentionally made this piece more 'off-kilter' than I usually do. I put in some stuff from a tap dictionary that I had never done before in an attempt to force myself to learn something new on my own (I have a tendency to learn nothing outside of what we work on in class). This is also what one might call lyrical tap -- I tried not to be a slave to the lyric rhythm, but I also took some of my shading cues from the rhythm of the lyrics.

Westminster Bridge: I actually don't really remember much of this one because it literally took me like an hour and a half to write it. I seem to remember it not sucking, so it must not have been too bad. It's a trio, and I think this was the really fast one (there was a really fast one in here somewhere).