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.

Music Day - Father Explains

Originally written 9 July 2016, 12.21am.

Been playing this song a lot lately. The gritty vocal, desperate lyrics, and raging guitars resonate with me right now.

This is one of the few DA albums that flies under the radar even among fans. Admittedly, it was well-nigh impossible to top their previous album (Darn Floor - Big Bite), plus there had been a hiatus of five years in between the two (mostly dedicated to the creation and perpetuation of the Swirling Eddies).

I've been listening to this song mostly because I identify with the line 'The boy thinks God may be over on the devil's side...' I've asked the same question myself in the past few months. After all, how else do you explain some of the things that keep happening to me? Literally the cycle is this: I hate my life for two years. I finally wake up one morning in a happy frame of mind and am finally enjoying just being alive, and all that comes with it. And before the sun sets, something very catastrophic happens -- divorce, death, all the usual crap.

The bombs came down like steel rain...

And it's another two years before I'm okay again for even a couple of hours. I don't even get a full day. I don't even get twenty-four hours. Seriously, God, how hard is this? If the joy of the Lord is my strength and I have no joy and I have no strength, then where is God? Is He deliberately planning these things just because for some reason I'm the cosmic punching bag?

I'll stop now. (Believe me, that's only a very tiny fraction of the rant. I went for an hour and a half on this the other night.)

This is a song clearly born in the Cold War era. Perhaps it's a little melodramatic to compare my spiritual life (such as it is) to something as horrific as war. But a lot of days, this song is the only thing angry enough to be capable of sympathising with me.

Title: Father Explains
Artist: Daniel Amos
Album: Kalhoun
Year: 1991
iTunes here; YouTube here.

And God only knows how much blood it will take
Before someone makes right all the wrong...

Fear and Trust

Trust. Fear. Courage.

The latter two terms have been themes on this blog lately. My life since my cousin died has been consumed by fear -- fear of someone else dying. Fear of leaving. Fear of staying. Fear of creating anything in case it sucks. Fear of myself. Fear of others. Fear of God -- what if He kills someone else?

Courage -- I've written about it before, but I have not lived with a single speck of it. As mentioned before, I have created absolutely nothing since my cousin died. I lost NaNoWriMo this past year for the first time EVER. National Choreography Month is in less than a week and I don't have a single plan. I listen to music and I don't see the dancers anymore. I go places and I don't feel the stories anymore. It's like my soul died when she did. And now I'm just stuck in this meaningless limbo called life... this driving to the grocery store and back, this waking up at 8am and eating oatmeal, this sitting in front of my computer and refreshing Facebook because I have literally no idea what to write for any of my papers. How much can you force creativity? I had points before my cousin's death where I thought I was, but now I look back and think, you weren't really forcing it -- you were just complaining about 'lack of inspiration' because then people are impressed by your dedication to making art anyway.

Trust -- how in the actual world do you trust a God who lets a child die in the face of all the prayers for her life? How do you trust a God who claims to hear and bring comfort yet leaves you in the lurch for two years? How do you trust God when His very people turn against you and tell you you are not wanted or even needed?

I can't get out of this black hole called my life unless I trust Him -- but to trust this unpredictable, distant God with my already-broken heart is insanity. What if He crushes it even more, until it's mere powder, carried on a cruel wind? Is trusting Him with my pathetic life really any better than my pathetic life now? On the other hand, is this crippling fear of what more He will do to me justified? Is it holding me back from something good?

But how do you trust a God who is not averse to letting people die?

A Voice of My Own

Originally written 5 November 2016.

I have a fairly intense singing semester at college this year: choir, voice lessons, and vocal master class. I'm spending more hours a week singing than I ever have dancing. The music students and faculty I interact with keep saying I'm improving, but I don't hear it and instead of gaining momentum I'm actually shrinking back. I haven't really sung in two days -- I've been in the practice rooms, but I've been doing breathing exercises or lip trills or speaking the text for the songs I have or playing the melodies to 'get them in my head'... but no actual singing takes place. I've mentioned before how I hate the sound of my voice and it seems that no matter where I turn I run into my voice, this awkward, clunky, wooden thing that can hit a note but sounds like the screen door on your grandma's old farmhouse in the process.

Their big thing here is volume. Because I hate my voice so much, I speak and sing as quietly as possible so people won't have to suffer the fate of hearing something so ungainly. I've done this for so long that I physically can no longer speak or sing very loud. My second year here stretched my volume boundary a bit, but not as much as is expected of me. I'm in this constant battle between wanting to sing more loudly because that's what my teachers ask of me and never wanting to sing again so no-one has to hear me.

Where did this come from? Nobody has ever outright told me they hate my voice. I've gotten 'I hate you,' and 'you sing flat,' but never 'I hate your voice.' Even the person who told me he couldn't stand me and basically wished I would go die in a hole told me I had a nice voice -- in the same conversation. (Come to think of it, that probably explains why I have such a hard time accepting compliments.)

It must have come from experience... The experience of being in that youth group and not even having a name. The experience of telling my parents I was NOT okay with a certain arrangement they had made and having them ignore me --- thrice (even after watching me spiral downward dramatically after the first two instances). The experience of constantly being ignored and shushed (and rebuked for the things I did say) in the youth group and having the God-card pulled on me at home. The experience of screaming to God for help, comfort, peace, anything for months when hell broke loose in 2015 and hearing nothing in response.

Nobody valued my voice -- literally or figuratively -- until I came to this college. I spent twenty years being systematically silenced and told I meant nothing, that my opinion didn't matter, that my voice was pointless. And now I have to sing loudly? Are you crazy? Who wants to hear that? Nobody.

How To Make Adrenaline Soup

Written 29 November 2016, 3.56pm.

Prepare three major papers. Simmer for three weeks.

Toss with two surprise (as in not-on-the-syllabus) presentations. Slowly pour in four all-nighters. Sprinkle in three cancelled classes.

Add snow (with all the childlike joy that comes with it). Reheat last Saturday's tuna casserole and add that as well.

Add a liberal shot of excitement for the Christmas musical.

Mix well and serve.

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.)

Music Day - Sometimes By Step

I first heard the full version of this song when my dear friend asked me to sing it with her in church. To this day I still like her take better than the original. But that's not to say the original is to be sneezed at.

I was listening to it the other day because lately I've been on a Rich Mullins kick and suddenly... well, you know that moment when you're listening to a song you're heard many times before but all of the sudden EVERY SINGLE WORD of it hits you right in the soul? Yeah. Me too. It's what I live for. It's why I ingest copious amounts of music and am always looking for more. I'm always looking for that moment. And that's why I'm in the arts. I want to give that moment to other people. There's just nothing like it.

Rich Mullins was one of those guys who knew how to write a lyric. He's up there with guys like Mark Heard, Terry Scott Taylor, and Michael Roe. These people can paint feelings with words. That's a very rare gift, and we are so lucky that they had the tenacity to hold onto that vision in a world where depth is 'too depressing' and 'not Christian enough.'

Sometimes the night was beautiful
Sometimes the sky was so far away
Sometimes it seemed to stoop so close
You could touch it but your heart would break
Sometimes the morning came too soon
Sometimes the day could be so hard
There was so much work left to do
But so much You'd already done...

Title: Sometimes By Step
Artist: Rich Mullins
Album: The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume Two
Year: 1991
Label: Reunion Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

If you were affiliated with the average evangelical church in the '90s and early 2000s, you probably recognise the chorus. Rich Mullins is primarily known for short repetitive choruses that congregations bludgeon to death, which is a shame because there is so much depth and richness to his poetry. However -- it does create a bridge from the average evangelical to actual creative art if said average evangelical does happen to research the history of it.

Nobody talks about heartbreak in Christianity. Nobody talks about days being hard. And even fewer people contrast that with the work God has done without getting stuck in a thin, cheesy water analogy that they can't seem to get out of (looking at you, Hillsong's Oceans). I'll refrain from the Christian-music-is-fluff rant here. But a lyric like this is real, refreshing, and hopeful. This is everything Christian music should strive to be. Poets and lyricists of the next generation, please take note. The future of songwriting may depend on it.

Snapshot of the Last Rays of Hope

26 October 2016, 1.52am.

The other day I was flipping through my notes from Songwriting class. I took this class in the final semester of my AA degree, as a modular (week-long intensive) course. This was, of course, the semester when my entire life went to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

There were a lot of journaling exercises in that class, and it was strange reading some of what I had written in those exercises. At that point in the semester, Brittney had been dead for less than a month. Our family friend was in the final stages of an extremely aggressive cancer and would in fact die less than two weeks later. The two divorces that jaded my entire concept of familial love and care had already burst on the scene (though the extent of the fallout remained to be seen). Less than a month later, God would withdraw His presence and comfort from me and my cousin would die a horrible sudden death two months later. In short, this was in that very intense upheaval period between all those things, and my notes from that class are a unique snapshot of a very short time in my life where despite all the crap I still retained some true faith that it was for good (which left when my cousin died). This was a fleeting moment in my spiritual life, though one can very easily see the torment already in my head.

We had to write a total of six songs for the class. Because I was so completely overwhelmed, I turned out six of the worst songs I have ever written in my entire life, and because of the way everything panned out (in terms of stress, abandonment, and the subsequent loss of inspiration that still haunts me), they have, so far, turned out to be the last. I vaguely remember the concepts behind two or three of them, but the one that stands out to me is the one I wrote for Brittney.

It was composed in a rush before I had really had time to process her death so it was cheesy as heck and because my piano skills are crap the accompaniment was only a couple of token chords in the background just to say it was a song. But I still remember the metaphor I used and I remember the prof in his feedback asking if I wrote poetry because it sounded like I do. I remember feeling incredibly honoured that he would even ask me that -- this was also two years to the week since I had discovered the magic that is Daniel Amos and the songwriting of my artistic hero Terry Scott Taylor (who is nothing if not poetic).

Reading these notes, I was surprised how much hope in God I still retained at that time. Most of the terrible things had happened already by this point. If my cousin hadn't died and God hadn't withdrawn His presence from me, it would have been all uphill from there. Reading those notes made me feel, for the first time, very disconnected with who I used to be. This girl who wrote those notes was hurting but she hoped through the tears. For better or for worse, I am not like that anymore. Hope is a faded memory. I am very conscious of the fact that I have put up a wall to protect myself and nobody is tearing it down -- not even me. Maybe if the wall is strong enough God can't get through to hurt me anymore. It's destroying my fledgling performing arts career (because not only can nothing get in, nothing can get out), but what does that matter anyway? There's no hope for any of that.

The Black Hole

Sometimes my self-hatred flares up even worse than usual. There's always a low-grade undercurrent of it throbbing through my head, tainting everything I see, hear, and do, but sometimes it rages across me so strongly that it completely stops every other thought and my brain literally feels like it will melt from the acid racing through it. And then I lock up in every area of my life -- sometimes to the point where I literally cannot talk.

It's been particularly bad this semester -- I'm taking eight classes, which I thought I could handle because I did it my last semester, but I failed to realise that last time I took eight classes they were all performing classes. In other words, they were things I have a natural aptitude for and also they don't require papers. This time, they're all academic classes. Which means papers. I may be a writer, but I'm in my third year of post-secondary and I have yet to write a half-decent paper. Academic writing just does not come naturally to me, and that, coupled with my already-crippling perfectionism, is a source of EXTREME stress. I don't have time to actually write the papers either, because I'm attending the eight classes... Add to this the fact that the flat has the LOUDEST heating system ever -- it literally wakes me up every time it runs. And I sleep like the dead. I have three very loud alarms set on my phone every morning and for the past three days I slept through every single one of them. But the heating system in the building wakes me up every. single. time. Add to that my already-near-crippling insecurity about my vocal abilities and the hit my performing abilities in general have taken, and you have a dangerous cocktail.

When I start into serious self-hatred mode, I get into this loop where no matter how much encouragement I receive, its effect is gone within seconds of my receiving it. I learnt long ago how to manipulate people into complimenting me, and though it's one of the things I hate the most about myself, I find myself doing it anyway at these times. This, of course, makes it worse because I already feel bad about myself and then I catch myself fishing for compliments again and then I feel even worse for putting the other person in that spot (seriously, there is nothing more awkward than being in a conversation with someone who is plainly fishing for compliments -- and I hate being that person), plus the encouragement I do get I suck dry within seconds and then start begging for more -- all without giving a single bit back. I'm just a black hole eating compliments and I can't stop it. So I hate myself even more for not being able to stop it, for not being able to live on one compliment a year like every one else does.

Why am I so needy? Why do I have to be that awkward person who takes but never, ever gives? Why does the coveted encouragement only last all of ten seconds before its effect is gone? Compliments don't make my whole day or even my whole minute -- they fade too fast. I'm torn between wanting more, hoping the next one will be the one that lasts and wanting to die so I can stop asking so much of so many and never being able to reciprocate.