Rising

Lately I've been doing daily stretch and strengthen exercises, mostly cobbled from dance classes over the years... my favourite and most influential teacher was always on the cutting edge of strength and conditioning programs to keep her dancers safe. She regularly set aside 15-30 minutes either at the beginning or the end of each class for strengthening exercises.

I had made many of these stretches part of my daily routine for several years in college, however, when I moved back to Alberta, depressed and thoroughly burnt out, everything went out the window except laying in bed until the afternoon sun covered me as well as the blankets. Then came the major life change called marriage (nobody tells you how STRESSFUL that is) and my first full-time job since before college, both of which sapped my energy and motivation to do literally anything. It was all I could do to go to work, make it through the day, and stagger back home and stare blankly at the television screen or my phone until bedtime.

Lately I've had some motivation returning, and I decided to bring back my daily stretches. This was also partly out of necessity, as my ankle is very angry at being made to stand on a concrete floor for 32 hours a week, no matter HOW good my shoes are, and is requiring either physio or total bedrest. Obviously physio is the option that keeps the bills paid, and many of the exercises that the doctor gave me are exactly the same ones that my dance teacher made us do years ago in class. This, then, leads quite naturally into the re-instation of a daily stretching program.

The most basic and most effective ankle strengthening exercise (as far as I know) is what we in ballet class call the rise. Rises on two feet and rises on one foot could take up as much as 45 minutes of class time -- different amounts, different combinations, different speeds. Students from our school were known locally for their incredible strength and confidence en pointe simply because we had so much ankle training in class. Once I fell off pointe (at a different school, after this one), and while I nearly broke my wrist, my ankles were completely unscathed (well, maybe not completely, otherwise I wouldn't need the physio now).

Rises, then, are the core of my strengthening exercises. I have sort of accidentally claimed a specific spot by the big picture window in the living room as the spot to do my exercises. On my days off, I typically do my exercises in the morning, so then the late morning winter light lies pale along the snow-lined road, reminding me of more carefree days gone by... the days when I would go to morning dance classes and do rises in classes with M, my sister, and other friends with whom I've more or less lost touch, with the calm, caring spirit of my teacher filling the room.

I would give almost anything in the world to have those days back. Of course I savoured them as much as I could while I was there -- knowing even at that young age how fleeting life is -- but I still somehow thought that it would never end, at least not completely. I thought that M would live a good long life and that my friends would stay in touch and that that school would continue turning out well-trained and deeply nurtured students for generations and that no matter how far away I traveled or for how long, I would always have a place at the barre in the sunlight.

Doing rises in front of that picture window takes me back to those days in the tiniest of ways -- strongly enough to bring tears to my eyes, but never strongly enough to be real. It breaks my heart every morning when I do rises, but I would rather remember those days than forget them. All I can do now is carry M and the spirit of my teacher and the school she gave to us for that short time in my heart and keep doing the rises that keep us connected.

An Open Letter To Those Who Love Me

Written 28 September 2013, 8.07pm.

I found this deep in my drafts folder the other day. I thought it was the perfect manifesto to start off this year. It has not been edited since July 2017.

(I'm not actually as depressed as the title makes it sound.)

Dear people in my life,

I think by now ya'll have noticed that I'm not exactly following your dreams for me. You know, the corporate dreams of me being some big-time lawyer or doctor or some other kind of genius. You have told me so many times over the years how smart I am, how smart I am, how smart I am. I get the sense that you figured I was some kind of a child prodigy or something. Cha-ching. Don't think I don't hear those cash registers in your heads.

Now, that may be true. Maybe I am a genius. I don't know. It depends what you're talking about, really (because if we're talking math, I am most definitely not a genius). But whatever the case, you all see me as intelligent. And I am not living up to your expectations of me.

I may be wrong (correct me if I am, I really do want to hear your honest take on this), but it seems to me you expected 'more' of me. I was to graduate high school and then go to college for perhaps a psychology or a medical or law degree. Something that would accentuate any speck of intelligence I possess. Something you could brag about to your co-workers to make you sound like you had some serious connections. And then, after spending four or perhaps ten irretrievable years of my years institutionalised, I would be ready to take on the world, to be the messiah, and you would have the privilege of saying you knew me before I was 'great.'

But it didn't work out that way. I graduated high school with... I don't know, integrity, I guess. I was willing to admit I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And, perhaps more damagingly, I was not willing to commit to what I didn't know. I did not want to go to college for a degree that I wasn't sure I wanted, only to decide after three or more years' worth of money had been sunk into it that it really wasn't what I wanted to do after all. And then I would have been dishonest -- to you, to the school that would have had the misfortune of hosting me in such a case, to myself.

And I cannot be dishonest.

For two years you secretly hoped and outwardly 'spurred me on' (to put it politely). And then -- a miracle! -- suddenly the announcement came. I was going to college. Your hearts pounded. You were so excited. Finally I was going to live the life you had planned for me. Finally I was going to make good use of all my brains that I had been wasting for so long...

And now for my side of the story.

I have never been interested in committing more time than necessary to anything I am not fully interested in. Even in grade school: math. Math never interested me (nor did it make sense, but that's a different discussion), so I hated it. I would do whatever it took to do as little as possible... to waste as little of my life as I had to on such a pointless pursuit. (I know now that there is a point to some math, but that was my perspective at the time.) Second example: You all have had the misfortune of trying to make small talk with me. I'm not interested in small talk. 'Share how you really feel or shut up' has pretty much always been my guideline for conversation (for better or for worse). I'm not interested in small talk -- I hate these little social lies we tell each other -- so I don't do it. Like, at all.

By the time I graduated, I was keenly aware of the fact that I have one life to live. I have already used up twenty years of it just getting to this point. That leaves me with roughly sixty years remaining (give or take a decade or so). And there's no promises that I won't die earlier -- say, from an accident or something. Is it really wise to spend four years of those precious remaining years on school? School that I don't really want and may never need?

This was my logic behind not going to college immediately. I wanted to think it through first. I wanted to be sure what I was doing with my life, then decide if college would be necessary for that.

For two years I thought about this -- believe me, I thought about it. Hardly a second went by that I wasn't thinking about my future, praying about it, asking God what He had created me to do. It looked to you like I was just being lazy and mooching off my parents. Believe me, this was not the case. At the very least, it was not the intent.

Two years I pondered this. Two years I agonised. Two years I prayed.

I have to drop this train of thought now and back up a bit.

You didn't know this -- nobody really knew this till recently. You know I have been dancing ballet since I was six. What you did not know was that I have been making up dances in my head since I was seven. I didn't know it until those two years between high school and college, but I had found my passion by the time I was seven years old.

Choreography. Imagining dancers on the stage, coming together as a choir of movement, creating beauty. It captivated me.

At seventeen I began to take this seriously. At eighteen I choreographed and wrote down my first complete dance. Here is where this news began to leak out... that I was doing choreography.

You didn't know it, but I did. I had found my passion. This was my calling.

In those two years, I researched so much about careers in the arts. You have no idea how much I tried to spin it different ways, wanting the worst-case scenario so I knew what to expect, but wanting the best-case scenario so I could tell you something you could be proud of. So you would stop taking jabs at me for being lazy or stupid. Because I was not being lazy or stupid -- in fact, that was exactly what I was trying so hard to avoid.

I will tell you straight. Even the choreographers for big-name TV shows make about $20,000 a year, often less. And it's straight commission. If you don't have a project that month, you don't get paid that month. You are your own boss, and there's not a lot of demand for a choreographer. There's a reason you don't meet a lot of choreographers. It's because we don't need a lot of choreographers. Because nobody cares about the arts anymore. Ballet (true ballet, not this 'contemporary ballet' crap) is fast becoming a lost art, and hip hop, the dance of choice today, is largely choreographed by the performers themselves. When a classical ballet company does tour, they often mount the old classics -- Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, Swan Lake... There is no need for a choreographer; those works already exist.

In fact, this is reality for the arts in general. Artists are overworked (mostly as volunteers), and they are severely underpaid. Some of the most talented artists of the past century languish in a furiously creative flurry... unnoticed. Loved only by a loyal handful, but misunderstood and rejected, then ignored, by everyone else.

This is the life I am called for.

I am called to live a life that not only has no retirement plan, it has barely enough money to buy the groceries every week.

I am called to toil in obscurity, perhaps for decades, not because of the quality of my work, but because perhaps God has seen fit that I choreograph for only a few.

I am called to a life of intense loneliness. No-one can understand what it's like to create a dance from scratch until they have done it. And even then, those without the passion cannot begin to imagine the thrill of the soul that so captures our imagination that we dream of pointe shoes at night; that demands we return, again and again, to the music, to the stages in our imaginations.

I am called to a life that no-one on this planet will ever understand. It will look intensely foolish to anyone who has never tasted the wine of creativity, and in this day and age, that's almost everyone.

I am called to daydream with a vengeance.

I am called to a life throughout which it is highly probable that I will be broke or near-broke, lonely and largely ignored, obscure and taunted by those who do not understand. I will very likely struggle, not because I'm not smart, but because this is my God-given passion and the gift He gave me. And when God gives a person a gift, they can not and will never be truly happy doing anything else.

So I will choreograph. I may dance, I may sing, I may play an instrument. But no amount of criticism from you will make me change my mind. I will not be happy doing anything else. Let me be happy doing this.

Can you live with that? Can you accept the fact that I will not be a doctor or a lawyer with a 'thriving' multimillion dollar practice? Can you accept the fact that I will sometimes ask aloud where my next meal is coming from -- when I know there are other, higher-paying jobs out there?

National Choreography Month - Preamble

Written 10 December 2021, 7.45pm.

In addition to individual dances, I also have varying full-length dance shows in varying stages of completion. There's the solo tap show (written loosely around a theme of escaping this world, but mostly created as a way to do the recital that my college program director cheated me out of doing -- which, by the way, means the college will not release my diploma to me because I 'didn't fulfil the program requirements.' Because the literal program director who KNEW I needed those credits for doing that recital hated me because I wasn't the sweet perfect little pushover he wanted. There's a whole rant here, but that's not the point of this post), there's the 'character vignettes' show, there's the shows I've written (or at least sketched out) based on Crumbächer's Escape From The Fallen Planet and Daniel Amos' Doppelgänger, there's the video album concept that's been written out for over half a decade and exists in pages of Benesh notation but not much else.

A few months ago, I had a flash of inspiration. I'm reluctant to share too much because it's the first pure idea I've had in a very long time, and I don't want to get caught up in trying to make it marketable like I do with everything else. It's a very close and personal topic for me, and the whole point is to celebrate that specific, personal experience, not to strike a common chord with the masses. It's a show directed to a very specific person and if nobody else gets it except that one person, I will still have succeeded.

I have already set a opening date. It's nearly five years into the future, but honestly I'll probably need that long to get my act together. I will need two children and one extremely good adult male dancer and one relatively simple-yet-large set piece.

But more than that, I need choreography.

I've been going through songs in all genres (even country, which I notoriously strongly dislike) and cherry-picking the best ones for this show. I'm shooting for roughly an hour and a half show, and I have 35 minutes of music already (and literally two full pages of music suggestions from my music nerd Facebook groups to listen through). I was just listening to the first rough iteration of the playlist tonight and it brought tears to my eyes and chills down my spine. This is shaping up really well -- I wasn't quite sure what to expect or how it would go, but I'm pleased at my preliminary progress so far.

So for Nachmo, I'm hoping to start choreographing these songs. I already have an idea of who's going to dance what (character-wise), and the staging is fairly simple -- which is exactly the point. Conveying this special relationship is absolutely key, and if all goes well for this one, I want to do another show for my husband -- and I've already got a bit of a playlist going for that one as well.

My problem will, as usual, more likely be in actually staging it rather than choreographing it. There's the part where I will have to learn the choreography; there's the part where I will have to find (audition?) dancers; the part where I will have to secure the venue and sell tickets -- unless I make it a private showing (which is also still on the table); the part where I will have to actually build the set and hire lighting and sound techs...

I'm trying not to focus on all that for the time being. I can almost guarantee that my biggest problem will be learning the choreography and rehearsing the dancers. And this doesn't happen until I can clear that hurdle.

There is a selfish part of me that wants to stage a show before I'm thirty. The show described above would, assuming it goes ahead on the projected date, happen when I'm thirty-two. I'm still considering staging the aforementioned 'escape' show before my thirtieth birthday (that's such a big number, good lord). It's already mostly choreographed, and if I can manage to conjure up enough discipline to get my lazy butt in the dance studio on any kind of regular basis (and convince my husband that I'm actually not avoiding him, just working on the dream that he 100% knew about from day one), I could theoretically learn it rather quickly. I'm not sure what venue I would use or if maybe I would just busk it and livestream it or something...although it would feel more official if it was in an actual theatre. If I still lived in Saskatchewan, I'd just book the theatre/practice space in town for a couple of nights. There is a theatre about a twenty minute drive away from where I live now... I've never seen it, nor do I know how much it costs to rent it, but that might be something to look into. There's a theatre being built in the town where I live, but there's no ETA on when that will be completed, plus I suspect that one will cost more to rent.

I'm getting off track here.

So basically, I want to start developing the first show idea during Nachmo this year. It'll take far longer than a month (at least a year, if not two) to fully choreograph, but I want to get a good head start.

The second show idea is already mostly choreographed -- I just have to finish up a few loose ends and then learn the whole thing. I was starting to learn chunks of it in fall 2020, before the second lockdown, but then in the six months of existing only in our tiny apartment or behind the coffeepots at work, I lost almost all of it. My goal with this one is to get it fully choreographed and learned by the end of the year (if not completely cleaned).

I also have a dance film in suspended animation that was supposed to happen this year, but the third lockdown put it on pause. That is still slated to go ahead in fall 2022. I still have to memorise and clean this one for myself, as well as for the other performers.

It's not lack of ideas that's holding me back, it's lack of resources. But for the month of January at least, I only have to focus on the one thing I can control, and that's the choreography itself.

The End Of Yet Another Era...

Last week I found out 'my' dance school (that I attended full time from 2009-2013 and then again 2015-16 and part time until Pandemic) is closing at the end of this month.

It hurts.

I've gone through so much change and upheaval already -- leaving my parents' picturesque house for good, leaving everything and everyone I ever knew, marriage to a man that in all honesty I barely knew before the ceremony... but I held onto that one constant that once the pandemic was over, once we could move out of the literal pit we currently live in (the town is in the bottom of a valley), I could go take Mrs. Clark's ballet class again and I could drive to class listening to White Heart as I looked at the streetlights and drive back home listening to Daniel Amos as I looked at the big dipper in the endless Alberta sky. That hope fueled me through much of this difficult first year of marriage and the pain of being separated from my friends and family back home. And now that hope to relive those wonderful days again, when everything was possible and everything was beautiful, is gone forever. I won't even get to take one last class at that studio. I don't even get to make that drive one last time.

I didn't know my last time was the last time. It's like a sudden death, in a small way.

I essentially quit dancing in the fall of 2019, despite being at my parents' house (read: within driving distance of the studio) due to the damage that my college professors did to me. They convinced me I wasn't good enough to even bother trying, so I stopped. I was too depressed to get out of bed, let alone go to class and feel even more inadequate about my abilities and myself as a person. I remember even texting the teacher and apologising for my patchy attendance, explaining that depression was kicking my butt. True to form, she was completely compassionate and understanding -- she always is. I thought I would come back. I really did.

I did up until last Sunday, when my sister told me the news.

I met M there, among other great people. I got my first pair of pointe shoes there. The teacher graciously watched and gave feedback on multiple choreography pieces I've done -- she even let me teach one to the ladies' class and let my sisters and I perform another in one of their shows. She hired my dad and I to build what turned out to be her last studio space. For most of my teen years, that class was my only joy in life. It quite literally kept me alive more than once. It wasn't just 'dance class,' it was that specific dance class, taught in that specific place by that specific person, surrounded by those specific classmates. It is irreplaceable, and now I can't go back. That dance school was quite literally a part of who I was, and with that gone -- among so many other things I've lost in the past two years -- it feels like my soul is untethered from me, floating aimlessly through space. I have no anchor left for it. I feel lost and alone in a world I don't recognise and never wanted to be in.

There are other dance classes and other studios. But dance will never, ever be the same again.

Lightning In A Bottle

Lately my choreographic motivation has begun to awaken from its long slumber (of course it's when I don't have access to a studio to work stuff out in, but I'm not going to complain too much -- I'll take the ideas, please). To give it something to do, I've been notating the ballets that I sketched out but never notated, going back to 2017. (Don't worry, it's only like five pieces... I haven't choreographed much ballet since I started college.)

This included my solo for Terry Scott Taylor's heart-wrenching One More Time, choregraphed in two days in the immediate aftermath of M's death. I found my notes for the piece, but the ending seemed incomplete. I knew I had finished choreographing it, as I remembered performing it live on Instagram (to resounding silence, as nearly everybody at college either didn't give one crap about dance or didn't think I was talented enough to bother doing it) and filming the performance on my video camera at the same time. So tonight, I dug out that memory card and found the video.

And I was stunned.

It was filmed 2 October 2018, and I found two rehearsal takes from the day before. In 2018, I was starting my fourth year of college, having been told by my program director at the beginning of the school year that I had exactly one (1) chance to 'prove myself' (whatever that meant, and no, he did not deign to tell me) or he would be, and I quote, "done with you." I would routinely beat myself up -- mentally and physically -- in the studio and at home because I was so deeply, profoundly angry at myself for continually failing to measure up to his expectations -- whatever the hell they even were. I had yet to decode them after four years, but I felt no end stupid for not having done so, despite the fact that he was the one not communicating clearly. My self-confidence waned steadily throughout my time at college, as a direct result of the way he and the instructors under him treated me. Because of how much they hated me and my work, I began to hate the way I danced, and by extension, I hated myself. In a way, I was jealous of M for escaping this terrible world and all the pressure of perfection before I did. Now I had -- and still have -- to face all that belittling and pressure alone. After I performed/filmed this solo, I never watched it, knowing I would just hate myself more for not being a good enough dancer to justify doing that dance.

Today when I watched it, I saw this young woman with a grace and tenderness that I could only dream of even now. There's an absolutely luscious back bend in there -- I thought if I lived to be a hundred I could never be flexible enough to do something so beautiful. Even in the rehearsal videos she looked like a professional dancer. The courus were perfect. Her arms just floated, absolutely effortlessly. The lines were perfect -- I made a goal at the beginning of this year to work on my lines, but after seeing this video, I'm wondering if I really ever needed to work on them at all. There was a section in the 'performance' that did feel a bit more staccato than it was in rehearsal, but the pure artistry overshadowed that. I think it may have been the most beautiful ballet I have ever watched.

Did I just capture lightning in a bottle? Was it all just a fluke? Or was I really that good all along and nobody was decent enough to actually tell me? I choreographed, learned, and performed this piece in literally two days. This was before I learned an entire staging of Oklahoma! and the second acts of Jesus Christ Superstar and Chicago in essentially a week (side note, do all theatre companies literally spend five months on Act I and then stage/choreograph ALL of Act II in one three-hour rehearsal or is this just the companies I end up working with?).

I'm still deciding what to do with this footage. It is incredible -- to my eyes, anyway. But it's also rehearsal footage, and I don't like posting full rehearsals of pieces I do want to make into an official video someday -- spoilers, you know. I would love to film this properly, but I don't have access to any studio or even a space large enough to do it. So do I just sit on this footage and wait, possibly several more years, before I can properly film it? Then comes the question 'what if it's not as good?' I'm not getting any younger (or more flexible)...

Either way, it encouraged me so much. At least I can watch and enjoy this video. It touched my heart, it truly did. If I do decide to post it somewhere, I'll link it here.

Day 23: National Choreography Month

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

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

Locked in a sky so blue

Is a land made for me and you

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

There's a secret place

So full of love and grace

When the world spins and breaks apart

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

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

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

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

There I go, trying to escape again.

National Choreography Month, Day 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cost of Dance

Life update: I have moved back home -- as in, to the little town where I grew up. My focus right now is on theatre and it's killing me because what I really want to do is dance. The city I was in this summer has WAY more dance opportunities and even training options than my home city. But I have literally zero savings to fall back on and it's cheaper to do theatre than dance. Yes, really.

First -- auditions.
I have never in my life paid for a theatre audition. I've auditioned for the biggest theatre company in Regina (twice), as well as the one in Edmonton. This past September alone I auditioned for thirteen small volunteer-based organizations. Not one of them -- not even the one that's several thousand dollars in the hole -- charged me an audition fee.
Conversely, every single dance audition I have ever done has come with an audition fee. I've paid as little as $25 and as much as $80 for a single dance audition. That's a lot of money to throw into the abyss on the tiniest off-chance that you might actually outshine the 300 other dancers who are no doubt also sending in video auditions.

Second -- training.
I had the opportunity this fall to train with one of western Canada's only tap ensembles but I had to pass it up because I was barely able to scrape together the last few dollars of my savings account for the audition fee (see above), let alone the $400+ required for registration for the actual training.
Dance training -- just to keep up your technique FOR auditions -- costs about a thousand dollars a year, per hour/week. (It does depend on the region a bit, but that's about average in western Canada.) Ideally, dancers at a professional level should be taking at LEAST twenty hours of class per week. That's $20,000 a year. That is fully half the average annual salary (in US dollars) for a professional dancer. That doesn't count transportation, pointe shoes ($120/pair, new pair every two weeks at that level of training), dancewear (one bodysuit averages $100), physiotherapy (every two weeks at least), and things like medication, counselling, food, rent -- you know, regular living expenses that everyone has to pay for.

On the other hand, I have never, ever had to pay for acting training (my degree doesn't count because I got exactly two acting classes out of a $100,000 degree and the director straight-up, to my face, refused to give me more even though my degree program actually required me to have more acting credits than that). All of my acting training has come on-site -- actually on the stage, in the rehearsal room, doing shows. I'm basically self-taught because nobody thought I was good enough for them to bother actually trying to teach me.

Third -- costumes.
In dance, there is always a costume fee. Always. From the time you're a three-year-old in a costume-shop tutu sickling your feet to the time you're a college student taking professional-level classes, you always, always, pay for every single costume you wear -- whether or not you are actually allowed to keep it.
In theatre, I have only paid a costume fee once. I've had to supply parts of my own costume -- slips, blouses -- but even the pieces that come out of the company costume room are free for me to use as long as I am in that particular production.

Fourth -- mentally.
Theatre is (usually) quite good at meeting their actors where they're at mentally and emotionally (my college and their 'you MUST be happy all the time whether or not the script even actually portrays this character as happy' attitude notwithstanding). They require a lot, but they also give a lot of empathy. If your depression is acting up, they'll accept whatever you can do with gentle encouragement. If you've twisted an ankle, they are happy to let you sit to the side with an ice pack as long as you're paying attention to what your blocking will be. If you haven't eaten in three days because you haven't had time, they will cobble together all their collective snacks and feed you, and they'll probably all remember your allergies and texture issues too.

Regarding dance, Sydney Magruder Washington has actually described it much better than I could in her excellent post on ballet and mental illness. Dancers are constantly told to shut up and smile. Grin and bear it. The show must go on. No negativity allowed. Ever. At all. Not even a hint of a breath of anything less than sunshine and rainbows and unicorn poop. And if you can't do it, there is NO END to the emotional and verbal abuse you will get if you can't fit the artistic director's mould of perfection and happiness, even during barre when you're still trying to get your exhausted eyelids to stay open. In dance, if you're having a rough depression day, you get fired on the spot. And then the director blacklists you to anybody who will listen for the rest of your life.
Also, for reference -- one (1) counselling appointment can be over $200. Each. When I was in my most intense period of counselling (which lasted for about eight months), I was going once a week, but probably should have been doing twice a week.

Don't tell me this huge financial disparity is because nobody goes to the ballet anymore -- nobody goes to the theatre anymore either, and yet the theatres somehow manage to run without soaking their usually-not-well-off performers for money. And when can these performers work? All the job openings insist on evenings and weekends. When do performing arts companies rehearse? Evenings and weekends. We can work OR we can perform, not both. And if we choose the latter, we can't even afford to get proper dance shoes, let alone get our properly-clad foot in the door with an audition.

All I want to do is dance, and I HATE that I'm too poor to afford it.

Rediscovering Choreography...

My official plan for National Choreography Month 2018 is more or less drawn up. I deliberately overplanned it, so I don't run out of songs halfway through the month like I did last November. I've also done a rough outline of choreography projects I want to accomplish over the next full calendar year. And I am SO excited for all of it. It's taking a lot of willpower to not start nibbling on the Nachmo list now.

So in order to satisfy the choreography bug while not starting on my January projects, I decided to revisit a ballet project that I have wanted to do for literally years. I had started it in early 2016, but then a(nother) series of discouraging/frustrating life events and then performance season happened... the latter altered my time-management habits just long enough to disrupt my choreography 'schedule' (such as it was), and the former sucked the last wisps of wind out of my proverbial sails and plunged me into a deep, soul-eating depressive episode that almost ended in suicide. From about April 2016 till this past November, I created almost literally nothing, nothing of substance.

Even during that indescribably dark time, I would occasionally think about this particular piece and think, I really should finish that. It's probably one of my best concepts ever, and I was always quite excited about it. But the fact that it probably is one of my best ideas also terrified me. Could I do justice to the concept? Would refining the abstract concept down to specific counts and movements ruin the big picture in my head? (The nature of the piece and the props I'm using for it are also notoriously difficult to notate.) Knowing that the finished piece would require seven dancers -- six on pointe -- to perform was also disheartening. After all, what was the point of creating this great piece if no-one would ever see it because there's no-one to perform it? But the fact that it was sitting there half-done finally bothered me enough that as of yesterday I've gone back to it.

I spent a day re-learning it -- figuring out how far I had gotten and going over what I've already done and notated. Again I'm reminded why I take SUCH detailed notes of my own choreography. I hear so many choreographers say they never write anything down, and honestly I think that's a huge mistake. Not only does your work not survive after you're gone, it's very possible that the work may be lost while you're still alive. Memory fails even before death becomes an issue. This piece would have been completely lost if I hadn't written it all down. Because it was so long ago, I remembered literally nothing except the abstract concept. Not one of the steps or sequences remained in my memory. I would have had to start completely from scratch and in a dance this emotionally (and practically) complex, you want as much of the work already done as possible and you really do not want to try to reconstruct the thing. You never think when you set a work aside for the day that you may not touch it again for nearly two years. Taking detailed notes allows for that possibility and is your safety net in case the possibility becomes a reality. (Also, having dated and detailed notes may be useful if there's ever a question of copyright at some point in the future...) But I digress.

I was surprised to find I had laid a darn good foundation. I've learned/absorbed a LOT about choreography and form in the past two years and half-expected this piece to look juvenile... but honestly I had set myself up really well. I had a handful of solid motifs for my pointe dancers and some pretty good character work done for everyone involved. Even the prop work didn't feel 'cheesy,' even though I hardly ever work with props and fully expected my lack of experience to be glaring. I choreographed the next thirty seconds of music in less than half an hour -- which is incredible for seven dancers, especially for someone who really hasn't choreographed ballet in two years.

As usual, I have no wrap-up for this post because the story's still being written, the dance is still being choreographed. But I am SO EXCITED for the choreography to come -- in this dance, in Nachmo 2018, and in the next year.

Dance and Trust

Remember a couple weeks ago when I was finishing my NaNoWriMo 2016 project and I came up against my inability to trust God with my life and it hampered my ability to finish the story because I'm spiritually not there yet?

Yeah, so, it happened again. For years I've been trying to choreograph this ballet piece -- since even before I lost my faith in God. I've worked on this thing in fits and starts. I've made a Pinterest board with pictures of costumes, poses, and corps formations. I've journaled eleven pages and counting of looseleaf. I've scrapped at least three versions.

This week I've been nibbling at it again and this is the farthest I've gotten on it. I tripled the amount of dancers and finally a storyline began to take shape. The individual steps aren't there yet, but the mood progression is there now, and that's half the battle sometimes.

That storyline follows a suicide survivor alone with her grief. Guilt, shame, frustration, and anger (personified by the other dancers) dog her every move, until finally she decides to trust God with the situation though she doesn't understand it.

Clearly this last phase is the part I'm sticking at. The part I have never gotten to -- the part where the protagonist trusts. And it's for the same reason I got stuck in the novel -- the character must trust God, but I have not. How can I believably take a character where even I emotionally fear to tread? My imagination can take me a lot of places I will never be in real life, but it balks when asked to picture what trusting God would be like. My experience with trusting God is equal to the experience of betrayal. You pray for a child's life to be spared. The child dies. How do you respond to that? How do you look at the God who let this happen and say, 'yes, I will still trust Your plan?'

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.)

If You Buy Different Pointe Shoes...

22 June 2016, 3.37am.

In the spirit of the If You Give A Mouse A Cookie books, I have written a fine piece of literature on what happens if the dance store is out of the pointe shoes you've been using for the past five years and you decide to buy a different, 'comparable' pair because you've already driven an hour in rush hour traffic to get to the store and feel it shouldn't be wasted.

If you buy different pointe shoes...
They will have those ridiculous elasticised drawstrings that are about as useful as an umbrella in a wildfire (the point of a drawstring is to pull something tight. The point of an elastic is to stretch. Am I the only one who sees the oxymoron here?).

If said pointe shoes have the aforementioned ridiculous elasticised drawstrings...
The shoes will slide off your heels with every single relevé, necessitating that you stop, pull the heels of your shoes back on, and continue -- until the next relevé, when you have to stop and pull the heels on again. (Consider that in your average minute-long warm-up exercise, you can have up to thirty-two relevés.)

If the shoes slide off your heels with every single relevé...
You can't break them in. (Think about it. How can you soften and manipulate the shanks of the shoes when they are not in contact with your foot because they're flopping around because the heel has slid off again?)

If you can't break them in...
You must find a way to break them in. This means doing anything possible to keep those stupid heels on your feet.

If you try to find a way to keep the heels on your feet...
Since the aforementioned ridiculous elasticised drawstrings are, as previously established, completely useless, you will try rosin inside the heel of the shoe.

If you try rosin...
It will do absolutely nothing because it turns out the heel of the shoe is not actually in contact with your foot, which is why it keeps sliding off in the first place.

If rosin does absolutely nothing...
You will tie the ribbons even tighter.

If you tie the ribbons even tighter...
Your ankles will bruise spectacularly. This will also severely exacerbate the ankle issues you have been having for five months and entirely remove your ability to plié.

If your ankles threaten to break under the tension...
You will try sewing elastic on the shoes.

If you try sewing elastic on the shoes...
You will, due to your busy schedule, end up writing an overdue letter, showering, and sewing the elastic on your shoes almost simultaneously at 2.30am when your pointe class is at 9.15am.

If you end up sewing elastics on pointe shoes at 2.30am...
You will inevitably stab your thumb with the needle and bleed all over the shiny new pointe shoes (which are only shiny and new after three weeks because you have been unable to break them in because the heel keeps sliding off so you can't actually manipulate the shanks with your feet...).

If you have to pause to wait for the bleeding to stop...
It gets even later.

If it gets even later...
You are now sewing pointe shoes at 3.30am with black spots floating in your vision and cursing everyone who has ever said that dance life is easy.

Moral of the story?

For dancers: If they don't have your size in your shoe, don't buy a new brand/style. Just go home and nurse the dead ones you already have for another week or two until they get your size in again. And next time, ask when you call to book the appointment if they have your shoe in your size because if not, you're not coming in. It's just not worth the hassle (and expense, and time) trying to find another shoe that fits right.

For non-dancers: Don't ever tell a dancer that their life is easy. If you do and they punch you in the face, don't say I didn't warn you.

The Law And Grace In Performing Art - Part I

I was six years old when I started dance classes. Legend has it that I begged my parents for classes for an entire year previous and they figured if I could spend a whole year talking about it, I must really want it. So they enrolled me in the only dance school they could find that didn't require them to work a bingo at any point.

I loved it. I spent five years there, and enjoyed every second of the first three. Even in the final two years I did enjoy it (or at least I thought I did), but by then my teacher's extremely negative attitude was starting to have an effect on me, even though I couldn't see it in myself. But my parents could, and they made the executive decision to pull me out (despite many tears and vehement protests on my part). It wasn't until years later that they began to hear about some of the cruel things that teacher did to us -- demanding perfection and knowledge without first showing us what we were expected to do, mocking students in front of the entire class if we did a technical thing wrong that we didn't even know about yet, straight up being mean or condescending, and she was the queen of favouritism to boot. For my entire final year in that school, she never once referred to me by name. She would have us do a centre exercise in two groups, and it would always be: "Ashley, Jessica, and Stephanie, Group One, the rest of you, Group Two." I was always 'the rest of you.' This same teacher also once told my parents straight up that I would fail the RAD exam. I passed that exam with my highest personal mark ever on an RAD exam -- and I've passed every RAD exam I've ever taken.

It was, in short, an extremely shame-based style of instruction. You were told only that you were doing it wrong, you weren't even told what you were doing wrong. You were expected to be perfect right off the bat and if you weren't, then you obviously weren't cut out to be a ballerina and you would spend the rest of your years at that school being ignored.

After that school, I took three years off. I wandered about aimlessly, looking for something else to do with my time. This was about the time that I began to really get into music (as a listener), but aside from that, nothing stuck. I took voice lessons, realised I was awful at singing, took some scrapbooking and paper art classes, realised I didn't have the patience for it, tried to develop friendships at our new church, realised that nobody there at the time gave a crap whether I was breathing or not. Finally I relinquished myself to the fact that I really just wanted to be dancing.

Although my mother was clearly taken aback by my revelation and I think was really hoping I would have left my childhood dream behind and joined the real world, she did seek out another dance school. This one was significantly farther away, but that didn't matter to me and so my parents decided they'd give it a try.

For the first four years or so, I said absolutely nothing in class and I expected nothing less than absolute perfection of myself. That was how I was trained at the first school -- shut up and do it perfectly. And I motivated myself with shame. My new teacher didn't provide any kind of mocking or sarcastic feedback, but by that time I was perfectly capable of providing it for myself... You're about a flexible as a two-by-four. You'll never do a grande battement like that and how do you expect to be any good if you can't be flexible? You can't even do a basic single pirouette and look at that -- all of the others can. They probably think you're stupid because you can't even land a single. You should have remembered that sequence. It's so easy. You didn't remember it because you're stupid. How can you call yourself a dancer? How stupid can you be to think that you can just come back to it? You're too old for this. You should be better than them and you're not. What's the point of even trying? You'll never be good enough. You're too stupid. You have no talent.

I think I started to open up a little when my new teacher commented off-hand that I was 'very musical.'

...Say what?

For the entire five years that I had been at that first school, my teacher had been saying things like, 'you're too fast,' 'you never listen to the music,' 'you have no rhythm,' 'you need to slow down.' I didn't know at the time exactly what she was getting at because she never explained it to me, but by the time my second teacher made that comment about me being musical, I knew that I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, 'musical.' I couldn't even read music. My sister could, but not me. I was too stupid.

It was slow going, and I wonder how much that second teacher knew about my first school -- if anything, since my parents didn't know a lot of it either -- and how much she might have despaired over the years that I would never stop berating myself. I wouldn't do it out loud, of course, because nobody needs to hear that, but I wouldn't be surprised if my self-hatred was plainly written on my face (and she is perceptive -- the other day she remarked (not asked, remarked) that I wasn't feeling well and it wasn't until she said that that I realised I was, in fact, feeling a bit out of it).

Anyway, even after that 'musical' comment, it wasn't an instant turnaround. In fact, I never really realised how patient she had been with me and how good it is to study under her until this past year, when I started thinking about what my life would have been like had I either stayed at that first school, or stayed away from dance entirely.

That second teacher, whether she knew it or not, had her work cut out for her when I walked in the studio door. And she spent upwards of the next five years patiently undoing the knot of self-loathing that I had been taught to weave and pull tight at that first school. She's never addressed it directly -- I don't even know how much if it she knows. But over years of gentle corrections -- not mocking lectures -- and the calm assurance that we'll 'get it yet, even if it isn't today' -- not 'that was horrendous. You're making me seasick. Do it again until it resembles something good' -- I began to actually enjoy myself again. I began to feel like I wasn't an embarrassment to dance and most of all I began to lose my crippling fear of being noticed by the teacher. In the first school, being noticed by the teacher, especially if you weren't one of her special favourites, was almost worse than being ignored -- it meant a long tirade mocking you for some minor thing that was merely an oversight and easily corrected (she literally went on a fifteen-minute tear one time because another girl had forgotten to straighten her knees. If she had simply said, "Make sure your knees are straight," that would have done the trick. But she made snide comments about it for fifteen minutes).

I probably don't have to tell you at this point that in five years at the second school, I made significantly more progress than I did in the same amount of time at the first school. My second teacher certainly didn't expect any less of us -- in fact, I had a hard time at first keeping up with the sheer amount of technique in her school because I wasn't used to it -- but we were allowed to make the occasional mistake. We were expected to improve, but not without the teacher demonstrating and explaining the correct way until we understood.

The difference was grace.

At the first school, we were expected to follow the letter of the law, instantly, without question, and without a single fault. At the second school, we were expected to adhere to the general 'laws' of ballet, but she understood that internalising the feel of it wasn't instant, and she gave us a(n) (often extremely lengthy) grace period within which to master it. And whenever she did correct our technique, it was gently, not with a harsh derisive smoker's laugh.

Unofficial Choreography Month - Day 10

Unofficial Choreography Month this year kind of snuck up on me. During finals at college (the second and third weeks of April) it was right at the front of my brain: Study for the next final, and then work on the choreography setlist. But then when I came back to Alberta, I forget about Unofficial Choreography Month completely. Until 11.30pm on 29 April when I suddenly realised I had no setlist and uttered a hearty and resounding "Oh crap!" Since the 30th was already booked almost solid, I didn't actually come up with a setlist until I made a rather rushed one in my head on the way to work on the morning of 1 May.

That setlist was as follows:
The Twist (live Daniel Amos version from 2011)
Come Away Reprise (Don Francisco)
Crushing Hand (Lost Dogs)

However, there was a bit of a wrinkle already. Usually, in the lead-in to a choreography month, I finish off any outstanding projects so I have a clean slate for the first of the month. But since I had completely forgotten about it, I was smack dab in the middle of a classical ballet for eleven and there was no way it was going to be done before May.

I'll tell you a little about it because I'm quite happy with how it turned out. See, the day after Loyd Boldman passed away, I was listening to Prodigal, partly in his honour/memory, and partly just because I wanted to. Specifically, I was listening to the song Neon.

Neon is more of a spoken word track than a song. Loyd's spoken vocals in the verses are a near whisper, layered lightly over a few simple keyboard measures that are repeated throughout the entire five-minute song. Then it soars up into a soft, almost ethereal chorus, a cry of the heart, genuine and yearning, with a fuzzed-out keyboard to keep things grounded. There are the sounds of urban traffic in the back of the mix, somewhere behind the vocal but weaving over and under the keyboards. And then at the end, it goes into this terrific drumming sequence -- one minute and forty five seconds' worth of hard strong steady drumming, enough time to let the listener really ponder what they've just heard.

Due to the sparse instrumentation, the spoken vocal, the subject matter, and the drumming bit at the end, this dance has 'modern ballet' written all over it. Which would be perfect, except that I pretty much loathe modern ballet -- as far as I'm concerned, if you're going to say you're doing ballet, do actual ballet, not just contemporary in pointe shoes. It looks awful and gives real ballet a terrible name. I have always wanted to choreograph Neon because the lyrics were so poetic and let's face it, the drumming section is the bomb, but I outright refuse to choreograph anything that could be taken as 'modern ballet.' If I'm choreographing ballet, I'm choreographing ballet, dang it, real ballet, that requires skill and heart and soul and sweat and strength and practice and is not just a contest to see how fast we can turn in/turn out one leg or the other.

So anyway, I'm listening to Neon and in my mind's eye I saw ballonnés. Hm... good. Anything else? Posé pirouettes. Well, that looks nice... then what? A rounde de jambe/coru section for the chorus... some corps-work for a group of nine in the second verse... and a wonderful moment of suspension just before the drumming kicks in. Within half an hour or so, possibly forty-five minutes, I had most of the dance figured out in my mind's eye. So I sketched it out on notepaper lest I forget the ideas and began notating. This is what I was still notating at the beginning of May. I spent the first full weekend finishing the notation of Neon, then I proceeded to choreograph the entire dance to Crushing Hand in basically twenty-four hours. Mind you, it was only a ballet for two, and the song itself is only two minutes long. But no matter -- it still counts as a dance done and for that I'm very grateful. It gives me quite a bit of time to work on Come Away (a ballet solo) and The Twist (ballet for two), and if I've got the time, I'd like to choreograph a fourth this month or maybe even bump it up to five.

Right now I have a few notes on Come Away, but I'm actively working on The Twist. It's over half-done. I have nearly the entire thing figured out in my head, it's just actually writing it and notating it that still need to be done. It's quite a task trying to get a bead on the characterisation for it though. What's the first dancer's mood? What are they trying to communicate? When does the tone change into a challenge? Is there still love mingled in with the implied challenge? What's the second dancer's reaction? How do I convey it? When does the mood change, and how abruptly? How can I convey it without relying too heavily on the lyric and without resorting to modern-dance-hyper-exaggerated-mime? What is the second character's mood here anyway? (The song is ambiguous in that it's never stated what the listener's reaction is, and I sort of want to keep it that way -- it makes people think if you don't spell out all the answers for them.)

I hope to get notating The Twist sometime tomorrow, maybe even finish it tomorrow or Monday. Then hopefully I can complete Come Away this week and then have some time left to write two or three more dances before the end of May.

Too Busy? Never...

Longtime readers may have wondered -- Is she still writing a novel in NaNoWriMo?

Heck yes! Well, planning on it anyway. For the first time in my writing life I actually had a playlist before I had the plot. (Despite the fact that I eat, sleep, and breathe music, usually the plot idea does actually come first. Barely.) This summer Daniel Amos released a 'Bonus Bonus Disc' to accompany the already double-disc ¡Alarma! re-release (because apparently the first bonus disc didn't have enough space, such is the sheer epic genius of this band), and it includes a lot of instrumental mixes (plus a heartbreaking vocal mix of As Long As I Live). Listening to all these instrumental mixes, I thought You know, this would make great writing music.

Great. So I had music, but I still didn't have a plot.

Then, while reading up on the history of ballet in Russia (I'm not this boring in real life, honest), I came upon a brief account of Nijinsky, how he had been the star of some bigshot Russian ballet company and then was dismissed while on tour in America because he (gasp!) got married. The director of the company pretty much made his life a living hell after that, and Nijinsky suffered a mental collapse before he even turned thirty.

The concept intrigued me, but I kept reading, on through the account of what happened to that company and all the others in Russia at the time. Then I set the book aside for a break, but my mind kept chewing on that idea -- of the director of a ballet company deliberately driving his former star to insanity out of sheer bitterness.

Within an hour and a half, I had a solid plot sketched out. Two days later I named the characters.

This will be interesting, as it's shaping up to be quite a dark book. I mean, I've written a book containing hallucinations and a rather violent murder (Reuben); a book that opens with a drug-overdose death and continues with the subject of drugs and drug addicts throughout the book -- to say nothing of the fact that one of the characters is, quite literally, in Hell (Chasm); and a book where a heinous plague is threatening to wipe out an entire world (Rebecca's World). Aside from the aforementioned murder, I've written at least three other death scenes in my novels over the years. But this one looks like it will not only contain murder and a stalker and one man actively trying to drive another insane, the story goes that the ex-star and his nine-year-old son live out of dingy motels, mostly working in sleazy bars just for food. It's all here, people -- drugs, murder, crime, cheap women, booze... the whole bit. Kill or be killed.

Then the kid discovers that his mother's death years before was actually murder. Not long after that, he's kidnapped and while in captivity he develops a fierce determination to avenge his mother's death -- even if it means taking out the director of a world-renowned dance company.

A Happy Check-In

So I got 80% on my book report. 96% on the music theory quiz.

We're starting on our Christmas music in choir this week.

Got two packages in the mail today. Both packages had food. One had a Crumbächer CD (Escape From The Fallen Planet) and a ballet syllabus music CD.

Spent most of the day with Vector's Dance in my head.

And I have ballet class tomorrow.

The only bad thing about this day was that I didn't get to work on choreography because I have a 1200-word paper due on Thursday.

Building Puzzles

Note: This was actually written a couple of weeks ago, however, the stress of packing and moving (as referred to in the post) zapped my energy to finish and publish this until just before the Internet went down for four days. As I write this note, I am actually at the college and have just began classes. Therefore the timeline in this post is a little bit out of whack (when I say 'right now,' it now actually means like two weeks ago), but the general informational idea (such as it is) is still the same.

So after that post talking about that little detour (or, more accurately, hairpin-sharp left turn) into the college thing, you faithful readers may or may not have wondered, 'Will she still do choreography?' (Okay, I know you probably didn't care, but humour me.)

As of right now, yes. Actually, I'm kind of choreographing like a mad woman. Having never been in a public school setting I have no clue what to expect from college. I hear people griping about the workload -- assignments and essays and homework and things -- but I don't know how much truth there is to that, or if they're all just being public-school whiners (crap. I said that out loud, didn't I?). As a result, I'm not sure how much spare time -- if any -- I'm going to have for personal pursuits such as choreography, so I'm trying to cram in as much as I can now, just in case. On paper, my course load this semester seems not bad (three classes Mondays and Wednesdays and two on Tuesdays and Thursdays), but who knows how much outside studying there'll be...

I've talked before about my experience with emotion being good for creativity (whether it's quality creativity remains to be seen). So having to leave my beloved dance school and now psyching myself up to saying goodbye to my friends and family here in two weeks and then moving -- something I've never done before in my life -- out of province is sparking a lot of creativity. Since the beginning of June I've choreographed (fully notated) Changeless, Sanctuary, and Daniel Amos' lovely Beautiful One (that last one only took 28 hours from initial idea to full notation), plus I've also sketched out a lot of other stuff and it's all quite good (in comparison to everything else I've done so far).

Following that I was working on a White Heart song (hey, DA and White Heart make good nuanced music, okay?) called Heaven Of My Heart. It's off to a slow start, though... I know sort of the feel I want for it, but the specific steps to accomplish said vision are so far eluding me, so I've been flipping back and forth between a few other songs... notably White Heart's Silhouette, John Michael Talbot's The Birth Of Jesus, and Terry Scott Taylor's Dancing On Light (words cannot explain how much I love this song). I have a lot of good ideas for all of them, but for some reason I don't want to commit to one... probably because I had committed to Heaven Of My Heart and it's not going anywhere. I hate leaving choreography half-finished (Montana Sky still haunts me).

However...

The other day while listening to the ShufflePod, David Meece's heavenly symphony God's Promises/Rainbows In The Night came through (followed immediately by the Swirling Eddies. I love my iPod). This is a gorgeous song, and it has ballet written all over it. I always knew I would do it someday, but 'someday' would come when I had really refined my ability to choreograph a smooth, flowing dance and aesthetically pleasing formations. This is a phenomenal majestic song and as a choreographer I cannot give it anything less than the best that ballet has to offer. I knew if I were to do it at that point, I couldn't even do the song justice, and even mere 'justice' is not good enough for something so sweeping and marvelous. I wasn't yet ready for a project of this caliber -- it would be six and a half minutes of grand, majestic, and very precise classical ballet for twelve people.

Last time I even thought of this song was probably in the spring sometime. I hadn't heard it in a long while (it's a crime to forget this song, and yet I keep doing it). Since then, things have changed -- I've had the opportunity to take a couple of ballet classes in the next level up than I was in, and it's one of those 'big jump' levels... you go from floating and gentle ballet to quick, precise and expressive ballet. I've noticed choreography coming far easier and far more quickly than before I took that class, plus my dancing is way more interesting now. I have a lot more technique to draw on thanks to that class.

Also, in the past week and a half or so I've been watching pretty much every classical ballet video that exists on YouTube. All the classic ballets (Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, I even saw some Alice In Wonderland...), and quite a few rehearsals, plus a bunch of Balanchine's stuff (despite having spent most of my life in the ballet community and having heard he was such a great choreographer, I've never actually seen his work).

You know how it works -- the more you watch something or listen to something, the more it sinks into the fabric of your being. Watching literally hours and hours and hours of rehearsing and excerpts of great ballets has packed my head so full of ballet stuff: intricate footwork, quick and complex movements, strings of impressive extensions, turns, and jumps without a break. (If you only watch one ballet excerpt in your entire life, watch this one... you will never fully understand how amazing this is if you've never been on pointe, but even to the untrained eye this is no doubt impressive.)

As a result of all the learning, the other day when that David Meece song came through, I began to wonder if maybe now I was ready.

So I'm seriously sketching it out now -- not officially notating, but coming up with pieces and fitting them together. It really is like building a puzzle, only you also have to create the pieces first. I did this with Sanctuary, with fantastic results -- Sanctuary is freaking gorgeous. The ending alone could stand as my best work (so far). Of course, by the time I finished I was ready to shred my sketch pages (my cross-references had cross-references which cross-referenced back for two lines of information before another cross-reference sent me off on another quest for a different page. The ending may have turned out spectacular, but sketching that first and then filling everything else in later on the following pages was insanity), but at least the final product was worth it. Because it worked so well with Sanctuary, I used the same approach with Beautiful One -- essentially choreographing the entire thing in my head and outlining it in English notes, then just transcribing it into BMN. I can pretty much guarantee that was how I managed to create the dance for Beautiful One from scratch so quickly.

Sorry, kind of a ramble... but as I'm writing I'm realising I think I found my creative rhythm!

Anyway, I haven't totally committed to God's Promises/Rainbows In The Night yet, but it's much closer to what I envisioned than it was a month ago... I seriously thought it would be years and years, and it's kind of surreal to think that maybe it's not that far off. I'm excited, anyway.

Music Day

I've been listening to this song for a week. In a week where the radical shifts forthcoming in my life are threatening to strangle me, this song has been comforting me in a way not much else is. The other night I fell asleep repeating that word to myself -- Changeless, changeless... It was the only glimmer of anything I could focus on that didn't try to crush me with the pain of knowing I might never dance ballet again. My Father in Heaven, who holds my life in His hand, is changeless.

Title: Changeless
Artist: Terry Scott Taylor
Album: A Briefing For The Ascent
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.