Dancing Next to a Dumpster
As per the title of my last piece “I not a poet…here is a poem”( amazing title- I know) Actually, I am a poet/writer, or at least that is what I have decided for now. This is cool because I was having a minor identity crisis- although I think we are never one thing but can be a bunch of different things. I have been and still am a bunch of different things- aerialist, pianist, writer, student, activist, daughter, coffee addict, dancer?????? and most recently poet. Something about writer, poet feels right- like authentic and happy.
Something I have come to lose when I try to tell myself I am a dancer. This was the minor crisis I have been having this whole year. I say I’m a dancer and I feel fake. Because I was faking it, and I knew it. Maybe it’s imposter syndrome, maybe it was a yearning for that moment in dance where your body overrides your mind and you enter some incredible state where you don’t care what your body is doing and it isn’t a loss of control- its a surrender to all the parts of yourself you had kept locked away. But those moments are rare- especially these days. Dance is hard.
It doesn’t come easy- not just physically- although that is another paper/ multi-volume novel series on its own- it is also mentally straining. Literally you are trying so hard to quiet your intrusive and loud thoughts that tell you your boobs are jiggling or your posture is hunching and wait! Stop! Hesitate! It is a fight against this internalized glitching that makes your body sieze up, hold itself back and you want to keep carrying yourself forward but you don’t trust your own body. Seriously the idea that dancers don’t think- that art and performing is somehow lesser than a codified hardened academic discipline is some bullshit. At least there you can live in your mind- ignore your body. Here we have to listen to every pain, every creaky joint, every ligament, all of it sometimes loud and sometimes buried. The focus required to give yourself away to your human body is something of incredible strength. And honestly, it is tiring. And like me, you can fake it, keep up with the steps- follow a map you pre-set for your moment of ‘improvisation’, knowing you are faking it because you just can’t put in the mental energy to actually trust yourself. I haven’t danced at all during this last year.
I haven’t danced because I was afraid what could possibly be unleashed from all the things I have contained within myself. The times I held back from what my body wanted-when I didn’t cry, didn’t assert myself, masked my pain in humor and sarcasm instead of confrontation and sorrow. But there is a duality- it is also concealing and holding back the times I wanted to embrace my friends, when my heart was overflowing with a love of the world and I clogged it. When my body wanted to run and fly and feel every air molecule and let every sound seep through my ears and out my skin as chills. But I held back against my will. Because it is really Will Power that dancers have in pushing themselves forward in their bodies and in their minds. Finding the will to trust ones limbs over ones brain.
And it doesn’t have to only be in dance. If anyone has watched the animated film ‘Soul’ — which is literally so cute omg go watch it if you haven’t. In the movie- it follows a jazz musician who briefly dies before the opportunity of a lifetime to really ‘make it’ and leave his job as a middle school band teacher to become the incredible famous musician that his work deserved. While he is pretty much dead in the hospital, he makes it to the ‘other side’. As he explores the in-between of life and death he comes to a space that is literally called ‘the Zone’. There, he can see his human body vibing up in ‘The Zone’ while he was improvising on the piano.( Improvisation could also be its own piece- literally there is so much interesting politics and philosophy about it) BUT wowie they made a fictional space in that movie where anyone who had really passed all their self-conscience barriers and surrendered their bodies to a brief moment of freedom- made it to ‘The Zone’. In that movie at least, it wasn’t those who were hunching stiffly over their computers who were the ones that were in the zone- like I am now *laughs drying*. The zone is happy- it’s free, we all want to be there. It was the part of dance I liked- it was the override that allowed your body to express all the good and lovable things- that didn’t hold back.
If you do not dance or play music or have an artsy fartsy freeing practice this movie is the best parallel I can offer. But I feel like we need something else that is not the zone but like a terrifying and uncontrollable releasing station???//// like maybe in a parking lot outside of the zone that is completely empty and there is a nearby dumpster to let go of the more uncomfortable moments our bodies have held onto? I also think it’s worth noting the amount of internalized self-policing that needs to be excreted in this dumpster.
Not to be that bitch, but it’s gendered. Yes I go to liberal arts school. But also I am A wOmAN girl lady who- even if no one is around still crosses her legs and checks her mascara- WHY you ask. Because that shit is internalized. I don’t want to go into a whole foucauldian Panopticon explanation but if you know, you know. If you don’t know- you are also me because I am always that person in class who secretly has no idea what is going on. But essentially we are performing our genders -even men who feel the need to perform toxic masculinity for the validation of other men(ew). Really this is damaging for everyone however, being the feminist I am I want to bring it back to woman’s bodies in dance.
Bodies that have been objectified, perfected, idolized, deemed submissive, docile, rapable. I recently was reading about how in Edward Degas’s paintings- the french dude who did all the oil paintings of ballerinas- has a dark and secret history. Look closer and you will see the lurking shadows and silhouettes of men watching in the wings. Men using those same dancers as prostitutes. The same dancers one moment glorified on stage debased behind the curtains. This is the hidden part of dance history that we don’t want to talk about. It is also the hidden parts of being a dancer and a performer that are difficult to confront. Because all this obviously goes to our heads- being an object, being an ideal body, trying to filter the male gaze, while also juggling a fear of being harassed. And a fear of what might happen… if we let ourselves go — truly. To be unafraid to take up space.
What would happen if I weren’t so on guard- didn’t hold my body close, didn’t shrink. It looms over me and I can’t get to ‘the Zone’- I can’t even get to the parking lot to throw this shit out. Remember we need our minds to shut the f*ck up to let ourselves trust our bodies, to delve into it, move forward.
Over a year ago, I had my dance clothes on- black leggings, like three different sport bras under my baggy shirt. In the studio, surrounded by the sweaty bodies of people I love who were giving their all. I gave half- now it’s less. It sucks and it’s exhausting and I have a million excuses why I shouldn’t dance. But really we need this practice of dance. Because it is a claiming and ownership and renewed trust in ourselves. We are not hollow muscular dolls to only mechanically complete the steps. We are powerful fleshy vessels of profound unfiltered feeling. Unleashing from the containers built for us that keeps us locked in roles and stereotypes that bodies didn’t choose but our loud insisting brains are telling us to enforce.
Anyways, — this was a lot, and maybe this made no sense to you- it really started as a rant I had about why I am not dancing-(especially in an improvised sense) and although identifying myself as a dancer might not fill me up with the same warmth anymore as being a writer currently does- really we should dance. For our bodies- for our minds. So go somewhere quiet where no one is around, go dance in an empty parking lot next to dumpster. Somewhere you can be completely unsupervised not only by the world, but also by yourself- and maybe you’ll find something to throw away- or maybe you’ll find ‘the Zone’. Or maybe you’ll be like me and just think and write about it instead…who knows.