Misnomer

My mind today has been thinking about dance performances and how to make them even more modern. The modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller is an inspiration to me for really stretching the capabilities of the dance. She explored with stage lighting and ways to make the experience for the audience even more exhilarating. She was originally a skirt dancer on the Vaudeville stage. She further expounded upon that basis by lengthening her skirts and incorporating colored lights. This video is one example of her work in her piece "Danse Serpentine."

I love her story of becoming friends with Marie Curie and asking to use radioactive materials because she wanted to glow on stage. While we now know of much smarter ways to do this, look at how she pushed dance so much further. She explored with the best technology of her day, received great inspiration, and made many innovations in the field of stage lighting. 

Our technology today is so much more advanced! Take a second and imagine the possibilities of mixing concert dance with the technical capabilities we have today. I would love to explore that very concept further through my life! Below is just one possibility. An animator filmed a dance performed by two BYU students and created an amazingly unique and beautiful experience for viewers. 

Likewise, Chris Elam of the dance company Misnomer performed at a TED event and then gave a little speech about how audience interaction can become a larger part of the whole performance experience. 

There is so much possible in this realm of dance. What other ideas can you think of?

Aerial Dance

After my post on Cirque Du Soleil yesterday, aerial dance has definitely been on my mind. I wanted to share a video which I have probably rewatched about 100 times over the past year. It is an aerial dancer from London who talks what it is like flying through the air and what struggles she has had to pass through which have led her to the point she is at now. 

One of the most inspiring details about this video is the part where she talks about how she studied English and philosophy at a university and after that she decided she really wanted to dance. She trained for a year and she's been working and dancing ever since. 

That story is immensely inspiring to me because I feel like that will be my story as well. I just want to dance, so I will be demonstrating courage to not stick with my original plan of medical school and I will be going with the field where I really feel alive. It is funny how much courage something as simple as that takes. I have no clue where I will end up. But there is beauty and passion in that unknown/anything is possible state of being. That is what I live for right now. 

Here are some links to more of Vanessa Cook and other aerial artists:

The Group "Gravity & Levity"

Push

Professional Experience Page

Mystere by Cirque Du Soleil

This is a true story about pretty much the best weekend of my entire life; the weekend I first got to see Cirque Du Soleil.

So it all started when, on the spur of a moment and at the push of a great groupon deal, a friend and I decided to go to Las Vegas, Nevada (not Las Vegas, New Mexico... did you know that that city even existed? Neither does most of the world!). It was a one-and-a-half day long trip and we spent most of it walking up then down the strip. Can you believe that they put whole malls with a hotel? And have dancing fountain shows and nightly volcanic eruptions? And an entire aquarium inside a hotel? Being there blew my entire mind!

But nothing compared to the Cirque Du Soleil show, Mystere, that we got to see! I think nothing in the world can completely compare to getting to be a part of that entire experience. With the hilarious clowns who swapped out couples, stole and dumped popcorn on the viewers, and picked a "papa" from audience to help out an adult size baby I was laughing harder than I have in months. From the intense drumming-from-the-sky introduction to the giant snail finale, they introduced me into a world that I have never before visited. When they dropped me off at the end of the show, I was left wanting so much more. It is difficult for words to describe being lifted into another state of being, but this is what the performers allowed me to do.

Acts included an aerial silk piece, trapeze flying, strong men balancing, trampoline jumping, aerial cube, bungee, and Chinese poles, among other unforgettable performances. Something about these performers made my right brain go wild with an immense amount of glee. They were able to move in ways that I've never before imagined possible for a human being. They taught me so much about how very hard work can lead to intense amounts of beauty. They made me wish to leave everything I know in life so that I can make their Neverland a daily lifestyle for me. I just may become an acrobat yet.

One thing I do know for sure, to feel alive I need movement and performance. If I were to give that up, I'd have choked off a huge part of my soul.

Inspiration

We all need a little inspiration sometimes! It is what helps us believe in our dreams in the first place and is what helps us remember why we do what we do when the going gets rough. Here is a place I'll use to collect videos and quotes that inspire me on those hard days. Hopefully it will help someone else as well.

Diana David: Have the Balls to Follow Your Dreams

She describes her journey from being a mechanical engineer because her family wanted it to becoming a mover, a clown, and a contact juggler. In explaining her story it becomes so clear how important following one's actual dream is to living a happy, fulfilling life. 

Nelson Mandela:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Louis Zamperini in his book Devil At My Heels

"All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices. Your dreams won't always come true, but you'll never know if you don't try. Either way, you will always discover so much of value along the way because you'll always run into problems-- or as I call them, challenges." 

M. Russell Ballard

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”

Martha Graham

"There is a vitality, a life-force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you."

The Beginning

This is a blog about dance. It is a personal journey and an exploration for me. I've recently decided I want to make dance a big part of my life. I don't know where it will take me. I don't know the struggles I may pass through. But I am excited to embark on this journey. This blog will be a place where I can place my findings, experiences, struggles, et cetera to help me remember why I dance and to maybe inspire someone to follow his or her dream as well. I will start by telling my story of why I dance.

I've always loved dance. I took my first ballet class when I was about 6 years old. Even at such an early age, I was such a motivated individual. My mom told me that I even went around doing extra jobs around the house to help pay for them. I didn't stick with ballet for too long mostly because my family was pretty religious and didn't like that the recitals tended to be on Sundays. I always loved dance, but after that experience, I didn't think it was for me or rather I wanted it to be for me but I figured it was already too late. I always regretted stopping and if I could go back I would have kept on doing it. The first dance related thing I got back into was when I was in the colorguard in the marching band in high school. I did that for all four years of high school. I loved doing that! I loved getting to dance with and without equipment (which included flags, sabres, rifles, et cetera). I was really good at it too-- I had solos, duets, trios, etc and I loved the whole performance feeling--the exhaustion, the beauty, the feeling of finally being able to perform in front of people who appreciated music and the arts.

That is one huge part of me. Another big part of me is my intellectual side. I was a little bit crazy with that in high school as well. I took basically every AP class I could fit into my schedule-- some of them being AP Literature and Composition, AP Language and Composition, AP World History, AP European History, AP Art History, AP Calculus, AP Calculus Based Physics, AP US Government, AP Macroeconomics, et cetera. Likewise, I took quite a few dual enrollment classes (college work when you're a high school student). Basically I entered college with somewhere around 40 credits already done. I would say I'm pretty smart, and because of that side of me, I thought that it was necessary for me to go into something that uses that, so according to that plan, I began my major (Biology) with the intention of heading toward medical school after my bachelor work.

However, the side of me which absolutely loves dance was super happy that I had the liberty in college to choose my classes. I chose my minor as dance so that I could take my dance classes and it would all still "count" for something for me. I have loved absolutely every dance class I've taken--technique, classroom, et cetera. Little by little I've been realizing that it is dance that gives quality to my life and that is the moments for me that make everything else I have had to do worthwhile. I have especially appreciated all of the dance performances we're required to go to in many courses in the dance program. There are always the pieces that really speak to me and make me feel like "I could do that!" --I guess it could be explained as moments when my soul is really connected to what I'm seeing and I want to be a part of it more than anything else. One such piece was Aaron Hooper's "Uwieziony." At the time I was in one of Mary Anne's modern dance classes and I wrote about his piece for a certain paper we had to turn in. She said that it was amazing and that I should share what I did with Aaron. I did that. Several semesters later, Aaron put up signs around the dance building that he needed dancers for his senior dance honors thesis (Phalanx). I got into that and that was the first pure dance performance I've been in and I can't describe how amazing that whole process was for me. Every time we got out of a rehearsal I was feeling a sense of euphoria! After the dance project was done, he told me that he knew he had to have my energy and passion in one of his pieces and he was glad that it was in that one.

The dance/creative and the intellectual are two important sides to me. A third is my religious side. I'm a Mormon. After the aforementioned semester, I took an 18 month leave of absence from UNM to serve a religious mission which I just returned from in December 2013. It is interesting how much you learn about yourself when you leave everything behind and are thinking about others 24/7. One such thing I learned is how much I longed to dance. I never feel that urging/longing to be a doctor. (It is funny because for me, becoming a doctor actually feels like the path of least resistance. I know I could do it and I would be good at it). As I was on my mission, there were times when we would be driving down the street and I'd see people in a certain arrangement at a street corner and something would spark in my head and I'd start choreographing how I would play out that scene. There even have been a few times that I have been lucky enough to have dance dreams.

So that kind of brings me to where I am now. The internal battle I've had for years on going the medical route vs. the dance route is still playing out. On different days one pulls stronger than the other. But conclusion I've been coming to over the past few months is that I feel like I want to dance so badly, so I think I need to go down that route. The part is that it is scary and I don't know that I would succeed. It is kind of scary when your body is your canvass so the way others view your art is also the way they view you. It is scary because I haven't been dancing for the past 18 months that I was gone and, beyond that, that I didn't start when I was 3 (like many other people in this field). For me it definitely isn't the path of least resistance. I don't care about money, but I would need the hope that I could eventually succeed. So I've been trying to research what others have done and brainstorm potential paths I could take in the dance field.

One such inspirational story to me is that of Donna, the director of the dance program at UNM. She, like me, didn't start dancing when she was super young. She took her first dance when she was in college, at 23 years of age. She graduated with a BA in History because she was convinced she wanted to be a high school teacher. But she realized that as she was teaching, her mind would constantly wander to dance. She said that she finally took the risk, stopped teaching high school, and put everything she had in trying to be a dancer. She said, "I was in Boston at the time, teaching in a junior high school, and I couldn't stop thinking about dance and choreography, so I quite my job, took dance classes five days a week, waited tables at night, and told myself I would give myself one year of classes and then audition for companies, and if I were taken into a company, then I would continue to dance."

I'm a very logical thinker and I try to think of what path would even be possible for me to walk down. So far, that seems like the most promising path for me and the path I'm currently considering... to continue to work out basically daily -- cardio, strength, and flexibility -- until I graduate this coming December. Then I will probably do something similar to Donna-- take as many dance classes as I can and audition for dance companies.

They say that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. That is what I want to do with dance. There is a chance I may completely fail. But I believe the price to pay will be well worth the sheer exhilaration possible in this field.