The Magic of Controlled Chaos

Magic spaces appear everywhere when your mind's eyes are open.

Here is the 6th attempt at answering my own question in the dance writing bonanza. And if you're in Delaware and you're looking to see dance in March (some of it made by my own two feet), scroll all the way down to the University of Delaware Dance Concert information. 

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 6: CONTROLLED CHAOS
How do other aspects of your life filter into the way you experience dance?

I am a writer.
Dancing speaks to the writer in me, the storyteller who knows dream-logic is true. Dancing is real-time and dream-time blended. Movement tells me what I need to know and withholds what I don't. It's my timeline (movement moves forward in time and space) where I can revel in timelessness.

I am quiet.
When I dance, wordlessness is welcome. Allowing my thoughts and emotions to travel through my vocal chords and out into the world is, to put it mildly, difficult for me. It doesn't happen often in real time (i.e. during a conversation with fellow human beings). When someone asks "How do you feel?" I can legitimately say, "I don't know." Yes, I'm working on it. But in the meantime, dancing puts me in direct touch with emotion--letting it out, letting it in, letting it rage or fester or swoon or mope. Moving actually shakes everything up and helps me process, cope. Afterwards, I'm able to move on to the next moment, the next emotion. It's like going for a walk or a run when you need to make a decision, only I'm rolling around on the floor and hanging upside down.

But I am bossy. 
Dancing satiates and kick-starts my intense needs for both control and chaos. I can hold control and chaos in the same movement phrase. I walk a line between spontaneity and set action. I can loose control and steal it back again. I can be bossy and set things in motion and then enjoy what happens inevitably or unexpectedly. I like setting people in motion. I can feel both masterful and like an absolute beginner in the same breath. Dancing feeds my ego and then bats it down to the floor like a stinky dog toy. I identify as a dancer and always will. However, I'm moving off the dance floor and into the role of the old lady who sits in a chair and commands the action. I like that role. I think I was born to play it. As I get the heck out of the way, I take my own physicality out of the picture. I can play choreographer and director. The piece I am making right now has very little of my own innate movement in it and that's a good thing. The work can become it's own thing instead of a forced reflection of me. I'm giving it away, I'm trusting my dancers. And they step in and stun me with their brave choices and embodied commitment.

I am a teacher.
I like passing dance down. I like sharing it with total beginners. I love being a student's first introduction to physical freedom. It's eye-opening. It's bliss: "Here, look. This is who we can be in our bodies." It's magic to observe how the room becomes charged. We walk in at first afraid. A dusty floor. It's hot or cold or just right. We are in sweats and zippies and socks. We don't talk or just laugh, nervously. I take attendance. We stand up. We can't settle. We close our eyes. We are embarrassed. We breathe. We move. And then we are made new. Everyone is through the wormhole and into the gleaming everything. This is it. As silly as it sounds, it's a soul trek, an awakening, a "yes I am part of this world fully right now." When I see that dawn in the face of an eight-year-old or a college kid or a sixty-five-year-old curiosity seeker, I am whole.

I am along for the ride.
How do we start? How do we let people in (both the movers and the moved?). That space-clearing first action is so important and there are infinite ways to do it. A handshake. A sage cleanse. Eyes closed and breathing. Turing the lights out. Settling people down and down and in and in. The incomparable choreographer Tere O'Connor considers this moment a deep and profound shift in perspective. How do you create that crucial, initial transformation, that trust? He probably grinned as he told his dancers, "magic space, people." It's a simple vote of confidence, a waving of the wand, an "all aboard!"

I am always a student.
Leave the everyday. Embrace falling. Reach out. Trust the space. One step leads to another (oh yeah, I remember).


In Delaware? Check out my latest work...
University of Delaware Dance Concert, Perpetual Artistry  
Friday March 13th and Saturday March 14th @ 7:30 
Mitchell Hall (South College Ave and The Green)
Newark, DE
$10 adults / $5 students
Info:  Call 302.831.3311 or email kschroed@udel.edu

Legs! Know How to Use Them!

springing off the edge of the earth

Presenting the next installment of the dance writing bonanza...

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 5:  LEGS! KNOW HOW TO USE THEM!
Get nerdy. What is the function of the leg joints? How does ease and efficiency of movement help you dance?


plié

to bend, to fold
easy springing
bouncing like a baby swing
fat, happy feet
barely boinging off the floor
a trampoline effect
catch and release

an intimate and simultaneous connection to earth and sky

simple support
locomotion, shock absorption
a spring in your step
legs hold us up
and deserve sympathy
respect, kindness
receptivity and resilience

the beginning of a step, a jump, a leap
the base of a laugh

the reverse antennae for trembling in the earth

receive information
gracefully
from your roots
and let it travel unfettered
to your hips, your head

it's your rhythm
the legs you stand on
it's dip, sway and swing
a brand new thing
with every step

Doubt Rears its Heady Head, Volume 4 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Finding my way while losing it or losing my way while finding it?

Number 4 in the dance writing bonanza series.

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 4:  DOUBT REARS ITS HEADY HEAD 
OR:  THE QUESTION SPIRAL
What questions and challenges are you currently encountering? 

I was fresh off a triumphant feeling of wholeness. I was centered, if not in body, at least on the page. I spent all morning yesterday writing about when and why I feel centered. I wrote about how I make it happen. I felt confident, a rare gem in my self-tripping emotional arsenal.

And then I sat down to answer my next question. It happened to be about questions themselves: "What questions and challenges are you currently encountering?" 

And all hell broke lose in my brain. Resistance. Panic. Anger. Who would ask such an exposing, soul-peeling question. Why am I taking this so terribly (and being such a baby)?

When I originally posed this question to my students, I meant it in the context of taking a dance class. I wanted them to share what confused them in class--techniques, concepts, knowing Right from Left. "My hamstrings feel tight when I hang over my legs...what can I do?" "When we perform in class, I feel silly. Does that change?" "What is Modern Dance and why would I sign up for it?"

Okay, I realize I am asking for exposure. Vulnerability. And I see when I pose the question to myself, I take it personally. This question raises my hackles. I want to skip it. Who's going to care if I erase this one little question? Me. Alright. But why would I ask this? It feels like a personal assault. That's extreme, but I feel exposed (just like my beginners do when I ask them to open their arms and their hearts). I want to smooth over this ultra-open wounded feeling with a light, pithy answer that doesn't scratch the surface. But I know I'm going in. I don't know where it's going to go. Here we go.

(Side note. I originally asked my students to answer these questions with a meaty paragraph or two and no more. It was a way to quickly capture their thoughts and reactions and gauge how the class was landing in their brains. Somehow, though, when I sit to answer these questions myself, they hit emotional sweet spots (and sore spots) and the answers have become long diatribes of delirious discourse. So be it. Hey, Queen of Distractions and Sidebars...come on back to the task.)

This question cuts to my core--my balanced, enlightened, groovy core that was so light and bubbly only yesterday. When I begin to answer this question, I don't think of my technique-laden dance answers. I take it as an affront to the way I live my life. I see and feel all the blocks that keep me from being fully myself. My blocked creativity, my procrastination, my collection of degrees sitting idly, the work I do that I could do better, the feeling that I'm not good enough, the judgement of myself that I feel so strongly that I superimpose it onto the way other people look at me. Oh, those challenges. The "how do I make it through the day with something to say" challenge.

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnnit..." confirms Stuart Smalley of Saturday Night Live yesteryear. I would say that for most of the time, I'm on board with this. I'm more on board with "good enough" than I've been in several years. But there are triggers, questions that cut, things that make me question the status quo. Doubt rears its ugly head and change is certainly, constantly, on the horizon.

When I first tackled (avoided) this question, I wrote down a list of other questions in my notebook. I never answered the original query. I just evaded it with more questions. I think that list boils down to two essential questions for me:

Why can't I get started? What is holding me back?

I have so much I want to do. I can feel my potential bursting at the seams. I keep it down. I keep it humble. I downplay myself. I have so much I want to do, I can't do any of it. It's too important. It's the BEST DANCE IN THE WORLD syndrome. THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL syndrome.

For the past few years, I essentially stopped rehearsing. I didn't bounce many ideas off anyone. I called myself a dancer but I didn't dance. I called myself a writer who wanted to write. I was waiting for something...a lightning bolt, an invitation, a cushy supportive artsy job...I don't know. I was waiting for an external fire starter. I didn't have the juice or the balls or the hutzpah to just begin. I felt "underwater" or "behind myself"or "perpetually wearing old glasses with an outdated prescription." I watched the world move without me. I couldn't write about movement if I was still. I was sad. I was underground. All the while, I blamed the world for holding me back and not giving me a chance. When I finally turned off the music and the podcasts and the TV and the running water I noticed that it was my own vice grip on myself that held me back. I fell into the classic artistic trap..."If I don't share anything with the world, it won't judge me." The unfinished work in my head remained pristine, unchallenged and showstoppingly awesome. MacArthur Genius Grant good. And invisible.

For years, untouched artwork laid inert in my ratting brain, sometimes boing-ing into my consciousness as "AUGHHHHHH!!! I never did that!" And then I'd go buy groceries or make soup. All good things. But it wasn't words on a page. It wasn't finishing my half-finished dance film. It certainly wasn't getting anything off the ground. My heart pounded silently and only I heard the call. I changed the channel.

But I knew I needed to write. I knew if I got that started, it would unlock so much.

And hey, I wasn't a slug. "Check the records. I did some stuff," retorts Bill Murray in Scrooged. I taught, I performed, I choreographed. I dusted off my leg warmers. Again, all good things, things I love. But it wasn't work for me. It wasn't the work that rumbles right under my skin.

Last year, I laid some groundwork. I connected with friends and family and fellow creators. I read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and it shook me to the core. It woke me up. It sparked a writing practice however irregular. It taught me to get the contents out of my head while my inner critic is out to lunch. I read Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon and agreed with every word. But I have yet to really show anything.

So the writing books keep coming, like beacons, like life rafts, like reminders to !?$#@$ WRITE. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is underway. I've decided the embark on her 12-week creative recovery program officially on March 1st. I'll let you know how it goes.

I am calling out to the world again. I am saying what I mean. I am doing the work again. I am awake if only for this moment. 

I know what was holding me back was me. I know that anything that still holds me back is me. I know I've opened the door enough to sneak through and keep running my pen along the page and see where it goes. I know I need to tell you I'm writing. I know I need to write.

I don't know if I've answered the original question. I don't know if that matters. What matters is that I'm here writing now, I'm practicing.

That's what this is, just practice. A friend asked me what I'm doing with grinbearmove. What is it? It's just practice. I'm writing about movement, however that comes. I'm opening myself up to the process.

Is that what you asked for, Teach? Next question.

Center of Your Universe, Volume 3 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Your gut knows more than you give it credit for...

Hello! The dance writing bonanza continues...

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's 
VOLUME 3:  CENTER OF YOUR UNIVERSE
What is center? What does it mean to feel centered? Have you ever felt this way? What centers you? What brings you back to a feeling of home base? 

A plumb line down the middle. That's your center line. The intersection of imaginary dotted, yellow lines that criss-cross and dissect you...that might be a center of sorts. Center is heart, but also the belly. It's hard to choose between the two. Some days center is deep down in the bowl of your pelvis, driving the ship. Gut reactions emanate from your center, the middle of your personal starfish. You might think of it as moving through the molten, viscous layers--lava, magma, mantle, more, less--to the core. All the dots connect to the center. It's where we store our heat, a starting place.

Ideally, it's the awake hub of connection. It's how you stem forth. Creativity lies in store at the core. Impulse, a shifting of weight. It's deep, man.

But often we think of center as superficial. We think abs. We think muscles and six packs and simple-minded strength. It might be "fitness" or "fashion." It might be our self-inflicted judgement of our core. When we're operating on the surface layers of our body, of our emotions, we can't imagine our center as intelligence. Nevertheless, there they are, our Spidey Senses, our intuition. If we don't connect to belly breath, we can't fully embody our fingertips.

In my sweetly insane, psychedelic teacher talk, I call branching out from the middle "starfishing out." Like totally. Total connectivity. Firing on all your cylinders starts from a warm core.

Trust your gut, eh? It's true. You can go anywhere from center. But here's the thing. We block. We don't breathe. We clench for years on end. We hold on for dear life and don't let go and then can't feel. (Hands up if you're feelin' this...oh you in the front row...yes you! The author, hello! Yes, this is familiar. Okay, then. It's okay.). We miss subtlety. We miss softness. We miss shaping our torso to embody and enhance our moods. Our sensitive side bodies and dreaming back bodies are waiting. The sides of us we can't see. They need life breathed into them like a fish needs water. We lock center away in its own vault and hope we never have to face it--the contents, the emotion, the injury, the pain. We "hold it in," or more violently "suck it in." Ah, language. How you cut. But where does our gut go, let alone trusting it? What if we were to hold compassion at our core, or the vaguest inkling of it. The beginning. What if we could float and swim softly in the middle of things.

Try this. Stand up and close your eyes. Float for a minute. Let your body catch itself. It knows how. Yawn your arms way up. Climb an imaginary ladder. Hang from the sky. Let your arms sift down at your sides. Undo your mental belly belt. I take no responsibility if you undo your real belt. Let the corners of your mouth turn up. Know this. You have all the support you need. Breathe into the edges of your skin. Fill fully. Expand not just the front of your belly but the sides, the back. There you are. Hello.

When I'm centered, I feel heavy and light at the same time. I feel the earth under my feet. I know myself. I trust myself. I have access to and permission from my whole body. My blood pressure drops, my breath slows, my eyeballs soften in their sockets. I "see" in a new way. I am both clear-headed and full of creative energy. I feel ready.

So, yes, I have felt centered. But I don't give myself this opportunity as often as I should. I hold back. I keep myself away. Or I look for center in quick fixes...like 7 minutes before class. But, folks, here is what it takes for me to center myself...

• Lying on the floor for an indefinite amount of time
• Breathing slowly and moving just as non-fast
• Working through a series of subtle, serious, silly, sumptuous, stately, starfish-y moves 
• My body's the boss...whatever it calls for shall be done
• Continue for at least 45 minutes
• Consider a down dog
• Roll up, stand and see who I am when I arrive on my feet
• Roll down and up and down and up the spine indefinitely until I feel a surge of something...inspiration, clarity or a true connection to core (an uplift and a downshift)

So, after an hour, I'm ready to "begin." I am free to move, although I've been moving all along. It takes me that long to say hello and see what's happening. And the whole time it's bliss and boring and nerdy and fraught and free. Yeah, like everything.

What centers me? Warm mugs on cold days. Hard wood floors and socks. Empty studios with patches of sunlight. Unexpected stars on crisp, clear nights. Hushed voices of trusted teachers. Green bell-bottomed sweat pants. Quinoa with chick peas and avocado and greens and good olive oil. Etta the dog exhaling. My old wooden spoon and making soups. Or lately, it's risotto. Homebase is the table that Tim built. A finally, consistently made bed. Our front porch light on. A clean kitchen. A set task...write for at least the length of this incense stick. Ok fine.

Center is breathing into my belly and just that. Center is the expansiveness of just this.

Alignment / Body Nerds Unite! VOLUME 2 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Alignment in action after action after action in the studio

Hi! Here's Take 2 in in the dance writing bonanza. 


Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 2:  ALIGNMENT / BODY NERDS UNITE!
What is your experience of alignment and posture? Where do these ideas come from in your history? Is alignment changeable?

Ideas of alignment are so ingrained in my dancing history that I hardly know how I would stand without dance. Since I can remember, being in dance class meant a longing for an unachievable up-ness. A noble pursuit, but for gravity. Jump up, head up, eyes up, kick your legs way up. Go for the superhuman. Teach a bear to fly.

My mother was always worried about slouching. We have a familiar, familial history of casual schlumping, and it even had a name:  the famously sweet "Benesch Slouch" on my mama's side of the family. No one was a hunchback by any means; I don't remember anyone really slouching. It was just a fear of slouching. Nevertheless, to her unending credit, my mom has done miraculous, heart-opening things in her yoga practice. Plus, her natural effervescence and buoyancy keep her perpetually youthful and up. It keeps me up, too.

Erika and I hang in the balance

A true, tactile experience of alignment (a stacking of bone, form as function, standing flow) didn't creep into my awareness until college. Then it began to simmer and steep during the magic of grad school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain. In my first week, Jan Erkert (who now heads up the program) was an invaluable guest artist for a workshop on "teaching dance." I wasn't yet a teacher. I thought I could be, but at 24, I hadn't really taught a soul. I didn't even have the confidence or courage to "audition" as a graduate teaching artist for my first semester, so I spent my grad assistant hours filing dance articles (probably reading them more than filing them). Jan has us do a simple walking exercise with a partner--walking and observing our partner in motion. What do you see? A simple beginning I've done in many forms many times over since then, but it was the dawning of seeing habits. Feeling them, really. Finding out what's been dormant or chronic or shining or painful. Who are we when we step forward? At the time, I was a young woman weeks away from a haunting hamstring injury that speaks to me still, 13 years later. Hello, body. Which foot is always first? What happens if the other foot is first. I didn't yet know.

Grad school was rich with...are there adjectives worthy?...outrageously gifted teachers. I received Laban and Bartenieff Fundamentals teachings from Sara Hook and Sara Lampert Hoover. I took Alexander Technique and Kinesiology with Rebecca Nettl-Fiol and Alexander and Ballet with Luc Vanier. I danced in class with Cynthia Oliver and Renée Wadleigh. I uncovered the joys of yoga with Linda Lehovec. I could go on. This is only scratching the surface of teachers and talents. I could write for years and never touch the knowledge I was exposed to or the gratitude I feel for being lucky enough to be there. Writing about it makes me little-kid wish with eyes squeezed shut that I was back in that wonderful womb of self-inquiry. It's hard to do on my own. But this post is a start, eh? We press on, aligning as we go. For a few different classes, I mapped my body, literally. A friend would help me crime-scene trace my outline, then I would color myself happy with crayons, adding emotion, injury, imagination, budding anatomical know-how.

(Side note...I am perched on the very edge of a cushion on the very edge of a chair that is too low for this table to write. Right leg is haphazardly over the left, half asleep. My head is in my hand and my spine, as is customary, is windswept to the right. Left-handedly I scrawl outside of every line. So...)

It may be as simple as saying "bending my knee changed my life." My experience of alignment (and therefore the world) has its roots in unlocking my knees. My hyperextension pushed my knees way back. I'm sure my whole teenage persona hinged on my precarious locked-back legs and swayed hips cocked and locked and ready for nothing. I even had a habit of snapping and jerking my knee back to get it to "pop" like a knuckle. Violent.

Thankfully, gracious and wise teachers have led me towards an ease in my joints, a softening to lengthen. Invite the "micro bend," as a true body nerd might know it. Now, alignment for me is like breathing before I speak. It's a fluid give and take, a kindness. It's sensual rather than stiff, a supple awareness, an ever-growing out to grow in.

Up to go Down

I like to say "hanging from the sky," and I do. More and more my movement images ingrain themselves in my psyche. What I tell myself I am. I am my alignment, an ongoing story. I like the stories that take me up, help me imagine, teach me to fly. My teaching language talks of puppetry, push-toys and starfish.

And, of course, we can't go up without down. Alignment is teeming with paradox, and as Parker Palmer would attest, we must hold the paradox. We need to unhook to connect. We need ease in our strength. We must breathe in to breathe out. We are many things at once. Alignment is how we are in the world, an everyday expression of who we are.

So is alignment changeable? As the wind. I have felt it bone-deep in my body and I've seen it in action in everyone I meet. But I know that alignment is a source of feeling stuck for so many people. They use the term "posture" and when I think of "posture" I think of stuck in the mud. Fixed. Born with it, deal with it. I hear so often, "I have terrible posture." It is what it is, yes, but then the weather shifts, your mood shifts. You hear good news, your heart sinks. Then we see who we are, where we are. How do you feel? How tall are you? Alignment isn't frozen. It's steam. It's water. It's so fluid it's happening right now. It's warm and malleable and meant to support you.

Try this. Melt your heels. Breathe in between your toes. Ease the fronts of your ankles. Unhook the backs of your knees. Suspend your pelvis over your legs. Fly up and away from your hip flexors. Your spine floats, curving ever up. Lungs expand in 360 degrees. There's a slow, helium-bounce buoyancy to your heart. Oh, especially the back of your heart. Yes. Underneath your ears you tickle with uplift, a secret, a sending. The back of your skull simply hangs from the sky. You receive it. Your eyes blink. Let go, listen in. You are standing grounded, moving every upward.

As changeable as the weather...strong as the wind

What is Dance? VOLUME 1 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Stars of Bethel Park & Rec "Ballet" Class, 1981

Settle in for a brand new series called "Modern Dance Journal Prompts." No wait. That's brutal. How about "Dance Talk Real Fine, First Edition" or "Everything You Wanted to Know About Dance But were Afraid to Ask?" Let's do: "Dance A's for My Own Damn Q's." Alright then. This February I'm taking on my own assignments for a month-long bonanza of dance writing. I gave these questions out as journal prompts for my Beginning Modern Dance class last semester. I've been juggling these topics in my brain, body and jumbled notes for, oh, the last 18 years of Dance Minor-dom, Grad School-a-rama and the last many years of teaching. But I've never formally answered my own questions. I'm always asking my students about movement, be they college kids or kindergarteners. And now I'm suiting-up as a student. Here we go...a taste of my own  nerdy-ness. And remember, no right or wrongs. Also, I'm big on complete sentences and never leaving sentences dangling, but grinbearmove is nothing if not poetic license. I'll go for rhythm over grammar (gasp). 

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 1:  WHAT IS DANCE?

What is dance? How do I relate to it? How does it manifest in my life? What are my goals for this experience (in this case, a month-long bonanza of dance writing)?

Dance is movement, life, an expression beyond words.

(Hang on...I'm just getting started.)

It's when words go unrequited. It's joy and loneliness and everything in between extremes. It's what we all (all of us) do. I am a sign-toting crazy person when it comes to believing everyone is a dancer. There is dance in and because of each of us.

Dance is a spontaneous response, an outburst. Outbreak? Dance is poetry in motion, blah, blah, blah.
You've heard it all and it's all true. But how do you talk about movement? We always talk about dance in terms of other forms--poetry, theater, music, writing. What is it on its own?

Dance is a communion with what is ephemeral and eternal in the same breath; it's a celebration of what cannot last, a moment-by-moment document of an idea or emotion. It's here and now like no other. "Here today, gone tomorrow" or 10 seconds from now. You know?

Sometimes dance is a long-stifled action, something you've been holding in too long. It comes out like a landslide or a slow expiration of stale air. Something on the inside wants out. It escapes gracefully, violently, outrageously, neatly, whathaveyou. Sometimes we suppress dance--you, me. Society might squash it or at least we feel it does. Sometimes we don't welcome it unless it's on a stage or in its right place--an obligatory dance at the Oscars before the "real work" of the night is honored. Fine. Not fine. If dance is in the grocery store, it's crazy. If it's out in the woods, it's hippy. If it's a ritual, it's witchy. If it's a wedding, you must be the right amount of drunk to shake inhibitions. But what if you didn't have to be? Drink in movement all it's own. Bust a move like you're 3 years old.

A gust of uplift on Putnam Park Road

All along, dance is there, waiting. It's raw potential. It's noble and base. Up here, down there. It's inevitable. It's structured, it's wild, it's animal, it's raging instinct or quiet intuition, a heavy heart or a light mind. Maybe the other way around. Dance is when your limbs get together and rock your core. Connect directly to flow and shake off dust and demons.

"Dance it out" is a phrase you'll hear from time to time. We send something out into the ether--what it is is up to us. 

Dance is essential to be a part of yourself, to be on your side. It's a way towards (what?) wholeness. Piece yourself together. Say, "I'm here." "I am worthy."

Dance and be a part of the world. See and be seen. Bounce next to someone and smile. Be a part of history. We dance because people danced before us. The time is ripe. Jot down your story in gestures. Connect to your DNA. How does your family dance? It might be so small, you can't even see it.

Dance is everything and we forget it's even in us. It's dormant. Whatever your mobility, if you have access to your imagination, it's there. Cells leaping, nervous system sparking. A way of learning and knowing the world. An untapped intelligence for the most part. Moving is such a wonderful way into your brain, your emotional intelligence, your humanity. 

Dance is something that needs defending. We fear its full power, we push it aside. We don't talk about it, and if we did, we wouldn't know how to. Let's start. What is dance?

I am a dancer, whether I'm dancing or not dancing, judging or not judging. I define myself in movement. When I stop, I am stuck. When I start, I am here. It give me energy and purpose. I remember it's not frivolous (hear that, brain?), it is essential. A way of being, a way of life. So if I say it another way, I don't relate to it. I am it. Dance appears everywhere for me. A flock of birds organizes, two dogs sit, I fold a shirt or steer into a farmer's turn, my mother opens her arms, you can hardly sit still, we barefoot beach squish side by side.

My mom and my grandma took me to see the Nutcracker as a toddler. I'm told I was fixed, motionless on my mother's lap the whole time. A rapt two-year-old, enchanted. I don't remember it, but I bet my body does. Same with my first Park & Rec ballet class at three (I'm in the red tights and the red tutu above, all business). Dancing was unconscious in the way a child's being is all inside itself. When I did think to think of dance, I loved it. I was it. I didn't consciously choose dance until college. Oh. Here I am, all along. Now dance shows up in my everything--my writing, the way I speak. I am a dance snob, a dance nerd, a freak, certainly. 

My M.O. is more free-flow rather than goal-oriented, so I think it's a healthy thing for me to express some goals. Here we go(al). I want to publish my answers by the end of February. Hold me to it. I want to articulate my views of movement at this moment in time and pinpoint the emotions that move along with those views. I want to recharge my sleeping dance batteries and get myself back into a studio to physically answer these questions. This is a statement of purpose to begin rehearsals for a new solo. It's time. I'm looking to tap into that joy I talk about intellectually, but don't always experience. I want to remember way I started grinbearmove in the first place.

Red tights dance party (I'm the shrimp with the killer clippy belt)

poetry breather

When I'm alone at a table in a restaurant for a hot minute--instead of making eye contact, instead of sipping serenely--I pull out my phone like the best of 'em. Rest of 'em. When I can pull my scrolling eyes and restless fingers away, I open the yellow glowing notepad (dating my OS) and write. Here's something I uncovered from a few months ago that I reworked. And honestly, I was distracted all the way through the process. But I wrote it down instead of thinking about writing it down. Enjoy!

Hey Busy Hands
(quick slip)
take a moment
(type treat)
breathe
(check, double check)
think big
(tap go back)
have thoughts
(undo)
obliterate them
(ping bling fling sing ding)
with endless lists
(fists fingers linger)
announcements
(can't stop eyes glaze)

and sadness 

(sip steady ready un-dead-y)
simply sit
(fidget flake)
Busy Hands
(hey it's hard)
all thumbs
(quiver itch slide pop)
just this
just this
refresh