Seeking: Inspiration

I've been feeling a little blah lately - okay, a lot blah.

My typical day goes a bit like this: hit the snooze button three too many times, frantically rush to get ready for work, barely catch the bus, work all day, head to a dance class or the gym, wait and wait and wait and wait for the bus, arrive home by 9:30 on a good night, shove food into my mouth, scroll through my emails or flip through the snail mail, respond to an email or two if I'm lucid, clean up the dish disaster from the morning, collapse into bed... And repeat. The weekend arrives with it's own bustle of errands and household chores, squeezing in husband and friend time when I'm not decompressing or catching extra zzz's. Before I know it, Monday is here again.

Whew.

I'm no stranger to an over-committed schedule. I guess my true complaint is I feel that my life lately is colored in shades of beige and gray, reflecting winter here in Pittsburgh. The days and weeks pass and I feel like I'm just going through the motions. No color, no flashes of inspiration, no aha! moments. I long to teach, to choreograph, to create, and find myself playing the wishing game with the ideas that dance through my mind, causing my heart to flutter as I lay in bed at night. But when the moment comes when I sit down at my computer, or stand in my bedroom (the current choreography studio), poised and ready... nothing.

The ideas vanish.

Then I had my duh moment: it is impossible to give when your well is empty.

I woke up last weekend and decided it was time to change what I can control. I can't change the weather (oh how I'd love to borrow some Colorado sun to share with the Steel City) but I can add splashes of color here and there. After brainstorming a game plan, I ventured out to obtain a few nuggets to begin the awakening.


At the Ballet: Onstage, Backstage... A big book of snapshots of the San Francisco Ballet in 1998, in company class, rehearsal, children taking their first class, and principal dancers captivating the audience. Nothing inspires me more than dance photography. A dancer's body in action is nothing less than art.

Never Stand Still: Dancing at Jacob's Pillow... Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Suzanne Farrell, Mark Morris, Judith Jamison, Bill Irwin - need I say more? It is but a dream to simply take class at the Pillow. Becket, MA, is a lot closer to Pittsburgh than Colorado was. One step closer.

My good friends Detective Holmes and Dr. Watson never fail to help get the storytelling juices flowing (aren't old British detective stories just the bees knees?!). I also picked up a story about two sisters' adventures in western China in 1923, and how they are tied to a modern-day London gal. A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, by Suzanne Joinson, is sure to pluck at my own wanderlusting heartstrings.

New sketch pencils, a Pink Pearl eraser, and a sharpener... the cherry on top! Using the aforementioned book of ballet dancers, I intend to shake the cobwebs loose from my figure drawing and costume sketches. Just a playful hobby for me, but one that I love and am not too terrible at.

All in all, nothing extravagant or elaborate, but enough to begin filling the well, drop by drop.

What's filling your well these days?

 

 xoxo

J

BAM! A sudden burst of inspiration

So, in addition to really needing to get my arse into the studio [um, fail last night... *blushes in embarrassment*...], I also need to get on the ball with some choreography. Like now! It's "strongly suggested" that us dance majors choreograph a piece for each semester's Student Dance Concert. This is the concert I did my "Love Lockdown" piece for last semester (more about that here and here). So, I have that to get busy with that. AND, I have instructions to choreo a li'l swing ditty for Tour Company this year.

Most the summer I've been putting off the Tour choreo, saying I'll do it after Chicago. Welllll, it's well after Chicago and I don't even have a song picked. Cripes. Similar song and dance for the Student Concert choreo. Having a song to choreograph to is kinda crucial for me. Some people can start putting movement together and then put a song to it, but not me. I can only choreograph when I'm moved, and music is what moves me.

So, finding music for both has been on my mind, but I haven't had much luck... until this afternoon!

I was looking for something to listen to on iTunes while working, and noticed that a few people here in the building had their iTunes libraries on "share". So I jumped on one gal's library and started scrolling through. I was enjoying a lovely smorgasbord of AC/DC, Gnarls Barkley, Duran Duran, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, En Vogue, etc., when the Flobots came on. Ooh, the Flobots! If you don't know these guys, check 'em out on YouTube. For one, they're sweet; secondly, they're local to Denver; and C, one of the guys in the band is a hip hop dance friend from years ago... but I digress...

So, the Flobots' album is playing and one song in particular strikes a chord for me: "Anne Braden". The song is about a woman from the South who talks about fighting against lynchings. This piques my curiosity, as I'm ever-interested in anything related to Civil Rights... so I Google Anne Braden and find out that she was a real lady. She was a southern white women who fought against racism in the 1950's, at a time when it was very unbecoming of any white southerner to speak up about racism, much less a southern lady.

Then I suddenly remembered something I saw at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago. Again, I'm very interested in Civil Rights history in this country, so while at the museum I told my friends that I had to go see the Civil Rights exhibit, to be sure to see displays about "my homeboy", Martin Luther King, Jr. (My friends thought this was hilarious, coming from their white friend). Well, while checking things out in the "Tracing the Civil Rights Movement" exhibit, I saw a display about the event that ignited the entire U.S. Civil Rights movement (according to my findings on the Internets today): the murder of Emmett Till.

Oh. My. God. The pictures in this exhibit were the most horrifying things I've ever seen. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. I suddenly got hot, my head felt light and floaty, and I started crying right there. My friends had to steer me away because I was so traumatized. I won't outline the details here, but go look up Emmett Till on Google Images and see for yourself.

Long story short, I've been inspired to choreograph a piece for the Student Dance Concert based on my views about racial prejudice, hate crimes, civil rights and social justice in the great, noble US of A. Hearing that Flobot song, which triggered the memory of the Emmet Till exhibit and how profoundly horrifying it was... is the trigger I needed. Something that triggers an emotional response from deep inside is a creative catalyst for me. I have a really hard time creating something that doesn't have much heart behind it. It feels trite and fake. And I want to be proud of what I put on stage and what I do on stage. I don't know exactly what this piece will entail or how it will look yet, and I have no idea what music I'll use, but the ideas are starting to flow and take shape from the indecisive "I could do this... or this..." fog, a place I was floating around in just this morning.

Once the creative juices are let loose, it's like whitewater rafting on class-4 rapids... hold on tight, y'all!

Its the day of the show, y'all!

Student Dance Concert opens tonight and I am SO. EXCITED.

A handful of friends and family will be there tonight, which makes me feel good knowing I have my crew there to support me. I'm proud of my dancers and all the hard work they have put into learning my choreography and dancing their hearts out. And, yes, I am proud of my piece.

Let me qualify that statement because I want to make sure you all know that this doesn't come from a conceited place... I know my choreography is not the most amazing thing on stage. I know I'm still learning and growing as a choreographer and artist. But this piece came from my heart. I did not choreograph simply because I have to or because I wanted to impress anyone. Yes, I hope people like it. Yes, I wanted to bring a bit of vernacular flavor to the CSU Dance Department's stage to mix things up, but there's a bigger reason why its important to me. Creating this piece was one of many steps of healing from something I'm working through in my personal life. One of my dancers, the only guy in my piece, represents a part of me that I tried to keep alive, but forces bigger than myself (represented by the other eight gals in my piece) were too much and I lost. But then there's a little surprise at the end to show that you can't keep me down for long - I will fight.

At one of our last rehearsals, I shared all of this with my dancers. I told them that if they don't get all the moves perfect or if they make mistakes, its okay - the most important thing to me is that they dance from their hearts. I asked them to dance their hearts out for me.

[Good grief, I'm getting choked up just writing this. I can't cry, I'm at work! Deep breath...]

SO. I am proud of my dancers for dancing their hearts out. I am proud of how the entire piece came together, choreography, costumes, and all. And I am proud of me for taking the risk to create something personal and put it on stage.

T-minus 7 days

Work was BUSY today. Which was fantastic because it was over before I knew it. But it was one of those busy kinds of days that made my eyes burn from staring at hundreds of uber-detailed spreadsheets and my brain was the consistency of overcooked cauliflower. The only cure for cauliflower-mush brain is to get out my jujus and dance like a crazy woman... so I did.

I stopped at my apartment for a quick pre-workout snack of peanut butter and honey toast, changed clothes and made my way to the gym. Since its still winter break, the gym was not busy at all and the aerobics studio was wide open.

I warmed up with some ballet barre exercises. Holy crap, my ballet muscles are tight! And my feet are not pointing as strongly as they should be... *sigh* I guess I should have done more ballet-focused conditioning the last three weeks. It is so hard to motivate myself to do ballet outside of a required ballet class. Ugh. I don't hate ballet, but I don't passionately love it, either. Someday I'll write a post about my love-hate relationship with ballet...

Anyhoo.

I lightly stretched - its not a good idea to intensely stretch before a workout. Better to save that for the very end. I then popped in my iPod headphones and started dancing around the studio.

I was listening to the song I want to choreograph to for Studio Night, and I was jumping around all over the place with some West African-esque moves. I'm sure the people running by on the track were wondering what the heck was wrong with me - "why is that girl spazzing out all over the aerobics studio?" - but whatever. I got my juju's out and cauliflower-mush brain quickly dissipated. And the creative juices were flowing! This is a huge relief. I've been thinking about what I want to do for Studio Night for most of break, and I've been feeling antsy that I really need to get on the ball with choreography, but I've had zero creative inspiration. But ideas were coming to me as I spazzed out around the studio, so all will be well.

I then did my hip hop conditioning - a series of various push-ups and crunches - and finished with some good stretching. At least I've consistently stretched over break. I think I'm more flexible than I was even at the end of last semester! Take that, ballet.

I'll go back to the gym on Thursday for more ballet. And more spazzing out in the interest of my jujus. And (hopefully) coming up with more choreography. I need to get to work - t-minus 7 days!