Performing to Perform

Since declaring that I would be studying dance in college when I was just barely into my Senior year of high school, I have met the question " So what will you do with a degree in dance?" more times than I care to count. I understand where the question comes from, sort of. Everyone's first thought goes toward teaching," So will you be a teacher…?" or to owning a dance studio, then they think of performing. However, I have ALWAYS wanted to be a performer, and frankly I try to find ways I can perform everyday of my life. I was born a Ham (aka a limelight lover) and will probably be living the old adage " the world is your stage" until the day that I die. I live for a good crowd, mostly a good laugh from a willing audience and don't usually find myself in social situations where I don't make my presence known. So for me, there was never a second thought as to what I would do with a BFA in Dance.

I was going to perform. I was set on it.

All the doors and windows of opportunity were open to me, and I was going to walk across that stage at graduation, promptly get my diploma, and walk my happy behind right onto the stage of dance and perform. I didn't have a timetable for how long I would be a performer but sure as the day was long, I was NOT going back to school anytime soon, and I was not waiting around saving my money while working a non-dance job until I found the performance job I wanted.

After graduation, I was on a  sort of dance tour of my own, taking my blind optimism and endless energy for rejection up and down the east coast and some of the midwest trying to find a place to perform. I soon realized that while I REALLY wanted to perform, there were a lot of dance companies that REALLY didn't want to hurt my feelings but at the same time REALLY didn't want me to perform with them. By an act of fate, I landed in Chicago before my optimism and energy for rejection ran out with two suitcases and a smile, and set up shop with The Dance COLEctive. What I then realized was that I had only just begun my quest to perform on stage.

I was in a new city with zero friends, no place to live and no job. Suddenly the idea of performing took a back seat to my survival and the goal of living somewhere other than a street corner in a cardboard box. My personal worst fear in life is to be homeless.

What I came to understand is the doors and windows of opportunity are only open as long as you force your body weight through them, stick fingers and toes into the cracks and wedge the space apart to make room for yourself and thus make opportunities for yourself. I looked into every job I thought I might be able to do:  coach swimming, teach English,  serve food, paint fences. If it was a job and I could imagine myself doing it then I applied, I called, I stopped by the office to drop off my resume. If I was hired, I took it. It didn't matter how far away it was or how few hours a week it offered, I was going to do it. Then, on Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was going to go to rehearsal with TDC and work on my performance opportunity.

Well, as it turns out, wanting to perform became more of a need to perform, because with a BFA in Dance, I have finally found my way through enough jobs to land my ideal job: teaching dance. In a small dance studio with a captive audience of seven year olds, I use my flare for performance to make them laugh and teach them to pivot and kick-ball-change and to love dance and performing just as much as I do. I think I may have tricked myself into teaching because the front of a classroom (no matter what type of class) is a sort of stage. So naturally, I feel at home. But I need to be good at my job so I can afford to keep myself afloat, and thus be able to perform with The Dance COLEctive. So here I am, 5 years out of college with my old rosy view of being a Dance Performer, and I. am. performing. on stage with the Dance COLEctive in as many chances as I can force myself into…. But I also get to perform everyday in my job as Miss Olivia, the quirky dance teacher who loves any stage and a willing audience.

Submitted by TDC Dancer Olivia May on Tuesday, November 13, 2012.

Sidelined

So here we are.  After 7 years of dancing with TDC, the 4 years prior spent dancing in college, and the 14 years prior spent dancing in Greenwood, Indiana, it’s pretty self-evident that life has taken some serious turns, some of them unexpected but all of them fulfilling.

And now life has given me another unexpected turn and I find myself in yet another unfamiliar phase in my long-term relationship with dance: on the sidelines. Still at rehearsal, but not necessarily in rehearsal, witnessing the creative process instead of participating in it. It’s a fascinating and disconcerting position to be in. While watching my fellow dancers work, even now, only a month removed from creating material myself, I get lost in what they are doing and creating, watching them work as I would watch a dance concert, with enjoyment and a complete lack of understanding of how hard each dancer is working. Watching the process I was just recently a part of, it is remarkably startling how immediately lost that sense of work, frustration, and struggle is.

This year’s new work offers particular challenges in the way Margi has gone about structuring the creative process – structuring it as such that there is no structure as to what a dancer can do, but only addressing what they CANNOT.  Rather than having a list of qualities, actions, moments, to include, dancers only have a list of what they cannot do – navigating the movement invention period with each other through individual “blind spots” if you will. Again, fascinating to watch, particularly the movement, duets, and group phrases that have been created, but upon flopping down on the floor at 10pm, I see complete exhaustion on the dancers’ faces. Not just physical exhaustion, but mental – mentally drained and spent.

Regardless of how awkward and tense the dancers say they feel in these awkward and tense relationships they are creating, they are delving into areas of self and creativity that I have not yet been witness to in my time in TDC. In my observation, it’s not without some twinges of jealousy that I am not a part of this process with them, but then again, I would also be missing the bigger picture of creativity, instead, stuck in my own frustration and exhaustion at the process.

Which is better? Jury’s still out. I never anticipated myself just sitting on the sidelines in my dance career, but I must say throughout my life, it is those situations I least anticipated that I learned the most. 

Submitted by TDC Dancer Kaitlin Bishop on Monday, November 5, 2012.