Day 3.

prompt: "love is finding the person who brings out the best in you and loves about you what you love about yourself - and vice versa."

music: "i was doing all right" by oscar peterson

thoughts: this prompt has a lot more to it than this! this is just some first movement.

Day 2.

prompt: "ask my wife, she has all the answers"
(in response to: "what is your philosophy on love?")

music: "zing! went the strings of my heart" by rufus wainwright

thoughts: short and silly and in a hallway.  i should probably find a studio space somewhere to do these in!  (makes me miss LPAC.)

Day 1.

prompt: "It exists if you believe in it."
(in response to "what is your philosophy on love?")

music: richard glazier - "concert transcription: summertime"

thoughts:
it's new year's day, i just worked all afternoon, i am hungry, i wasn't in the mood to come up with anything good.  i felt afraid of this resolution.  (pretty silly since i'm just doing it to myself... but not living up to one's own expectations? oooh boy. scary stuff.)  as i type i'm having to stop myself from making excuses like "UNFINISHED WORK!" "JUST PLAYING AROUND!" "DID THIS IN MY APARTMENT HALLWAY!" but i know that's all just creative resistance.  so, a start.

new year's resolution 2012

well, it's that time again.  resolution time!

now, a quick disclaimer.  i don't really "believe in" resolutions; conscious focus and effort in an often subtle, consistent way is how to make changes in one's life.  or at least that's how it works for me.

but i also do believe in focusing your attention on something in that consistent way to bring an awareness to that part of your life.  (i wouldn't have said it this way until this year.  guess i've become a yogi...)

time to get fierce about creating movement! in the first month or two of 2010 and 2011, i set out to choreograph a little bit of something every day.  it has been a really rewarding experience - putting unfinished work out there, creating for creativity's sake, and observing how my movement patterns emerge and change over a month or from year to year.  as an added bonus, i used a lot of raw material for projects like The Way We Danced 'Til Three.  (you can find excerpts of both years in the choreography page.)

this year, i'm going for 31 days of choreography - the month of january - and i'm focusing entirely on bits of creative input from my friends, family, audience members, dancers, supporters, and anyone else who wants to tell me something.  i have a book full of slips of paper from TWWDTT in chicago with audience answers to the prompt "what is your philosophy on love?"  they were designed just to get audiences thinking, but the responses were funny, charming, and very interesting... too interesting to never be used!  added to that, i have notes from four different casts of dancers performing TWWDTT (or excerpts of it) four different times-- written personal ads, thoughts on "mr. right," what coupley things drive them insane, etc etc etc.

so i have some great stuff to start with, but wanna get in on this?  fill out whatever parts you want of this survey. you can be as honest or as outrageous as your little heart desires.  i'll take it all.  and then stay tuned right here for the results of this "resolution."

i think 2012 is going to be great. and i'm feeling oddly emotional about 2011 coming to a close.  have a beautiful night, everyone!

thank you!

in a much-belated post: we are FUNDED!  the jaema joy dance campaign on kickstarter.com was successful.  our goals have been met!

better yet, the ball is already rolling.  last saturday, we presented the work in its latest form at Steps on Broadway for an informal showing.  despite the snowstorm (yes.  slushy nasty snowstorm.), Halloween, and subway trouble, there was a small and mighty audience of wonderful souls willing to give us some feedback - on the dancing, on the story, on the props, on everything!

i could not be more grateful for how it turned out!

there's always a nervewracking feeling when you put something in front of an audience for the first time (or, in this case, not for the first time, but for a new audience in a new city with new dancers....) because you're so in it that you don't even know if your basic thought behind the work is going to come through.  i still am always pleasantly surprised when people don't get up and leave during the show.  so imagine my delight when people have insightful strong opinions about what they have just seen... and even some things they LIKED.  incredible!

look forward to more updates soon about the show in the spring.  feeling inspired and ready to share more with all of you!

thank you as always.  overwhelmed by the support and ever grateful.
love!

structure

all our lives, we participate in a certain sort of structure imposed from the outside.  most of this is extremely helpful.  we are born into a family structure.  the structure of traffic laws keeps us safe while we cross the street, and while we grow up and become drivers.  the education system, if we follow it, keeps us moving through its structure of grade school, middle school, high school, (applications), college, (applications), internships, (applications), (interviews), jobs.

as an upper-middle-class college grad from a good school with an engineering degree and a corporate job, i felt a continuing structure imposed socially.  i worked hard at the office.  i went out to bars for happy hours and football games with coworkers and friends.  i went to the gym in the morning.  i ordered thai food and watched tv with my roommates. i went out on dates.  etc.  and it was fun! and the structure was helpful, again, for propelling me in that life/career path.

but now, i've decided i want my life to be about movement and creativity and growth and gratitude.  so if i'm looking at that big picture, the old structure doesn't necessarily get me there.  the 18-years-old-fresh-face-in-NYC-auditioning-daily structure doesn't really apply to me, either.  or even the 25-years-old-starving-artist-waiting-tables structure.  and secretly i think none of us actually fit into a structure.  we have to choose the parts of it that are helpful and throw out the rest.

i have a very dear friend who's currently in africa for the peace corps, and she's the one who illuminated this idea of structure for me when she said that life right now is about creating a structure for oneself instead of relying on the structure imposed socially and culturally by the well-meaning society.

there are little examples of creating one's own structure every day.  for example: i'm feeling stressed, so i write a to-do list.  this is structure.  then i don't have to think about anything, i just work my way through my list.  working within a structure that i set up allows freedom from stress and "keeping it all together."  for a second example: i'm in a choreography class, and the professor gives us some wacky assignment about movement.  i'm not worried about creating something artistic or my style as an artist, i just do my "assignment." and voila, i come up with something more creative than i ever would have thought of if you just locked me in a dance studio.  by inserting myself as subject to the structure, i allow freedom for creative movement.

our work now, then, is to create a big-picture "structure" for our lives, to free us up to live meaningfully and creatively, in africa, in new york, in our families, in our jobs.  piece of cake!  haha.

... something to work on.

new undertakings.

i've been extremely blessed to work in an environment that takes goal-setting very seriously... (we are literally "goal-coached" regularly, and that term is extremely normal at work. pretty powerful) and one of the most important things i've been dwelling on lately is how crucial it is to be clear and specific about your goals, write them down, and share them.

a little history. in september 2009, i took a scrap piece of paper out of my notebook one night and i wrote the following:

by january 2010: present dance pieces in 3 different venues.
by april 2010: come up with new choreographic idea.
by september 2010: quit this job.

i stuck that paper inside a journal of mine and i'm not sure how long it was before i forgot about it, but i definitely did.

fast-forward to june 2010.  i was flipping through some stuff and a piece of paper fluttered out.  it was that little scrap with those deadlines on it (bet you didn't see that coming).  i had completely forgotten that i had even written it.  but upon further thought, i realized my success rate was pretty incredible.

by january 2010: present dance pieces in 3 different venues.  i had work in Dance Chicago in November of 2009, and Northwestern University put up my first show on campus in December 2009.  so that's two out of three.
by april 2010: come up with new choreographic idea. january brought with it my first choreography resolution, so that's 31 new ideas. and i had just started rehearsals for my at-that-point-unnamed project that would become The Way We Danced 'Til Three.  so that was kinda thirty-two out of one.
by september 2010: quit this job.  i had just days before started my leave of absence from Accenture.

that felt pretty powerful.  not a bad track record.  as you might imagine, i've been making a point to physically write down some goals and dreams regularly!

here's my latest.  until now, i've fronted money from my savings account to self-produce my work, but i can't really afford to do that anymore, so my latest goal is to actually get FUNDED to put up TWWDTT here in NYC.

the best part about that is that then the ticket sales from this show, instead of reimbursing me for the expenses, can go towards the next production.  and then hopefully i'll keep this cycle going!

here it is.  i just launched my kickstarter campaign, and you can see it here! at least you can see what i'm up to!

on another note... survived Hurricane Irene, and my part of Brooklyn was fortunately spared!  grateful for all of it!