Day 2.

a couple of reflections/disclaimers for today:

1. i took class today for the first time in a couple weeks.  this is actually the first activity more strenuous than climbing the stairs to my apartment that i've done in two weeks, as i was hit by a nasty virus and more laid out than i have been in my adult life.  as i wobbled and shook my way through balances and developes, i was struck by how much of my body and my ability i take for granted: two weeks of illness and inactivity and i was already so out of shape!  on the flip side, these legs are pretty incredible to stay as supple and strong as they do on a regular basis. sigh, gratitude.  sigh, humility.

2. please forgive the terrible lighting and dumpy sweater outfit.  (reference the above... it's an accomplishment that i'm not wearing pajamas.)

3. the name of this poem is "i like for you to be still."  there is so much to work with, in only that title! i'm starting my improv of today and yesterday with a play on stillness and movement.

.... i also added video to yesterday!
here's today.

Day 1.

Well, happy new year!

It's been a big day already: Northwestern University won its first bowl game since 1949, I saw some fireworks in Prospect Park, and my apartment is so clean.

Additionally, I made an intention for 2013 and taped it to my fridge:

I'm really great at worrying.  I have noticed, though, that as I am now an adult, with a lovely support system, I can usually figure out how to work my way through whatever situation comes up, and worrying about it doesn't really do anything for me.  (I expect this "no worrying" policy will fly out the window when I have kids someday, right Mom?)  For now, I'm trying it out.

In light of this, I have decided to focus, for 30 days, on the new piece of choreography I'm working on. While I have focused on and reworked pieces (sometimes in 3 or 4 performed iterations, countless rehearsal iterations), I'm curious about what it's going to be like to focus on the same piece, every day, for all of January.

The first bit of the piece is set to a reading of a Pablo Neruda poem.  The second bit is a solo piano piece.  Today's work is set to the poem... and is not videotaped.  It is now!(It turns out, my everyday life right now doesn't provide much access to open spaces, so I need to figure that one out!)  It's in my body after a living-room-marked-jam, and it'll be on here in one of the next posts. It's posted below, videotaped January 2nd.

Here's to a focused 2013!

2012, the best year yet.

ah yes, the end of december.

i'm back at home after spending time with family and friends, and as the peacefulness and joy of the season has settled, i (like everyone, ever) inevitably turn toward the future.  setting "resolutions," looking forward to events coming up, etc.

i also look back. a certain special someone toasted me on new year's eve last year: "to 2012, the best year yet."  (little did i know that he had some plans to make this the best year yet, but that's beside the point.)  i jumped at the chance and toasted, heartily, to 2012, the best year yet - caught up in the happy moment, laughing headlong into that conviction without a doubt.  and you know what?  it was amazing.

for the past three years i've operated under the principle that what you do for the first 30 days of the year shapes that whole year.  for me, that's been a focus on choreography and creating something every day.

that has given me a lot of drive and a LOT of wonderful raw material to draw from in my work.  i always learn something about myself, about my choices and habits, and about what keeps me going creatively.  but i've also been learning something else, with even farther-reaching consequences: the power of conscious thought.

what we focus on will come to be.  we've all heard this in a million different ways, seen it in compelling square digital graphics, heard it in inspiring speeches.  i think you can't really know about that until you give it a chance - a real, fighting chance.  example?  i decided to consciously focus on gratitude in 2012, and now, looking back, all i can tangibly remember is the incredible abundance in my life - in friends, in family, in love, in adventures, even in accomplishments.  really.

so what to focus on for 2013?  i haven't worked out the specifics.  but 2013 is going to be about being BIG. in an effort to be modest, to find a dancer aesthetic, to be polite, i've become aware that i've also been continuously trying to make myself smaller and less "in the way."  well, let's be real.  i'm not one of those ladies whose beauty is in demureness or exquisite daintyness or in a quiet, serene beauty.  my life is kind of loud and messy and wonderfully joyful, and i'm kind of weird and wonky and silly, and i have decided that none of those things keep me from being "beautiful" and powerful and living an incredible life.

as i sit back on the late december days of 2013, i can't wait to remember all the big, enormous, wonderful things that will fill my year.

a lotta life to draw from

there have been several adults in my life - college professors, friends of my parents, even members of my family - who were still so young (say, 40 or 50) and had done what seemed like an impossible number of different things in their lives.  i was always struck by how seamlessly they could fit all that into a cohesive life, and how they showed up in my own life, able to relate to me while still having lived so many different lives.  so many things had happened to them!  they had done so many varied and interesting things! so many jobs, relationships, experiences, places...i always wished i could look back in 20 or 30 years and say the same.

i am 26 and i'm in the middle of packing up my apartment.  this is something i have done, of course, several times - when my parents moved us to a new house in traverse city, when i was preparing to move into a college dorm, when i moved to downtown chicago, moved to brooklyn, moved to manhattan.

packing is always a little emotional and definitely nostalgic, and even though i've only been in this apartment for six months, i still find surprising things.

one of my favorite mugs, a nicely-shaped white one from the Industrial Engineering Department at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, now stained from my habitual coffee-drinking with little brown rings on the inside.

the woven blanket with trains and cars (!) all over it that a still-unknown guardian angel wrapped around me on a dark rainy night in november of last year when i'd been hit by a car and was trying not to lose consciousness on the median.

a ceramic quaker oats cookie jar, a goodbye gift from the supply chain data team i worked with at pepsico.

books on the history of modern dance, discrete event simulation, and organizational psychology.

a photocopied contract with Links Hall for You Can't Dance Out the Side of Your Mouth.

etc, etc... many more with backstories too long for this post.

i don't think of my life path as being particularly varied, but i've come to realize that, actually, life is pretty fantastic and everyone has this amazing set of endlessly interesting circumstances and interactions, jobs and relationships, apartments, cars, and crazy coincidences.  i'm only four years out of college and already my life has taken a vastly different direction than so many of my closest friends' lives.  i'm only 26 and my life has already been surprisingly varied.  sometimes it takes going through weird things crammed into the corners of your little apartment to realize just how varied it is.

and to tie it back to my creative life... all of this comes out, of course, in one's art - and definitely in my own choreography.  how inspiring that without even really seeking it out, life hurls at you all these interesting things to express and remember and feel!  how inspiring that every single artist-- every single person-- has that unique set of silly, poignant, tragic, interesting moments!  who knows who i might run into in 20 years that might find this life astounding?  and what a wonderful responsibility it is to live fully through all of those moments, because hey, no one else is going to have the chance.

movement /= body image. (or, my yoga practice is not sexy.)

i read a blog post yesterday about the body image and yoga.   it's a well-thought-out plea to the yoga community to take responsibility for the "yoga goddess" image as an ideal fed to the yoga-practicing masses in a similar way that over-sexualized clothing and behavior is fed to adolescent girls.  i see the point.  i guess what causes me to write is that my experience of yoga has been so different than the pressure-filled experience portrayed in this article.

i understand that yoga is about putting one's body into different postures and through different movements.  the focus is on your own practice and how your body feels and responds from one day to the next.  your fullest expression of a pose on monday may be very different than thursday's fullest expression.  what my yoga practice has taught me most of all is how rewarding it is to have patience with my body and myself and to enjoy the practice TODAY.  maybe something new is available today.  maybe i can't go as deeply into this pose today, but i can actually learn from a tightness and find a clearer alignment here today. 

i'm not shoved in front of a wall of mirrors during my yoga practice.  i'm not asked to perform trikonasana alongside other women in order to judge who does it the best.  my ability to get a job, to have a strong performance, to be "good" is in no way dependent on my weight, my strength, my flexibility, or a shape my body can make.  my presence is the only important thing, and i am entirely responsible for that in a way that i am not responsible for, say, my height.

i also don't see yoga as a workout.  it is a strengthening practice, it increases my flexibility, and i mean yeah, i sweat a lot.  but the benefit of a yoga class is the experience of the physical practice, not about TORCHING CALORIES or getting sexy and bendy.  i love a great heart-pounding workout, too, don't get me wrong.  but it's just different. 

yes, i wear tight clothing to yoga.  i do wear a lot of lululemon.  this actually is more about the functionality of the clothing for what i'm doing and the reduction of distractions than it is about presenting a certain aesthetic.  if large t-shirts didn't fall over my face during practice, if i didn't have to adjust comfy baggy sweatpants every time i lunged, if cotton didn't bag out and make me sweatier, i would happily wear any old thing to yoga.  additionally, i wear what i wear because i am in a privileged position to be able to wear "high-end" athletic clothing, and i take advantage of that because i like it for how it feels and how it doesn't distract me.  it's not about how i look.  i am aware that it is most definitely a luxury and a privilege, and i am extremely grateful.  it does not define my yoga practice.  it does not define yoga.  (and beyond that, is lululemon more provocative than, say, speedo?  they both make super-tight, technical clothing for athletic use.  i know that's a broad comparison, and my point is just that wearing clothing that doesn't alter the shape of a body is not an inherently harmful thing.)

yoga is the same practice whether i am happy, peaceful, depressed, or struggling with a change-filled part of my life.  it is always a focus on the present moment and leaning into whatever physical or emotional state i am in, be it tight hips or career anxiety.  in fact, using the physical body as a metaphor helps me bring more space and peace into my outside life mentally/emotionally.  i can be having a really crappy day and yoga doesn't fix anything.  yoga can, however, encourage me to choose to stop running away from the crappyness, just as i choose to not jump out of hanumanasana, even though i usually want to.  that's an important distinction.

perhaps my relationship with yoga and with my yoga practice is personally positive because it occurs in contrast to how i relate to my dancing - or more specifically, to how i have related to my dancing from my childhood through to my adulthood.  maybe that's more of a reflection on my body-image-dance-relationship than it is on yoga.  i feel very strongly, though, that the caring, knowledgeable, wonderful women who are my yoga instructors and friends paint a beautiful picture of real diverse women who share a physical practice.  they have taken on a responsibility called for in the above article. i have much gratitude and love for the teachers in my life.

just because something is about body consciousness doesn't mean it has to be about body self-consciousness or body image.  my yoga practice is not about how hot i am, how good my butt looks in leggings, how spiritually pure and happy i am, or how strong or balanced i am.  my yoga practice is about patience, discovery, and enjoying each delicious present moment.

setting goals

i work for a company that focuses a lot of attention on goal-setting.  i was, as you can imagine, rather skeptical of this. i've been a hard worker and a reasonably high achiever most of my young life, and i thought i was doing just fine without writing down some goals, thank you very much.

rewind three years.  i was working 80 hours, seven days a week for most of the summer.  (once i had a sunday off.  i cried with relief while i walked to the Lincoln Park farmer's market.  and then i cried more that afternoon because i was so stressed i was too checked out.  sick, but i know you know what i mean.)  at some point during august 2009, i wrote out a few lines on a piece of notebook paper and stuck it in a journal.  and it turns out, those were my first written goals.  (i told this story last year.)

this goal-setting thing has become an incredibly rewarding process for me.  i just rewrote my goals again, today.  i got to cross off a few (hosting a get-together in my apartment in nyc? check.  running a half marathon? almost check! presenting an evening-length dance work to over 300 people in new york city? CHECK.  talk about jolt of confidence!)  the editing process is enlightening - it's a chance to sit back and celebrate what i have accomplished, notice where i have fallen short, and find out how my priorities have shifted since those goals were written.  it's interesting - the core 10-years-from-now-i-want-this things have stayed the same in the past two years since i've been writing and rewriting my goals, but the little things change all the time.  (100 mile bike ride lost out to running a half marathon, as pointed out by an ever-inspiring pal. freestanding handstand disappeared, presenting work in new york happened a year and a half before my goal deadline.  having children backed up a couple years...haha.)

and i'd like to share a few of my current goals.  gotta put them out in the universe, you know?

i present brand new work in a dance festival by december 2012.
i choreograph a musical in new york by july 2013.
i pay off credit card debt by october 2013.
i raise a puppy by july 2014.

phew. readysetgo.

finding joy in the process

i have been asked many times in the last month about my show and "how it went."

my initial reaction is a thank you and a little smiley response about how happy i was about the whole experience - all very true.  my second reaction is HOW CAN I PUT THAT KIND OF CREATIVE PROCESS INTO NEATLY PACKAGED WORDS FOR YOU?!   i usually mention how it was an incredible amount of effort and work and how it was over in practically the blink of an eye.  also true!  and how incredibly grateful i am for all the love and support in the room.  so true.

it's the end of june.  in the past two months, i have had the amazing emotional high of the show, and the realization that i presented my own choreographic work for a couple hundred people in new york city.  i've had the low of three rejected choreography submissions, one failed grant, and have let a couple of deadlines slip by.  in each of these - varied in their "i poured my soul into this" quality, from i-threw-this-together to this-is-the-largest-undertaking-of-my-life - i have a new sense of taking it in, breathing in the moment of joy (or elation, disappointment, bitterness, letdown, pride), letting it come in, then looking up to see what's next.

there's a sort of satisfaction and joy in this "that was perfect, and now what?" approach to my creative life.  i think it's part of the maturing process as an artist.  first, your art is everything, and as you hone your craft and your work gets closer to the work of your soul, you actually treat it more like minor works in the ongoing project that is your artistry - from first piece to last piece.  how this "piece" goes doesn't really matter - the fact that you do it is the only necessary part.  on to the next.  checking off each rejection and success on the path of your life's work, step by step.

so what's next for me?  not really sure.  but there's a little improv i've started working on for something brand new, and i'm craving collaboration.  onto the next!