I’m back in the studio, rehearsing and tweaking my “Small Stone” solo for summer performances. That’s the bruise I get on my hip from rolling over and over on the hard floor. I love bruises, from dance and from other activities. I love having evidence on my body of hard work or adventures.

Dancers are social animals, and I’ve always done best with external motivation. So it’s hard choreographing on myself, then being my own director and coach. I run the solo trying to have two voices in my head. The dancer’s voice says plie, plie, turn, stop and also connects me to the emotions of the piece: slow, thick, sad, remember how it felt that summer, hot, dusty, on my bed, rocking back in forth, she’d spoon me and then say “switch” and we’d roll over and I’d spoon her. The coach says slow down, bigger, deeper, layout, go go GO. I’m learning.

Now that proposals for the fall show are more or less in, I’m trying to decide what I want to do. Part of me wants to get back in the studio with other bodies, choreograph that group piece I’ve been dreaming about. But I have SPPSSM and there are so many good proposals from other folks.

Once again I’m questioning what I’m doing with dance and where I want to go with it. Right now I’m very focused on getting in shape and dancing my best in all these shows this summer. It’s funny, years ago I thought I was done with pointe, then I joined a semi-professional ballet company and now I’m dancing in my one pointe shoe all over the place. I think my relationship to dance will always be in flux. It’s so hard, so time consuming, and it’s getting to be hard on my body as I age. A few weeks ago I stood in class, hip flexors burning, everything aching, and thought, it’s time to stop. this is an art for young people. But I’m still improving. I’m a better dancer now than I was in high school when I danced 20 hours a week. And I’m not ready to stop, any more than I was in fourth grade when I used to come home crying. I’ve always wanted this, in a way I don’t really understand.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 6:57 pm and is filed under musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.