Post Performance

This weekend was a whole lotta dance, makeup, love, and free Patron Silver. I'm ready for summer already.

I said it already, but I really love the ladies I have the privilege of dancing with. Maybe I just get surprised by really open and warm displays of affection because I don't tend to initiate them (except with Leif), but I love how many of them just come up and hug on me, or crack me up, or swat my butt. I guess it's like being on a football team--we spend so many hours working together as a physical unit. Except instead of smashing into each other (which only happens sometimes), we are helping each other pin bra straps under costumes, finding bandages for each other's feet, sharing lipstick, eyelash glue, hairspray, ponytail holders, and helping each other to feel more secure when we're all feeling exposed, nervous, or not-good-enough. I can't express enough how good it made me feel when one of my friends said "you look lovely" out of the blue when I had just been thinking that I didn't. That's only one small example of some of the kindness and attention I received this weekend.

Of course I'm glad the show is over, and I also don't feel totally satisfied with my performance. I know it sounds like I'm being a big Woody Allen, and I haven't seen the video, but I felt that I couldn't quite get to a point where I completely let go and performed to capacity. I can't explain why except to say that I know (or think I know) what performing that way feels like, and I haven't felt that since my jazz days. I explained my nagging feeling to Leif and my parents, and they actually didn't sugar coat their responses (well, Leif couldn't sugar-coat his way out of a paper bag, but I was surprised that my parents shot me straight). Leif said I wasn't really dancing like it was my last or only opportunity, which is to say that I wasn't performing with my face that much and that maybe I could've danced harder. My mom said my movement seemed a little conservative.

My dance goal has come into sharper focus: I want to reach a level of dancing where I feel like I've totally exposed myself. I'd like to practice taking more risks--I thought I was giving my performance everything I could, but I think I'm unconscious about the level of self-protection I employ (in dance and in life). I do a lot to avoid embarrassment and exposure.

I know this is true of me as a teacher. I reveal so little about my personal life that I once told an anecdote that started with "we were watching a movie the other day" and the kids started tittering wait, who's "we"? I said "my pseudo husband" which only confused them further. A few of the classes had directly asked me why I was going to be absent over Mardi Gras week and who I'd be going skiing with, so they know. "Boyfriend" isn't an accurate term at this point and "partner" only means gay around here, and I always feel weird letting slip that I live with him but we aren't married (even though some of my students aren't conservative and actually say things like "That's assuming I ever want to get married" and a handful of them wrote persuasive essays on the legalization of gay marriage). Anyway, that's a long way to say that I don't volunteer information unless directly accosted. I think it's a holdover from something Dr. Guillory said about being professional and focusing on the kids, or maybe it's because I don't want to be one of those teachers who is so easily flattered that the kids are able to manipulate her by asking her to tell stories about herself to procrastinate doing work. Mostly, it's because I'm afraid of being vulnerable, judged, or embarrassed by whatever some volatile kid lets fly out of his/her mouth.

I haven't thought much about how that defensiveness shows up in my dance. I've gotten the note that I need to quit looking down and open up my chest more. I've gotten the note that I'm not performing with my face. I've gotten the note that I could be sharper, bigger, kick and jump higher. There's a big subconscious part of me that is scared to look foolish or ugly, or to lose my balance, or to get a step wrong. It's almost like I troubleshoot instead of dance sometimes--I try to line myself up just right and measure up to all of the other good dancers around me. I feel frustrated with my body pretty often, as if it won't quite to what I want to make it do. I go about it in a controlling way instead of a surrendering way. My favorite dancers look like they're surrendering.

Okay, well, maybe what I can't do is go about this in a goal-oriented achiever sort of way, because that's exactly my issue. Maybe I will just start experimenting with opening up my dance style a bit during class. Taking more risks. I want to take some more classes. Yoga would surely help with my mindset, not to mention my balance and flexibility.

***

In other news, I'm still having anxiety about my writing hiatus/block. I saw this cartoon today and it made me want to laugh and throw up at the same time. After finishing up my annual unit on Fahrenheit 451, I feel like society is becoming more and more addicted to virtual entertainment and less and less connected to sensory, creative, productive, or natural experiences. I feel like I am watching internet TV instead of creating art. Today especially, I am avoiding that stack of research papers like the plague and feeling bad about myself because of it. I am also feeling sad that the energy that it takes to grade papers and plan lessons makes me too tired to read and write interesting things, and I don't know how to work around it.

A strange coincidence did happen recently. I picked up a copy of the Shambhala Sun magazine a Whole Foods because Pema Chodron was on the cover and I've been meaning to read something of hers ever since I saw her in O magazine. She seems like a badass female monk, but also a good writer. I never, ever make impulse buys at the grocery checkout because the set up of it feels like a trap or a scam, but I was in a mood and it looked like good reading, so I got it. It's been sitting around for months in my dining room--I read the Thich Nhat Han article and the Pema Chodron and left it open on the table. I was looking for something to read during breakfast the other morning, and the article I came across was written by Ronlyn, my first creative writing workshop teacher in college, who is also a LHS graduate. I went to her website to read about what she'd been up to and started reading a piece she wrote that was advising novice writers about how to get started, get published, find writing groups, etc. Reading it gave me a familiar overwhelmed feeling that makes me want to run in the other direction or just plain quit. A sense of dread and worry. I thought about contacting her as a kind of catalyst to asking about writing circles in BR and tapping back into that world, but of course I put it off. Then I just happened to see that she had commented on Ann's facebook page, so I took that opportunity to friend her and send her a message about how I coincidentally came across her piece and really enjoyed it. She responded with a really sweet message about how she doesn't buy magazines either but checked out that one and ended up sending them a piece she wrote. They responded in two days about publishing her! How can it be that easy? Maybe they knew she was the writer of a popular novel.

I didn't ask her about writing circles. Maybe I will later.

If I believed that the universe sends special messages to individuals, I'd say that it was telling me to reconnect with the fiction world again. If there even is one in BR. I still have no ideas for stories. But I did purchase one of Margaret Atwood's recent novels on my Kindle.

In other other news, surprise! I'm not going to my ten-year high school reunion! Ang sent me a link about it and told me I was on the MIA list. I poked around on the site and felt a wave of something--claustrophobia, maybe, or revulsion. Suffice it to say that I didn't want to talk to The Hormone Table (or the Future Republicans of America that fucked them) in 2001, and I sure as hell don't want to talk to them now.

But I am having a family reunion with my parents, sibs, and their significant others soon. Haven't seen everybody all together in what feels like months, and we are going to have drinks in the pool and decorate eggs. Spring break is just around the corner, y'all. It cannot come soon enough.