What do I want for our dancers?

What do I want for our dancers?

I want smooth, deliberate leads who pay attention to their follows and dance with them, not around them, leads who understand that it is their duty and their privilege to be in control of each dance, and who fully comprehend the honor it is for their follow to accord them so much respect and place in them so much trust that she follows their every movement without hesitation. I want leads who can move outside of their lead without losing the ability to lead exactly, who dance with the music, not on top of it, and whose relation to the rhythm is always evident, a subtle connection to its roots. I want them to react to the music without thought, producing authentic movement that is not affected by how they want to look, but by how they feel and how the music and their partner make them feel.

I want follows who are focused wholly and without compunction on their lead, who trust that the lead has control over the dance, and who are content and delighted to create and respond within the dance that is being led, and not attempt to change the lead’s vision completely. I want follows who do not anticipate or ignore their leads, but actually feel how the lead wants them to move and follow it without qualm or boredom, seeing each movement as a new opportunity to dance, regardless of how “exciting” the move is or how many times they have done it before. I want them to feel themselves, the music, and their partner and let those feelings emerge or erupt in their dance without trying to stifle emotions or movements because they feel worry, ego, or self-doubt.

I don’t just want dancers; I want artists. What is a dancer? Humans who live every moment and breathe every emotion on the floor until they are physically and emotionally spent, free of baggage and having expressed everything they were…they are dancers, and they are beautiful. But those who then get up to dance again, tired, depleted, fervent, and find new emotions and new movement where they thought nothing was left with which to dance, who know that the creative well is never truly empty, and who continue to create, passionate about the music and the dance…

Those are artists. They may define themselves as either lead or follow, or may consider themselves both. They may come from any walk of life and any amount of experience. But we know them, and wish to be them, because what they create on the dance floor, whether it is their first dance of the night or their fiftieth, is powerful and beautiful and real, and we leave their presence feeling changed.

I want my dancers to be those artists.

Why aim that high? Being a dancer is impressive by itself, and nothing to laugh at.

We aim there because we can, and we should, and because dancing that passionately makes visible the spark of divinity inside each of us that defines who we are and differentiates us from every other person on earth.

Walking away gets harder each day

What do you do when one night those stray thoughts about dropping out of college and those comments you make every semester during class registration about wanting to take classes you like all come together in your head and you realize that you don't really want a "degree" in some field that the education system has decided is worthwhile? I don't want to be one of those "gifted" elementary school students who becomes a "high-achieving" middle schooler and a "university-bound" high-schooler who then graduates from some top school with a relatively good GPA and a degree that declares me fit to breathe the academia-infused air of success. The media and the schools always talk about the importance of compulsory schooling and classroom education and how children learn so much better in a supportive and focused school environment where everything that they need to know in life is spelled out for them in their assignments and everything is geared for the oh-so-important standardized tests. I know people who would kill for top grades on the AP tests and the SAT.

Someone probably has.

There's a lot of life out there beyond the little box of "classroom education" on which everyone seems to be so focused. Is it that way because in our world a piece of paper saying that you survived a degree program at any college or university is worth more to most people than the actual skills that you have? I have a problem with the fact that the "academic credentials" of the least useful (by anyone's terms) student at my school are worth more than the decades of brilliant, creative, and concrete work done by many adults I know whose "academic credentials" past high school are slim or non-existent. Everyone knows someone whose ability to think, work, and do a multitude of difficult and complicated things is completely negated in the modern world of credential-only applications, when even just one hundred years ago that person would probably have been the leader or cornerstone of a community--and in some cases those people still are, but without a lot of the respect and recognition they deserve for their abilities. I'd rather be one of them than a college graduate with good grades and no life skills except typing and making presentations.

I don't know what I'm going to do about college--stay in, suffer through, and graduate; stay in, take the courses I want to take, and leave at the end of this school year, perhaps coming back later to finish up; or leave at the end of this school year with the knowledge I've gained from classes I enjoyed and hold my head up high when people ask why I didn't graduate, because there are better things for me to be doing than writing papers that will be read once, maybe twice, graded, and tossed by me at the end of the semester. There are so many things that I would rather do than sit in classes that I am taking solely for the degree that they will help me earn: I could write the stories and poetry that I've wanted to focus on for years, or design naturally-built houses that are easier on the Earth and the people who live here, or read every book I can find about anything and everything that interests me, or volunteer, or write letters to people I know and actually get to know them personally.

Or I could sit outside on the grass under a tree with a book, a cup of tea or lemonade, a pen, and a notebook, and think.

Now that would definitely be a change from the hurry-up, get-it-done, turn-it-in, no-time-to-actually-think-about-life world of academics and credentials that is sending me off to class right now lest I be late for a lecture on something I already know.

Natural Building Methods

I've always loved the thatched cottages that so picturesquely dotted the Irish, Welsh, and English countrysides. Lately, however, my interest in them has gone far beyond the yearning that I had to live in one of them, and has progressed to the point of seriously thinking about building and living in one, especially while David is in grad school. I've checked out some books, done a lot of research online, and ordered in more books while contemplating the best and most efficient (for a four-year living situation) methods of creating a home for us. Right now cob is the method I like most, but more research will probably expand my views on natural building and help me come up with a method that will work even better for our goals.

Here's a neat slideshow of different naturally built homes around the world.

Live the dance

Live the emotion in your dance that you feel when the music plays. Don’t focus on how you want to look or feel. This isn’t a lesson or a performance—it’s a dance, and a dance is a personal experience, a lifetime in itself. This opportunity will never occur again: even if the same people hit the same floor to the same music, that moment will be different from the one you are in right now, the dance that you have the chance to explore at this exact moment.

Play off your partner—he has emotions, too, and you can feel them in the dance. Have you danced with him before? Many times? Never before in your life? None of that matters. If you know him, you have a relationship that you must at the same time remember completely and forget utterly. Approach this dance as something completely new. Don’t think about how you felt when you danced with him last time, or worry about following a new lead. Just let the dance progress as you would a spur-of-the-moment relationship: throw yourself into the music wholeheartedly and don’t think twice about anything. Fall in love with what is in front of you right now: you, your partner, and the music are the only things that exist on the earth when you begin to dance, because here, tonight, there is a beat on the dance floor that calls to your body and a melody that calls to your soul, and you are going to take this sublime moment that only exists once, and you are going to dance.

Don’t let this moment escape you—it could turn out to be the best dance of your life.

Take a good look at your partner. How is he dressed? What kind of mood do you think pointed him to the clothes he is wearing tonight? What about yourself? What do your clothes say about your dancing and your mood? Have you both been dancing so hard that you’re slick with sweat, or is every hair still in place because you just got here? Ask yourself why. Question everything about your current state, including why you are there. Did you come to dance with friends? To show off? To blow off steam? To impress someone? For the exercise? Because you were bored and had nothing else to do?

We have many reasons for dancing and they all have their places. In my mind, the best one is because we have to. It’s that feeling you get when you’re in a restaurant for dinner and what David and I call “Eduardo-class music” comes on. The kind of music that affects you before you consciously hear it, the kind that has your fingers tapping clave before you realize that a song is playing. That moment when we feel that sitting still would kill us, that we must get up and dance or we will die…that moment of passion is the one that defines us. Not whether we actually get up and dance, as there are times when it is impossible or inappropriate, but that the overwhelming desire to dance takes over our entire consciousness to the point where a disaster could occur or someone could walk in naked and we wouldn’t even notice, so bound to the music are we at that moment.

When we dance, no matter the reason, we should strive to be as unconsciously and wholeheartedly focused on the dance, on the music, and on our partner as we are when that feeling of being utterly compelled to dance comes upon us. If we feel no change when we dance, then we are ignoring all the factors that have the power to affect us at that exact moment in time, and we are missing an experience that we will never have the chance to repeat.

So when you dance, don’t do it because someone asked you, or because you need the practice, or because you have nothing else to do, or because you feel good tonight.

Do it because you need to dance, and because you want to.

Spending my time

I realized a few weeks ago that I have been treating my time in college as time to research and prepare for the life that I want to lead after I graduate. I spend probably thirty hours a week finding old and new ideas about cooking, cleaning, and gardening, whereas I probably only spend about two hours a week doing homework and studying for my classes. I'm thinking that I have been spending my time this way for a lot of reasons, but most of them can be pared down to three:

1) I much prefer learning of my own volition than because I am told to learn a certain thing at a certain time.

2) Real life is not academia, and academia is not real life.

3) I may not be able to live the life right now that I want to live, but I can learn as much as possible of the theory of it so that I will be a little bit more prepared when it comes time for me to actually live it.

The life that I want to live has very little to do with the academic world in which I live right now, composed as this one is of classrooms, essays, and detailed instructions for every assignment. Much as I would prefer to be running a household right now, with the very different routine and chores that come with it, I am stuck in the college life for a year and a month more, including holidays. Because of this, I am having to adjust the way I want to live so that it fits in with the way I have to live at the moment in order to graduate and be able to move on in life, a process that is often difficult for me because I do not always see the importance of assignments that my professors seem to find extraordinarily important.

What few people seem to have realized is that the academic world trains students to be academics in some form or fashion, which does not always lead to us being trained in all the things that we will need for the rest of our lives. I would much rather spend my time in college researching whatever piques my interest than studying whatever piques my professors' interests, as what fascinates them is not always certain to fascinate me as well. So I do my own research in my own time, and the study that they require of me gets pushed off until a time when there are fewer interesting things for me to learn about on my own.

I'd probably feel worse about how I divide my time if I were not gaining more from what I research on my own than from what I learn in class.

Distraction by way of Photoshop

So I got a little bit distracted by photoshop this evening while trying to figure out which style and color bouquet I should carry in the wedding...the result was an attempt at a wedding picture of David and me.

My future through the eyes of my past

I'm getting married. Eighteen months from now, I will have been a married woman for two full months. it's a strange thing to think of, isn't it?--That I'm even old enough, wise enough, to think of being in charge of the daily household functions for two people, one of whom has little real-world experience. but we love each other, love each other so much that sometimes it hurts, and to the point that I don't even want to contemplate a life without him. We are neither of us very experienced, and both very young, but I think that we will do fine--as well, at least, as most young couples do when they are just starting out in life. It's not like we're rich, but neither of us is afraid of work, and he has many intellectual talents that will be of great use to him in finding a job, both during and after grad school. As for me, I save money very well and am good at accomplishing things on a small budget and in creative ways. I have always been creative, as my mother often reminds me, and not easily stymied.

I am a good proofreader, a good writer, and a student of humanity in every way. I can ply a needle, crochet, knit, and tat, so clothing is not problem, nor are blankets. I could probably even make sheets and pillowcases if necessary. I can cook and bake, wash and mend, clean a house...and I will do anything for the people I love. I am going to be a good housewife and keep my husband happy, as well as our children when we have them. I will create a wonderful place for us to live, no matter where we are and how well-off or budget-conscious we are.

Love can work wonders, especially when applied liberally and sincerely. I should know--my family has never been rich, and often our little luxuries cost us somewhere else, but we have been happy because we love each other and know that love to be all-encompassing. We certainly do not always get along, but it does not matter. Strong personalities are bound to clash at times, but we still love each other even more every day, and we are happy. What more can I ask for in my life with David than that? There are certainly much less desirable things to be found in a marriage than love and happiness. I will be very satisfied if we have but those two alone.