Monday, November 2, 2009

I am

I am a dancer.

I am a teacher.

I am an artist.

As a dancer I have learned where my body ends and the world begins. I have learned about limitations as well as the unlimited potential of the effects of my dancing. I have learned that I can make people laugh, cry, or feel ecstasy through my dance. I have learned that I can mobilize people through dance. I can create alternate realities through my dancing. I can ignite love between two people through dance. As a dancer I have become a fuller human being. As a dancer I continue to grow and expand into deeper, farther-reaching potentialities. I continue to evolve, spin, roll, creep, and seep into the interstices of this thing called dance.

As a teacher I have learned where my experiences end and my students’ begin. I have seen that the process of teaching is a two way street, that as much as I give to my students I receive from them equal amounts of knowledge and nourishment. I have realized that I have so much more to learn. I have come to understand and admire my own teachers even more. I have come to the crossroads of contradiction and bivouacked through to create new roads. I have broken rules that my teachers said should never be broken and yet I have carried on the traditions with reverence and respect. As a teacher I am an ever evolving, revolving creator.

As an artist I have been given a gift. I have been given the freedom to push past the boundaries and delineations of our isolated arts fields. I can invert the floor and dance on the side of a building. I can create dances on a computer screen. I can draw dances in the sand. I can inscribe my experiences in the wind and never worry about the ethereality of the result. I can write the unending story of dance without an audience. I can dance in the middle of the grocery store. And I can sit in my living room and create an entire world without moving a muscle.