Confronting Love: Freeing the Dancer Within Performance
These are my collected social media countdown notes on practicing the Tamalpa Institute Life/Art Process for my Final Self-Portrait Ritual “Confronting Love: Freeing the Dancer Within,” to be performed on July 10, 2020 as completion of the Level 1 Weekend Training on Personal Embodiment.
10
Playing with fire, taunting it as it taunts me, a spider wrapped in its web. . .
Monday afternoon light and soft filters emphasize the fiery, blood red wings my teacher had made just for me. I am still growing into them.
I feel special with them on, even though I trip over my own feet at times.
I am still confronting my edges.
9
Playing with air, relaxing into beauty and learning how to love. . .
Thursday afternoon light and chill-raising filters emphasize the cold, meandering day in which I actually practiced!
I feel a resilience and a resoluteness within. My shy inner child resists, and the adult me still wants to dance freely. I am somewhere in between.
8
Dancing with the longing to grieve, to feel it, really feel it. . .
Friday afternoon in red wings and red bowler hat. Vivid filters emphasize the effort and slight disconnection from the loss of my birth mother represented by Ailee’s beautiful voice saying goodbye to love!
I really want to be able to go there, but I’m still holding myself back. My containment and holding dance sustaining me. I am left with the thought—more fucking practice!!!!
7
Dancing to my own voice singing Alexz Johnson in the shower. Dancing with the weight, the resistance, the ground and my own frustration this 4th of July. . .
Saturday afternoon in black wings, black bathing suit, pants and bowler hat in support of Black Lives Matter. I had a micro-aggression via a response to my story post on BLM this morning from someone I’ve known my whole life willfully ignoring her white privilege that reminded me of the micro-aggressions I experienced on the daily growing up in Michigan.
Instead of blasting her words in screencaps all over my feeds, I took my anger to the floor and moved with it. Another way of confronting while staying true to myself. And that is the practice!
6
I missed a day!
5
Dancing to the moon in my own ode to a nightingale. Also dancing my own negative capability. Once a Keats fan, always a Keatsian? 🌚
Monday night in my pretty wings and moon cycle comfortable bodysuit. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed today, and I did. I didn’t feel like wing dancing, and E had me put on my playlist, and when I still didn’t want to dance it, she had me work on my core and strengthening exercises. Finally, after getting my selfie stick/tripod/WiFi remote controller toy in the mail today, I felt like dancing!!! It is also helping me to feel more performance ready!
Good night to you all! 🙏🏼🌑🤍
4
Dancing in joy, new beginnings, new stories and new vitality! 👒🦋🌸
Tuesday evening in my butterfly wings, white bowler hat, and the Aria Lattner bodysuit! It feels good to be in my body today, in this bodysuit and in my skin.
The spider and cat serving as my audience do not keep me from exhilarating in my own movement, which really does feel like a ritual in this moment and dancing to this newly released version of the Alexz Johnson song I’ve loved for nearly 10 years.
I cried when I discovered the re-release last week because it’s so different than the original, but it’s the same song. I changed my performance to work these two versions in because that is essentially the theme of my dance anyway. What changes and what remains the same. The different versions of love and what it takes for transformation. . .
3
Dancing my first two full length performance run-throughs today was a learning experience. The first was a complete and utter failure. Boring, stuck, rigid, heady, disastrous transitions.
As Wednesday afternoon became Wednesday evening, I regretted waiting so long to do a run-through. The fears I wouldn’t be able to fully embody my score began to rise. I felt that familiar adrenaline and love of a challenge come in, too, and I went with it. The second run-through went much better. I am getting closer to my vision.
Once a procrastinator always a procrastinator. I know I create added pressure for myself, and it also feeds the creative energy and fixation as I try to become my own masterpiece!
2
Dancing my last two full length performance run-throughs today with my portrait hung and “stage” set!
Dancing in the Thursday late afternoon and evening heat left me dehydrated, exhausted and hungry.
The literal hunger is easy to satisfy, but the metaphorical one less so! I have gotten my core ready to ingest the fire and my whole body is lit like the sun from the inside out. Will I be able to shine tomorrow? Can I dance with my little girl who has been integrated into the shape shifting fire to grow in the chamber of my womb? Am I ready to be fully unleashed?
1
My personal journey has been to integrate my spacious and serene MIND with the realness of my BODY, and the compassion and pureness of my HEART. In integrating my 3 centers, I am now having to confront my relationship with my heart’s expanding openness and with my actual capacity to love and let love in.
Through this encountering, I am feeling the openings and closings held in this center. I dance with the current inquiry: What does it mean to surrender?
I have this dream of dancing with my inner child in wild abandon. No inhibitions, no constraints, no resistance—only the liberation of the dance and trust in my body. I believe when I am able to embody this dream, my whole self will be fully unleashed and both my inner child and me can be free. This wild, fully unleashed self is my dancer within, and it is she I am longing to meet through my integration. It is she who has been protected in my disconnection from my heart and my body. It is my hidden dancer within who I honor with my “Identify—Confront—Release—Change” dance.
Dancing in freedom. Dancing with love for myself, for this process, for my own growth and for my integrated selves! Dancing in full embodiment—free, unleashed, open and feeling!
Dancing what one of my teachers calls—“this YES dance”! Yes, to it all.
Friday afternoon’s dance was a success in terms of my visions, intentions and truth of where I am at right now. I feel relieved, and I also feel liberated, soaring above the clouds at sunset—uninhibited, full and completely ME.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey towards my own true self-expression! I appreciate you more than I can say at this moment. I am so deeply touched by each of you and will continue to carry your wisdom with me!
