I often remark that my type A nature is coursing through my veins. I grew up in a highly stressful academic environment and dance provided an outlet to escape the chaos. Throughout my younger years dance was something I did for fun. It was full of joy and healthy challenges I was eager to conquer. Moving to music was when I felt the most alive, when I felt a connection to something much larger than myself.
As things shifted in high school, my type A tendencies poured their way into my dancing. I became more concerned with not only how I looked physically but also how “good” my dancing was. Years later I am often questioning what I defined as good. I wanted to be “correct” and do things “right.” I was far more caught up in the product than the process. It became less about the experience of dance and more so about dancing for some end result tied to a sense of self worth and perfection. As I made my way through the latter part of high school and into college, this perfectionism mixed with a whole host of injuries and disordered eating seemed to exacerbate these ideals. I was continuously tied to everything that was wrong with my body, wrong with my dancing, and wrong with the career choices I had chosen to make thus far.
My first year upon graduating college I joined a trainee program. It was a welcoming and supportive environment and yet I entered this program in the same perfectionist mind-state. Then something shifted around year two of being “on my own,” no longer associated with an institution or program. I was taking open classes in NYC and I felt like the tiniest of fish in a huge pond. (Side note: many days I still feel like this, though the pond feels ever so slightly more manageable).
After a conversation with a coach, I started to get really curious about dance, a word I had never associated with my dancing before. Instead of going into the room looking to be the best dancer, or the thinnest, or the most flexible (all things I had at one point been so very consumed by), I started to explore how I could reconnect to the joy of movement. This shift in my mindset provided a much needed change in my dancing. When I had approached class striving to be the best, it actually stunted my potential for growth. I was boxed into these feelings of how I needed to perform a certain way.
Shifting my mindset brought me back to all the beautiful reasons why I choose dance in the first place. Why I fought through countless injuries and disordered eating to pursue something that I loved. When I approach my dancing now, I am in a continuous process of asking myself; how can I be generous with my movement? Where does the generosity in movement originate? How can I cultivate a dance practice that is rooted in moving for reasons that are abundant and joyful? This shift in approach to dance is not perfect. There are still plenty of days when I take class and find myself resorting back to my old thought patterns and ways of relating to movement. Other days though I feel much lighter and free in the studio, open and available to what is possible.
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