Recognizing the thought that started us on a new path in life, or shifting how we see ourselves, can often be different each time we go looking for it. I don't think this is a bad thing, and it is the process of looking at how we got to where we are that can help us have faith that our choices today might be for a better unknowable future! How's that for a mouthful of an opening statement?
This year is turning out to be quite the adventure, as many projects seem to have come together after varying gestations of years, if not decades. Just on traveling alone, by the end of this year I will have visited more time zones than I care to acknowledge, and touched on a few Taylor dances that I didn't know very well before. Each of these adventures started with a single idea, and a willingness to see where it might lead.
Before I get too deep into my musings, this is also about the mindset of taking dance classes in either ballet or modern (or both, if you prefer). If learning to dance was the thought that germinated into taking class, the idea also needs time to self-determine what "dance" means to you. So why not try out different classes and different teachers to help the idea gain some perspective on what might be both possible and enjoyable to you.
Before I write any of these posts, I try to figure out what ideas my day-to-day activities (and teaching) have me invested in for the moment. I am almost always trying to decide if a new approach to a familiar challenge is necessary, or, "am I just making things more difficult for myself for the sake of being different?" So I let my observations of the dancers in class determine if I need to try something different, or pull out the "tried and true".
Believe it or not, this is true of almost any task in my work as a director of licensing for Paul Taylor's dances to be staged and performed by outside companies and schools. The basic components always need to be addressed but how they go together can vary quite drastically, depending on the organizational culture, resources, inclination, and economic agility of the outside organizations. For dancers taking class, my metaphorical parallel is their amiability, their natural gifts, their desire, and their openmindedness to learning the unfamiliar.
Nothing in my childhood ever considered that there was a future in dance for me, much less having multiple careers within the field throughout my life. Yet I did have the thought that it was something I wanted to try doing.
My ballet career in the USA gained traction in 1982 with Oakland Ballet in California. I accepted the offer to join the company from taking company class alongside the dancers while they were on tour in Miami, Florida. I knew nothing about the company or California when I landed in Oakland and was taken to rehearsals the first evening I had ever set foot in the city, much less the state! Three years later, I was a featured dancer with the company, and had done my first premieres of original roles created for me by choreographers.
Jump forward ten years, I would join Paul Taylor Dance Company, for which I had flown into NYC solely to attend an open audition call. I was not confident I had any chance of getting a job with Taylor, but it was also the only company in New York for which I wanted to dance.
In my last post I mentioned the impact of Carlos Carvajal on my dance career at Oakland Ballet, and I have uncovered a short clip from the opening of his ballet SYNERGIES in which I originated the role of the opening dancer.
I also mentioned that I would find myself having opening solos created for me more than once. Here I am with Paul Taylor Dance Company.
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