A month ago, in the height of intense rehearsals and immense pressure, I had several moments where I just honestly lost my shit in front of my boyfriend. My body ached, my feet literally bled and bruised, my head was full of notes and patterns, and I was having constant internal existential crises.
After one such melt down, he just turned to me and said something along the lines of, “if it causes you this much pain and makes you ask yourself so many questions, why do you keep doing it?”
I kind of just gaped back at his question. My fatigued brain whirred around with potential answers, a few profound and a few s
nappy, but not a single one seemed to sum it all up. So I just shrugged and said “because”. So angsty.
But the question kept coming back to me, as much as I thought I could shrug it off.
I was beginning to ask myself why. With all the uncertainty, physical pain, emotional rollercoasters, and mind bending situations did I actually want to pursue a career in dance? And then this of course led to the internal panic attacks of how if I really didn’t want to dance, and if I chose something else, how long would I be in school, and would I have to transfer to save money? Also, what the hell would I do if I didn’t dance??
Once I got past the initial stages of internally being in hysterics and externally trying to play it cool, I started to re-evaluate.
Yes, dance is usually financially unstable. I will definitely hold many jobs to keep myself alive. Yes, dance monopolizes times and often throws other commitments to the wayside. There’s a huge chance I will miss family events, or events of friends because of a dance commitment. And yes, it takes a toll on you. Definitely physically, and most likely emotionally.
But I can’t just walk away.
Dance is a part of me the same way I say I’m from Atlanta. It has affected everything in my life. The way I carry myself, the way I process information, the way I see and hear things. Dance is the way for me to both be myself, and be a completely different person. I know I’m a complex person, and that probably is partially because I consider myself an artist. But I think in an interesting way dance has been a means of expressing the complexity.
I don’t think the complexities and challenges dance proposes should be masked. Maybe it’s supposed to look easy, but we don’t have to continue that facade when we speak about it. There are so many beautiful things that the arts have offered me, discipline, creative thinking, drive, fitness, strength of character, individuality, the list goes on. While I still plan to pursue dance in the future, I know that no matter what happens, being given the opportunity to dance in any capacity has created the woman I am today. A woman who I am still discovering, and am learning to be proud of.
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