Go climb a mountain

On a group hike today, I asked the fastest hiker, a 76-year-old, what her favorite hike is that she’s done. Her answer: 

“Pike’s Peak, because I was turning 60, and I thought, ‘Well, I can either be depressed that I’m turning 60, or I can go climb a mountain.’ So I climbed a mountain.” 

Chicago, Part 2

Things Chicago reminded me I love about big cities: 

Seeing/hearing passionate subway lectures and speeches and wondering if they’re the same in every car and what those guys go home to.

People helping strangers on the street and on public transportation.

Watching people and thinking they’re friends or family, then realizing a couple minutes later they had just met and will probably never see each other again but nevertheless made a real connection for one brief moment in their lives.

Walking everywhere.

Getting temporarily lost and seeing parts of the city I wouldn’t otherwise.

Things it reminded me I don’t like about big cities:

Mystery sludge on me from above. Seriously, what is it and where does it come from??

Seeing people who are invisible. They talk to every person who walks by asking for something, and no one turns to look; no one so much as blinks to acknowledge their existence. Putting aside how they got there, what is it like to go through your day with words that don’t reach anyone and a body that no one sees?

Feeling small.

Walking everywhere with a backpack.

People changing their socks on the train.

Getting temporarily lost when I’m racing to make the last train home.

Leaving it before I’ve had my fill.

Chicago, Part 1

I spent the day after my 19th birthday exploring New York City for the first time, by myself. After taking me to see Wicked the night before and helping me settle into my disgusting, gross, cockroach-riddled room for the summer in a Harlem apartment shared with three girls I didn't know, my parents left that morning, and I set out to conquer the city. 

What I remember most about that first day on my own was how empowering it felt to learn New York. I remember taking the subway down from Harlem to Times Square and walking around the theatre district, ultimately landing at a table in Bryant Park, and thinking, "I can do this. On my own. In the biggest city in the country."

I had never really been anywhere on my own other than Bloomington, Indiana for college—a town that mixes Midwest and Southern hospitality and is the poster child for every greenery-covered, idealistic college brochure ever. And which was also less than two hours from where I grew up.

So though I absolutely felt lonely that first day alone in NYC, my loneliness was no match for the enormous sense of strength I felt from being able to take on this huge, tough, loud, crowded, confusing, entirely different and new-to-me city by myself.

As Times Square eventually became my back yard and the place in the world that I know more intimately, and at more times of day and night, than any other place besides my childhood house, I sometimes missed that feeling of seeing it for the first time and learning its nooks and crannies, discovering its secrets, making it feel small and familiar to me rather than a place famous from the TV screen.

Today, to celebrate my birthday (a day early) I decided to go to another big city I don't know, by myself.

This is my view from the train station. I recognize nothing. Chicago is a stranger to me.

And that's what makes it so great. Because I have a whole day ahead of me to learn it.

Perfect vs. Good

One of the lessons pandemic life has underscored for me is to never let perfect be the enemy of good. Over the last year, we've faced the choices of outdoor, masked, and socially distanced get-togethers with friends and family or none at all, of working out at a gym with a mask on or not at all, of taking dance and fitness classes from our homes or not at all... Too often, it's easy to go with the "Well if I can't do it the way I want to then it's not worth doing it at all" choice, and I think we miss out on so much when we live life that way.

I created this dance on a day when it was tempting to let perfect be the enemy of good. I wasn't in "the zone," was sore and tight and tired, my technique was sloppy, and I was feeling uncreative. I wanted windows and natural light and to feel inspired by my surroundings. But that's not what I had. After working on several songs unsuccessfully, I checked the clock and thought, "I don't know that I'm going to come up with anything in the half hour I have left."

But then I found this song. And I did this dance.

Perfect? No. But I like it. I'm glad I didn't give up on creating something good, even if it's not perfect.

No pandemic can keep us from creating or dancing—no windowless studio or basement with cement and carpet or class existing on a mobile device can do that.

Only we can do that to ourselves.

🎼: "One Last Time" by LP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UY-zQR0ZXE

Inhibition and improvisation

 

When do we develop the self-consciousness that inhibits us from improvising, whether it's dance, acting, or any other art—or even just conversing? I often hear that improvisation is a "muscle" that must be exercised, but to me it seems quite the opposite—You're born with the ability to improvise. Babies bop to music in their carriers long before they can walk; kids invent elaborate role-play scenarios years before they freeze up in an improv exercise in drama or speech class; young children ask questions and make announcements without worrying how the listener will perceive them for their words.

I ask my three-to-eight-year-old ballet students to improv and they do it with smiles on their faces, responding to the tempo, rhythm, and even the levels suggested by the music. But my teen students freeze—hands in pockets, not even a head bop or rock side to side to the beat. Is it because of a "muscle" they haven't exercised or because they feel judged? Or some other factor entirely?

In thinking about it, I realized that while I stayed comfortable improvising in theatre and dance, it's my ease of conversing with those I don’t know well that suffered when I left early childhood. I can come off as shy, but it's not that words don't come to me or that I'm standoffish, nor do I have any fear of public speaking—It's that I started censoring myself when I started getting picked on in school, and now I find myself with words in my head that sometimes never get said aloud. Sometimes they build up, and eventually all the feelings conveyed by those words that were never said, conversations that were never had, swirl together with everything else inside me and come out as dance... improvised dance. Without that outlet I would explode.

So how do you get teens to improvise? How do you keep children from inhibiting themselves in expression? How do you get older kids and adults to have that same breathless smile of joy as they twirl and leap that they did when they were six?

Stillness

I've been thinking about stillness lately. I have a hard time being still. When I took my first-ever yoga class recently, I had an enormously difficult time being that still for that long. I wanted to do some gigantic, explosive movement. For the whole class I was aware that people around me were deriving peace from being calm and still, while the same stillness and calmness was making me more and more anxious and antsy. I could feel it building inside me. By the end of class, I needed to run three miles to get out what had built up during the stillness.

And that got me thinking about this dance. Though I posted the rest of it on Instagram, I never posted this part of it because I thought it had too much stillness and quiet movement. Rewatching it, I realized I used what was building inside me and being held back during the stillness to make what happens on the release more explosive. For me, stillness always has to be followed by big movement. Stillness can't be an end goal in and of itself. It can only be a pause, a means by which to achieve more powerful movement—which also translates beyond just physical movement to how I live my life.

Does stillness make you calm or anxious? Do you derive peace from contentment or does contentment unnerve you and fill you with the need for exertion and movement?

The line in this song “the furthest thing from perfect” speaks so strongly to me. Perhaps my inability to hold still is one of my great flaws, but I have a feeling I’ll always find more peace in jumping as hard as I can as high as I can than I will in holding still in any position, physical or otherwise.

Music: Furthest Thing (Drake song covered by Dermot Kennedy)

Taking back my Saturday

Saturday morning ballet classes were always one of my favorite things all through childhood. There was something different about them from the classes I went to after school during the week. Same room, same teachers, many of the same students, but the feeling in the air was different. The electricity and energy were different. The effort and sweat were different. No one had to be there Saturday morning. It wasn't required. It wasn't a form of babysitting or an afterschool activity parents signed their kids up for. It was a choice by everyone in the room to get up early on a day their friends slept in or watched TV in their pajamas and go work hard instead. Everyone there wanted to be their best and gave up one of only two (if any) possible days to sleep in to achieve that. We all started class sleepy and quiet, but there was an intensity in our quiet. The dreams in the dance studio Saturday morning were bigger than during the week. The pirouettes had more risks, more rotations, and more falls. The extensions were held ever so slightly longer, despite trembling muscles. The jumps were ever so slightly higher, breath was shorter, and at the end of the class, the feeling of being wiped out and having given my all was sweeter and so much more delicious.

Those Saturday morning ballet classes are something I miss the most about my childhood ballet training. Now, I teach three back-to-back kids' ballet classes Saturday morning into afternoon without so much as a 30-second break to slip my mask off and take a sip of water in between. Saturdays are no longer something I feel I "own." They're not mine. They belong to the kids I teach.

So I decided to take back my Saturday morning by getting up even earlier than normal and going to my boxing gym. But I would be lying if I said that what I really wanted to do before those three classes is get up early and go work out. When my alarm went off this morning, I just wanted to go back to sleep for an extra hour and then watch Scooby Doo in my PJs while leisurely eating my cereal.

But I did work out. Because it's something I can do for myself. I love teaching my students, but I also need to get back the feeling of Saturday mornings when I was kid—when those mornings belonged to me. I miss getting up early to go to class and sweat and work hard surrounded by others who wanted—needed—to be there just as much as I. I never felt more satisfied than after Saturday morning class, no matter how hard it was to get myself there in the first place.

Today I took ownership of my Saturday by boxing before teaching my three classes. Did I want to to do it when I woke up? Nope. Was it incredibly hard to get through the class? Yep. Was it the most rewarding feeling all week that I did it anyway? Absolutely.

Do something for yourself today. Whatever that is. Something that gives you ownership of your day, takes something back for yourself, and conquers something, however small it is.