"Hurt"

There have been times in my life when people have tried to tell me that being a dancer isn't who I am but just a thing I do—that defining myself as a dancer is somehow limiting or something that needs to be fixed. I completely disagree. Dance does define me, and that's okay. Even when I'm 90, if my body is broken and confined to a wheelchair, if shrugging my shoulders and bopping my head and wiggling my toes and fingers is all I can do, I will still be a dancer, not a "former dancer." Being a dancer is not a switch that can be thrown for me. Some people dance for a living but it doesn't define them, and that's okay. For me, it does. I've heard so many times that it's important to remember dance is "just a part" of me, and in a sense, that's true—there are of course many other parts of my life and things I do besides dance. But dance is a part of me that touches and influences every other part of me: how I see things, how I feel movement and touch, how I process new situations, how I see colors and movement, how I feel emotions, how I write words. I can't turn off being a dancer, and I don't want to.

I created this dance from beginning to end in ten minutes at the end of a 2-hour studio session working on something else. I might never be the person who can walk into a room and talk to strangers easily and grab attention or quickly find the right words to say at the right time, but music and dance never fail me. They will always be the language of my soul; they will always be the place I put my emotions that have no other outlet; they will always be how I express what I cannot put into words; they will always be the device by which I feel deeper and richer than ordinary life would allow. This piece is one of my favorites I've created, and I hope watching it you feel even a fraction of what I felt dancing it.