Day 134: Who Am I in a Group? Dance Company - Pt1

After high school I pursued an education to become a professional dancer. Dancing was my passion - what I loved to do and what I wanted to do forever. I quit towards the end of the first year, because within this training, within this school - I felt I no longer enjoyed dancing the way I used to. The training was intense of course and the school was competitive. Dancing for me had always been something I did in my free time, for me - where I 'got away from it all'.

In movies they romanticize what it means to get in to a professional dancing school, and so had I. The physical reality was different from what I had expected. The group I started in seemed to share the same expectations - we were all excited initially, but it didn't take long before we were all continuously exhausted and struggling emotionally to make it through the week. The weekend, when I wasn't dancing, was now the time we would get 'away from it all'.

After I quit the school, I joined an amateur dance company. I had seen them perform while I was still in the professional dance school and remember being impressed by the choreography, their level of technique/ability and the passion of the dancers.

There were several new dancers in the company when I joined. The group was obviously 'tight' with each other and so the newbies would mostly hang with each other - but this didn't last for long. Within the choreographies, there was a lot of partnerwork - where two or more dancers have to work in absolute harmony in order to pull of a particular part/section of the choreography - and for no one to fall or get hurt. Your timing, your positioning, your intensity, your speed has to be absolutely specific - and you have to trust the other to do the same. And if for some reason you get out of sync, you have to adjust yourself in a moment - and trust that the other would do the same. Trust on this level is quite interesting - because it is a decision that has to be made - where you allow yourself to place trust in another - to catch you, to hold you or to release you.

To be continued