Thursday, January 21, 2010

Dance

So a good friend of mine asked me yesterday, why do you dance?

Especially, he said, when it seems like "There are times when you seem to be killing yourself with dance to the detriment of other things in a way I don't think I would for an activity..."

and it got me thinking....

I have thought about the question why do i dance before. my parents still often ask me, why are you still dancing? what does it mean to you? i always, of course, a little petulantly, say, "because it makes me happy!"

but what does that mean? And in the response to my friend, i started really trying to understand, what it is that happens when i dance, or draws me to dance.

first, its unstoppable. its an urge. its like, there is nothing else i can do but DANCE something out. its this feeling that i get when i hear music, or feel an emotion, or see a story, that all of a sudden coaxes my body into something, and i think to myself, i have to get myself to a studio now.

second, more than an urge to just move, its an urge to create. its like when something moves me, a piece of music, an emotion, a story, my mind naturally wanders to a visual scene that i want to create. i want to translate what i feel into something that someone else can understand and feel as well.

and third, i realized this when i talked to another friend of mine, a lot of times dance is able to express something for myself that words, music, art, can't do for me. Actually mostly just words. I used to diary a lot. write down a lot of my emotions, but there is a way that i did it where i noticed i censored myself. i think before i write it down, and in the translation onto paper or into words, i lose some of that raw feeling that i had in my head. to me, dance is sometimes a much more direct translation of how i feel.

in high school, when i first started to seriously choreograph, i dont think i even thought twice about why i loved it. it was an activity, and i threw 110% of myself into everyone of my activities. (YEA..i was THAT kid). So in HS it was just something I excelled at. but just recently, dance has become much more meaningful to me.

So yes, I sometimes give into that temptation, and sometimes it is to the detriment of everything else that I *should* be doing. I get very little sleep sometimes, don't eat properly, do a lot of crazy things...but hey, i'm in my twenties, and that's allowed, right?

And who defines what I *should* or *shouldn't* be doing to begin with?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

'because we're adults now, and it's our turn to define what that means.'

my favorite quote.

and i totally agree with everything you said.

Anonymous said...

i was actually thinking about the difference between writing and dancing recently. i think right now for me, writing is an attempt to explain and understand. the very act of choosing words to describe what you're feeling is in a way a judgment; it's cognitive, conscious, analytical.
dancing is just...expressing. it is what it is, not something to be understood so much as to be felt.
each has their own place. but thought i'd share this thought.
<3