Finding MY Groove
As a fourteen-year-old, I thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher. All it took was a stupid ski accident, a torn ACL, and a 9 month "no dancing" prescription to teach me that I did not want to be a high school English teacher. I wanted to be a dancer.
I got lucky and found the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago the summer before my senior year. I studied modern, ballet, West African, and hip hop (and tap but we don't talk about that) for three years before earning my Bachelor's in Dance in 2017. My time at Columbia was truly awesome. My only real responsibility was to go to school and get good grades, and "going to school" meant dancing and "getting good grades" meant dancing, so really the only thing I ever had to do was dance. I remember having an acute awareness that this situation was not only unbelievably fun, but it was also endemic to this time in my life, and would vanish when I graduated (this knowledge definitely added to the fun). Unfortunately, I was right. I graduated and things were... definitely less fun.
Part of what I did in college was start The Sunflower Project, which is an initiative to use dance to educate high school students on abusive relationships (I'm a survivor of this). When I graduated, I thought that it might be a good idea to try to work in the nonprofit world for a bit, as I planned to make The Sunflower Project a nonprofit one day in the future. I was grateful for the direction I felt when it came to not only how I would be dancing in my future, but how I would also be making a living (gasp) from my craft. I took a full time job at a local nonprofit six months after graduating, and stayed there for a year.
Then this weird thing happened - suddenly it had been a year and a half since I had danced. I'd somehow gone from dancing five days a week for three or four hours a day to literally not dancing at all. The 9-5 had perks (consistent pay, whaddup!) but left no room for energy to take dance class, or time to take dance class, or (and this one is important) feeling the need to take dance class. Somehow I let my life drift so far away from the dancer I had been years before that I forgot that I like to dance.
While working at this nonprofit was always explained away by my insisting that it was "for the future, for when I start my own nonprofit", I conveniently forgot that "starting my own nonprofit" was code for "becoming a professional dancer in a non-traditional way". The "professional dancer" part of that plan was easily tossed in a bin and shoved into a very small storage space in the basement of my apartment building - next to, of course, my dance diploma. I gained weight in places that had always been firm and sculpted from hours at the barre. I fell out of touch with almost every single dance friend I made in college. I even missed one of Alvin Ailey's rare Chicago performances. I was completely on the outside of the dance world, and it didn't feel good.
So I quit my job. I recognize how lucky I was to be able to do that - to turn away a full-time paycheck and trade it for instability and (most likely) a lot less money. I was so grateful that I caught this mistake I had made early enough and could stop going down the non-dance path and forge my way back to the original dance-path I had set out on when I started college. I got hired at a few dance places to teach little kiddos in public schools how to pointe their toes and do a three-step-turn (I mean, after all, I do have a degree in dance). I was so excited to "get back into the dance world".
But that was February, and as I write this it's almost June, and I am very much not "back in the dance world". In fact, I feel more outside of it all than I ever had before - even when I was spending 40 hours a week working for an organization that literally had nothing to do with dance.
Now, if you know me, you might start protesting at this point. "But Leah, don't you have a show coming up?" Yes, yes I do have a show coming up. In 6 days, actually (yikes). You see, back in the summer of 2019 I applied to be an artist in residence at a studio in Logan Square and was accepted. I've been rehearsing there since September with two other dancers and in a week we are premiering my first ever full-length, self-produced show. We are even doing two nights of this show, which I decided in a bout of (probably out of place) self-confidence. So, with this big show coming up, how could I possibly still feel so out of the loop when it comes to dance?
Part of why I feel so distant from the dance world is that I have lost a lot of my technique in the years I spent not dancing. I haven't been going to any classes, so my muscles have softened and my balance has decreased, and altogether my body is not what I used to consider a "dancer body". And not only am I not in a company, I know that if I did audition for one or two or twelve I wouldn't get in anywhere because, again, I've lost my technique.
Another part of why I feel so distant is that I haven't been to many shows at all, and any self-respecting dancer spends all their time at shows when they aren't training in class, right? At least, that's what I learned in college. Not going to shows plus not being in shows plus having really awful technique plus not going to class... you get it. Even with a show coming up, I'm not feeling confident in the merits of my own choreography and I'm certainly wildly unsure if anyone will even come to watch the show.
I've brought this up to the two dancers who are performing in this show with me next week, and both of them have expressed feeling similarly when it comes to being out of the dance world. This is not a sentiment held by me alone - in fact I have a hunch that a lot of dancers have experienced this feeling.
So that's why this blog exists. I could definitely use some solidarity in my quest to be a dancer again, and I have a feeling other people might need it, too. I'll be honest in my rants about the trials of re-entering the world of dance, and probably I will fall into the tropes and caricatures of what it means to be a "dancer", but hopefully (!) I will be able to poke some holes in the ways dancers define their world... and (just maybe) I'll poke a hole big enough to crawl through.
I got lucky and found the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago the summer before my senior year. I studied modern, ballet, West African, and hip hop (and tap but we don't talk about that) for three years before earning my Bachelor's in Dance in 2017. My time at Columbia was truly awesome. My only real responsibility was to go to school and get good grades, and "going to school" meant dancing and "getting good grades" meant dancing, so really the only thing I ever had to do was dance. I remember having an acute awareness that this situation was not only unbelievably fun, but it was also endemic to this time in my life, and would vanish when I graduated (this knowledge definitely added to the fun). Unfortunately, I was right. I graduated and things were... definitely less fun.
Part of what I did in college was start The Sunflower Project, which is an initiative to use dance to educate high school students on abusive relationships (I'm a survivor of this). When I graduated, I thought that it might be a good idea to try to work in the nonprofit world for a bit, as I planned to make The Sunflower Project a nonprofit one day in the future. I was grateful for the direction I felt when it came to not only how I would be dancing in my future, but how I would also be making a living (gasp) from my craft. I took a full time job at a local nonprofit six months after graduating, and stayed there for a year.
Then this weird thing happened - suddenly it had been a year and a half since I had danced. I'd somehow gone from dancing five days a week for three or four hours a day to literally not dancing at all. The 9-5 had perks (consistent pay, whaddup!) but left no room for energy to take dance class, or time to take dance class, or (and this one is important) feeling the need to take dance class. Somehow I let my life drift so far away from the dancer I had been years before that I forgot that I like to dance.
I'll repeat: I forgot that I liked to dance.
While working at this nonprofit was always explained away by my insisting that it was "for the future, for when I start my own nonprofit", I conveniently forgot that "starting my own nonprofit" was code for "becoming a professional dancer in a non-traditional way". The "professional dancer" part of that plan was easily tossed in a bin and shoved into a very small storage space in the basement of my apartment building - next to, of course, my dance diploma. I gained weight in places that had always been firm and sculpted from hours at the barre. I fell out of touch with almost every single dance friend I made in college. I even missed one of Alvin Ailey's rare Chicago performances. I was completely on the outside of the dance world, and it didn't feel good.
So I quit my job. I recognize how lucky I was to be able to do that - to turn away a full-time paycheck and trade it for instability and (most likely) a lot less money. I was so grateful that I caught this mistake I had made early enough and could stop going down the non-dance path and forge my way back to the original dance-path I had set out on when I started college. I got hired at a few dance places to teach little kiddos in public schools how to pointe their toes and do a three-step-turn (I mean, after all, I do have a degree in dance). I was so excited to "get back into the dance world".
But that was February, and as I write this it's almost June, and I am very much not "back in the dance world". In fact, I feel more outside of it all than I ever had before - even when I was spending 40 hours a week working for an organization that literally had nothing to do with dance.
Now, if you know me, you might start protesting at this point. "But Leah, don't you have a show coming up?" Yes, yes I do have a show coming up. In 6 days, actually (yikes). You see, back in the summer of 2019 I applied to be an artist in residence at a studio in Logan Square and was accepted. I've been rehearsing there since September with two other dancers and in a week we are premiering my first ever full-length, self-produced show. We are even doing two nights of this show, which I decided in a bout of (probably out of place) self-confidence. So, with this big show coming up, how could I possibly still feel so out of the loop when it comes to dance?
The dance scene is no different than any art scene in any city - it's exclusive, it's elusive, and nobody really knows who makes the rules for how to get in.
Part of why I feel so distant from the dance world is that I have lost a lot of my technique in the years I spent not dancing. I haven't been going to any classes, so my muscles have softened and my balance has decreased, and altogether my body is not what I used to consider a "dancer body". And not only am I not in a company, I know that if I did audition for one or two or twelve I wouldn't get in anywhere because, again, I've lost my technique.
Another part of why I feel so distant is that I haven't been to many shows at all, and any self-respecting dancer spends all their time at shows when they aren't training in class, right? At least, that's what I learned in college. Not going to shows plus not being in shows plus having really awful technique plus not going to class... you get it. Even with a show coming up, I'm not feeling confident in the merits of my own choreography and I'm certainly wildly unsure if anyone will even come to watch the show.
I've brought this up to the two dancers who are performing in this show with me next week, and both of them have expressed feeling similarly when it comes to being out of the dance world. This is not a sentiment held by me alone - in fact I have a hunch that a lot of dancers have experienced this feeling.
In fact, I have a hunch that the majority of dancers have experienced this feeling.
So that's why this blog exists. I could definitely use some solidarity in my quest to be a dancer again, and I have a feeling other people might need it, too. I'll be honest in my rants about the trials of re-entering the world of dance, and probably I will fall into the tropes and caricatures of what it means to be a "dancer", but hopefully (!) I will be able to poke some holes in the ways dancers define their world... and (just maybe) I'll poke a hole big enough to crawl through.
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