A couple of days ago, bfp asked herself and us the equivalent of “where are you in your creative life?”  That question hit home.

I think the short answer is that I am stuck.  That of course is not so much a place as a statement of condition. I hope that the distinction will help me move beyond the sensation.  For stuck, I am.   At West Coast, we often play with stuck or bound movement; that contradiction seems useful, too.  In class and on stage, it always generates interesting movement both to dance and to watch.  How you move when you are stuck is the key question, no?

Mostly, I have appreciated the idea that in my dance life (as opposed to my former life) there is nothing but the present, the next movement, the next project, the next class, the absence of planned career and target lists, the absence of stress, the  ….  And mostly, I have been able to commit to the utter and incredible singularity of each of my daily experiences.  That’s a new for me (I’ve been a follow the rules/worry about the next thing girl all my life). So, let me come clean.  I have no reason to complain about being stuck.  I am where I wanted to be; I worked to be here.  And I will work harder to stay here.  I even kind of feel it is wrong to feel stuck because I am dancing unbelievable work with unbelievable people.  Dancers would kill to be in pieces by choreographers I have had the honor to dance for.  And believe me, honor is an understatement.

And yet, I feel stuck.  (I don’t mean to sound whiny, honestly; I am trying to access a complicated feeling about how to develop as a dancer and person this year.)

While I enjoy the experience of being in the present, I also realize that I have nowhere else to go (that thought that makes me worried.  Will I always be here doing only the daily?  What if?  Worse, what when….?  Am I trapped in the present? Should I be planning/saving for the future?).  My skills are limited: I am not so much a creator of work as I am an interpreter and realizer of other people’s visions.  I am a tool, literally, but probably not in the negative common use of the word.  Understand, please, that I don’t find that a bad thing.  It’s what I am best at in this field; it’s where I find the most pleasure, and my pleasure in my work is what keeps me here.  And yet, this particular skill set is also one of the things that prevents me from doing many other different things.

I want to work at the highest possible level; that’s where I am.  (There aren’t that many places for a disabled dancer to go at a company level and I have been too shy/injured to build networks of other people to move with — should work on changing that).  So, here, I am.  At the very best place to be.  I am not a starter upper — I won’t be starting my own company or even be doing significant amounts of my own choreography.  I am not a fixer-upper, either.  In addition to the work, I have to think of the other side of the coin as my body.  That’s not just my job, it’s also me.  I have to recognize that I have physical limits — and I don’t mean my disability: grin — that’s part of my job.  It’s that I need a body to live with when I am done with my job.  So, I have to remember that I should not be doing certain things (like slamming onto my shoulders or torquing my hip).  I am recognizing that my current approach to dancing — hard on, full out  (or perhaps I have my prepositions mixed) is perhaps more suited to someone in their twenties and less appropriate for a (wannabe grand) old dame.  There’s a reason so many dancers don’t dance at my age; it’s that the body cries in the morning when it gets up and cringes through rehearsals.  Even the adrenaline of performance can seem insufficient.

So, I have to grow as a dancer before I discover that I can’t do it anymore.  I have mapped out for myself a set of things to achieve and accomplish this year.  Some are classes to take; some are new conversations to have; some new experiences to extend my range.  If I can do these things, I will be happy — and I can use the tools that I will have learned to in all walks of whatever life I happen to be in.

In addition to whatever happens next, I also have to plan for disability itself.  If I trash my shoulders dancing, I won’t have them for mobility when I am sixty. It’s all very well to say, but there will be powerchairs …  There may or may not be, depending on how access is granted to this wonderful device.  I can imagine a world where my insurance company says, “You know, you did this to yourself in an unapproved use of your chair.  Don’t expect us and your fellow citizens to pay for it.” “But it was ART,” I will weakly protest.  “Yes,” they will say, “and this is the budget.”

The other thing is pain.  I am so scared of reinjuring myself and of the pain that comes with it.  Accidents happen, but stuff shouldn’t happen because I wasn’t focused or wasn’t taking care or was simply doing stupid stuff.  I am so scared of pain.  Every small twinge has me running to the heating pad, the ice pack, the hot pool, the …  pain has a way of getting inside my head and freezing me.  And at this point, even the things that are disability related pain and not dance-related pain are scary.  I know that they aren’t the same thing.  I know that disability related pain doesn’t mean that I am hurt; it just means that I am hurting.  Different thing.  Different, brain, really.

Taking care of yourself as a dancer is a necessary precursor to the acts of creation that people see on stage.  Non-disabled dancers go through years of training so that they come to know what their limits are, how to take care of themselves, and how to prepare to dance.  Disabled dancers don’t show up with years of training.  We have to figure out our limits (what, I shouldn’t have done that! If I want to do that, I should use these muscles?)  It is also a kind of responsibility we have to each other in the company; we don’t have understudies.  (Runs to ice her shoulders and her hip just in case.

So, this year, I have to grow.  I have to grow for myself as a dancer and thinker.  I have to grow as a writer.  I will take on new projects, ideas, experiments.  I will allow myself to fail, to be told “NO.”  (Well, all right, “no.”)  And maybe, just maybe, at the end of the year, I will have dug deep enough so that I will not only be unstuck, I will be have seen the curtain go up on new vistas.

X-posted at my blog.