Why do I dance? Why do I breathe?

For all my life I have been a dancer; I intend to remain that way until the day I die. However, ultimately, I truly believe that it is within anyone who is human to be a dancer—my personal practice of this art should not and is not exclusive to me. We will all be dancers, forever. We’re human.

So I suppose where I’m going with this is that my essential goal through dance is to spread the honesty of emotion, and sincere expression of what fabricates humanity’s spirit, that comes with and through dance. I believe that in times like these, with all the nasty turmoil that churns in the everyday world, people need to turn to simple, honest reminders of who we are: singing, painting, writing, and, yes, dance. These are the things that humans learned to do first, because they were natural, and beautiful, and felt right. It was what defined who we were as a species. It was what stirred our souls.

I know that I’ve trained for the bulk of my life to be a dancer, because I know that’s what I want. I want to move people, to make people cry, and laugh, and walk out being able to say they were changed. For the better. I want those who have become disenchanted with the monotony of life to be reminded of the beauty in our world, in life, in themselves. I want a mutual sense of connection between me and my audience, a silent agreement that we will both be better people tomorrow. Whatever scene or emotion was portrayed in the dance is always honest, and I want that to remind others of the presence of that honest emotion in all of us. I want to move people from judgment and towards acceptance, from restlessness and towards serenity. And if they are ignorant, I want to spread awareness so that we as a people can come together and lessen the pain that is rife in society. But ultimately, I want to remind people why they're people, reaffirm humanity's faith in itself, because there is so much faith that there is to be had. That is my intent when I dance.

And as for my goal in my dance career, I don’t mind much what I do. I just know that I have to dance. I understand that I always will, even just in my living room when I’m 85, but I’d hope that I’ll be able to carry that over to my workplace. Dancing is what I do. It’s all I know how to do. I'm human.

Dance is still something that stirs our souls, as people. We, as a population of mankind, are still great! And don't you remember? Remember when things were simple, when all that felt right was to sing out, to dance, to celebrate our identity in the world? Remember when we laughed, and painted pictures on the side of the wall, even if we "weren't supposed to"? Because that is exactly what we ARE supposed to do! We are dancers, we are painters, we are thinkers and artists, and we have power to change the situation whenever crap happens.

Remember? We're human.

Corrections

I apologize on my last blog-- there were actually 13 people who died in the 1996 Everest disaster. Just to clarify, out of respect to them.

Thoughts on the Human Spirit

So I'm reading this book, Into Thin Air (by Jon Krakauer) for the second time around-- and unfortunately, despite the fact that I am enjoying the book more, the characters' fates are still as un-enjoyable and unfavorable as before. The book winds through an ascent to Everest, and as much as I will it otherwise, 9 people still die, and many others still end up with frostbite. But of the few that remain of these expeditions up the mountain, I'm curious as to how they knew they could keep going, and those many others couldn't. How exhaustion was trumped by the thirst for the summit, how death was somehow trumped by life, despite the clear indications that in all logical situations it would be otherwise. Is this genetic makeup that decided their separate fates that day? Or simply their will?
Let me relate this to my own life. I happen to be a dancer, and tonight I took my average tuesday-night class, variations. For the past month I've learned and rehearsed separate parts of a variation from Balanchine's Who Cares? and tonight we pieced it together, running it beginning to end several times over. It's three or four minutes long, and I realize-- that pales in comparison to many other sports or ventures, such as climbing, but in dance, in ballet, that's long. That's hard.
I felt foolish though, huffing and puffing after running it through for only my second time. Huffing and puffing, mind you, as I thought furiously to myself, you can do this, common now... But what is a limit? What's that word mean? As I read this book and as I dance my part I want to know, when do I know I've pushed too hard, fought too long? Men have climbed Everest. They've spent the night in sub zero temperatures at 28,000 feet, with chilling winds that ripped their clothes off. And I, in my quiet studio that sits midst small-corporate-business-land, is out of breath after dancing for a mere four minutes. So what's up with that? Is that human spirit, should I push harder, work longer...Is that the differentiation in our efforts...I don't know, to be honest.
But what I do know is that I am a human being, precisely engineered for always pushing, hungering for more, more of whatever it is that I need. For me it's dance, for them it was the summit, and although I am fully aware that these two venues are hardly comprable, I've come to the conclusion is that there's always more I can muster, there's always more I can work at, and at least from my viewpoint, I'll never be able to do enough.

I think that's ok though. In fact, it's pretty neat.