What follows is a sort of intro to a larger work I am going to be developing on my personal experience of dancing and the philosophy I have developed around this practice. It is dedicated to Benjamin Elias Hidalgo, who taught me much of what I know about love, freedom, friendship, and dancing emptiness.
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WHEN I MAKE MYSELF VULNERABLE...when I write, when I sing, when I dance...when I move closer to myself and dare to make that unveiling public, there is ALWAYS an inclination to do so aggressively, angrily, defensively. Because so often when any of us have spoken, we've been silenced, our songs suppressed or ignored. Because so often our dancing has been judged, stigmatized, sexualized, banned, punished, coopted into stacks (heels) and stacks (money) of oblivion. In a culture of divide and conquer, we free ourselves and each other by refusing the divisions, by increasing freedom for one another. BUT IN A CULTURE RULED BY DANGEROUS DICHOTOMIES, where all is divided and conquered, we who exist at the intersection of a multiplicity of injustices are blinded to what we know and experience by the very monochromatic gaze which drains all color and complexity. This calculated conflict imposed on the basic unity of everything places us in conflict with ourselves and each other. We feel oppressed, so we desire more freedom. We feel vulnerable, so we seek power. WE HAVE BEEN HURT, SO WE WANT TO HURT BACK. To worsen things, the people primarily invested in the perpetuation of this system have developed an incredible assortment of things you can buy to feel more free, more powerful, more secure. We seek to enlarge our own freedom and contentment to the detriment of ourselves and each other. WE THINK FREEDOM AND CONTENTMENT ARE SOMETHING THEY ARE NOT, RIGHT? We live in a horrifically repressive and violent society, but for the most part, we don't see it. We live in a nation that is shocked and confused when it is violently attacked despite it being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. WE THINK WE CAN BE FREE WHILE OTHERS ARE OPPRESSED.
It is difficult to talk about dancing without talking about all of the tensions--internal, external--and their constant copulation in moments of complete surrender to music.
(FOR EXAMPLE: THE "PART OF ME" WHO THINKS YOU ARE ANXIOUS AND ANNOYED, ABOUT TO DEMAND I GET TO THE POINT ALREADY, IS IN CONFLICT WITH "THE PART OF ME" WHO DOESN'T WANT TO BE (A)PART ANYMORE. BUT BECAUSE THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO THIS DIATRIBE FEELS LIKE DEATH TO ALL WHICH IS SACRED, I SHALL ATTEMPT TO PUT THE PARTS IN DIALOGUE WITH ONE ANOTHER, KNOWING THE ONLY ONE THAT IS CONSCIOUS OF YOU IS YOU...guided by the belief that in moving closer to each other, we might move closer to ourselves. KNOWING THE ACT CAN ONLY EVER BE A KIND OF TEARING AT THE SOMETHING OF EXPERIENCE WITH THE NOTHING OF LANGUAGE, yet I will tear and tear with loving anger, for our lives and loves and fullest emancipation are not any less meaningful or significant for our impermanence, and if ever there were a reason to wrestle with the difficulty of expressing experience without capturing it falsely or reductively, it would be in the service of DANCING, the fullest and most fundamental act of engagement with that struggle.)
