Last month, I shared a dance piece I choreographed with enthusiastic audiences at Dance Because, the dance performance I produce in Nevada City. This was a biiiigg deal for me. Let me tell you why.

I started making some movement and had this seed of an idea back in 2020 but then dropped it when this whole other life thing happened, which is a story for another blog. The idea was to make my own version of The Five Movements from that amazing show the OA on Netflix. I wanted to bring many movers together from my town, create a series of movements that were specific to us, perform it and then a channel would open to another timeline that we could all hop into; one where peace and truth and integrity and love exist. Like for real. I’m telling you this because I do still really want to do this.

Fast forward to 2023 and I’m ready to pick this idea up. And this is what I want to get on paper: My creative process with this piece was a crazy, hard, beautiful, scary and a rewarding experience. It was also funny, depressing, obsessive, wonderful, and empowering roller coaster ride. I thought the piece was going to be one thing and it turned completely into something else. I thought I was going to have all these dancers in it but instead it was hard enough to find just three dancers to commit to weekly rehearsals. Then I tore my meniscus which affected my dancing and choreographing abilities. I had this whole beginning part choreographed using the pockets of the dancers pants but then that got totally scrapped a few weeks before the show and was replaced with me pulling a long blood red cord out of my heart. There were a lot of nights I went to sleep thinking obsessively about what story I was trying to tell and what kind of movement would tell that story.

And then the music…I must have listened to a hundred songs. One week I had decided the music was going to be purely percussive but then in rehearsal we could all see that these important nuances in the movement got lost with just drums. I imagined a sparse, deep and emotive piece of music but in the end I chose something very different and…something I think may define a style I may have. I think my choreography leans towards the theatrical over pure dance. I also like contrast or putting two opposite things together to make a third and different/new thing.

I chose two pieces of music by Ennio Morricone from the Western The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The second piece called The Ecstasy of Gold (love that name!) is undeniably cowboy and the piece climaxes with the dancers galloping into their freedom, which definitely brought a lot of smiles and claps from the audience. Hallelujah! I thought as there were many nights I didn’t think anybody would get the quirkiness and our galloping would fall flat.

Which brings me to crux of this blog post: the fear. This is the true good, bad and ugly. I had a lot of fear throughout this process. There were a number of times I wanted to throw in the towel or quietly kill the piece. I am not a choreographer I told myself a lot, I am a dancer. I am good at being in other people’s pieces. I can’t do this well. I can’t do this as perfect as I want to do this. I felt stuck and discouraged and petrified people were going to think the piece was just really weird and a mish mash of movement that didn’t really say anything.

But this thing kept happening when a fear spell flared up. I would feel the fear for a day or two and then this fire or surge of energy…maybe it was a voltage of my soul…would come over me. It would tell me to focus on putting 100% of myself into the piece. Don’t shy away or give in…but push back. Stand up straighter, prouder in front of that fear. My inner voice said that I couldn’t fail if I put everything I had into making the piece as good as I possibly could make it. For the first time in a long time, I really really cared about a creating something good. And I was going to give it my all.

And that’s what happened: fear > recommit > fear > recommit over and over to the last minute. The piece came together in the last few days and I performed it with the same energy in which I created it: all in. Amen to that.

So this is what I learned and it’s already changing my life:

Its part of my path and purpose to be passionate about whatever I am creating be it a dance, a design, a painting. I had lost this passion in the last seven years but I have found it again.
I have a proven technique to deal with fear: stand up for yourself right in front of it.
Maybe I am a choreographer and I can keep exploring this path.
Accept and honor where the creative process takes you.
I am an artist and I am recommitting to my creativity.

I wrote this imperfect blog from my own head and without the help of ai. I think it’s important to say this in these crazy days. I organized my own thoughts and created a beginning, middle and ending. I made spelling mistakes and improperly formed sentences which I mostly went back and fixed. It took me a few days to write and form and not a few seconds. But my brain is stronger now and I feel as though I have a somatic feeling of catharsis around what I wanted to get out on paper.