Sometimes, I speak too soon. After finishing up my  journal entry about my disenchantment with dance performance I went to see OtherShore‘s collaboration with Big Dance Theater’s Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar. Without going too much into the excerpt that was presented (it was the first Performance Club exclusive!) I will say that the entire evening renewed my spirits. It looks like this love has more resilience than I thought. Shame on me for doubting it.

After this Heidi-inspired (the classic novel) dance theater showing I felt electrically charged. With obvious talent for dance, everyone seemed to really embrace the theatrical aspects of the piece. All that aside, the Q&A that followed was what really got me going (I think I almost jumped out of my seat at one point to hug Annie-B and just thank her for all the serendipitous information she was revealing). I’m almost too excited to write about it.

I have a good friend that is also very interested in the  blending of theater and dance (albeit in a very different way from BDT). We’ve spoken numerous times about how successful it can actually be and the obstacles that come along with it. Dancers, sometimes have a fear of genre-crossing (as I’m sure some actors do) and Annie-B and OtherShore dancers spoke to that. As a dancer who’s been asked on more than one occasion to deliver a line or two I was extra attentive. It’s no secret I prefer to tell stories with my movement, not my words (or, not by my spoken words as obviously I enjoy writing) so I have this mild anxiety attack when a director will call for improv exercises (theater improv, not dance) or line delivery. It’s one of those “Please please please, don’t pick me to go first” moments. But Brandi Norton (one of the founders of OtherShore) said something enlightening which will hopefully relax me in rehearsals to come. She said that when a director gives you parameters to flounder around in, when it’s a safe environment for you to mess up, it’s oddly liberating. And it is a funny thought, the idea that you need guidelines to be free, but I really understood what she was getting at.

So, in one evening I got alot of  information that I could put to practical use and saw an entertaining and engaging work in progress. I would have been happy to stop the night with that, but the fact that I was able to catch up with my friends Mary, Siobhan, and Sarah and then getting to finally meet Evan of Dancing Perfectly Free (a blog I avidly read…she’s super smart and knows her stuff) made it all the more enchanting. Sometimes you just need a few friends to make you remember why you love something…a group of people that share your passion for it and pull you through the rough times.

And the reality of that makes me question what was once said about me loving dance more than people; it’s so blatantly untrue and was an idiotic and unfair thing to say of me. It’s being able to SHARE dance WITH people that makes me so happy. To watch their eyes light up, to watch how hard they work through a choreographic problem, to listen to them talk with vehemence about something they were touched by, to try and show them why something was so moving to me…that’s the inspiring part. (Shame on YOU for misunderstanding me.)

So, to my dance friends and colleagues, this post is for you. Thank you for always sharing your devotion, it means more than you know.