I have attended 5 Rhythms several times (in Cold Spring, if you’re ever curious). The way I approach it is that I imagine I am in my own dance show. I never make eye contact with another (not on purpose, anyway), I close my eyes as often as possible. I love to dance but I’m not a performer. I love to make a dance and imagine the space, color, music, costume, and also the movement but I don’t love it for being watched. I love it for living in it. My whole creative self is so fucked up from the academic model. I always got complements and good grades for my art work and I translated that into my value as a person— but unlike getting this positive reinforcement as a young person who is good at math/science/engineering (most of my family, btw), a student who is good at the arts spends finds that the world/your family/your advisers/your self ask you to put all that nonsense aside and get a real job. When I think of making something (a poem, a drawing, a dance) I think of how it will be received, and then I think of how I hate that I think of this. If I was better (in some/any way), I wouldn’t care what others thought. I envy your bravery in writing whatever the F you want here. I am afraid that if I say in what I really want on my own substack, I will make myself unemployable. My work identity is one that
I guard, to keep it from getting too weird, too angry, too real. My public persona is safe and made to put others at ease and make myself useful to them. I am not entirely sure what the “whatever the F I want” is because it has never felt practical, accessible, reasonable, responsible to go there. In 5 Rhythms, I do move however the F I want. It is wild and weird or simple
and commonplace. But there is no record of it anywhere- perhaps that’s why i can go there.
I have attended 5 Rhythms several times (in Cold Spring, if you’re ever curious). The way I approach it is that I imagine I am in my own dance show. I never make eye contact with another (not on purpose, anyway), I close my eyes as often as possible. I love to dance but I’m not a performer. I love to make a dance and imagine the space, color, music, costume, and also the movement but I don’t love it for being watched. I love it for living in it. My whole creative self is so fucked up from the academic model. I always got complements and good grades for my art work and I translated that into my value as a person— but unlike getting this positive reinforcement as a young person who is good at math/science/engineering (most of my family, btw), a student who is good at the arts spends finds that the world/your family/your advisers/your self ask you to put all that nonsense aside and get a real job. When I think of making something (a poem, a drawing, a dance) I think of how it will be received, and then I think of how I hate that I think of this. If I was better (in some/any way), I wouldn’t care what others thought. I envy your bravery in writing whatever the F you want here. I am afraid that if I say in what I really want on my own substack, I will make myself unemployable. My work identity is one that
I guard, to keep it from getting too weird, too angry, too real. My public persona is safe and made to put others at ease and make myself useful to them. I am not entirely sure what the “whatever the F I want” is because it has never felt practical, accessible, reasonable, responsible to go there. In 5 Rhythms, I do move however the F I want. It is wild and weird or simple
and commonplace. But there is no record of it anywhere- perhaps that’s why i can go there.