I'm being inducted into my high school hall of fame this weekend.
It's brought up a lot. It's gotten my brain waxing. Which, to be fair, a lot does. Normally, I'd say now that "I'm an overthinker," but really, I'm an artist. I'm a person primed for meeting such moments - and any moments that inspire me, tall and small, light and dark - as spaces in which I am called to reflect, and to see what I can create from that reflection. Sometimes it's dances. Sometimes it's giggles from my children. Sometimes it's writing. In this case, I suppose it's writing that I'm going to speak out loud to people who have gathered to honor me for my accomplishments.
I ended up here, in my semi-public writing space, in hopes that I can organize what's come up for me within this particular space of inspiration into words I can share in a speech tomorrow night at the banquet celebrating this. I'm surprised at how much effort I've decided to pour into this. Upon receiving an email reminder this week that we'd be asked to give a less than five minute speech to accept our nomination, I at first thought I'd just wing it. After all, I thought, I have a lot to do, I'm an improvisor, and it's not that big of a deal.
To respond to my own chain of thought there, first off, there's always 'a lot to do.' I am getting better and better at not falling into this partially self and partially societally-created problem in my brain, but it still gets the better of me sometimes. That said, the 'getting better at' is winning out right now, as I was able to remind myself that this Fall is, schedule-wise, much more spacious than normal, and that I need to embrace these times, as I know I've avoided burnout in my career in part thanks to understanding that I need to embrace the 'underextended' parts of the cycle that sometimes has me overextended.
As for being an improvisor, wanting to prepare for this moment in time and the speech it's requiring of me has me thinking again about how I'm a performer, sure, and generally quite comfortable expressing myself in front of people, but how I don't usually do this with words. I DO love writing - I have luminaries Hanson (who was Flanny to me), Hoeg, Lundstrom, Ottoson and Strege to thank for that - but my writing does not often translate into speaking. Seemed like a good reminder to prepare some remarks.
And that it's 'not that big of a deal?' I think I might hear the voice of a particular friend who chose to step out of my life this Spring, dragging it this way. I've been left to wonder, among other things, if she had a limited tolerance for being happy for me about things in my life that are different from things in hers, and if she reached capacity on this when my second child was born. I might be wrong, but, she won't talk to me, so I'm left wondering. I'm realizing I'm having a really hard time not being able to celebrate this with her, since she'd been my bestie since 6th grade, we've both had careers in the arts, and we graduated together from the high school from which I'm receiving this honor. We'd been through so much life change together, and made it 30 years. Her decision to cut me out of her life without a dialogue about it has and will likely continue to be painful, and can come up for me at times that catch me off guard and feel surprising. Like now, trying to prepare to write this speech.
It seems like there's just a lot I need to process and get out here, in order to suss out what actually should go into this speech, and what . . . just needs to be processed.
At this particular juncture, I'm also processing swirling ideas about free speech. I find ABC's decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air - cloaked as a disagreement on what kind of speech they feel is appropriate for their late-night host but seemingly really to preserve Disney's ability to undergo a big merger that will make their top executives even richer than they are already because they must be cleared by the sycophants of a federal government led by a petty, wannabe autocrat who cannot handle being joked about like any normal public figure because he's got enough wits about him to know Kimmel's politically-savvy comedy causes people to question, among many other deeply troubling decisions, his self-motivated over-reaches - as horrifying as I find Charlie Kirk's murder. As I do think humans are quicker than ever to move into outrage-mode, I do NOT use the word 'horrified' lightly. There is no better word for brazen public murder of anyone, even someone whose views I found abhorrent and who I believe fomented violence. There is also no better word for the alarmingly fast ramp we are sliding down into government censorship. One of many alarmingly-fast ramps we are sliding down into fascism. Another word I do NOT use lightly. One I am only using HERE online, in long-form, not-very-social writing.
In getting ready to have a verbal platform this weekend, however slight, I cannot help the need to process all this before I set onto it. I don't know yet whether any of this will work its way into what I'll say. But at least now I have it off my chest somewhere.
Another thing that's come up for me is consideration of privilege in tandem with consideration of love and community. Specifically, thinking about how my ability to pursue a career in dance has been considerably aided by my economic privilege of being born into an upper middle class family. This thought came in tandem with consideration of the love I've been offered, as this economic and class privilege would not have manifested into what it did for me without the love my parents poured into me. It shows in their choice to save their money in education funds rather than spend it on any number of things. It shows in their willingness to bend their funds and their time and our family's time around the many interests I pursued, driving me countless places in the process. It shows in how they supported my desire to become a dancer and artist, when many parents would discourage their child from doing so, for countless reasons.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the above is an example of how privilege and love can work in tandem to propel a person forward. Being able to discuss them alongside one another does not negate either. Two (or more) related things can be true at the same time. For me, this recognition of privilege in no way waters down the multitude of expressions of love shown by my parents and the other people who supported me growing up, and throughout my life. It simply reminds me to be thankful for those people and how they've treated me, and to be humbled by consideration of the conditions into which I was born: it is possible to think of oneself as both talented and fortunate, knowing that had their own life conditions been different, someone else equally as talented (or perhaps even more so) would be running with the baton you were handed. Another example of the possibility of two related things being true at the same time: I can believe I'm talented and hardworking and deserve what I've built and the accolades I've been afforded for it, while also understanding that it could have easily been someone else had my life conditions been different.
I was raised, like many of my peers, to follow my dreams. I'm grateful to have gone through my K-12 schooling during a time in which one could explore a lot of things and still have a shot at creating a career in something as unusual and competitive as concert dance - and even more niche, concert jazz dance. In a way, I think being taught to find (which is a whole other can of worms) and 'follow your dreams' this is a beautiful and encouraging sentiment, and that to not believe it creates a rift in which we can sell ourselves shorter and shorter. In another way, I think it can set people up for a disappointing future. I'm trying to articulate this not to be a downer. I'm trying to suggest that equally, and perhaps, in healthy counterpoint, people should also be taught to not only identify, but seek out beauty in the seemingly-mundane and appreciate those things as what they are: extraordinary in the ordinary. One wild and precious life and all that :)
Which I suppose brings me to this. I think my life so far has been neither ordinary nor extraordinary. I've built a pretty unconventional career, in the performing arts no less, but I'm not a household name (is there such a thing as a 'famous choreographer'?! Depends on who you ask!). I don't think life really has to be either ordinary or extraordinary. Perhaps, extraordinary is implied, when you are taught and choose to implicate your life - ordinary or not - as such.
I think I'm realizing my good fortune in having been taught to implicate my life as such. By people like my aforementioned English teachers - who were also my theater teachers - who understand how important it is for young people to express themselves, no matter how mundane that expression might seem at first. Have these topics been threaded through many perhaps 'greater' minds, time and time again, before I created my own thoughts and writings on them? Definitely. Is it still important that I move through the cognitive exercises of considering them myself, and how they apply to me in my own life? Yes. Is my perspective still unique because there is only one me? Yes.
I don't suppose these reasons alone qualify these thoughts to be worthy of orating to others. But maybe they do. I did not nominate myself to the Prior Lake High School Laker Hall of Fame. I was nominated by someone else who saw value in what I've offered to the world, in context with my education in Prior Lake, and decided I should be recognized for it.
Aren't we all just ripples in the same - albeit REALLY BIG - cosmic ocean?
Which brings me to this thought: every year - at least once, and sometimes multiple times - I wonder if what I spend my professional energy on makes a difference beyond me. More often than not, after sharing that "I'm a dancer" in response to the "what do you do?" question, I would be met with "So you just dance all day? That must be fun!" I've since adapted the language I use when answering that question to "I'm a dance artist," which usually elicits the kind of curiosity that provokes more thoughtful follow-up questions and allows me to unpack what this entails with more depth. Regardless, despite understanding that such responses were generally not meant maliciously, I couldn't help that they usually evoked within me several things that caused me frustration. For one, there are definitely things about it, like any other career that seems like it must be fulfilling, or passion work, or FUN, that are NOT fun. It's not fun to get injured and have your ability to make a living put on pause. It's not fun to make paltry wages for highly skilled work that required many years of expensive training for it to become even a possibility to build a career within.
For another, unfortunately, I do NOT dance all day. That probably would be fun (and also still difficult, per what's mentioned above, among other things)! While I do make me entire living from dance-related work now, getting there included a lot of time spent in unrelated and sometimes draining jobs to support myself financially. Throughout the whole of it - especially now - I've spent a LOT of time sitting in front of a computer. I realize a lot of people do this, but at the heat of my career is moving my body. It's counterintuitive to me - and likely, the "so you just dance all day?" people - that I spend so much of my professional time sitting in front of a screen.
Related is the thought that I'm grateful to have done a lot of my 'growing up' prior to the advent of social media and lives lived online. My memories of my high school experience are, fortunately, devoid of online bullying. While chat rooms and instant messaging were a thing in my middle and high school years, they were not accessible on a mini computer always in my pocket, begging me to disengage from my embodied, physical reality. These statements are not meant to detract from my appreciation of digital communication technologies - they've done a lot to move the world forward - but to note my thoughts that we must continuously seek to uncover the ways they bring out the best in us, and step away from how they bring out the worst. I'm heartened when I read stories about young folks who are intentional and measured in how they use social media and other digital communication technologies. Related is the importance, in increasingly disembodied times, of endeavors that invite people back into their bodies to connect with themselves and others in their physical realities. Things like dance classes and performances :)
All of that said, it's partially all that screen time that has enabled me to build a career in dance in which I am the decision-maker. The spark. The one bringing visions into physical realities. This is not to suggest that I am a one-woman show: as previously discussed, the success of my endeavors has been in no small part thanks to the support of loved ones and the communities of people around me. Indeed, I work in an art form composed of other people. Even so, and in spite of the several seemingly self-deprecating things I've pondered in this writing, as previously discussed, I suppose I can be open to being recognized for what I've accomplished and the beauty I've added to the world. I suppose the spark of me has been an important part of these equations too. It can all be simultaneously true.
So, here I am, at 40 years old, in the middle of a career in dance that I'm proud to have build. It feels like a complicated juncture, as my knowledge matures and my body does too. In a way, I can't believe I can no longer check "emerging artist" on applications. In another way, I feel I've built a strong enough foundation that I can start to scale back, or at least stop being obsessed with 'pushing forward,' at least how I've come to understand it over time. As an entrepreneurial artist, any time not spent on furthering the art can feel like lost or missed opportunities. When I became a parent for the first time in 2021, I found myself having to confront this subconscious belief. I say subconscious because it felt ridiculous to write. Consciously, I know that 'balance is important,' but subconsciously, the thoughts to 'achieve more, do more, be better' are always floating around in the back of my head. Another part-nature, part-nurture situation.
Regardless, it was quite the challenge for me to let go of two work days a week to be with my kid - and as of March, kidS. I've found that while I've been able to maintain a lot of my work, I HAVE had to come to terms with doing less, and taking on fewer things, despite continuing to have new ideas that feel worth pursuing. All of this said, I am also acutely aware that burn-out in the professional performing arts is common. I have come to believe that this very thing of doing less is in part what has enabled me to avoid burnout and continue working in a career that I love, but can be pretty unforgiving. As far as my equation for success, alongside doing less and my own unique spark, are the many trappings of both hard work and privilege, intentional living and good fortune, such as: financial stability, a high level of education, freedom to express myself, and, most importantly, having many overlapping circles of outstanding people who love and support me, including my husband Kris, my parents Wayne and Joy and other immediate family, my friends - many of whom I met during my schooling in Prior Lake. Not to be left off this list are my little kiddos Niko and Jovi, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for being constant reminders that the world is full of beauty just waiting to be noticed, a pretty important thing to be reminded of not only as an artist, but as a human trying their best in their one wild and precious life.
After cutting through all the above, I am left with a final thought to unpack: that at least once a year, I find myself wondering whether how I spend my professional time makes any difference beyond myself. I do keep landing on 'yes, it does.' If I didn't, as a person with deep empathy and care for the greater good, I would have made a career change long ago. I believe that what I've chosen to spend my career on - dance - creates a worthwhile positive impact, for reasons I've already touched on in this soliloquy. Like how free expression is critical to the health of ourselves and our societies: what we each create individually does matter, even if it serves only the purpose of us each giving ourselves an outlet or outlets. Like how finding beauty in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary, often requires the kind of spark ignited by participating in or witnessing artistic and aesthetic expression. Like how joyfully reconnecting with one's embodied self, alongside others, can do ONLY good.
While my own ripple can only go so far, I try to remember that, in aggregate, such ripples turn tides.
It's concepts like these that allow me to work through what you could call characteristically Minnesotan self-deprecation and simply, in the face of this honor that's caused all this difficult, sweet and worthwhile reflection, say, "thank you."
Now, I just need to figure out how and what to distill of this into a five minute speech for tomorrow night :)
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