From our hands, not mine

I came here with some vague ideas of what I wanted to accomplish, besides teaching -- I thought, sometime in the winter I'll produce something, though what the something was was a bit uncertain.

I had heard some things about Cambodian classical dance, and knew I wanted to do something with it, learn it, and fuse it somehow with my own background. Simple enough, but I had a certain attitude about, a very western developed kind of attitude, that somehow my work would be essential in advancing the form. That part of my 'mission' was indeed to help develop and expand the classical structure.

There's nothing wrong with that; and indeed, many Khmer people I talked to about it seemed to be saying the same thing, that the form needed to be modernized. Aren't I special, I thought.

But there have been some things happening the past week that have been shifting my focus, not drastically but dramatically, small shifts that affect everything.

The first was a conversation with the program director at CLA, who loved my idea and even offered the suggestion -- which I love -- of taking a good long time in the studio with my collaborator in order to really find that true fusion. However, she did offer a word of caution: the Ministry of Culture, she said, can get a little sensitive about the idea of 'developing' the form, as they are just trying to keep it alive period, worried about losing thousands of years of culture and tradition. Something that nearly happened during the Khmer Rouge.

The next, was the realization at some point during one of my workshops that I have some very talented dancers there, kids who are really great movers. Suddenly I thought, what if they were my dancers, and not some expat professionals? They get a professional performance opportunity, it forces me to learn enough Khmer to lead a rehearsal, and they bring me a Khmer audience. It seemed right, and felt good.

The third was the Cambodia is not for sale film, when suddenly I looked at myself as the westerner, well-meaning but utterly oblivious to the reality, exactly what our development efforts do and the destruction they could wreak. It is not my place, I realized suddenly, to develop anything, to make something make progress. What I can do is simply investigate this fusion, just to see what happens.

The last was a highly dramatic story involving someone who was going to give me contacts and then apparently, for some crazy reasons of the heart that I haven't quite figured out, deciding that we were no longer friends and thus leaving me with no access at all to the contacts. But the thing is -- they were expats. They were expat ideas, that people are already doing here, like doing performances in clubs.

I thought this morning, you know, if they aren't available, then that is not where I should be looking. In fact, everywhere I turn, it is leading me away from the expat community, away from the westerners giving shows for the westerners. It is telling me less about how I can influence the Cambodian classical dance and more how much it can influence me.

The shift is enormous. I am still doing the same thing, still trying to make the fusion, but everything has changed. I am not looking to develop anything at all, just investigate. Not do the expat thing, but do something entirely new, something that doesn't need to be western or Khmer or cater to one or the either, but a true fusion, in everything -- from the dancers, to the choreography, to the production itself.

I can't wait to see where it takes me.

At a loss for words (part 3)

It's somewhat fitting that when I get to the part in the story that left me speechless for the first time, I have no more words to say.

I can't tell you about Paris -- I already have too many times and stuffing it into words makes it into language, and I want to keep it in the same plasma state it was. I'd like to tell you -- about each moment and each now, and how the colors inside them blinded me, how everything burned and how I turned around one day and realized I wasn't lost anymore. But I can't. To do so would be a great disservice.

All I can tell you is that -- and what a silly, piddling statement it is -- I changed.

Maybe that's the theme I'm going for in this series, the only thing I can say for sure at the end of this mad, violent, busy, wonderful, intensely full period of life they call college. It's nothing but another door, but this door means something because I've changed -- but not just changed ---

I think the word I want is become.  I have become.

This past year, the final one, has been no exception. I spent the first semester staring at myself in a mirror and having no clue who was looking back, struggling to fit the life I had before with the life I had created. I knew I'd be culture shocked and thought I had prepared, but prepared to fight a monster whose face I didn't even recognize when I saw it.

Sure, there were the academics -- a thesis, for one --  but this year was about making a dream come true, and celebrating the journey. I think I did both spectacularly.

I have nothing more to say about it, which is not to say there is nothing to say about it -- about each year and each summer and each splendid moment that was terribly unperfect and perfect, and about this year, but again -- I can't. I've run out. Paris left me speechless and I haven't recovered my tongue yet.

I'm just the girl who has become, and turns to face the world with immense passion and determination. Who is either really stupid or a visionary, and I guess we'll find out soon enough.

It's been a fun ride. I wouldn't have wanted it any shorter or longer, any more or less, anything else than exactly what it was.

(Everything is always perfect, remember?)

Retrospective, part 2

Sometimes I feel like I got it all together, and I can do anything.

Sometimes, I feel like a kid and the sheer audacity of what I propose to do knocks me over.

I have probably said it before, but let me put it straight: I propose to move to Paris and start a dance company that will be world-famous, all while breaking all the rules of contemporary dance. Before I hit thirty.

The girl I was just out of high school wanted to save the world. Something involving a world-wide revolution for life or something like that. I commend her vision and her passion. But something happened after my sophomore year of college -- saving the world just wasn't that important anymore.

Changing the world around me, the people I meet, the circle I move in, for the better -- that remained. But I realized, in one of those terrible moments when you think to yourself, man, this must be what it means to be an adult, that I just simply can't save the world. I know, it sounds obvious now. But it came as a surprise to that Gillian. All you can do is live where you are. The world is too Big.

Sometimes I find it hard to remember what I was doing the first two years of college. That was when I was still convinced that I was going to double major, when dance was something I loved but not yet something I couldn't live without, still playing catch-up with my technique. When I was still considering musical theatre and did those shows on campus. More than anything, I was busy. Tons of classes, work, shows, rehearsals, what have you.

In fact, looking back, I'm quite impressed with freshman and sophomore Gillian's sheer willpower to get through the semesters she did. I went to Oxford for Christmas, spent a week in Orlando for an acting/dancing/etc competition thing that turned out to be a total waste of time and money, spent a summer teaching dance and circus, and quite stupidly went over the credit limit in fall sophomore year.

The sophomore slump hit me hard, dragging me through an extraordinarily difficult five week stretch that I only later realized must have been some kind of depressive episode, which I finally pulled myself out of by my bootstraps. Coming into the spring, I was hit with a burst of madness and had a (to me) very real dilemma:

Should I stay at Columbia, work my butt off, and graduate a year early so I could get my life started, or take a year to dick around in Paris and then go back and graduate?

To everyone except me, the answer was obvious, but for a few weeks, I agonized over it. I was working a fantastic internship at an off-Broadway theatre company, I was balancing a 20 credit load with the internship and some 12 hours of work while I was at it, and had just decided, for the first time, to ditch the second major and focus on my passion -- wherever it took me. Bursting with the energy from that decision, just getting my life started sounded like a great idea.

Then it happened. I was at an info session for the Paris program, and I saw myself on a bike, pedaling through the streets of Paris. On a cloudy day, over a bridge. Whatever was happening that day, it was significant.

I can't explain it. All I know is that, in that moment, I knew I had to be in Paris, because something important was going to happen that day and I needed to be there to know what it was.

Following that moment, not going to Paris was no longer an option, and I barrelled forward as though nothing, including a complete lack of funding, could stop me.

The rest, they say, is history.

The Aftermath: Paris the 2e Tour

I believe I mentioned, some time ago, that I was returning to Paris, and had some anxieties about it. I just looked through my recent posts and realized that I said nothing further, and yet one week ago, I returned from a ten day trip to the one city in the world that has managed to completely and utter capture my heart.

Well. Time to fix that.

I have trouble describing it in few words, but I think the main things are simple enough. The main anxiety was that returning to the place of such an incredible and life changing experience was bound to be a letdown, or strange, or that somehow my memory was rose-colored and I would not feel the same perfect peace and belonging as I did in living there. That I would feel the same terrifying unknowing that I did in returning to the USA after 11 months away, the same uncanny displacement that you can do nothing about but turn in circles until you find yourself (which didn't happen until December).

On this account, I shouldn't have worried. The second I arrived, I felt as though I had never left. Friends greeted me as though I had left the day before. The signs, the metros, everything. I only realized the sirens were different when one of my dancers pointed it out.

French people always ask me why in the world I would live in Paris when I could live in New York. I say, it's less stressful, and they say, well Paris is stressful too. I think it's not quite that, then -- the real fact of the matter is that Paris has an energy that I feel better in -- ça me correspond mieux.

The other thing about the trip was that it was so deeply and incredibly encouraging. The idea to come back for the April festival at Paris 7 started out as a mere possibility, a dream, and for a year it was all I thought about. Everything I did revolved around making it happen. I had dancers leave and a real dearth of funding until the last minute, but then suddenly we were there, and it was real. What had been a dream was reality, and it was exactly as I had wanted it to be.

Well, if I could do that -- suddenly it seems very possible to make other dreams come true. Of course, with time -- but I have time, my god I have so much time.

It was interesting -- people kept telling me how incredible it was that I did this, that I got a group from Columbia to Paris for the festival, and it allowed me to step back and be proud, because inside of it --

Honestly, it wasn't anything amazing. It was nothing more or less than something I had to do. Not doing it was not an option and therefore I had to find a way. Simple.

But either way, I know now, it's possible. You just have to be completely obsessed, and I am.

That's why, for the past week, I have not been depressed like I thought I might be after leaving Paris. I was missing it terribly on Tuesday, sure, but the pervasive energy has been so positive and exciting -- because I know I'm going back. I know it will be just as wonderful, and that I can make all my dreams come true.

You just have to give me a few years.

5/30/10

For the past two nights, I’ve had these crazy, intense rescue mission dreams. I’ve been in bed by midnight and I don’t get up until past 11:30, though I usually wake up at nine and decide to sleep a bit more. But the past two mornings, my dreams have attacked me. I dream of buildings often; whenever I can remember my dreams there is some large, many roomed, and impossible to find anything kind of building in them.
The one this morning I was trying to sneak in and accomplish some sort of task. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say, you know those dreams where you spend the entire time trying not to get caught? If so, you know exactly what it was like.

I suppose, if you believe (and I do) that your dreams reflect things in your life, then I’m trying not to get caught by life itself, sneaking around and trying to dive in when the water’s clear and grab the prizes at the bottom. “Next week”, now this week I guess, is sneaking up behind me, with a few vague promises for interviews and callbacks, and I really can’t help but wonder if June 1st is a little late to be figuring out what you’re doing for the summer. But nevertheless, many businesses seem to be in exactly that position. And so, armed with bike, I will go downtown to begin the dreaded Follow Up process on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on who (or if) I hear from. I’m still waiting for the restaurant manager at Renaissance Hotel to get back to me – I have bothered the poor HR manager enough, but I will do so again if I don’t get a call by Wednesday. I do hope that I don’t annoy him so much he rescinds his blessing…but I doubt it. Don’t they say persistence pays off?

I am almost over my cold, thank goodness. I suppose this forced vacation – that is, the world shutting down for the holiday weekend and nothing going anywhere on the job front, leaving me with absolutely nothing to do – has been good for me. I am finally slowing down a bit, and yes, you’d probably have to see it to believe it. I’ve quite enjoyed the lazy mornings, waking up slowly on the porch swing, and returning after the latest afternoon trip to sit and drink tea outside with a book.
We spent a little time wandering around today, seeing what shops were around and looking at the neighborhood. There seems to be no end to the barber shops – do people really need to cut their hair that often? – but the neighborhood is very cute, all these charming little houses, each with its own garden. Of course, even in Asheville, the southern equivalent of Boulder, there’s your intolerant you-know-whats; we saw a couple signs rather forcefully telling us to go back to Mexico or the hood, depending on the race.

Tomorrow I think we’ll bike down to the Biltmore Estate park and have a picnic for Memorial Day; tonight Janet is cooking Turkey burgers and potato salad, since she won’t be around tomorrow night. We are getting more food out of the deal than we planned, which is great but I really hope we aren’t imposing. I worry about that certainly, but she has been so kind, and she knows we are both itching to get into our own place (so it’s not as though we are just squatting here).
I haven’t seen any fireflies since that first night. Some strange soul was up shooting firecrackers last night and whooping, which Hilary and I both found incredibly amusing, seeing as the fourth of July is over a month away. I suppose they just wanted to light up the sky a bit. But about the fireflies, maybe I’ll lather myself in insect repellent and go hunting for them tonight. Little stars of my own.

(Though I guess, why not whoop if you set off firecrackers? Still, a bite early in my opinion)

So apparently I’m going contra dancing tomorrow night. Asheville, so far as I can tell, is the contra dancing mecca. It’s a cousin of square dancing, and is apparently a lot of fun. In the week since we’ve been here, I have had three separate people – out of the few we’ve really met and talked to – tell me to go, and ask me to join them at various times. This particular one is the son of a friend of my mother’s. So it’s six bucks to get in, and I hate to say it but even that I have to think before I spend – I’ll do it this time because I want to meet people, and if I can go with someone I know, but we’ll see. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun, but there is always that little reticence because it’s so new and I will probably know exactly one person there. Two, if Hilary goes. We’ll see if she does – she’s not really the dancing type. But she has surprised me before. Janet gave me a dress to wear, very pretty and flowy, white with flowers on it. It fits me surprisingly well and makes me feel pretty, so it’s all good.

It’s funny with those things; like I said I know I’ll have a good time because I love dancing and it’s very social, but again – it’s hard for me to go into places I don’t know people. Must be a learned skill. Still, it’ll be a good thing and will definitely keep me occupied.

I was going to make this much more artistic, but that’s not really happening, and before I start getting whiny because I’m thinking about this upcoming week and stressing, I’ll sign off. I’ll make sure I actually have something to say when we see each other next.
Ciao.