Happy Birthday MJ

PDC has to take a moment to acknowledge its inspirations...well, mine at least.

If Michael Jackson was still alive, he would be 54 today.

Last year, for my thesis, I spent a long time with MJ, watching music videos on repeat, comparing with his back up dancers; I read a 650 page biography and his autobiography, watched This Is It and other random videos, and read several dozen articles. Of course I knew about him, but I had never really watched him dance before then.

And then I spent a whole semester doing so.

Because I'm posting this, I'm sure you know how I feel, but let me just say: he was (and is) the most incredible dancer I have ever seen, with the ability to move without moving and walk without weight. There is no comparison, and especially not in the influence he had. Everyone knows who he is, and how he moved. You start a move and everyone says, oh yeah, Michael Jackson.

So happy birthday, Mr. Jackson. You inspire me.

Honoring where I have come: Khmer Arts, pt 3

Hungry or not, late or otherwise, as she got to talking about her mission and about helping me, Sophiline began to open up more and more, as though she had been waiting for this moment for a long time and just hadn't had anywhere to put the words that had clearly been rankling in her head.

The point of the whole rant -- if I may call it that -- was respect.

Ms. Sophiline Shapiro is a destination. People admire her, respect her, and recommend her to people. To reporters, researchers, and choreographers, who then come and talk to her. She knows, and is proud of it -- as well she should be. She is a gracious host, and takes time to talk to the people coming to see for themselves, people like me.

And yet. According to her, they come, they learn, they get inspired, and when they are successful, they no longer know her. If she is invited to the work they present, she's greeted with a cool thank you for coming. Even researchers -- they come to interview her, say they have been so inspired, and yet in the published work she's a source, and no more. One she said, didn't tell her they were doing a presentation in Phnom Penh and gave her no thanks in it, even though this particular researcher had apparently spent a long time interviewing Sophiline and her dancers.

Of course she is proud, and of course it's her own point of view, and of course the others might be surprised to hear her say it. But it doesn't make it any less of a problem. Excuse me, she said, if I'm a little skittish about these kinds of things, but I get hurt a lot.

It is not enough to just be inspired, but pay respect to the sources. From where she is coming from, it makes perfect sense. Even now, she said, I try to honor my teachers. Every day she burns incense in the theater to recognize them and pay her respects. Indeed, at the front of the stage is the pot of incense, hundreds of sticks now burned to the end.

I let her talk, listening deeply to her words, thinking what a magnificent woman. Proud and passionate, and wanting simply to be acknowledged for the force she is. As we all know so well, sometimes it's not enough to know yourself. Sometimes you just need to be told.

I've split this series into three parts because I wanted to make sure I got everything she said. I was -- like apparently so many others before me -- so inspired by her sheer presence, but more so by her passion. How the dance is part of her bones, how she believes in it so fiercely that she turns away any attempts to make it 'western' and 'commercial' and is making beautiful work. Her elegance, and finally her honesty.

I am here to learn. Though I had nothing to do with them, in this case I do carry the weight of those who came before me and, unwittingly or not, left without lighting their metaphorical incense to this fantastic woman. So I'll say it now and again and often, to her and to you and after I've left Cambodia and wherever this mad adventure takes me, and if I don't, slap me around a bit:

Ms. Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, you inspire me, and I would consider myself deeply blessed to have the same elegance and influence as you.

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.

Here, have a part of my soul: Separating Life and Work

It's not late, not by most college student standards. For me, a bit. The later it gets, the shorter the time between now and when my alarm goes off.

Normally I'd be in bed. But I'm not. I'm here, writing this, carefully breaking off chunks of a chocolate fudge poptart and letting the knot of anxiety in my stomach loosen.

The piece I'm choreographing for my senior creative thesis -- which will also be performed in Paris as part of a larger festival of contemporary dance -- is the first time I have deliberately and intentionally crafted a piece, with narrative and spacing. Essentially, everything I've been learning, as a dancer, in choreography classes. As such, it's a first try, but I want -- as with any artist -- my craft to be complete now, so I can make the best choreography anyone has ever seen now.

First of all: That's ridiculous. My mom often quotes a zen saying, that you can become a master in 20 years, and if you try very hard, 30 years. In other words, it takes time, and you can't rush it. You have to be a novice for awhile. And trust me -- in an artistic world where validation is the law, that's tough. 


The piece in question was not meant to be autobiographical. In fact, I'd like to say it's not. But today when the female dancer -- there are three in total, two male -- hurt her ankle, I danced the part and fell into like breathing. Oh crap -- a lot of me wound up in it.

I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

Today I had two visitors in rehearsal, people I very much respect and trust. And I was terrified. That's where the knot in my stomach came from. You know how it feels. That same, clinging feeling of needing validation, of wanting and hoping desperately that these people you like will like the piece, because their opinion very much matters. 


Here. Have a part of my soul. Doesn't it feel like that? Creation, we think, is from us, from our souls, and my god, showing that is terrifying. The most you part of you, the thing that beats and loves and makes everything you are? And then you have to show it, and let it be judged?

Good lord, it's a wonder there even are artists.

But I realize that there's a trap there. Oh god is there a trap. Does creation come from us? Or the genii -- the daemons, the little spirtis -- in the corners, to use a metaphor from Elizabeth Gilbert? This piece was given to me. By who, I don't know and I'm not going to get into a discussion of the 'higher power'; I'm an atheist and it's not a religious blog, anyway. But Inspiration -- to be inspired -- is a funny thing, and happens in the blink of an eye. I'd like to think it's the daemons.

What are the implications of the artist not being the one who tries and in trying, creates?

Freedom.

You aren't responsible anymore, except to the spark of inspiration itself. The piece was given to me because my experiences allowed me to craft in such a way that it expressed the essence of the piece. Then all I can do is work to get it as close as I possibly can to that essence -- the thing that first inspired me to move in this or that way, to structure movement like this, or that. But then it is not mine, not mine to be judged, not my soul to be tossed from dirty paw to dirty paw like a precious gem.

The artist and his work have been inseparable since the 18th century at least, perhaps before. The artist has also become more and more self-destructive, and melancholy, and alone. No. Let's not fall into the trap. The artist's life is important in that it gives him the ideas and the possibilities to realize the work, but in entwining the two together, art becomes too personal.

It's why I can't dance the part, and why I don't want to. I may physically and emotionally be able to, but it hopelessly confuses what is me and what is the movement. The movement is mine because I channeled the idea, but it is not me. And nor should it be.