The feeling of losing oneself to movement and music. The feeling of being completely in flow with a dance partner. The feeling of zero separation between body and mind and work and life.
Those are the reasons I danced. I always felt most in my skin onstage while dancing. Now, as a choreographer, there are different but equally satisfying feelings.
I am no longer bound by my own body’s limitations. I’m constantly slipping into someone else’s way of moving and someone else’s story. It is a process so satisfying and physical in a unique way, from the more corporeal—for example, working with a long-legged artist, or someone who can turn for days, or a dancer who has a long, willowy torso—to the more intimate. How do you, as an artist, physicalize sorrow, pain, love, joy? How do your instincts differ from those of the dancer next to you? How do they differ from mine? Additionally, how do the characters in the story move? What is their world? How might they dance? The combinations are endless.
I never bored of dancing. And now dance is even more satisfying, thanks to these choreographic collaborations with dancers. I hope the process of creating movement will continue for the rest of my life.
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