wandering around Jacob's Pillow (a dance festival/community/slice o'heaven in Massachusetts) last weekend, i started to wonder about immersion into a thing you love. i had pretty much come to the conclusion that the dancers who come and go there would probably notice if i tried to move into one of the bungalows where they live ("yeah, hi, no don't worry bout me, just wanna see what this is like"...um, no), but it got me thinking about what it's like to be so committed and passionate about something that you give yourself to it completely. Welcome the pain and the pleasure, the bliss and blood. i thought about that as i sat in a barn with dancers not many inches away sweating and breathing through their movements, one of the girls wincing (once) on toe reminding me how precarious it is up there, those five little piggies pressed against that block that's holding you balanced. (and inevitably went to the five-inch platforms i sometimes wear in class and how much i can't stand not feeling my feet on the floor...tho my boots are another story altogether.) I watched these dancers' faces as they moved through insane humidity and crazy heat and damn if they didn't seem (except for the wince) above any discomfort.
I know this is part of performance, tho i also think about what it looks like when you lose yourself completely in a moment while doing something you love and don't think of pain in the traditional way.
A couple of nights later, I sat in the front row in a small space to see the show i'd come to JPillow for: Jacoby&Pronk. they're impossibly tall and lithe and sexy (see pics above) and married to each other and all of that informs the way i watch them. i make up stories (about everything really, like i wonder what it looks like when they dance and are mad at each other? or how amazing to have a job where you get to touch the person you're in love with all the time. how might that work?). I tried to catch their faces as much as their movement, and altho exaggerated in stillness most of the time, the way they watched each other is what struck me. no perceptible change of emotion, and of course i'm getting more now that it's the body that talks, not the face that expresses. at the end, during their bows to the audience, their faces broke and they actually smiled, looked happy and grabbed each other. So naturally being some sort of hopeless closet romantic whose working on coming out of that closet, this grabbing and kissing made me really happy.
But more than that, what was rippling away underneath during this movement that is made to look effortless? and how much goes into masking any pain? while i celebrate my bruises, i also know that there is a place to disappear into when you're really in love with something or at least committed to doing it. it's true that last year, the final miles of the marathon, while always weird and surreal, were almost blissful in that i was completely moving from outside my body. yes, my physical self was obviously carrying me, and if i'd paid too much attention to it, i would have felt it's pain, but somewhere along the way i lifted out of it. during S class i'm often banging against something or smacking some part of my body against a wall, chair, pole. it all sounds sort of spastic, but i'm really not feeling that pain. instead i'm touching somewhere else in there and i'm pretty sure my face is reflecting that. last night after my dance, a comment to me: "i'd like to see what would happen if you danced to 10 songs in a row. you've got all this movement coming out, i wonder if you could spend it all." it actually made me lose my breath a bit to think of that. (And a friend told me later that during my dance she wanted to tell me to breathe. i should just have that word tattooed up my arms, torso, legs.) but i wonder. would it be like the dervishs just spinning and spinning and trancing out? Is that what happens when you love that much? just go and don't care what it looks like. lift off and disappear into it. run away with the circus.
No comments:
Post a Comment