Welcome

I remember the moment before every curtain went up.

I’d always stand with my head bowed, looking at the tape marks on the stage, watching in my peripheral for the theatre lights to go out. My breath was always shallow, in anticipation and in fear that if I breathed too loudly I’d miss the cue. I wasn’t in character yet. I was between worlds. Always tapping my right toe behind my left ankle, and waiting…waiting to let the character fill me and for my face to become theirs as the curtain began to lift. I would think of nothing, and yet feel everything; a silent transition into a different soul…

Even as I write about dance, my body transforms. I sit straighter and more elegant. I move more deliberate and even sensual, as fluidity is interpreted as sensuality. It is a homecoming to a place I miss so deeply and desperately wish I could live again.

Creative exploration of any kind is not a hobby or a pastime, or something we should put off. It is the very breath we breathe! It is a lifeline to our present self, and a connection to our past and future. And even so much more importantly than that, it connects the imagination of the brain, to the soulful longing in the heart. A poetic and symbiotic dance.

It is as scary as it is liberating and is always, always, worth that risk.