Becoming More of a Dancer
BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT
“To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion before I die, that’s deeper than any emotion that I’ve ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it.” –Andrew Wyeth
I haven’t been doing much dancing lately. At least, not in the usual sense. I’m spending a lot of time this summer by myself in the mountains, miles away from any dance studio. This past month I think I made it to class three times.
What’s happening to me? Am I becoming less of a dancer? Less disciplined? Less devoted to the art form?
Perhaps.
But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps dance is more than diligently going to a studio every day and practicing steps.
I’ve been reading through some old journals lately, and I came across this note I made to myself in February 2009: nothing will make you less of a dancer.
At the time I wrote it, I was miles deep in daily dance classes and rehearsals. I ate, slept and breathed dance. It consumed my identity and conversely it was very easy for me to believe that at any given moment I was becoming more of a dancer.
In retrospect, that myopic pursuit of dance was an important time in my life but also a bit juvenile in scope. Dance still takes up a large portion of my head space, but thankfully I’ve expanded a bit in my interests and desires.
So the question is: have I become less of a dancer?
Out in the mountains by myself, when I get the itch to dance, I clear the floor or find some shade under a tree. Other times, I just stare at the clouds in the sky, lost in thought. I take the words from the 2009 version of myself to heart: all of this makes me more of a dancer.
All of my experiences – parties, road trips, crushes, long walks, bad jokes, and yes, all that time in the dance studio too – makes me more of a dancer, makes me more of an artist, makes me more of a human. Dance isn’t a numbers game. So many hour in a dance studio a day doesn’t augment my dancerliness, and my dancerliness doesn’t go down when I’m taking a break or pursuing other things. Sure, muscles atrophy or grow stronger, technical things like turns and leaps have to be practiced regularly in order to stay adept at, and God I get out of breath a bit quicker. But the essence of being a dancer goes deeper than technique. Being an artist is a reflection of being a human, and every experience, every insight, every pursuit, every emotion adds to my scope as both a person and a dancer.
I watched a sunrise today. It made me more of a dancer.
One Response to “Becoming More of a Dancer”
Emmaly you will always be a dancer. But you needed to go though all the steps to get your base. Many people think of themselves of dancers without any classical training and without much technique of any type. The key phase here is “think of themselves of dancers”, because in reality they are not. You don’t become a dancer simply from thinking about it or even loving dance. You actually have to do it. It is not astro-physics, you can’t do a thought experiment, it is physical and you have to do it. You have to make all the mistakes and put in all the time and effort. The what surely must seem like endless errors and corrections are an important part of the process. Once you go though all of that then you can sit under the tree look up at the sky and think about dance but without all that “stuff” all those experiences and knowledge gained you are just not going to get very far.
Comments are closed.