I took my first Pilobolus SI in 2017 [1].

1. You know you’ve been dancing for a while when you have to look through your own blog or Google photos reel to confirm which year you did something *eternal facepalm*

I guess it goes without saying that I’m a different dancer and a different person than I was back then. What I don’t know is whether it goes without saying how incredibly instrumental that first Pilobolus SI was in my life.

Back before that first SI, I’d taken a handful of workshops and masterclasses with Pilobolus. At one of them (in late 2016 I think???) I met Edwin Olvera, who snagged me as I was leaving a masterclass and said, “You’re a beautiful mover. You should come to the summer workshop. Also, we have auditions coming up, and you should go.”

I couldn’t actually go to the audition because my I had other commitments and not enough lead time to figure out a trip to NYC, but I did go to the SI, and it’s not hyperbole to say that it changed my life.

It didn’t transform me from a ballet nerd into someone who only wanted to do Pilobolus-influenced modern, but it did give me both a whole collection of new tools and a deeper insight into my own innate ability as a dancer. A few of us were offered a scholarship to stay on for another week, and though I wasn’t able to stay, that offer was really deeply edifying: it helped me understand that I did, in fact, have something worth developing as a dancer.

My time at that SI in 2017 also somehow became the thing that finally broke the ice-dam I’d built between myself and thinking about the hardest and most terrible part of my childhood.

The night before I left for home, I sat on the edge of the bed in the room where I slept growing up, and realized that the pain and terror of the worst days of my life no longer owned me: that I had learned how to trust people with my body and with my dreams in a way I’d never imagined possible.

Pilobolus SI facilitated a lot of that work.

That doesn’t mean I was really, really out of the woods yet: I had, and still have, a long way to go. But I’d lived within this system of bulwarks raised against both the past and the present for so, so long then, and to step out from them even a little was just profound.

On the drive home (which, at the time, was a long way — 800+ miles), I listened to music[2] I’d avoided for over a decade and just wept. Like, sometimes I had to pull over because I couldn’t see. All of the free and wild and giddy and dark and bright and powerful feelings I’d kept strangled into silence since I was thirteen years old came pouring through me again, and I loved the joy and the pain and the resonance of everything. I sang songs I hadn’t sung in so, so long, and they moved in my heart like the spirit of G-d across the waters of creation.

2. I almost never actually listen to music when I’m driving, because it’s either too distracting or not distracting enough, if that makes sense, so this was a major departure on many levels.

I wasn’t instantly and completely and totally healed from that day forward, because that’s basically not how healing works — but I felt, for once in my life, that I had turned a corner; that I was at the beginning of a new path; a new stage in the journey.

I was ready to let the world touch me again, at least a bit.

Pilobolus, Redux

This year, I finally returned to the Summer Intensive[3].

3. I did take Pilobolus’ 2-day long Teacher Training Workshop in 2018, but it’s much briefer and a very different experience. Still immensely valuable, and it still deeply influences my own teaching practice, but it’s its own thing.

I didn’t come expecting the same experience I had in 2017, because I am in a profoundly different place in my life now than I was then, and because you can never step into the same stream twice.

In fact, I tried to come with as few expectations as possible. I tried to allow myself room to be whoever and whatever I was going to be at this year’s intensive, both in the studio and in the dorms, and to receive and give and, like, just do whatever came.

That’s a difficult thing to do. As humans we thrive on stories. Stories — conscious or otherwise — are kind of how we move through the world. They frame our understanding of things (not to mention our misunderstanding of things).

And, to be fair, telling yourself “allow room for unexpected stories” and “try to release your established stories about yourself a bit” still begets stories. The point isn’t to avoid stories: it’s just to give yourself room to breathe into new ones.

Anyway, in the end, I surprised myself rather a lot. Even moreso because one of my friends from 2017 also came (she signed up at the last minute, so I had no idea she was coming) and I found myself completely comfortable with the idea that I wasn’t the same me she’d last hung out with.

At the first Pilobolus SI, I struggled to find my way in. I was reticent to join groups; reticent to offer myself as a partner (because who would want to dance with me, when I had basically no idea what I was doing?). I was mostly quiet in the dorms. I spent a lot of lunch breaks alone.

This time I was almost obnoxiously ready to jump in to things. I offered myself as a partner all the time, because to a great extent nobody knows what they’re doing, but the tools of partnering are familiar ones, and I feel comfortable using them in new and strange situations. I hung out with people a lot: not to say I didn’t grab my alone time, because I need alone time, but I, like, talked to people?

This time I contributed ideas to things, and spoke up for myself, and at one point had to navigate a particularly sticky two-day long misunderstanding that led to some pretty heated disagreements until we found enough common language to work through the sticking points.

I came to love the people with whom I was vehemently disagreeing as much as I instantly loved the people whose vibes chimed easily and naturally with mine. I came to see that, as insecure as I sometimes felt as a dancer who hasn’t truly been able to train and work full-time since the beginning of the pandemic, others in the space felt equally insecure, or even more so, for their own reasons.

I realized that sometimes we’re all afraid and all trying not to reveal our fear, because to reveal fear is to admit vulnerability, and that’s scary.

Not to say I didn’t know that rationally already — but to really feel it in your bones is a different thing. I don’t know if I’ve been there before or not. I guess it probably doesn’t matter: learning something just takes as many times as it takes.

I was also less afraid to do Stupid Pilobolus Camp Tricks after hours, which was terribly fun. You haven’t lived until you’ve done a dive roll over a limbo stick that someone’s holding like four feet off the ground[4].

4. Or your equivalent thereof ^-^ This could sound really ableist or whatever, so please take it as read that everyone has their own version of this; it doesn’t have to literally be a dive roll from low orbit or whatever.

I spent less time thinking What if they don’t want me to join in; I should just stand back and a lot more time going If they don’t want me to join, they’ll tell me, and it’ll be fine.

I told stupid jokes. I made terrible puns. Many of them landed. Some crashed and burned. I made stupid, awkward, uncomfortable gaffes because my language coprocessor is terrible, and I apologized for them rather than just quietly curling up under the bleachers to die. Nobody wound up hating me, because everyone gave me grace for being the awkward little weirdo that I am.

I wore the tiny Mariia ballet shorts that I never wear because I thought I didn’t like how they looked on me, and several people commented on how much they liked them … so then I wore them to swim in a lake, because it turns out that they’re actually pretty comfortable. The ballet gods might still strike me down for that one, but so far, so good.

I made friends. We went to NY to see the company perform at the Joyce, and I held hands and clung together with one of my new friends because the choreography hit us the same way and we both wound up in tears.

I was afraid a lot, but I tried things anyway, because everyone worked to make sure everyone felt wanted and safe.

That is an incredibly, incredibly powerful thing.

The Kids, As They Say, Are All Right

This group skewed younger on average than my last Pilobolus SI: that is, the percentage of people who were in the “Traditional US College Age” bracket was quite a bit higher (the range overall was about the same, though).

The result was that the zeitgeist of the whole group shifted towards the Gen-Z ethos of meeting people where they are; of just letting people vibe instead of trying to sort them into neat categories; of inclusion as a normal thing, instead of as this sort of begrudging afterthought. Not that it felt begrudging in 2017 — just, this year, there was this unspoken, proactive, collective effort to make sure everyone was being brought in, and that if someone really wanted to work on their own, they were given space to do so in a way that still somehow let them know they were welcome and wanted and part of the whole.

If anyone hovered on the edge, looking like they didn’t know how to join in, someone always came along and said, “Hi! Come work with me!” in a way that made them feel not just included, but wanted.

If you’ve ever been the kid that was only included because a teacher stepped in and said, “You have to include everyone,” and how awful it feels to be included but not wanted, you know how crucial a difference that is. For me, that experience of grudging inclusion made up most of my childhood and the entire first year of my professional career, so this generous spirit of welcome really hit.

We all talked about this at the closing circle, after our show (which was, by the way, straight FIRE). It was the thing that, perhaps, moved us all the most.

Summa

When you go to Pilobolus’ Summer Intensive, you come home with mysterious bruises and a tenderized heart.

I can’t think of another that does that as well.

You ultimately go to most intensives (especially ballet intensives) to hone your technique. You go to Pilobolus just to go to Pilobolus, and that makes it a different experience.

For a week, or two weeks, or (if you’re lucky) even three weeks, you go and live in your body in a way that’s pretty unique even in the dance world, with a group of people who come from all kinds of backgrounds. You share a common purpose and you work for it in a zillion different ways.

You learn, both literally and metaphorically, to move other people and to be moved by them.

You find things in yourself you never imagined, because other people help you to see them.

Even the moments of conflict are gifts. This past week, I had to take a long look at my own impatience, and the ways in which living in the dance world, which is deeply immersive and often pretty insular, means I need to listen harder and pause to process more effectively when I’m interacting with people who don’t necessarily live there. I also discovered that I can, in fact, stand up for myself.

The piece my group performed for the showing came out of an exercise in which we were given the image of crossing the desert together and finding a single cup of water suspended ten feet in the air, which was then spilled by the person we lifted up to retrieve it.

The resulting dance became a reflective adagio in which we struggled against a blistering wind to reach a brilliant, holy light, and in the end only one of us made it alive, carrying another across his shoulders like a lamb, as the rest of us were transfigured into stone (in my case, as I lay on the ground, reaching for the light).

We performed it to Arvo Part’s “Summa,” which lent it a spare, elegaic quality and a singular focus.

The piece came off better than any of us had expected: this piece that we’d fought over, that I at one point offered to leave because I felt like it would be the easiest solution. When we finished, there was this moment of pause before the applause; that space of a few heartbeats that tells you that what the audience saw really hit them.

I feel that way about this intensive. You go, you experience it, and then you have to breathe with it for a while to let it wash through you.

I hope to go again next year. I don’t know what to expect, so I think I’ll stick with this strategy of trying, as much as I’m able, not to expect.

I don’t know who I’ll be then. But I’m looking forward to finding out, and to sharing that process of discovery with new and old friends.

Maybe you’ll come.

If you do, you’ll be welcome.

ps you also get a cool shirt if you come