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.
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].
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].
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.
Just a couple of wee thoughts. We’re working so much and dancing so much and talking so much and just living together so much that I’ve been spending my alone time just reading and breathing.
Anyway, this intensive has been amazing for so many reasons, not least because it has put me in touch with feelings I haven’t really addressed in a long time.
First, it has forced me to very directly face my difficulty approaching people. Every day this week, we’ve spent the morning doing exercises with one partner or set of partners, then repeating or iterating them with another, then another.
I hadn’t realized how much it still freaks me out to choose partners. Yesterday I got seriously rattled by it—but I actually mentioned it to the person who chose me, and they helped me through that moment. It was amazing.
I realize I’ve been feeling like, “This person or that person probably doesn’t want to work with me,” which isn’t fair either to them or to myself. That’s their call. I shouldn’t try to make it for them.
Second, I’ve realized that one of the things I love so much in dance, and especially in this kind of dance, is the giving and receiving of touch in an atmosphere of deep trust.
To do the work we’re doing here, you need to touch your partners and you need to trust them. Somehow, the process we’re working with creates an atmosphere of immense trust. We are all safe here in each-other’s arms (or feet, or whatever).
I came to this understanding by a circuitous back route. There’s one guy here who I kept desperately wanting to work with—to dance with. I wanted to feel his arms around me and his body against mine, but in a way that wasn’t about sex [1].
Or, well, mostly wasn’t.
I kept trying to figure out why (leaving out the fact that he’s beautiful in a very unique way) and finally I realized that it’s the way he partners: he’s solid and steady, and when he holds anyone—anyone—in his arms, you can feel the power and the tenderness of that connection from across the room.
I’ve worked with him a couple of times now. In one piece, I caught him and sank to the ground holding him in my arms (in that particular dance, he had just died).
It was an incredibly powerful moment. I’m not sure how to explain it, except to say that in that moment he trusted me with his body, and that trust felt like a sacred thing.
But also it just felt so damned good: just a human body touching my human body, which is so strangely important, without any need to be afraid or guarded or aggressive.
Rather the opposite: the dance involved me catching his wrist as he took a slow backwards fall, pulling him into my arms and collapsing to the ground with him. I couldn’t be afraid or guarded or aggressive; I had to be fast and strong, but soft. I had to get both of us to the floor without anybody getting hurt.
I don’t know how to explain how that feels, but it’s pretty incomparable.
Today there was a dance in which a girl trusted me to catch her mid-flight, redirect her momentum, and throw her halfway across the room; in which I trusted her to pull me straight to the ground out of an arabesque as I pulled her to her feet. That felt incredible. There aren’t many places where you get to feel that kind of thing.
Anyway, that’s it for now. The creative process here never ceases to amaze me. Groups of dancers who had, for the most part, never met a few days back are, each afternoon, creating dances I’d happily pay to see, working in groups as small as two and as large as six, with only minimum input from our teachers.
I’m now committed for BW’s masterclass and some of the ML&Co intensive—I remembered that there are one-day passes and 3- or 5-class cards, so I’m planning to take 3 classes during the week and then go for the full day on Friday. It will be a hectic week, but not insanely so.
I also seem to have somehow committed myself to audition for the company at ML&Co’s intensive, so we’ll see how that goes. Erm, onward and upward?
In other news, I learned while I was writing this post that I will indeed be going to Pilobolus’ intensive this year as well! Obviously, that’s pretty exciting! I’ll also be able to visit my Mom and Step-Dad (unless the week that I’m going is the same week in July that they’re out of town; I can’t remember at the moment o.O’).
Yesterday, after I finished writing my post, I ate lunch, decided to read for a bit, and promptly fell asleep on the couch until 9 PM. Later, I slept from 12:30-9:30 AM. I’m not usually much of a napper, and that’s a lot of sleep for one night, so presumably I really needed to catch up!
At any rate, I’m feeling pretty well rested today 😀
We didn’t have modern class today (which let me get a bunch of stuff done around the house), so it’s back to the normal class schedule tomorrow. Modern is moving to a new time-slot, though, so that’ll be a change.
This week, D and I will start really cracking away at our PlayThink piece, which I hope to have finished before Master Class/ML&Co week (June 5 – 9) so we can simply polish it up before the festival.
Kids, this is why punctuation is important. That should read:
Pilobolus Master Class; All Up In My Drawers
First: Pilobolus Master Class!
You guys, it was so great.
I feel like I learned a great deal about the process of creating dances through improv, and it was cool to dance in an environment where technique wasn’t even a thing. The guys from Pilobolus basically said, “We love dancers and we love dance technique, but if you’re someone who spends hours every day in class, please check your technique at the door.” As someone who loves technique but can get a bit too invested in it, that idea was very freeing.
I am a horrible person, and have forgotten the names of our ambassadors of Pilobolus, but they were both very cool guys and very good teachers — though this process was as much one of bringing out what’s already there as one of teaching. The teaching part was more about figuring out how to use what’s already there.
I must admit that I went into it a bit worried that I’d be all stiff and horrible because…
OMG STRANGERZ!!!11!!!1one1oneomgwtfbbq
…But apparently I overlooked the part where, like, you know, dancing? …When I was worrying about that.
If dance is involved, I seem to do relatively okay in groups of new people.
At the end of class, we broke into three groups and created three short (about 4 minutes) dances in the span of about five minutes, performed them, critiqued them, refined them over another two (two!) minutes, then performed them again.
All three dances were completely different, and all three of them were cool, but one (not my group’s; ours was silly) was really stirring and moving. I hope some of the dancers will take it and run with it, because it was really, really good.
I feel like I want to let this whole experience percolate a bit more, then write about it at greater length. It was, in short, just an amazing two-ish hours (happily, we ran over the original 1.5-hour class time).
It turns out that Pilobolus holds a 3-week summer workshop series (in Connecticut, yay!). I’m going to have to seriously consider whether I can figure out how to afford at least one week this year. Curiously, the name of the third workshop, Vision & Revision, was also the name of my favorite writing class when I was in high school.
Serendipity, much?
And Now: All Up In My Drawers!
I did manage to make it to IKEA afterwards.
My one real goal was to acquire a second Big Blue Bag, which will greatly improve my laundry system. Heretofore, I’ve been using one Big Blue Bag and any of my various not-quite-as-ginormous shopping bags.
The second Big Blue Bag wasn’t essential, but it will make the system run more smoothly, since now I’ll have two dedicated laundry bags of the same size.
While cruising through the store (you guys, it is so nice to walk through an IKEA all alone), however, I found something even better: specifically, Drawerganizers(TM).
Since keeping tights and so forth corralled is a fairly regular topic of conversation among dancers and aerialists in my life, I thought I’d share the current iteration of my system, which mostly comprises hair elastics, a plastic crate, and IKEA’s set of 6 Skubb boxes. (Sadly, the Cincy IKEA didn’t have the aqua ones in stock.)
I’ve been meaning to implement a boxes-in-the-drawers system for a while, but hadn’t found Drawerganizers that worked for me (shoeboxes would have been fine, probably, but we didn’t have any). The Skubb series works really nicely, and I couldn’t argue with the price — something like $8 for the set — or the portability factor. The boxes fold up rather ingeniously; when you set them up, little zippers in the floor panels add tension that keeps them in shape.
So, here’s how things are organized now:
First Floor: Cycling Apparel, Men’s Shirts, and The Occasional Sarong
Bottom Drawer (technically the second drawer from the bottom; the real bottom drawer houses bed linens): this one’s full of bike kit, a few pairs of shorts, and a bunch of t-shirts that I should probably donate, since I don’t wear them enough.
Bike kit used to share the dance clothes drawer (which was the Bike Kit Drawer until I had too much bike kit to keep it all in one drawer), but then the dance kit kind of took over. Anyway, I’ve used the two medium-sized Skubb boxes to contain bike kit.
Overflow bike kit lives in a vertical organizer in the guest room closet, because I am apparently unusually sentimental about my Cabal jerseys, even the ones I don’t wear very often.
And, yes, there’s even a sarong in there, though I don’t think you can see it in this shot.
Next time I’m at IKEA, I’ll pick up a couple more Skubb boxes to corral the things that are still roaming free.
Second Floor: Dance Apparel, Fuzzy Socks, and Thermal Tights*
Top Drawer: Dance kit and almost nothing else.
Until recently, I’ve alternated between folding and rolling my tights, and found that neither really prevents everything from coming undone when I’m digging for that one pair with the pictures of mountains on it or whatevs.
The other day, I hit on the solution of buying a package of brightly-colored hair ties to keep them contained. It works brilliantly.
In combination with the hair ties, the Skubb boxes keep things corralled and controlled. No more tights rolling into the base-layer section; no more dance belts hiding under legwarmers (right now, for decency’s sake, they’re hiding under a pair of socks instead).
Things that didn’t really fit anywhere else take up the extra space in the drawer in front of the Skubbs.
Rooftop Terrace: Aerial Apparel, Clutter, and Mayhem
On Top Of Ol’ Dresser: Denis’ tights live here, along with our white-noise machine (which is really an air purifier), a photo from our wedding, and a terrifying doll that predates my tenure in this establishment. There are also some foam panels that insulate our air-con when it’s installed, but right now it’s still on vacation.
I found the plastic basket at a place called Five Below, but you can find similar ones just about anywhere.
The fact that Denis has his own tights-basket means he no longer asks me where his tights are (when they’re right freaking there!) or roots through my dance-kit drawer, leaving chaos in his wake. Seriously, the man is like a water buffalo sloshing around in a pond when he gets in there.
My married peeps (and anyone with kids or particularly egregious housemates; similar things can happen in kitchen drawers) will understand how this helps keep me out of prison.
La Pièce de Resistance
A cheap keychain-grade carabiner slipped through a convenient opening in the “weave” of the basket holds the hair elastics that aren’t currently in use. I’ve oriented it so the gate can be operated without removing the whole carabiner: you just slide a band up to the top, open the gate, and the band comes right out. The process for replacing one is similarly painless.
I had to think long and hard about how to implement this bit, because my husband is a lazy slob (and will happily tell you so himself). The idea is to make it so freaking easy to put the bands back that it’s basically easier than not bothering.
You guys, I seriously believe in the power of harnessing the path of least resistance. Remember, when (ahem) shaping (ahem) the behavior of spouses, appealing to the natural laziness of the human animal will save you many headaches.
So, there you have it. A tour of how things are staying organized all up in my drawers (dancers be like, “Wait, isn’t that what dance belts are for?” :V).
I am apparently having an unsociable week. My apologies for the comments to which I have yet to reply (I keep saying to myself, “NEXT TIME YOU LOG IN, DanseurIgnoble, REPLY TO PPL!!!” and then not doing it) and also for relative radio silence.
I am doing class and things are going pretty well, actually, I’m just feeling peopled out and my language co-processor keeps being like, “Feh, you want me to craft a cogent response to somebody else’s thoughts? Here, why don’t we look at more memes instead.”
If you’re in the area and you can go, you totally should. You will run into me and get to watch me flail through said class. Assuming you’re not also flailing away so hard that you can’t spare the energy to do so.
Pilobolus occupies a huge space in my heart. I grew up on their home turf (Connecticus is tiny, y’all), and they were the first modern dance company I ever saw, way back when I was but a wee bairn (like, seriously, I was probably about three?) and had no idea that dance came in different flavors.
Anyway, you can thank Modern T, who informed us of this minor miracle, for this particular FanBoy Moment.
…Which sounds like some really awful blended tea flavor. “After a hard day at the con, settle down in your hotel room and relax with a piping-hot cup of FANBOY MOMENT.”
Or maybe it’s an equally ill-advised cologne, I don’t know. I imagine that it either smells like a freshly-opened pack of Magic cards did in 2002 or maybe like the scent of convention centers and sleep deprivation? I’m rooting for the first one, because I have never been to a convention center that didn’t have that “brand-new-carpet and brutalist concrete architecture” smell.
Anyway. Come do class with Pilobolus! It will be awesome! And then we can go to IKEA together, because Louisville is apparently not good enough to have its own IKEA.
Or, well, we can if we can still walk after an hour and a half of Pilobolus masterclass. Or maybe if they have those little electric carts. I don’t know.
danseur ignoble 