Corporal Culture

Hi everybody!

Thanks for tuning in to my first post – I thought this might be a good chance to give a brief introduction to myself and to the reason I created this blog.

Most of you (hi mom!) already know me : I grew up in Portland, Oregon, started dancing at age 5, went through the school and subsequently the ranks of Oregon Ballet Theatre, and then at the age of 25 moved to France to dance for Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. And here I am; my history is relatively unimportant as to this blog. The importance to me is only that it’s one story in a world full of unique paths to and through the professional dance world.

We each have a story to tell, and with each of our experiences comes a different viewpoint on what we do, why we do it, and how we move forward in this world. This blog is intended to do two things:

1. be a sounding board for me to explore and discuss my ideas about the dynamics that we encounter as professional, classically-based dancers.
2. be a place where dancers and people interested in our world can discuss their different perspectives on the issues in a dancer’s daily life.

For those of you that are amateur dancers, dancers from other backgrounds, or students of dance, I don’t intend on leaving you out. I definitely want to hear your opinions and insight, which will surely help sharpen and fill out this discussion of what we do. But since the world that I know and have lived in is that of classically based, full-time dance, this is the platform that I’ll use to dive into this murky world.

The world of dance can be a complicated one. We can’t, by necessity, work like other modern day organizations, and this has both upsides and downsides. My hope is to explore these idiosyncrasies by trying to take a bird’s eye view of the issues that we encounter in and outside of our workplace, presenting my take on those issues, and inviting discussion in the comments afterwards.

Please help spark discussion by commenting if you feel inspired or have your own opinion to share. This blog is an attempt to paint a fuller, more well-rounded picture of what we do. We each need to hear alternative viewpoints to our own in order to help shape our judgment and make us more understanding of the things which make us impatient or unhappy. This is a large part of the reason I am starting this blog.

In the coming weeks I’ll try to release a few posts exploring dancer volition and culpability, the use of language in the studio, a dancer interview or two, and hopefully some lighter stuff as well. We don’t have to go deep all the time 🙂

If this sounds interesting to you, please subscribe by clicking “Follow” at the bottom of the page, and you’ll be automatically sent an email once a new post is up.

What do you want me to write about? Tell me in the comments.

Dancer lift off!