WHAT HAVE I LEARNED FROM DANCE?

This question has been pulsing vigorously in my mind the last few days and I was sitting here on the couch, eating a warm home-cooked dinner on a cool rainy Bali night, and I had to turn off Netflix and jump right in. Which was my hour to wind down before the evening took place, but alas, here I am.

That’s the thing about this medium, writing. It calls. It drives. And when we choose to tune into the frequencies of ourselves, we can spin gold through our words. But one must first surrender to the call of the divine.

Hands up for the recovering work addicted?

Hands up for the ones who take the weight of the world on their shoulders?

Hands up for those who do everything for everyone, except themseloves?

My hands are in the air, waving about profusely.

It took a few more blows to actually stop me in my tracks, with the hands of God shaking me by the shoulders to wake up and sit the fuck down. And sit down I have. This time, for real.

Photo Credit: Tofan Angga

How did I get here?

Life took a challenging turn two months ago when I was diagnosed with a disease, and the testing continues for another. During the same period, while dancing at a friend’s birthday, I gracefully tore my calf muscle. I spent a month hobbling in and out of the hospital almost daily seeing three different specialists and I couldn’t shake the thought— I was a dancer for 20 years and this never happened. Granted, it has been seven years since I trained, and I am in my thirties now and definitely-maybe not in denial about the fact that my body is ageing. But still, this injury was out of the blue and happened in a manner that made no logical sense.

Until it did.

I figured all my life that the way I approach life, work, passions, and relationships was virtuous. Over and above for everything. Dedicating sixteen-hour days on my computer, hustling to meet deadlines, make events happen, continually connect to my wider community, create & produce and somehow maintain friendships in the midst of it all. Saying yes to everything. Helping everyone the moment the call came. I am not here to say these things weren’t done with a pure heart, or for any reason other than they felt right. They felt me. But to what detriment?

My health, it seems.

I had a conversation with an old dance friend recently, and we were talking about life after full-time training, the ending of careers and what lead us to where we are now. She made a point then that I didn’t realise would be the catalyst to my deep need for, and into the action of reformation. She spoke of how life after dancing she entered only high-stress jobs that consumed her time, and her energy. She pointed out how our training shapes us into these machines that are unrelenting. This was the first time I truly understood how I got here. I guess I could use military training as a comparable example. Left, right, left, right, left. Breaking down the mind to the point of malleability to be transformed into a weapon of industry.

I have spent years writing my stories in poetry, of how I denied my body fuel and gave up everything, including being in my home country to pursue this dream of dancing in the nude line at The esteemed Moulin Rouge. Of captivating audiences. Of playing the character. Of sculpting my figure, and joining the elites, but I never sat and thought of what I truly learned from dance.

Resilience.

Damn, this one is a two-headed beast. How great to be unbreakable? To be invincible and able to change direction and always move with guns-blazing. To be able to take blow after blow and still be standing when most would have lost the fight to an epic knockout. Any challenge can arise, and I can find my way through it. As if it is not option to raise a white flag and surrender. People often tell me they admire my strength, and I used to feel good about this and say thank you.

Although now, I crave to hear the words ‘I admire your softness’. But inside this lesson, I can see its value. If I think back on the great mass of challenges I have faced, I am incredibly grateful for my

Photo Credit: Tofan Angga

training. It prepared me to step out into the unknown, filled with fear, but somehow stepping fearlessly. But on the other side of resilience, I have discovered how much I have never been ‘in’ the moment. Present. Here. If it wasn’t thinking back to what happened before and letting that lead me, it was future-focused and dedicated to achieving the next level. What I now understand, is that I have been running on stress, anxiety and tension. What was the fuel to my fire? I can only tell you now, it was the hope of getting to this day where I could say ‘no more, thank you'.

I decided to take my life back into my own hands. I put everything on the firing line and asked them to reveal their value. I asked them to honour me, to honour the love I have poured in and if we had a future. I began to cut and cut the excess baggage. The things that took up every moment in the day, left me with no fire to create and connect with the people who inspired me. I ended working relationships; I turned down the noise of people who wanted to distract me from my mission and I made a choice to move only on the things that bring me deep joy and are rooted in love. I said no to stress.

We have heard all our lives that stress is the silent killer. Yet, I pretended that what I was feeling was just a burning desire to succeed in my dreams when in reality, it was all stress. The conditions I have to live with now derived directly from this. I never gave my body the time and space to recover from each day, from the moments that took my breath away and was indulging in the sweet high of running on fumes.

Not so sweet after all.

Now that the pain of losing this journey with dance has gone, and I have found my way back to dance in a new way mixing it with spoken word, music, sculpting and painting. I can see so much more clearly what the lessons have been. I have found the need for creating and expressing to be increasingly visceral. The beast inside has caught a glimpse into the freedom, and it wants out.

In a practical sense, I am doing all the things that need to be done. Like staying home more often than not, taking slow and undirected mornings in silence, back to exercise and movement, reading books again and my favourite, acupuncture. I am unlearning everything I have ever known. I am updating my software with no way to roll it back to the version previous.

Through this undoing and unlearning, I have found that I am ever-present in each moment that passes.

It feels as if before, time was constantly warping around me and that I had no idea where I stood in time and space. Now, I feel as if every cell in my body is buzzing and aware. My limbs no longer move without intention.

It is unchartered territory. It is completely unknown, and I have never felt more alive.

My mission has never been clearer, and I have a new fire to move in that direction, and that direction only.

Photo Credit: Tofan Angga

I am prepared now for the moments when I might need to say no or abandon ship when it is heading for a wreck. I don’t feel afraid to sit in moments of unclarity or disarray.

A seven-year cycle has ended, and it’s as if a rebirth has taken place.

A tiny infant, slowly opening her eyes to a world so colourful, and I feel it all.

Photo Credit: Tofan Angga

BULLETPROOF

If I could have been taught

How to truly defend myself

From the gunfire of life and love

I could have put my hand over my heart

And stopped it

I never learned any protection spells

Or how to build a fence

I did learn how to craft walls

Close doors

Lock them and cleverly lose the keys

Something in my eyes always gave me away

Like a window revealing terrain

You so wish to explore

But the mountains of snow blocked the passageway

They told the secrets I asked them not to

I never learned how to speak with an air of certainty

For I was forever lost in the fog of feeling like a stranger in my own body

Searching the mirror for an ounce of truth

And all I saw were waves of glass

Skewing my view

If only I had learned to go gently into the night

Light footed and stealth

Maybe I could have placed my hand over my heart

And begged for my life

But all I have learned

Is that you cannot catch a bullet

With love,

Emerie Seins