My Journey: Evolution in Creative Expression and Sense of Self Part 2

   A lot of people dance with creativity everyday and dance the edge of deep innermost expression all the while keeping it at a distance and therefore not really committing to the message that is there to come out. The hardest part of any creative endeavor is not the technique or the time/energy management. It's the daring to be completely and whole heartedly honest with no codes to veil and distort the expression. We want to water it down and make it more palatable to the masses even though the artists job is to challenge people to reflect on their own experiences and relation to themselves, to others and to things. The artist no matter what style of expression has been turned into a robot. Merely an entertainer. Entertainment is all good and well. It is very much needed in a world where people work very hard and suffer everyday. Sometimes entertainment is the only thing that can make us feel like we aren't the only one, or to take us beyond a difficult experience to experience happiness again. But people are very afraid of facing themselves, hearing themselves speak. Because they know deep down what I know by experience. That when you hear yourself and see yourself you see everything around you differently. You feel everything differently. And all of this means that you'll attract trouble in some way or another. It means having who you are on the table and therefore not ultra protected by a massive wall of illusion.

   I have danced for years with how to have a wall that is good for me rather than one that is created in the way that most people in my culture create. The kind that is based off of fear, anger, victim hood. We've all been victims of something and most of us know how hard it is to keep ourselves from losing a part of ourselves deep within that is fresh. The only part of us that has the guts to be so honest that it changes and breaks institutions and blows everyone's minds! To keep that inner child alive and healthy as well as safe and protected is the trick of it. If your like me you did not have a mother in life that was able to provide this for you while you are growing up. I like to believe in things I cannot see and things that I have never known but I know must exist and that I can create for myself. And because I believe that for myself and know this by experience I believe that every one else can too if they could only open their minds to the idea.

   I really believe that all of the trouble in the world no matter what it is is rooted in how people are conditioned to believe that their human nature and therefore animal nature is bad. And that we all must rise above it and to rise above anything from the natural animal kingdom. The more people have continued this line of thought, the more we have seen damage done to the earth and all of it's inhabitants. The massive breakdown of communities, families and therefore the massive breakdown of connection to our natural selves. We see dogmatic beliefs about beauty, success and self worth. Everything has a price tag including our abs, hair or lack thereof!

   All of this thought came about from experiencing not just knowing which I have known some time now that I had lost a connection to dance which I had early on in the early to mind 2000s when I began. Back then I had the heart of Am Cab in my heart and my hands and I danced with it. Over the years I explored other dance forms such as ATS and Tribal Fusion which I am very addicted to and I love them because my body loves expressing what these dance forms express. My body needs it and my mind needs it. But through exploring and focusing on these dance forms in depth I wasn't dancing with the heart of dance like I used to. As a result I had less and less confidence in myself as a dancer and as a person no matter that I was learning new dance forms, refining my techniques and learning more complicated things. All of this lead to feeling dis spirited by the dance form so over the years I danced back to it for missing it and wanting to have what I had before but then dancing away to other forms of expression and arts. I also was not in a good financial place to continue or to be in a community that I could be supported by. I could not explore all of the dance forms I had come to know and need. There were times where I wanted to join daturaonline.com but even then $25 per month was too much to commit to. And it isn't just videos. It's an on-line community that supports each other. So I didn't even have that!

   I also was very dis spirited by all of the politics surrounding Belly Dance which did not exist or not that I knew of when I began. I struggled with it enough that I was overwhelmed, burnt out and it drove away any of the heart I had tried to spirit up into my life again. But my wishes and my dreams never went away. I tried to make them go away to make my life easier. To save money, pay down debt easier and not be put in more debt by dancing. I was burned out in other areas of my life so much I craved simplicity, space, quiet and peace. I gave it to myself and though I needed it and got what I needed from it, I needed richness, color, texture, culture and energy that fluctuated to out and in to my center. I needed community and dreamed of finding a dance community that I could be part of again that allowed my spirit and expression to dance free. So, though I held dance at a distance I held the dream out there for it to be a possibility.

   I was not happy living in Fredericton NB. I was happy to go back there after living in Halifax NS but it did not have what I needed. I felt wrong there as I did in Halifax. I had no idea what I was going to do. All I could see ahead of me was nothing and I hated it. No matter how hard I looked I couldn't see myself having anything there and this went on for almost the entire time I was back. One day last fall at the beginning of October I was having one of those days which were many which felt dead, dis spirited, flat, unhappy, bleak, depressing. I was in the shower and suddenly a thought came to me straight out of nowhere. It was " Have I ever thought of moving to Sackville?" And I thought, that yes I had. Years ago during my first year at NBCCD while I was completing my FVA I applied too Mount Allison University to the Fine Arts program. The idea of moving to a small town at the time was scary. I used to live in a small town and was afraid of it. But I wanted to explore the Fine Arts so I applied. I did get accepted to the school to take any other program however but didn't follow through with it because though I was interested in many things they had to offer, I wanted the Fine Arts. After that I sporadically thought of moving to Sackville NB. I craved a small community that wasn't angry by the population, the horrible transit, etc. After going to see Alice Cooper in Moncton NB of 2016 my husband and I went on a trip with some friends who had also gone to the concert  to explore Sackville. I played with the idea a little then of what it would be like to move to the small town. Finally, I'm here! Last fall when I thought of it I also thought, " I could travel to Moncton nearby to take classes with Barbara Aubie at Studio Sephira! " I also thought, " I could travel to Halifax which would be much closer to take classes at Serpentine Dance Studio."

   Another part of my evolution of coming back into my dance self happened soon after I moved here much to my surprise! I knew it was meant to be because I had held an idea in my mind that I was looking for a healthy dance community. One day I was walking down the street and there was a dance studio. I thought " I wonder if they have any belly dance classes there...." Then thought "Probably not. It looks like it's Ballet and Modern Dance." I saw when I checked Perpetual Motion Dance Studio's site that it was indeed a lot of that. But I spied Tribal Fusion. Tribal Fusion! I was like "Wow! In this small town?!" I have come to find that Sackville NB holds many such hidden extraordinary jewels related to art and culture and it has made me feel more and more like it was the right choice to move there!

   So when I made my discovery I wrote the owner of the studio about more information regarding the classes to which she forwarded me on to the teacher. I wrote to her expressing my interest in taking classes, my experience and how I would like to be part of a dance community again and maybe to someday perform again. She wrote me back and was amazed to find someone approach her who already knew what Tribal Fusion and ATS was! We got together to chat at a local cafe and it was the first heart to heart chat that I had had about Belly Dance in years! We both talked about the difficulties within the greater dance community, the frustrations and our passions. We also talked about how image was a major barrier to women beginning and continuing the dance form. During the conversation she also revealed to me that she was going to be taking time off of teaching soon because she needed maternity leave. She apologized for my timing on coming to the classes just when they were ending but when she found out my experience as a dancer, teacher and yogi she wanted me to teach at the studio. For years I had been afraid of teaching. I believed that if I taught bad things would happen to me because they did! Over and over! But over the years I had also wanted to break that fear and find my voice in teaching again. Because I knew it was one of my inherent strengths. I could always speak on front of people without fear and I could always teach well even before I had teacher training. So that was not what I was afraid of.

   So when this opportunity was laid at my feet I was amazed. I was energized and full of adrenaline. I had hope of teaching again and of finally letting the fear go. I had taught a few years before but in my own space and privately. But the fear never completely went away. Having a class at a studio felt bigger and more "real". Over the years I had learned to doubt myself more but I kept telling myself of how much I had grown and how much I could offer even with my practice having been sporadic and not as involved or as intense as my practice earlier on. I don't know everything and never pretend to. But it had gotten into me over time that I was supposed to know everything somehow. So, I had to ignore that and remember that I did know a few things and that the spirit, not just the technique of my teaching was good and needed. I felt I had to get people to find the spirit within rather than connecting to a technique or an image or a hope of losing weight by dancing. It has always felt like a huge responsibility because it is. It's not an easy task to not just teach technique but to help people to love themselves unflinchingly without shame through dance or yoga. It's a tall order. People want to be amazing at these things so that they can finally like themselves. Rather than dance as a process to learning how to "love" themselves and not just "like". People are very attached to it because being amazing or thin or projecting a powerful and refined image gives off an impression that if we can achieve this then it will automatically promise respect from others. That no one will treat us like complete shit again! A lot of us would rather be intimidating enough to put others in a position of submission. It's one of the ways that we adopt to protect ourselves in life and when it comes to exploring an art form. It becomes about this toxic relationship with ourselves and others rather than a real relationship and a real expression with ourselves and others.

   Stay tuned for Part 3 of My Journey: Evolution in Creative Expression and Sense of Self!