Integration

This past weekend, the American College Dance Festival held it's regional festival in Madison, and I was fortunate enough to take part. Other than feeling very very old (seriously, since when do college undergrads look like babies?!?), it was an overall soul-filling experience. And it had me very much nostalgic about my own experiences with ACDFA as a college undergrad and about being a dance student in general...

I very vividly remember the moment, freshman year, sitting in the CLA Honors office, when my advisor told me about dance therapy and directed me to the ADTA website. I took her little slip of paper with the website address, and trekked back to Middlebrook Hall where I pulled the site up on my slow, noisy computer. In that moment, I knew - this was what I was meant to do. All my unresolved emotions about the dance performance world and feeling pulled between passion for dance and psychology seemed magically solved, and I had a plan. And goodness knows, I do like to have a plan.

I also remember another moment, now during my senior year, after literally catering my undergraduate studies towards the idea of studying dance therapy in grad school. I was sitting in a dance professor's office in the BBCD, and she told me that she felt that I was basically "chickening out" by pursuing dance therapy because I didn't have enough confidence in my dancing to pursue a career as a performer. (Mind you, I had never once before felt like my dancing was worth a second glance from said professor...to complicate this commentary further). I knew she was wrong, and that she didn't understand that dance therapy fills up my spirit and makes me tick in a way that dance performance never has or will, but I'd be lying if I claimed that she didn't strike a chord in that moment. Clearly, she did, because even today that's the only piece of our conversation I even remember.

Now, eight years after that senior year conversation (really, eight years?!?) I can tell you without a doubt that dance therapy is the path I was indeed meant to pursue. In my mind and in my faith and in my body I know it's the truth. I have been reassured of that on so many levels and occasions that I can hardly list them all, starting literally with my arrival to my graduate program in Chicago  and ending with the student who came up to me crying after my master class on dance therapy last Saturday, in her sweet confusion saying, "I don't even know why I'm crying, but this is so amazing, thank you." (Singing my song, my dear...)

But I'd also be lying if I said that there wasn't another part of me, small and illogical as it might be, that hasn't wondered "what if?" What if that professor was right, what if I should have pursued a dance MFA so that I could teach full-time, what if I am just an insecure chicken in this wild and crazy world of art? And I can also say that I have coped with this piece of insecurity by separating "me" from "them." By claiming an identity as a dance therapist so that I can swear off any desire to have an identity as a wannabe professional dancer of some sort. By making it very clear to myself and to others that what I do is so different from what they do. I know plenty about coping mechanisms in my line of work, and this polarization is indeed my own way of coping with this dichotomous understanding of myself.

This false polarization confronted me smack in the face for the first time last fall, when the dance therapy conference I attended was held in conjunction with the national dance educators conference. Especially since the conference was held in the city where I attended undergrad, the whole scenario was overwhelming. I was surrounded by familiar faces from my undergraduate studies, graduate studies and now professional life in Madison. I kept seeing people and trying to compartmentalize them, figuring out which part of "me" they belonged to. And as the conference progressed, I was forced to admit that, really, we (dance performers, dance teachers, dance/movement therapists...) are not as different as I want us to be. We actually all have quite a lot in common. Ultimately, what it comes down to, we aren't as different as what makes me feel safe and comfortable and special.

I was reminded of these same feelings over the festival this past weekend, trying to reconcile part time dance teacher, part time dance therapist, very part time dancer for fun and undeniably very pregnant me with all parts of the classes and performances and dinners. I felt sometimes overwhelmed with clarity for my role within it all, and at other times grateful for my growing baby belly which became a bit of a space to hide behind, ultimately shielding me with a very obvious excuse from my own feelings of self-consciousness and self-doubt.

Saturday night was the final piece of the festival I was able to attend, and Sunday morning my own dear husband preached at our church a sermon about claiming our identities as beloved children of Christ above any other worldly identities. I was, and am, challenged to continue to seek for this peace and wholeness of identity in my own life. I look forward very much to the day, if in this life or next, when I don't feel a battle of selves and what-ifs but just a sense of peace and wholeness in believing in who I am without a doubt.

In grad school, one of the most gratifying experiences I had was learning Laban Movement Analysis and specifically about the work of Irmgard Bartenieff. Learning this material was one of the many moments when I felt a blissed out assurance that I was in the right place learning and doing the right thing for my life. Bartenieff's work, today, greatly influences my approach as both a therapist and teacher. She works from a developmental movement perspective, and discusses very often the concept of movement integration for an individual. Bartenieff refers often to her "lemniscate," or the idea that "inner connectivity breeds outer expressivity." As I continue on a journey towards accepting and connecting to my own inner story, I hope for the day that it can be experienced fully in my own outer expression with a clear identity and as the human being I am slowly realizing myself to be. All other crap and self-doubt aside.