So the other night at PURE rehearsal, as part of one of the exercises, we had to write down our life goals for the year and our dance goals for the year. One of the things I wrote down and shared with the group was "To dance as an artist as well as a performer." Kaeshi asked me what that meant. I was nervous and it was sort of a personal thing so I kind of mumbled something about telling stories and moving people as opposed to just dancing for a party or entertainment.

That's not quite what I meant though.

There is a journey that I started as a dancer whereby dance was a release for me. A way to let off steam and express myself and my emotions wildly. Then it became a way for me to learn more about myself and humanity by taking myself and my emotions, concentrating them, distilling them, letting them manifest themselves through my body, and see what would happen and what I would learn. After learning about myself through dance, it then became a way for connecting to the Divine. You can call it what you want; God, Allah, Buddha, the universe's life force, whatever. But I used dance to learn how to connect to that energy that renews me when I have nothing left.

Throughout this journey, people watched me dance.

In the "express myself" stage I didn't really care too much. Fairly early on in the journey I worked hard to shed my fears, shame, self doubt, perceived incompetence as a dancer, and just let myself go. Not because I was confident or fearless but because I was at rock bottom and NEEDED to do this. It was this feeling of, "I have nothing left to lose." kind of desperation. I needed to release and if people wanted to watch, that was their problem.

In the "learn about myself and humanity" stage I started to pay attention to the fact that people were watching me dance. I would distill myself and emotions, push out some of my energy, and make little connections with people here and there when dancing. Whatever reactions they would have to my energy, and my own subsequent reactions to them, helped me on that journey of learning about myself and the world.

In the "learn how to connect with the divine" stage I went back into myself and ignored the people watching me dance; they had done their part for now. I took the person I had discovered as being "Me" and asked some questions. If I lost everything, even my ability to dance, what would be left of "Me" beyond the persona of "Dancer"? Dancing is my way of gathering energy to keep me going. Why? And if I needed to, could I find other ways of tapping into that energy? I found that I could. I am still a Dancer. It is who I am. But I am first and foremost, Me. And I know where my energy comes from.

Now I am reaching a point where I know myself, I know something of the world, I know my energy, and I have some skills and a voice through my dancing. I still need some physical refinement; to fine tune my knowledge, skills, and my body. But now I want to take myself, this whole ball of "Me", and put it out into the world. To connect with it and hopefully move it and change it. I want my dancing to touch people, move them, make them think, change them. I want my dancing to surprise them and skew their heads just a little so that it affects the other parts of their lives. Yes, I want to entertain and perform. But I also want to create Art.