a blue-lined hardcover notebook, taller than it was wide, with slightly faded yellow pages. I liked how all the num- bers in the world were based on ten different characters - ten building blocks to count with infinitely. Other than the numbers, I didn’t learn much Cantonese from my dad. He never felt confident in his understanding of the language, having grown up in a society consumed with pressures to assimilate. English was the language he learned and American comic book superheroes were the men he idolized. But on Lunar New Year, he says, his mom would cook a feast. When I hear him share his stories of food from his culture, I feel something in him soften and light up. When my dad and I share treats from Chinatown or bake Ling Go for New Years together, I feel close to him. And I feel close to a part of myself that hasn’t always felt like it belongs to me. A part I feel like I don’t know much about. I am both Chinese and not Chinese. Both white and not white. Both and neither . Like so many people, I straddle multiple categories, looking for a balancing point in the middle of them. Finding home feels like a practice of trying to describe this space of specific ambiguity, of in-betweenness, of undefined-ness – and honoring, maybe even celebrating, the void from which we feel. I FEEL AT HOME IN MY BODY only to the extent that I feel myself searching for home. I am learning my self worth, locating myself within my lineage and wondering if in my body, my ancestors can meet. I am learning to welcome the wisdom of my body’s temporal pacing. Recently, I’ve been feeling ghostlike in my body. I have a wispy, foggy sense of myself. I do the tasks I need to do but I am rigid and held and clunky when I move. In a dance class taught by Ainsley Tharp I was offered the practice of speaking the words aloud “I am powerful,” while a partner whispered from the sidelines, “You are powerful.” In the one tiny and fleeting moment of speak- ing the words aloud, I did indeed feel a surge of power. But I let it go right after. I let myself go from it. My phys-
root in the earth, from which I, the tree, grow. I could very much have written a whole essay about home in relation to my mom, but I am not ready for that, yet. It feels import- ant to name the way in which grief has returned me to childhood and to home. I REPEAT TO MYSELF, My feet are standing on the floor My feet are standing on the floor My feet are standing on the floor . Which is to say, I am a part of this earth and the earth a part of me. I am real. I am taking up space in this room. I am in relationship with the world around me. THESE DAYS I SHARE TIME with a one-and-a-half-year-old girl (N) who is fascinated with the world around her. She is learning how things fit together, taking the caps on and off of markers, and on again, touch- ing the soft and rough sides of vel- cro, becoming elated with excite- ment when a big bumble bee flies in through the kitchen window. She lives on her own timeline, clear
with what she does and does not want. Together we roll around on the bed, hide in boxes, feed the stuffed animals bites of her oatmeal, and become entranced with the con- struction work happening next door. She hides in plain sight, covering her face with her eyes. She hides in the closet, and squeals with excitement when she slides the door back to reveal herself standing right in front of me. N helps me in tracking this deep commitment I have towards rules, obedience, predictability, and order. When N
no trouble asking for help. She is unafraid of needing. When I help her put on her shoes, I feel a sense of purpose. Yes, my body is in relation to hers, and yes, we are both offering one another a gift of and in our own making. N guides me into relationship with my own queerness – an embodiment of time that is not rigid, a deep con- nection with the needs of the body, and sweet laughter that erupts simply from looking at one another (for lon- ger than most adults do). With her, I slow down. I am brought into the present moment as she shows me how much there is to be discovered. This is the dance between her and I, finding a language of love and trust through a language of play. DANCE HAS FELT LIKE both something I am putting onto my body, and something I am birthing from my body. My dance education includes the white dance lineage of modern and post-modern dance. In college I was, for the most part, taught by white professors. I lived in a world of whiteness. I lived, as whiteness, a feeling I can only describe as a wash of white paint over an already painted image - a sort of masking of the self. It’s as if I gave all my energy toward holding up and sustaining the white half of myself in order to be successful, as if I could be
separated from myself. And in this loss, so too, was the loss of play. My perfectionism, the wanting to please, the feeling that my art could be good or bad all took me away from myself. I looked so intensely outward and worried so much about what I should be making. So of course, making from my heart was confusing. I craved a relation- ship of trust with dance and with my dancing body so we could all play together. Yet when the making becomes tense with linearity and endpoints, and tied up with self- worth and image, the messy scribble of a process has a hard time being free to wander. I hold the question of what happened in the transmis- sion of movement from the white bodies who taught me to my body. For a long time this question has felt very serious to me. I am waiting for the world of white dance lineage and the world of my body to arrive at a settled and peaceful coexistence. I’m realizing that this both isn’t the point, and isn’t going to happen, especially if I’m try- ing to make it happen. The two worlds must instead live in play with one another. The tension itself can be play- ful (which doesn’t make it less serious or rigorous or focused). I can welcome the embodiment of the question, allow it to move and morph with me and within me, and let go of trying to solve anything. The answer is in the day
throws her entire bowl of oatmeal onto the floor to see what will happen or when it takes us twenty min- utes to get out the door because she insists, at only 18 months, that she must be the one to put on her own lace-up sneakers, I can easily have my patience tested. My reaction of momentary frustration is telling me something very important about my attachment to things going a certain way. N is just a kid, and what
Dance has felt like both something I am putting onto my body, and something I am birthing from my body.
ical body stayed put in the room, but my mind and heart flew away. I fled fast from myself, and from this source of power inside of myself. A few months ago I lost my mom to a cancerous brain tumor that bloomed like a butterfly in her brain. I am only at the very beginning of reckoning with the hole in me where my attachment to her lay, like a deeply buried
joyousness to live a life where you can spontaneously throw oatmeal into the air to see how it will splat on the floor (not to neglect the importance of teaching N about responsibil- ity and gratitude). What strong will and a heart N has- what fierce independence she displays as she tries to put her tiny right foot into the left shoe. And when, after some period of time that makes sense to her body, she is done trying, N has
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y
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