screaming wild

I just watched a rehearsal of the company that I do some administration for, Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie. They were rehearsing a 26 year old Kudelka piece, In Paradisum.

It's aesthetically beautiful, intricate, difficult and completely out of my technical scope as a dancer, so quite exciting to watch. About halfway through I started to wonder what it was about, and I made my best guess - loss, which turned out to be correct - but I also found myself wondering how effective a medium western concert dance has become to communicate ideas. Ultimately it is dated - In Paradisum is pretty much historical at this point (ha!) but still has a lot of relevance and is still interesting and engaging to watch. I mean, it's Kudelka - it's like kind of a big deal or whatever - plus the dancers are phenomenal so at least on an athletic level it is fascinating.

However a few things occurred to me while watching it:

1. This kind of work is dying, and dying quickly. I haven't been to Europe though, so maybe it's already dead.
2. With the death of this kind of work, "traditional" western concert dance careers are going to die also.
3. While I like executing that kind of work, I like performing it more than I like watching it and that makes me really think about where my career should be going.

Erin said to me the other day "You won't have a traditional dance career." While - like I just said - the amount of people who will have that is getting smaller and smaller, I think she was definitely right when it comes to me. I don't know what kind of dance career i will have; I am starting to feel like it would be great to have A dance career, considering how little dance work I have, but whatever it is it will not be easy or straightforward. That is not what kind of dancer I am and I am learning it is not what kind of person I am. I don't do things the easy or straightforward way, but I still do them.

These are all things that are interesting for me to think about, and making me really excited about school in the fall.