I'm not sure how much of this is going to make sense as it's 3:00am, but sometimes that's when the clearest thoughts come through. (Apologizing in advance for the book!)
“All good work
requires self-revelation.” – Sidney Lumet
For a while now, I’ve been wracking my brain over how to get
this solo done. Free-writing, dance
improvs, different tools you learned in dance comp – but I've been coming up
empty. Today, while I was scrolling
through pictures for my summer workshop brochure I came across a picture from one
of coEXIST’s pieces “Forgive Me,” and all of a sudden I remembered something
that our director and choreographer, Kathleen, had said when we were learning
this dance. She was re-staging a
personal story on different dancers but it wasn’t going to be completely the
same because “she is a different person today than she was back then.”
All of a sudden I knew what to do.
This solo is one that I had always wanted to add on to my
senior piece in college. My piece “Out
of the Silence” was about my life up until that point. At the heart of the dance is the subdued voice
that’s crying to be heard. The music is
from the “Memoirs of a Geisha” soundtrack, so it naturally had a lot of Asian
themes to it. For the most part, I made
the piece about the opposing forces in my mind and in my life – the ones that
cry out to be heard and the ones that are perfectly content in this “delicate,
soft-spoken, respect your elders, mind over heart” value of the Asian culture. 6 girls begin movement in a circle and in
silence until Yo-Yo Ma’s beautiful cello comes in – music he described as the
voice of the movie’s main character. At
the time, I was a girl who felt the immense, burdening pressure from her family
to be perfect. I was a girl with concealed
frustrations that weren’t supposed to be heard, but I was also a girl who was
in love and thought that at least that part of her future was bright. It was clear.
Her strength came from love.
Six years later the stakes changed. Pain came.
Life changed. I changed – for the
better. I am no longer that girl who
knew exactly what her dreams were.
Today, I know where my life is. I
know my situation and I still fight this constant battle of expectations from
not only my family but of the world. The future remains unclear and in a way I can’t
really explain, I feel like I need to prove something to the world. I’m still searching, still wandering, still
looking for my true self… and that’s okay.
Perhaps that is why I’m having so much trouble getting the
movement out of me for this solo. I
chose 6 of my advanced girls at the studio I teach and am attempting to
re-stage “Out of the Silence,” adding my solo at the end of it and also
inserting myself into the group part. “Out
of the Silence” is about cultural identity, speaking up for myself and for my
passion in life. While I still struggle
with those same themes, it’s linked to something else. The girl 6 yrs ago thought she had an
identity and destiny linked to another’s but the woman I have become today is
linked to so much more. I stand alone
and am doing my own thing for ME. This
solo, more than ever is about the Me I am today and the Me I will become
tomorrow and every day after that. The
group part of the piece is part of a past story and the solo is about the
present and the future – breaking and unbinding from the things holding me back
NOW, letting my voice be heard, and standing up for what is me.
Kathleen’s words that day had always resonated with me so I
went back and dug through my past to where the piece really came from and how
it relates to “now.” In 2001 there was
an inspirational book called “Yell-Oh Girls” that was published and it was
eye-opening for my middle school self.
In this book, “Asian American girls, speak up and speak out. They speak for themselves, to each other, and
to the world…new voices are heard and new stories become part of our greater
American story.” I looked back at all
the passages and sentences I underlined that helped me with “Out of the Silence.”
I remember reading one in particular to my cast in college before they performed it for the
first time on stage back then, and as I read it again now, I think of coEXISTdance.
“May we look inward
to find the truth…May we give words to that which is not yet spoken. My strength, is your strength, is ours.”
When I think about CoEXISTdance, the word community comes to
mind - how we give, how we support, how we stand for a cause. Not only are we about giving towards the
community, we have also built one of our own within the 8 of us. We dance, we laugh, we share, we create, we
support, and through it all we draw strength from each other – my strength,
their strength, our strength. Because of
this, the self-revelation has come and the movements and feelings are finally
flowing and I am thankful. =)
*Lauren Sion
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