Well, as these things tend to go for me, I planned to do way more than I’m able to actualize. I had wanted to edit short videos every day to go with these blogs during our Baryshnikov Arts Center residency. But with everything else going on while we’re here, I’ll be lucky to just get out two or three videos in our whole 2.5 weeks at the center.

But I still intend to write at least a little each day.

We had an inspiring first day of orientation to the space, regrouping as an ensemble and beginning to experiment.  I was jet-lagged, overwhelmed and in a mind-haze for the first couple of hours. And as usual when I’m feeling blue, I can’t imagine a time when it could ever end. So I was trying to come to terms with the fact that I would be slightly depressed for our whole residency, when we got into dancing and extended group improvisations.

Immediately as I made contact with my moving body, and felt myself arrive physically and psychically through colliding with this wild group of artists, I felt better. And not only better, but slightly ecstatic.

I’m reminded for the millionth time it seems, what a good friend dance is. In little ways and in huge life-changing ways, dance has been what gets me through stuck places, dark corners and times of despair. I always seem to forget that it has this power, but somehow-call it grace or fate or just plain luck-I find myself dancing again, and this dancing saves me.

It doesn’t make anything go away. Rather it embraces whatever is present in my experience, and transforms it into fertilizer for something large and powerful to blossom.