Core training and dance

Wow

Wow

Wow



Today was a very physically active day...

We started the morning with fitness work and muscle conditioning, then worked on a lyrical routine. Doing the lyrical dance was fantastic for me. Lyrical, as opposed to other kinds of dance such as Jazz or Ballet, does not rely so much on counting and specific moves. It's more about the body moving through space and about the body embodying the emotion and moving with that. For me, it was very liberating. I don't have a lot of dance technique, so consequently, when I am trying to attempt the same moves as Suzie Q. Dancer next to me, I just look like crap. Not because I am crap, but just because I don't have the technique. Either way, the result is more cringing at myself in the mirror (and you may remember that there is already much cringing to begin with).

But with lyrical dance, I'm able to feel the moves more, and get inside my body as I'm moving. Boy does it make size irrelevant really quickly.

After a much more full day of classes, performance workshops, etc., we had a three hour class in core training at the end of the day (6PM to 9PM!!!). I came into the room already exhausted and not really wanting to be there.

This class was not what I expected. This isn't like Pilates core training or the like. It was much more basic than that. It's a technique that uses contact improvisation and mixes it with acting principles such as actions, communication, listening, etc. All I know is that I experienced my body in a way that I had never experienced it before....I was leaning on people, giving weight, being lifted (!!!!), and improvising physically. This technique is a lot about basic communication with the body and nothing else. Breathing as you lean on someone and they lean on you, pulling, pushing, lifting, and all sorts of craziness. I felt 40 pounds lighter when I was in the middle of this play.

But the amazing part wasn't about how I felt in my body. It was about allowing my full physical self to be present with a partner. It was intense. Touching, moving, asking, giving permission, playing, giving, taking....all laid out there in the physical body.

It was like looking at human relationships and boiling them down to their most basic non-verbal elements and living inside them.


It made me realize how much of myself I tend to hold back in any relationships with people. Especially with my weight issues, it makes me not want to burden others. This was mirrored in the work we did tonight. At one point, when I was supposed to give my weight to someone else, I was holding back because I didn't want to be too heavy for them. But that act of holding back actually made it harder for my partner to shift his weight and to move and communicate with me. He needed me to be fully there in order for us to dance together.

Boy ain't it funny how art mirrors life???

More thoughts tonight: Personal myths

Ok, I seem to be full of thoughts tonight.

Of course my mind keeps wandering back to the Boy from Oz...despite his extended holiday (meaning I haven't seen him for a week and he's not coming back for another two weeks), I find myself more and more smitten with this boy.

I figure him being away for three weeks allows me sometime to reflect on the personal myths I hold about myself and how I might undo these myths.

The thing is, I've just begun to realize how much these myths have been ruling my life without my really knowing. And these myths certainly can hold a lot of power. For instance, these myths have prevented me from dating or having a real relationship for pretty much all of my life.

(yes, I've never had a romantic relationship or any real experience in romance at all)

So I'm going to risk being overly self-indulgent (I guess this blog is a bit of that anyways) and just take a moment to list the myths that I have been holding as truths in my life. These are all myths that still hold a certain amount of power for me, but I hope that by naming them, perhaps I can start to wrench myself from their control.

So here goes:

PERSONAL MYTHS

• My weight makes me not attractive enough to date or be in a relationship
• Being overweight means that there is no way I could possibly be pretty
  
• I would never be considered sexy by another guy because of the shape of my body
• Being a nice or interesting person is not enough if I am overweight
• When other people see me, it is my weight that they see first
• Being overweight diminishes my value as a person
• A potential partner would be much better off with someone who is more fit than I
• I clearly am living my life wrong if I am shaped like this

Alright, I named them. Though I suspect that there could be more lurking deeper beneath the surface.

These are the things that stand in my way at the moment. These are the things that have prevented me so many times from taking an opportunity to find love or affection. These are what I'm grappling with right now as I find myself in my current situation of REALLY liking someone and REALLY wanting to pursue something with him.

Geez...now I wonder if I'm ready or not.....

Some thoughts on performativity and body image

One of the concepts we've been studying in this theater course is the idea of performativity. Performativity was a theory applied by Judith Butler in gender development. In it's most basic form, it states that we learn to act out our gender roles based upon what input tells us. So that we're not actually the gender that we are...we're more "doing" the gender that we are.

A more practical example showed itself to me here in London: Black pointy-toed heeled boots. They're everywhere...so many women wear them it's crazy. And when my friend from New Mexico who has more hippie style than anything else started wearing them, it became clear. The constant signal is that to be a woman in London, it calls for the black pointy-toed heeled boots. So she was performative with that aspect of "doing" a woman in London.

So I was wondering, what performative aspects do we deal with in body image? What roles am I "doing" as a larger sized woman? Here are some performative qualities I think I may be reflecting from the input of society:

• Relying more on my personality than my looks
• Automatically discounting myself as a sexual creature
• Deflecting attention from myself as far as appearance is concerned
• Choosing clothes that hide the shape of my body or cover parts of my body that I don't want seen
• Not being a dancer

This is just off of the top of my head.

I'm still really trying to wrap my head around this whole concept of performativity. But I do think there are some truths to how we fill perceived roles rather than exists just as ourselves.

Just some food for thought....

Ballet class (or being the biggest girl in the room- again)

This morning, I took a ballet class given by a friend of mine on my current course. Now I love dancing, but dance classes in general have been my biggest struggle with this course over all. I did train in dance when I was younger, but then I got "too heavy" to really look at any advancement at the ballet school I was at. And if I don't get the feeling of moving up or onwards with anything I do, I tend to lose interest. So I stopped dancing.

In this course, I am the heaviest person. I see this and am reminded of this every day.

The toughest part of dance classes for me now is looking at myself in the mirror. When I see how much bigger I am than everyone else in the row, it causes a little inner cringe every time.

But something strange happened to me in this class. When the class started, I saw my big self in the mirror and did my inner cringe, bit my lip, and moved on.

But somehow between the beginning and end of the class, I shrank. I don't really know how to describe it other than that. I just didn't look as big to myself by the end of the class.

It's so strange how changeable the experiences of our bodies can be. We go through more feelings of sizes than actual sizes. Those days we feel big, those days we feel thinner.

I want to find that thing that shrank me during that ballet class and keep it all the time.

DATING!!!!

Dating is always interesting. I've been making a point of just going out on dates whenever the opportunity presents itself in this city. I don't really know a lot of people, so of course I turn to online dating.

Now there's always this nagging voice in the back of my head that questions whether or not I even have the right to date if I am not thin and beautiful.

(I should note here that for some reason, I have been equating the two. Obviously this isn't always the case, yet this still seems to be the default setting on my brain. All one has to do is look at the converse reasoning- if thin=beautiful, therefore fat=ugly)

Anyways, I have been going on dates, and met some really nice guys, but none who thrill me. I haven't gotten that flitter-flutter feeling you get when you meet someone you really like.

Well, at least not until I met the boy from Oz.

GAH! I actually really really like him. Everytime I think of this guy, I get a stupid grin on my face. We've gone on three dates, and have only gotten to the point of hugging. I would love to make a move, yet I feel that because I am not thin, I don't have the right to do so.

Basically, I have to assess first if he's alright with my size and that sucks. Now I remember why I haven't been bothering too much with dating these last five or six years.

Anyways, the whole question is tabled until he gets back from his extended holiday.

That gives me some time to figure out how much of an obstacle my body image has really set up between me and finding love.....

Let's try this again

Well, changing countries and e-mails and all seemed to lock away this blog for a bit. But now here's the fancy new e-blogger and it's time to bring this back for soooo many reasons which you will hear about in subsequent posts.

It's time to go more anonymous now too. I need to delve into stuff that I'm not sure I want everyone in my life knowing about. I'm not worried about those of you who already know who I am, and if I've referred you to this blog, then you can bet that I trust you.