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i tried, i tried.
Harder to find the words than i thought it would be
must everything be ambiguity?
enforced mystery?
but maybe that's because it's in images-- images that flash past the mind's eye like a moving picture of stills, snapshots. One remembered glance on a bus ride home, one captured angle of a certain tilt, one frozen moment of a choreo; maybe because it's dance, and the closest you can come to describing dance is something utterly inadequate like "cross-open-up-down". Dance is felt and danced, not-- if ever-- described. And yes, you can describe emotions, but when they're so closely and intricately bound up with dance that they become assimilated into each other, when you can't tell where feeling ends and dance begins--
maybe, just maybe,m that justifies mystry, ambiguity, a lack of clarity. Fuzzy logic.
so, ambiguity it is.
the first time we did the last song's dance-- the first time ahmad did the shooting bit, and fell-- john or yayi reached out to try and catch him. ahmad said "ai why you catch!" or something like that-- but ye gods, i can completely understand why they reached out to catch him. -i- reached out involuntarily when he started falling. the whole emotional build-up was... almost scary, almost breath-taking,
i can't let go
the words are hard to find.
this love is so dysfunctional
the storyline, the music, the choreography-- everything seemed to be about his life. his life, his loss, his isolation. silver gray blue white-- not the colours i'd first seen him in, but did it matter? they were the colours that i most remembered him in, in that one class he had taught on his birthday that i had been so grumpy about. the flash of the diamante belt buckle that carried his name; the steel in his eyes as he flashed that glance, irritated, at the intruders; the denim jeans, the cap, the black shirt.
that song-- that choregraphy-- it was, maybe, one of the most challenging songs for me for this performance. i had difficulty with all the other choreographies-- i mean, i always do-- but this was the one that i wanted-- needed-- to do well, if not perfectly. it was something that involved not just a determination to-- for want of a better term-- "do right" by the choreo, but also to... do justice... to a memory. to a remembrance.
i've hesitated, typing this, so many times. i use "a" instead of "my", add ellipses for thought, for unfathomability, for uncertainty. i cannot lay claim even to my memories, because it seems selfish, presumptuous-- but--
i knew it wasn't going to be easy.
it leaves me so emotional
we all dance for our own reasons. i thinkt he first time we really did that choreo -properly- was the day/week I visited SGH with J; i remember her saying that the song and its lyrics was so painful because for her it really described what she was going through. i couldn't bring myself to speak, because i didn't know how to speak-- but it was brought home so clearly to me that everyone has a motivation for dancing. maybe not so much motivation as-- a motive force, something that drives you to practise a hundred and one times (literally. at last count about a week before busking my play count for the song was 127); something that keeps you behind an hour after practice on weeknights and that keeps you up till 2am after a full day of practice/rehearsal, still trying to get your extension right...
i'm in way too deep and i can't let, can't let, can't let
maybe it's as simple as love-- love for what it represents, love for what it means to you. love for the meaning you give to dance-- for the honour it does to the memory of someone who inspired you, or someone who cared for you, or someone who stuck up for you, or someone who widened your horizons, or even the someone you found one day staring back from the reflection in the glass of as7 or a studio mirror. for the sweat, the tears, the bruises, the lack of sleep-- everything is worth it.
i digress. all through the rehearsals and the performances i wanted and wanted so badly to have everything i felt materialise in that one particular song. ahmad told us all repeatedly (i rmemeber once, during cleanup in cfa) that we had to dance from the heart; and this song-- this song-- was really the one that was closest to my heart because it felt like it so personified his life. the first time that emotion really dawned on me was-- ironically-- the one run that we did the worst for. it was friday i think-- the day before the first performance-- and the first time we had full lighting and everything. i scrambled out after crushcrushcrush with only the thought of not having wardrobe malfunctions and getting into my 2nd outfit as soon as possible. i pulled my shirt straight, i turned around--
and looked into another world altogether.
melodramatic? but that was how it really felt to me. the mist, the lights-- so starkly, unforgivingly, heartachingly white-- the way they came down in... bars, lines, on the floor, and then revolved and turned; the drapery of the backdrop cloths-- when i did the slow walk in it really felt like i was entering another world altogether. everyone around me felt like-- ghosts. lik i didn't even know them, or anyone, like all i could see was the blue and white and gray, and not people per se. then the music crescendoed-- and we ran to our positions.
i can't let go
every movement, every step after that just layered heartache upon heartache in this hollow right in my centre. i don't know how to describe it, but that was the first time i felt emotion-- truly felt something rather than, i don't know, the usual sense of panic and stress haha. writing at this point i can't remember if this run or saturday's matinee was the performance where, upon the last gunshot, as we sank to our knees, i really started crying a little. but it felt good, it was cathartic, and the sense of wonderment at the emotion was just inexplicably-- inexplicable. i have no words left for it.
of course, this run was also the one that we disappointed ahmad so much for. argh.
i hoped throughout the shows-- and expected-- that sunday's would be the climax, when i would really really feel the whole wave of emotion breaking over me as i danced that last piece. well-- it didn't. but i didn't feel as disappointed as i thought i might have, because it just means that there's still so much further for me to go. and i'm glad the road is long, because i don't ever want to lose this. ever.
suad-- and busking-- has taught me so, so, so much. i learnt not to make excuses-- who the hell cares if you're tired? your aching back, your strained muscles, your knees that (haha) have no more cartilage left-- who cares? you should never give a damn-- never, never, NEVER make excuses for yourself. pain is temporary, and dance-- dance is forever.
don't blame the choreographer for a difficult step, or for being harsh, or for being exacting. blame yourself for not being good enough. and then-- practise. the amount of practice you have to do to improve is mind-bloody-boggling-- as i was telling jinglin that day on bus 10, i really don't know how we got through the preparation for suad this year. haha. i think monday was the only day i usually didn't have dance prac of some sort or another (so that day went to teaching tuition). but it gives me an inkling of the amount of time i really need to practise to improve even the tiny little bit that i did.
and that, finally, is all i wanted to say (except for perhaps also remembering that both the items i was in drove our respective choreographers to tears. ARGH.). but i'm hoping that if ever i feel like giving up or that this is enough, or that i think i can't take anymore, i can look back on this and smile and read and remember and know there is greater strength than i can ever fathom in dance. dance is life, dance is love. :)
in loving memory