DANCE OF LIFE

“You are the music while the music lasts,” (T.S. Eliot).  A professional choreographer/dancer when my disability hit me, I did not appreciate this sentiment for many years.  It took some powerful disabled artists to allow me to appreciate that the art that was in my heart/soul/mind was not restricted by the restrictions of my body.

As a dancer since age 4, I danced in NYC for 12 years.  When my body gave way, slowly, surely, it felt as if my very being was eroded.  I did not know myself as a person if I could not dance. And my dance career was over.

There is no way to describe the interface between myself and dance.  It was not like being a lawyer—a job.  It was a way of being.  Just walking was a dance for me.  So not being able to walk . . .well, where was I?

I felt like I was not.  There wasn’t a me.  This was a pretty big hurdle.  It had nothing to do with the way people saw me (although the eventual wheelchair was of course an issue), but it had to do with my self image at its very core, and also my kinesthetic reality.

Finally, after many years, many other experiences and two newly developed careers (marketing executive, and, eventually ministry), before I became too disabled to do much more outside the home, I discovered a disabled painter at the local CILO who painted with the brush in her mouth.

This challenged me for quite a while.  She had originally painted with her hands, but she did not give up, and still saw her art in her mind.  Now my art had previously “come” from within my body, but it also came from my mind and soul, and those were still functioning.

Then, one day, I saw the performance of a “disabled/able bodied” dance company.  I was confused, hurt, admiring, and amazed.  My first reaction was, “get those able bodied people off that stage!  They are getting in the way of what the disabled dancers are trying to do.”

Then I observed the people in the audience.  One piece started with all performers on the floor, and it was not possible to tell who was disabled and who was not.  It became more clear throughout the dance, and many in the audience were in tears.

It was a very powerful awareness experience for that audience.  For me, it was more of an acceptance experience.  I could see that the lines I had divided between able bodied and disabled people were, TO A LARGE EXTENT for me at that time, my own lines.

THIS WAS AN INCREDIBLE INSIGHT.  I was able to extend it beyond dance into other areas of my life, and not divide the world so clearly between “them and us.”

Also, I was able to see that perhaps, in some way, I could still dance.  Just because my body was not the same, it was still my body. 

And now, a new, near miracle.  Some things come in strange ways!  I broke my shoulder last summer, and needed 16 weeks of physical therapy in a therapeutic pool.  I discovered that I could MOVE in the pool.

Now I have graduated to “free swim” and I can actually choreograph in the pool.  I have found some local dancers who are willing to give a try to using my ideas on land.  I have also started working with some choreography in the wheelchair, although this is more problematic for me.

The main thing though, is that the CILO artist and the disabled dance company taught me that my ‘art’ is not about what I can’t do, but what I can and do want to do.  I will never be the same again.  My art is still alive.  “You are the music while the music lasts!”