ok lucy. 'splain.

Alright. I can't stand it when I have something that needs to be blogged about but it's too big to written about quickly, and I don't have time to do anything longly (??!?!?....teehee).

Here's what happened last week while I was in Los Angeles that caused me to return home several days early, and before completing the run of shows.

It wasn't that there was another external event that caused me to go (even though there were some new event that did occur). What caused me to go was that I recognized a pattern within myself.

And this is a riot. I think.

Have you ever had one of those romantic relationships where the sex was sooooo mindblowingly fucking awesome, but the rest of the relationship was shit?? And you kept going back for the mindblowing sex even though when you weren't in the sack, you felt horrible?? And you kept thinking, "Man! This sex is soooo great that it just has to spill over into the rest of the relationship eventually!"....but of course, (as we all know) it never does???

Well, my relationship with this dance company (and let's be more specific here, with this director) was exactly like that kind of romantic relationship. The 6-minutes of being on stage performing?? Mindblowingly amazing. The post-performance "afterglow" and feedback from the audience?? Super juicy . The rest of the process and time spent??? Shit. My needs not being met or being outright ignored, or in some cases, even blatantly violated. And I kept going back to perform over and over again because the dancing itself was so good....and it just took me foreverrrrrr to figure out that I'd already "been there, done that."

You see, I've had my share of unhealthy romantic relationships. I had one that fits this description in my early 20's. As a bonus (either because the universe likes to toy with me or because I am a complete dufus), I had another relationship just like it in my early 30's, too. After the second go 'round, I finally figured out how to not do that again. But the toying universe?? Which seems to think that life is about repeating the same friggin' patterns over and over and over again in all of its various forms, probably until the day I DIE??? It has now decided to have me work through this pattern within my WORKING relationships.
Yay! Woohoo!
(not)

So there I was on Tuesday morning in Los Angeles seeing these connections, and it was finally becoming crystal clear to me why I was having so much trouble with this dance company and never going being able to work it out. And it was because it was never going to be a healthy relationship, no matter what I did.

Now, the good news, is having done this twice already in the romance forum, I:
a) knew that getting out would be ouch-y, but that I would indeed survive it.
b) knew that making a complete cut was the only way to do it (ie, no trying to just be "sexy-friends"....nuh uh, dont work).
c) knew that the other part of pattern, historically, is that once I get free and clear of the unhealthy hinderance, that what I have done is to create space for the next great healthy thing to come into my life, and wouldn't it be uber-great to have a huge wave of fantastic creative-ness entering my life.

That was all the good news.
The bad news, was that I had committed to finishing the second weekend of shows already , and I really really (did I say really?) not want to be out of professional integrity by leaving the company mid-run....even though staying meant violating my own personal integrity at that point. I mean, let's go back to using the sexual relationship as an analogy as an example. Once I finally become aware of my unhealthy behavior, staying around for one last fling is just outright sick.

But I felt like I had made a commitment, and I also felt like I really needed to consider the fact that what I needed was a break from the director of the company, but that leaving was going to impact the rest of the company and theater techs who would have to rework the show, and the driving arrangements getting home....yadda yadda yadda. I mean, there was going to be a whoooole lotta innocent bystanders.

Well, I talked to the director about how I was feeling Tuesday night. Laid it right out there on the table, pretty much just as I am laying out to you here. And he told me that if it felt that icky, I should feel free to go. If you've been reading along over the years, you'll know that this director is the KING of working entire shows as late as even the day of the performance, so I wasn't at all worried that he could pull it off. And once he said it was okay to go, well....I felt like I was no longer out of integrity. I'd been given permission to go.
So I went.

It felt poopy, as expected, but I knew from experience that it would pass. I have been concerned about whether or not my fellow dancers were negatively impacted, and am not sure what I'm going to do once I start getting reports. But other than the concern for dancemates, I haven't had a single regret, and I have been feeling a whole lot better.


Coming home early meant that I was able to attend a workshop that I was going to have to miss...which was an added bonus. My dance teacher, Jamie Miller, had studied Ideokenisis/Creative Body Alignment with Andre Bernard. When he passed away a few years ago, his student Carol Loud (who was also a former student of Jamie's), would come to California to teach the work once a year. I have missed it the last several years because, you guessed it, commitments with this same modern dance company. This year, I got to go to the workshop. And because my own teaching includes so many of the techniques found in the creative body alignment work, going this workshop is basically like taking continuing education classes or being recertified or something. So it was really great to get to attend finally.

I'm now feeling the push to start working on my own stuff, too....which is great. I'm going to start by revisiting the solo I created last year, because I think that it might just be a spring-board for a trilogy of pieces in a similar vein.

Exciting ;-)

Even if it took me forever and a day to figure it out.
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Hope you'll please forgive the typos and rambling thoughts....I started this post this morning, and am trying to edit it now in the late night, after a long day of hanging out with friends and doing some sight seeing in the Napa Valley. I'm just pooped. G'night gang ;-)