Dancing Geek

I found a new brain squirrel today. And this one I found on my own. If I sound proud of that, it’s because I am; one of my previous brain squirrels is:

I can’t do this on my own

Having met this new brain squirrel on my own, it was a different experience. The same sense of emotional impact was there but without the instant emotional release.

I found it whilst I was practising questioning my thoughts and it turns out that I had to question the truth of what this brain squirrel was saying to me in order to find the release.

After the release

I’m noticing that once the release happens, the brain squirrel becomes a reminder, rather than a taunt. For example, when I notice the desire to run to someone else to tell me what to do, the situation may remind me of my brain squirrel “I cannot do this on my own” and this in turn helps me to release the anxiety.

Beforehand, this phrase would have just brought a sense of complete belief and thus despair at the ‘truth’ of the situation.

My newest reminder

So now I have a new phrase to trigger my thought patterns, but hopefully this brain squirrel is also now working for me. I would like you to meet him; he is called:

If people see me they will attack me.

This is a bit of a temporary name for him, because the semantics aren’t entirely clear, but for the moment you may think of him in the context of Avatar, where seeing someone doesn’t mean just having them in view but rather seeing a glimpse of who they really are.

His personal ad

This particular brain squirrel, having been questioned and now under new management, has written a Very Personal Ad:

I want to train so as to better show the real me, my heart & soul. I want to be a better dancer so that I can let more people see more of the real me, so that I can feel love.

This final gift from my brain squirrel is why this post is listed under Dancing, and not Personal mumblings. This is no mumble, and the clear intention that I have here is strong and all about dance.

I travelled down to Brighton in May to be part of the Bodies in Urban Spaces performance being created there for Brighton Festival (not to be confused with Fringe Festival, or any of the other festivals going on in Brighton at exactly the same time!)

Suffice to say it was brilliant fun and I got to meet 20+ new and awesome people.

There are some photos on the Telegraph website and more on Facebook, if you have me on there.

I managed to double up the awesome this Friday by travelling to Lincoln to see both my Dad, and Retina‘s latest piece, Antipode.  Having been lucky enough to work with Filip (company director) on a couple of different occasions in Derby it was great to see him in the Q&A afterwards as well – bonus!

The piece consists of four male dancers and a double bass player.  Whilst the guys are doing their thing on stage, the musician is playing, recording and mixing loops of his music, percussion and other clever tricks real time – an absolute treat for the audience (and probably the dancers too).

The dancing itself was mostly gorgeous to watch, and pretty full on for the whole hour.  Cue sweat patterns – all part of being a male dancer though, at least we don’t have to pretend that we don’t sweat.  There were the odd times when the unison wasn’t together, I caught a couple of moments where someone stopped to wait for the others to catch up and so on, but my Dad never saw any of that so maybe I’m being too picky.

The lifts were great fun, and even managed to perplex me as to how it was done on a couple – wonderful and frustrating at the same time.  The duets in general were excellent fun to watch and you could see the smiles on the dancers’ faces.  They even admitted afterwards that part of that was having to egg each other to keep going as energy levels started to flag.

Having 4 guys dance together was brilliant for me, as I got to see the differences between them and how, whilst I might not have the facility of one or the strength of another, they each had different limitations and natural abilities that made them unique and I’m no different.  I will admit to being horribly jealous at times, they’re all a few years younger than me, thus managing to make me feel old at 28, but mostly I was inspired and determined to find/create more opportunities to dance.

There’s only a couple of more dates down South to catch this, but it’s worth it – and if you don’t manage to see this one then check out Retina anyway.  They’ve been producing consistently great quality dance for a while now, and being based in the East Midlands it’s a real treat for us to have this based in our region, rather than down in London.