Artists on Making Art  (other posts here, info/contributing here.)

Watering the Desert

There is much to be said about the process of creating and producing a dance work. I have been exploring what happens after the show is finished. I am interested in how artistic demands and personal quality of life often collide when pursuing artistic endeavors, and how it might be possible to envision a sustainable way to be an artist.

The actual performance of a project is the culmination of an extensive and exhaustive amount of work along many fronts. It is an exciting, charged experience and as I would imagine reaching the summit of an immense mountain on a clear day would feel like. It can be incredible and fulfilling. However, there is a particular phenomenon that occurs when the show is over. An accurate name might be the POOF! effect. After exorbitant amounts of work, the performances finally come and then POOF! , it all disappears. It is the most amazing and disturbing magic act ever. It is acutely unsettling to some inner compass of mine that has been pointing and guiding toward CREATE and DANCE and ART. Then POOF! and I am alone in the middle of a vast desert with the faint echoes of praise amidst shrieks of criticism, opinions and doubt that come zinging out of the sky like vultures dive-bombing down on my head, checking to see if I am still alive and terrorizing with their constant presence. After my last project, this barren and desolate landscape I had been exiled to finally sparked a revolt inside. This isn’t working anymore!

In discussing with a therapist why relationships end or go askew, she noted that, in her long experience, it was almost never for a lack of love. Love is not the problem. I feel that way with my relationship to art. This isn’t working. This isn’t enough. Somehow the relationship is going bad, and it is not for a lack of love. The relationship is simply out of balance. Creating work requires prioritizing the project, immersing myself in the world of the work, and incredible amounts of faith, persistence, finances, focus, will... putting my head down and pushing through doubt, fatigue, and monetary drain. It is a story I have heard from many artists, and the price gets higher for each new project I undertake. The dysfunction also lies in my relentless expectations of myself and my work crashing into the reality of limited time and resources. However, I choose to continue making work because it is, ultimately, an essential part of me.

Is it possible to form a sustainable and healthy relationship between myself as an artist and my overall quality of life? I need to believe that it is. I choreograph because I need to create and express, I believe in the importance of art, and I feel alive in dance. So I must believe that there is a way to define myself as an artist and continue to create in a way which does not come at such a huge personal price. I realized that I felt incredibly vulnerable out in that desert, and I needed to find a way to feel safe before I could really commit to creating again. I identified time, space, and support as my main needs, then amplified my perception of them: there is enough time, enough space, and enough support for me and all that I need and want to do in my life. Enough to fully recover from a project, pay off my credit card debt, heal from a back injury, connect with loved ones and look forward to the future instead of fearing it. This way of thinking has helped to depressurize my heart. I tried to suspend preconceived notions of myself as an artist to allow new ideas to emerge. I began examining which choices I am making that are actually impeding my well-being overall. I found that I wanted more in both my personal and artistic life than I was acknowledging, and needed to expand my vision to include all of my desires. In order to build a healthy and vibrant relationship with making art, I need to commit to a healthy and vibrant quality of life overall. It required softening and widening my gaze to survey a broader landscape, then slowly bringing it all back into clear and sharp focus.

Sustaining a career in the arts is not about surviving on less, it is about envisioning more. Actively choosing to step off of the hamster wheel of surviving and into the open field of thriving. The open field offers nourishment and is alive with potential. It offers enough time, space and support to provide the balance to be an artist for the rest of my life. Maybe more than anything this open field offers a sense of possibility and expansion that gives much needed hope. I have hope that I can begin to build an oasis in that doomed desert, so that if I become unmoored again, there will be some cool water to dip my feet into and the shade of a tree or two to block out those vultures. Eventually, I hope to be able to transform the desert into a luscious and thriving haven that I can be transported to after POOF!, one that feels safe to wander in for as long as I need until I am able to reset my compass to CREATE.