I want to be Real...

photo credit: Debra Trean

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about what it is that I want to do with my life. This is chiefly because my current position is about to end at the end of June and I am trying to work out where it is that I'm going to work next. The issue is, whenever you're making decisions about what it is you want to do, I think especially at this time in one's life, you're also making decisions about who you are and who you want to be. You're not just taking a job (ideally), you're advancing towards some ambiguous thing called a career.

Well, I think what I've realized about who I am and where I want to go in my career is that, more than anything else in the world, I love dancing. I want to be around dance for my entire life. I think it is far too late to consider a career in a professional dance company, but I want to be around dance and dancers and in the dance world, basically forever. I don't know what I want to do in the world, largely because I don't even know all the kinds of things that I could be doing, but that is where I want to be.

The big issue with this is that I feel unqualified. I have been dancing my entire life, but I've only taken a few actual dance classes. At this point in my life I dance at least three times a week, sometimes four if I am assistant teaching a tango class. But it never seems like enough to make up for a lack of on paper qualifications or feedback from knowledgeable peers. Which leaves me constantly wondering: Am I a Real Dancer?

Now don't, for heaven's sake try to pin me down on what exactly a Real Dancer is. I'm sure I have no idea. The closest I could come to describing what I encompass in the term is to say that if I was esteemed and treated as a dancer by other, accomplished dancers, I think I could consider myself a Real Dancer. The trouble is, I don't really know any accomplished dancers. Although the exact definition of "accomplished dancer" is also a little fuzzy. I mean, do I have to get props from Martha Graham before this would be a done deal? Would even that kind of validation be enough?

The root trouble is, I think what I really need is not so much affirmation from Martha Graham so much as some affirmation from myself. But I have always struggled to be internally validated about anything. Even my writing, in which I have earned a freakin' Bachelor's degreee, by the by, but I just don't seem to have enough...I don't know, moxy is a fuzzy enough term, to consider myself a Real Writer either. I don't know where the obsession comes from, to find some mystic guru to descend and tell me which side of the arbitrarily drawn line I fall on, but I guess it all has to do with identity again. What I do is a very large part of who I am. And I am a person who has many interests, but few passions. If I can't achieve some level of proficiency in those passions, why bother with the pursuit?

But that's it--the pursuit! If I pursue writing, if I pursue dancing, doesn't that defacto make me a writer and a dancer? I mean, if a person dances three times a week, I don't think it would make very much sense to say that they're not a dancer, right? I don't know about the warm and fuzzy shelf life of this little epiphany, but for a moment it comforts me a great deal to know that I can be a Real Pursuer. Whether that makes me a writer and a dancer, or a Writer and a Dancer, I don't know, but hopefully it will at least afford me some real peace of mind.

S.

P.S.--But, as an aside, if anyone offered me Martha Graham's phone number, I wouldn't turn it down...