Day One...again

Aside from my single most recent blog - full of promises as of yet unkept and otherwise unmet - it has been one year since my last post. I feel a bit like I am confessing this: Forgive me followers, for I have sinned; it has been one year since my last post...

I am once again in Meadville, PA directing and teaching the annual Allegheny Summer Dance Intensive with Antaeus Dance. It is a delightfully cool evening and I am living in a place where there is neither light nor sound pollution. This year I have 28 students, many of them new to me. They are a lovely group and day one has left me exhausted - happily so.

I always get a bit nostalgic here at my Alma Mater; but the real joy of being here is being with the students. Time was when I really knew who these kids were. I was one of them after all. But that was 20 years ago now and walking into the studio today is like walking into a new country, or even onto a different planet.

What I truly relish is being in that moment of knowing what my intentions are but not knowing how they will take shape. At one point, I told the students that we are all professional improvisors. We do it everyday in our speech and meeting of one another and think nothing of it. It is the same with teaching - the improvising that is. At our best, students and teachers alike, we meet one another and participate in dialogue. We receive, consider, ask and respond equally. Today, I was aware of it - riding the wave and seeing myself riding the wave all at the same time - and in that millimoment there was true bliss. And then I named it, recognized it, tried to catch it and it was gone.

But I am still remembering that moment, when I veered away from the plan but stayed true to the intention.

There was laughter, in me and the students. Not in knowing or claiming to know or in holding on to what was happening, but simply in being in that moment.

Joan