“Art, after all, is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal.”
— Rosamund Stone & Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility
How did I get here? It’s 8:20am on a Saturday, I have a towel wrapped around my wet hair, and I’m at my light wooden desk, organizing my thoughts before I make my first pitch to bring creative movement to my community.
These past few weeks I’ve spent every free moment preparing for this. How did I decide to dedicate my time and energy to facilitate spaces for creative movement?
I was always creative as a child, though I didn’t feel comfortable calling myself an artist until I got to college and met other creatives. I was sitting in my brick red living room, on one of our musty couches that was passed down from student to student, when I told my theater friend that I wasn’t sure if I was an artist. What they told me was so simple: “Being an artist simply means that you decide to move through the lens of art. If you say you’re an artist, you’re an artist.”
That conversation opened my eyes to accept the truth that I came into this world to create. I was a child with certain gifts in music, proclivities to scissors and paper, and affinities for paint and brush. The thing is, I’m not unique in this. If you spend time with any elementary schooler, you will see that humans love making things. There’s a joy in turning nothing into something and giggling at the experiments we create out of the infinite possibilities before us.
Yet we have learned to turn away from art because it doesn’t pay the bills, and to judge and criticize anything that comes out of us, because how could something we create possibly be beautiful enough to call “art”?
But creative movement and art is not about perfection or presenting something to the world. It’s about sharing a space that lets us tap into our inner child – that curiosity and wonder that we so easily nurture in our children, but so easily forget to water within ourselves.
It’s not about ego, or what others think of us. It’s not about being cool or doing it well. It’s about using movement as a tool to get unstuck, to laugh and play, and to make new connections between the ideas in our brains and the people in our lives.
I touched on the “Creative” part, so let me close with the “Movement” part. I was a shy kid growing up, and I never felt comfortable existing in front of others, let alone dancing and performing in front of them. I am not alone in this. Most people are not comfortable dancing and creatively moving in front of others. Go to any wedding or party, and you’ll see how many people need “liquid courage” to be okay with being seen wiggling their bodies.
I want you to know that this is okay. I’m not going to make you dance if you don’t want to, though I will invite you to try some of the activities I carefully crafted for us. Trust me when I say I have worked with all sorts of people, of various ages, sizes, and backgrounds. I’d like to say I have a knack for making things accessible and interesting for people. So let’s try something new!
Let’s rearrange ourselves in fun ways, and as a consequence, create surprising juxtapositions in our minds. Let’s shake things up and create emotional openings for us to be fully here with each other. Let’s take off and rise to new possibilities!