Some junk about being calm

I’ve returned to Warsaw, Poland for my fourth time in less than two years…and it’s starting to feel quite comfortable and familiar.  I am still not learning street names, but am certainly gaining sufficient knowledge of the city to get myself around and begin discovering new places without a fear of getting too lost.

This is my third proper winter.  The last two were spent in Russia, and so this winter in Poland is far less severe, although one notable similarity should be mentioned: the consequences of not learning how to walk on ice plague me here, as well.

I decided last week, after spending two weeks almost entirely indoors, to spend between thirty and sixty minutes outside each day walking around, headed in no particular direction and without headphones to listen to or books/magazines to read.  It wasn’t aimed at finding a coffee shop to sit in and continue my practice of reclusivity, but at opening up my senses to Warsaw and its people…to getting just a bit lost or seeing a new park, monument, etc.  On the first of these walks, last Monday, I was reflecting on my inability to walk safely on ice (onlookers might have drawn comparisons to Bambi) when a jogger ran, on the ice-slicked pavement, right past me.

I thought – well naturally, of course…I am behaving like a damned toddler while this cool guy trots on, right down the road, probably all the way home, without wobbling or sliding at all.  No tumble into the snow bank for him!

My envy and bitterness quickly subsided and I was left with some sort of clichéd but relevant metaphor about running and walking and being appropriate.  In this situation, for this jogger, running was possible and required and for me at that moment, walking (scooting, really) was possible and required…which is to say that at different times in different situations and for different people, different things are possible and required.

In the continued throws of starting the new company, I’m finding myself wanting to sprint off to the lands of 40 week contracts, health insurance, our own studio(s) and theater, grants from the NEA, and features on 60 Minutes or 20/20 about the Californian who braved post-Soviet Russia, found the meaning of life, and returned to SF to share his insights, gifts, and aesthetics.  The very fact that I would think about a dance company (which should be primarily aimed at making art, not headlines) as a vehicle for these things…or that I would want to run in these directions…is an indicator that now is the perfect time to be walking, with my eyes open and my headphones off.  For some time I will be stuck on a seemingly-eternal sheet of ice-paved pavement, with neither a clear destination in mind nor a clear means of getting there, and that’s okay.

Now is not my time to run, but to take long walks instead.  To take deliberate walks, maybe, but to keep at least one foot on the ground at all times.

This might seem like yet another ‘he’s only seeing that NOW!?’ realization, but it’s an important one that I’m making nonetheless.  Getting more…be it money or PR or butts in the seats IS good and necessary and certainly helps with keeping the budgets balanced.  But it doesn’t give the work integrity, depth, or meaning.  And, in fact, I think that rushing after these big flashing neon indicators of ‘success’ might deter us from our tasks as artists altogether.  Some of the “best” companies make the least meaningful work.

It’s not to say that artists should be poor or not in close proximity to Las Vegas…not at all…only that regardless of how many grants we’re getting, and how many friends we have on facebook, my company is still a new, young, fledgling company just as I am still a new, young, fledgling choreographer.  A big budget doesn’t give one experience…and I’m thinking that taking some time to slow the f down might be just what the craft is calling for, from me, now.  Playing with my sits bones and talking with my dancers about theirs…that’s where my work-of-late begins.