Rehearsing for Soil at the Botanic Gardens.
This weekend I performed at my favorite place to dance in Washington, DC, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I was thrilled when my dear friend and director of the Liberated Muse Arts Group, Khadijah Ali-Coleman invited me to be a part of her company’s presentation at the Page-to-Stage Festival. Liberated Muse presented a reading of Color in a Sphere of Monochrome, a series of poems and monologues adapted from essays written by different women exploring how to preserve their capacity to show up in the world as their full colorful selves, even as there’s so much pressure to just conform, blend in, and disappear.
I danced to a piece called Soil by mother, writer, and gardener Tichaona Chinyelu. This was my first time performing dance for an audience as a mother. Since giving birth 6 years ago, I’ve facilitated a number of workshops and presented interactive movement shares at conferences, but I hadn’t taken to the stage in pure performance mode in a very long time. I spent all summer preparing for my part, which was only a few minutes. But I was the only dancer, and everyone else in the cast was speaking and acting.
I sat with the piece for a long time, just feeling for the mood. I wanted to feel for the story underneath the words. I didn’t want to choreograph literally to the text. I wanted to feel the writer’s story, and then extract movement phrases from the embodied emotions coming up for me from my interpretation of her story. To do this, I played around with lots of different music when I was rehearsing. I danced to house music, jazz, afrobeat, African drums, sonic soundscapes, gospel, and nature sounds. I didn’t feel I could only rehearse to the recording of the poem and its sound score. In fact, I felt I had to intentionally open up the field of possibility for the movement, by situating the story in a variety of moods.
Sometimes I took myself—and the munchkins of course—outside to experiment with movements for the piece in the sun, or in the breeze, or in the grass, or near a body of water (read: next to the fountain at the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden because getting to the beach wasn’t always doable). And without words, and without music, I would just move inside of nature. Since the piece was connected to this theme of growth and all the writer is able to do with her soil, I thought immersing myself in the elements of nature was also a critical part of the choreography.
As it got closer to performance time, I started to try out all the movement sequences I’d been developing to the actual recording of the poem. It was like playing around with puzzle pieces, but the overall picture could always change. Nothing had to be permanently anywhere. Sometimes during a run a particular movement would feel really good and seem to mesh with a line of the poem. But then the next day the resonance might have dissipated, and I would allow that to just be. I didn’t feel pressure to lock the choreography down. Just like the soil, my movement had to be responsive to the realities of the moment. Every time I dance, I’m bringing my full, mothering self to the process. Everyday I am a different dancer, and my movements reflect the ever-shifting nature of what it means to be always mothering and always creating.
In the last weeks leading up to performance time, I’d identified a core sequence of movements that I felt most strongly connected to the emotions and imagery of the poem. With each practice, I felt more and more in tune with the narrative and felt my movements growing more seamless and fluid. I didn’t piece them together in the exact same way each time, but I did find recurring segments and markers that anchored the flow of the piece, and still allowed me the freedom to be present, authentic, and responsive to the moment.
One of the best parts of this process of allowance and deep awareness as a mover was the continuous discovery of more layers to the poem and to the dance. The closer it got to the performance date, the more specific my embodied emotional narrative became. I felt that the undercurrent of the writer’s story was one of joy, a deeply sensual and abundant joy that fed her soul—and her soil—from the inside out. It was here that I rooted my own movement expression when showtime came.
All the movements came together beautifully at the performance, a magical puzzle finally realized after months of processing, development, and experimentation. I felt my emotional narrative really translated through the movement, and that the audience could feel the joy exuding from the poem, my body, and the collaborative union between Tichoana, the writer, and me, the dancer—even though we’ve never met or even spoken to each other. All we’ve shared together is our art, mother to mother. And our sharing was enough to birth a performance piece that is truly amazing and lovely.
I love that my life as a mothering artist keeps me in close communion with other mothering artists, and that I’m constantly exploring ways to engage in intimate creative exchanges across time, space, distance, language, cultural backgrounds, artistic disciplines, and mothering paths. Each of us are abundant in our own creative powers, and when we find mutually satisfying points of intersection, merging, and expansion, our powers grow exponentially.
This is why I’m so passionate about cultivating spaces for mothering artists to discover the infinite possibilities within our creative labors, both individually and collectively. Many of us have been trying to find our way inside the harsh corridors of the world’s frequently anti-mothering spaces, because we’ve been told that real art and real artists look and function a certain way—a way that is most often not connected to children, fertility, or motherhood. But here we all are, creating anyway, thriving anyway, finding joy in our art anyway. There is a whole universe for us to explore, just within our own vibrant selves as mothering artists.
My whole performance journey this go around was facilitated through the loving actions of one mother to another. I am reminded that I don’t have to look outside of myself to experience the bliss and delight of my process as a performer. There is room for me as I am. There are opportunities for me, and my reality as a mother with plenty little folks to care for, to be on someone’s stage right now. It matters greatly how we feel and how we are treated throughout the process of performing. It matters whether or not our mothering selves have been honored and celebrated in the intensive work of producing our art.
The actual performance was less than 4 minutes, but the three months I spent preparing for it enriched my life and my labors as a mothering artist. And my munchkins weren’t there to see Mommy perform (the logistics of getting everyone there for such an early call time were beyond what I could manage for the day), but they were with me for nearly every rehearsal, including my dress rehearsal at our home studio the night before when they all oohed and ahhhed over my dress that I was wearing for the show.
I am grateful for all the sweet moments along the way that led to Saturday’s performance. Through every part of the process, I have become so much more of my mothering artist self. Just like a seed planted in well-nourished soil can grow freely into its fullest potential, so too does a mother who is loved on and treated kindly as she and her creativity are constantly evolving.
Words by Tichaona Chinyelu
Narration and vocalization by Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman
Music composed by Ben Dawson, Jr.
Produced by Chez Soleil Music Group