Once upon a time, a dance of celebration at the Breakfast Shed Waterfront, Port of Spain, Trinidad. I came to Trinidad after a series of fertility traumas, and the people, the land, the water, and the sun restored me. Photo by Renaldo de Silva.

My oldest son keeps asking me, “Mommy, who told you to dance?” My second son has asked me several times in the last few weeks, “Is dance your work?” I find their questions simple and deep, complicated and clear. I love how they see and experience my movement as an everyday part of their lives. I love that in our family, dance is not something reserved for special occasions or needing to ever have a set meaning. My dance has numerous applications on any given day, and my children know they are welcome to participate in the movements whenever they want.

I remember being in my 20s and being in between one heartbreaking relationship mess and another. I remember wanting to slip further into sadness over whatever violation and anger I felt towards someone who I was still struggling to see did not, could not, truly love me. You know how this goes. It took several more awakenings (read: years!) to really get that it wasn’t a good situation for me. And even more than just having to slowly, reluctantly, painfully come to that understanding, I was being led into a deeper clarity about how unhealthy relationships affected my dance practice. The final reckoning was in having to choose what my life was going to be like moving forward. Was I going to wallow and stew in despair, or was I going to dance?

One night during this time I had a vivid dream. I was lying in a hospital bed. And you know how in dreams you just know some things? So I knew, I could feel with full certainty, that I was on my death bed. I was sick with some serious illness, and I wasn’t an old woman. I was my young self, and I was terrified of dying. 

At some point a large and luminous African elder man comes into my hospital room. But I can tell he’s from the spiritual plane. It’s as if he’s floating and not walking. It’s as if only I can see and talk to him, and he’s here to tell me something. He is drumming a small drum under his arm. He’s dressed in fantastical robes that spin and fly up and around as he  spins and dips and moves to his own rhythm. He doesn’t say anything to me, but as he dances, I feel this tug on my heart, this pull on my limbs, my spine, my feet. As he dances in the air above and around my hospital bed, I am getting stronger. Where I had been feeling so weak and like I was withering away, I am feeling more and more restored. 

I see his movements are an invitation to me. He’s not telling me how to dance, rather he’s sharing with me that if I get up and dance I won’t die. His vibrant arcs and twirls are a kinetic code of survival. This is how you live, he’s communicating. This is how you end the suffering of your broken spirit. He’s telling me that if I surrender my life to the movements that I am called to offer to the world, if I give generously of my body and offer my dance for the betterment of humanity, then I will not only be healed from this illness, but I will be eternally well. 

At some point I am strong enough to join him in the dance. Now we are both flying it seems, moving graciously and abundantly through the air. I am not feeling like I am dying, and there’s a fountain of joy and gratitude nourishing me, sustaining me and keeping me afloat. I am not afraid of falling, and I’m not afraid of this magical dancing man leaving me. I see that I have the ultimate power to save myself. As long as I keep dancing, I can survive the harsh realities of the world. The movements, my movements, will buoy me through the storms. The dance will keep me soft, open, and hopeful through the inevitable, soul-shattering heartaches that happen from time to time as a part of growing and navigating our existence as human beings. 

When I awake I am breathing intensely. I can’t tell if it’s tears or sweat, but my face is moist and I have an urge to both sit up and lie still. I look up at the ceiling, and then out toward the soft morning light filtering through the blinds. I hear sounds of birds, cars, buses, people moving here and there, a city in motion and beginning it’s day. It all seemed so real, I keep saying inside. I’m still at home, but I know I’ve awakened to a new reality. I know that I can never go back to being the woman I was before this dream. 

Since that morning all those years ago I have encountered my dance practice with the deepest reverence. I see my movements as not only stimulating and sustaining my creativity, but as an integral and vital component of my survival. Dance has continued to be my lifeline through so many traumas, especially the ones connected to my fertility journeys. After each miscarriage, I have danced. I knew that if I wanted to restore my fertile radiance and recover a space of joy in the possibility of what could be, of who I could one day birth, then I’d have to dance. 

Not every dance has been smooth, or easy to come into, or even beautiful. Sometimes the movements are rough and static. Sometimes it takes me a while to find a flow, to access the opening where there is warmth and an opportunity at deliverance from my sadness. It changes day to day, moment to moment, as life spins me all around in different directions. Motherhood has infinitely transformed my dance practice and my relationship to movement. The dance has also been essential to processing the many stages of becoming a mother, and acclimating to the ever-shifting rhythms of my life as a mothering artist. 

I do not have a name for the old African man/spirit who came to help me back into my dance, but I carry his reminder to dance with me everywhere I go. I am deeply grateful that I was so receptive, and that I didn’t doubt the fullness of his offering to me. I have never forgotten that overwhelming feeling of coming back to life in that dream, of the delicious resurgence of passion and purpose with each lovely movement. 

When my children want to know why I’m dancing, I don’t always have the exact words in the moment. Most times I just smile and get a flash of images showing me all the ways dance has saved my life. And then, on occasions when I do come up with a way to answer them, they, being their munchkin selves of course, have moved on to a different topic anyway. 

I love that I have this awareness of why it’s critical for me to dance each day of my life. So many people in our world think they are not good enough, or worthy enough, or beautiful enough to dance. But all of us, every single person on this planet, has a dance that is necessary for their livelihood, and also for the advancement of the human family. This is a core part of my commitment to the dance, spreading the truth that all our moving bodies generate a positive vibration that is vital to the survival of humanity.

When we are dancing we are more connected to our power, to our truth, to our most radiant and dynamic versions of our selves. Imagine, I always think, if everyone of us could find our way into our uniquely crafted dance. How magical it would be if everyday we all allowed our bodies to move in the service of love and gratitude. Our world would be profoundly, and radically changed, and in such a good, good way.  

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This week’s storm is everyone in this house being sick. The fevers, the runny noses, the stuffy ears, the congestion, the sore throats—it’s a lot to navigate all at once. Especially with the little ones who can’t quite explain all they’re feeling, and whose accumulation of discomforts make them just wanting to cling to Mommy. All. Day. Long.

Did I mention I’m sick too? Yeah, it’s not a pretty sight at all! I’m stretched very thin right now, and I am still aware that no matter how awful I’m feeling, the dance is one of the best remedies I have. Dancing will lift my spirits, deliver some new oxygen into my blood, stimulate the release of whatever my body needs to flush out, and break up the long hours of crying, whining, begging, pleading, and moaning that are making up the bulk of our days right now.

This week the storm is a funky cold making its rounds. Sometimes it’s a financial crisis when all the bills are due. Sometimes it’s a tragedy in the community. Sometimes it’s the heartbreak of not winning the the grand prize after being a finalist. Sometimes it’s a fertility trauma that no one but you can see. Sometimes it’s the seemingly never-ending cycle of grief from losing a loved one. Chances are, we’ve all encountered multiple storms in various forms throughout our lives. They are never something we plan. They are not convenient. They are not considerate of everything else on our plates demanding our full attention. And yet, through every part of the storm, we’re continuously confronted with the truth of ever forward motion: Life moves on. 

There comes a point in grappling with the storm, that we have to make a decision about how we’re going to make it through the roughness and turbulence. For me, I’ve learned that engaging in my dance practice—especially in the thick of the thick of the storm—allows me to move with renewed energy through what initially felt like the heaviest of burdens, the most immovable of mountains.

Dancing opens up unexplored possibilities for processing and strategizing how we’re going to survive a very challenging situation. As we bend, twist, roll, reach, sway, spin, dip, and rock around, we invite new thought patterns to participate in the mental labor of sorting through whatever it is that is weighing our spirits down. The movements give us space, literally, to breathe, to think, to imagine, and to act in new ways. Each cell of our body plays a role in shaping our thoughts and actions. When we dance, we recalibrate all of our cells with an energy source more reflective of the present moment. We then have a greater capacity to transform our consciousness and develop a more desirable outlook. Something that might have seemed completely hopeless or made us feel that we were powerless to change can be rediscovered through a newly identified lens of possibility after a vigorous, sweat-pouring, heart-expanding, booty-shaking dance session. 

The reason the dance is so effective at helping us to generate fresh ideas or access opportunities and solutions not previously considered or deemed unrealistic is because we become renewed every time we dance. Renewed in our minds, renewed in our bodies, renewed in our hearts. The movement actually shifts our biochemistry and allows new pathways for synapses and neurological connections to emerge. This in turn creates new patterns for our thoughts, ultimately giving us a whole new way to look at, experience, and navigate our storm. 

This understanding is what leads me into the dance today. I am so tired from being up all night and day with little sick people. I want nothing more but to just stay tucked underneath the blankets, but my children are all demanding something—to eat, to nurse, to be held, to be read to, to be played with, to be listened to, to have all their questions about the world answered right, right now! There is no escaping them, as they grow more impatient by the second, yanking the covers back and pulling my head up from the pillow. I realize it’s time to switch gears as resting, in the traditional sense, is impossible at this point. If I’m going to have to be on my feet, I reason, I might as well be dancing. 

After serving up a round of snacks for everyone, I connect my phone to the speakers and put on my soca music playlist. I need some music that will jolt me into a new reality. Carnival it is! The festive, Caribbean melodies help us all shift into a different flow. They eat, I dance. They run around, I dance. They scream and ask for more food, I dance as I fill more bowls with more food. Tired as I am, I feel the movements gradually giving me more energy. My sinuses are starting to drain. My capacity to answer question after question after question increases with each rotation on the floor. I put a pot of tea on and keep dancing while waiting for it to boil. The simple, small, repetitive movements making their way into my hips and up my spine are the best this very tired mommy can do right now. My dance is not something spectacular in this moment, but its victory is still felt with each breath. This is me dancing through the storm, once again. This is me finding a way through when there is no way out.

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The munchkins explore the space with Mommy in between dance sequences at her favorite place to dance in Washington, DC, the roof terrace of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

I dance with my children all the time. In fact, my movement practice has evolved radically and abundantly since becoming a mother. The more children I have, the more time I seem to have to dance. Does that surprise you? I would have never guessed it would turn out this way either, but as I continued to experiment with how to integrate my mothering labors with my creative practice, a beautifully collaborative process emerged.

My kids have mixed emotions about mommy dancing. Sometimes they are all for it and spend the whole time with me, running circles around me, moving through my legs, climbing over me, swinging off of me, and taking turns leading me through dances that they’ve come up with on the spot. Sometimes they are whining that I’ve done enough and can they pleeeeeeease get their snack, NOW! Sometimes they are sleepy or fussy and they are on my hip, or on my back, or on my breast while I am still swaying, and dipping, and rocking, and discovering whatever it is I’ve tapped into for that day’s practice. Also, after mothering two sons and then having a daughter, I was amazed to see how different my dance sessions are when it’s just me and Jubilee are in the space. The mother-daughter movement connection is unlike anything I’ve ever shared with my sons. I’m really curious to see how our collective movements, and duos, and trios evolve as they grow up.

A large part of creating and actually experiencing more time to dance has been through undoing the conditioning that in order to have a meaningful dance practice I have to be away from my children. For me, facilitating long stretches of time where I can be on my own has never been a part of my mothering reality. The resources to facilitate that—open blocks of time, childcare, transportation, money for transportation, commuting time, time and energy to prepare food for everyone while I’m away—are not easily accessible or affordable for our family. I learned this early on, but I also just never accepted that those resources were the only way to nurture my practice as a dancing mother. I always came back to a simple question that led me deeper into the experiment: But what about my dance?

Years before having children I had a profound revelation that everyone’s movement, everybody’s dance, mattered greatly to the sustained wellness of humanity. When we dance together, we are kinder to each other, more thoughtful and sensitive about making space for everyone’s needs, and more positive about our shared futures. Dance competition shows perpetuate false narratives that in order to be worthy of being celebrated for our dance, we have to know how to move a certain way, and be validated by people who have reached a certain level of expertise in the field. But movement is an individual resource, no matter who’s watching, or appreciating, or liking, or understanding our dance moves. When we dance, we are enhancing our quality of life. We are regenerating blood cells, muscles, and brain power. We are adding new oxygen to our blood stream, and increasing flexibility, stamina, and energy. Simply put, dancing makes us better human beings in our day to day moments of life. 

As a mothering artist I knew that not only did have to dance to nurture my creative practice, I have to dance to sustain optimal wellness while navigating the very physical, emotional, and mentally exhaustive labors of motherhood. From a logistical perspective, as someone who spends all day and all night with her little people, learning how to dance with my children became an imperative. If I was waiting on a moment to myself to dance, I’d always be waiting. The movement would pass me by, and my body and spirit would lose some of its warmth and vibrancy. An absence of movement was not an option. I had to figure out a generative and collaborative process. The dance, like me, had to grow and make space for my reality as a dancing mother.

Over the years I’ve made some exciting discoveries in my shared movement moments with my children. Each of my children experience their dancing selves in different ways. Sometimes they are content to move as solo operators in the space. Sometimes they like being the leader and getting everyone to follow along in their movement creation. So far, my daughter, who is also the youngest at two years old, has spent the most time dancing with me one-on-one. Many times I’ve noticed even when we’re not sharing an intentional collaborative moment, she’s still watching me, and will later imitate my movements, calling out to me, “Look Mommy, I’m dancing!” 

My oldest son loves to come up with dances, and giving them wild and hilarious names. He loves jamming to his favorite song over and over again, and showing us all the movements he’s creating. My second son is very acrobatic and athletic with his dance movements. Oftentimes, he’ll find his way into the dance by imitating an animal, a robot, a creature of his imagination. Also, anything involving running or jumping, and it’s automatically his favorite dance. I learn something new every time I dance with one or more of my children. I become more aware of what is on their minds, of what memories are playing out in their heads, of how they are making connections and deepening understandings about the world at home and outside of home. 

Dancing with my children also makes the moments when I am truly having a solo dancing moment very sweet. I appreciate those sporadic pockets of solo-bodied dancing time in a way I never had to before being a mother. Once upon a time I spent hours, days, weeks by myself, just immersed in my own creative inquiries. I didn’t have to consider bed times, snacks, diapers, disputes over a toy that no one will care about in five minutes. I used to dance in all sorts of public spaces, spaces that would be extremely dangerous for small children in my current reality. I used to only have to consider my body, my needs, my time. Now though, I have to factor in a multitude of needs every time I dance. Even if I’m not physically engaged with my children at the moment, I’m still hyper-aware of them and the constant possibility of their needs altering the dance practice I’m having in that moment. 

For instance, when I am mothering an infant, even if I’m dancing while they’re sleeping, I remain in close proximity so that I can quickly tend to whoever might need to be nursed back to sleep, or picked up if they roll off the bed, or just held as they acclimate to waking up. If I’m playing music it’s low, so that I can hear my children and be responsive to their needs. If they’re out at the playground with their father I am debating how to use the moment: make dinner so people won’t be hollering for food when they come back, or dance, dance, dance? 

There is no pure moment to myself where I don’t have to consider my children’s needs. A dancing mother is in perpetual communion with her mothering labors, no matter where or how her body is moving in the space. It takes time, practice, and lots of experimentation to come into peaceful acceptance and celebration of this new way of dancing, of being. In these first years of motherhood I’ve had to dismantle old ways of thinking. I’ve had to do away with ideas that left me feeling stuck and unfulfilled in my daily reality of being a mother and primary caregiver to my many munchkins. 

The dance had to expand so that it could adapt to my new parameters. That’s one of the beautiful things about dance as an art form, and about creativity in general. Reinventing, reimagining, reshaping, redoing, repeating, restoring, recovering—it’s all a part of the process of discovering and accessing new movement possibilities. My children—ceaseless demands for snacks and all—have made me a better dancer, a stronger dancer, a more creative dancer. I move through life with more receptivity, more passion for the present moment, more joy in the revelation of every new thing my body can do. 

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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

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