careless

My friend, Maya Hey, recently posted this video on Facebook. It had been a couple of years since I last saw it, and the sheer bombastic intensity of it surprised me. "Careless" was choreographed by Alex Ketley and premiered in 2006.

Alex challenged all these thoughts I had about being a "good" dancer, about being beautiful and being honest. The girls I danced with were maddening and wonderful, willing to crash into the air and through the floor and run full tilt at one another in the assumption that the collision would be worth it. It was a frustrating and exhausting project, but it shifted my ideals and virtues. Looking at it, I barely recognize those wild girls, newly let loose in unfamiliar movement, but I can appreciate now (and I didn't then; I was so stubborn!) how much being in this piece changed me as a dancer. It cracked open doors in my head in walls that I didn't even know were there.

I think it's also one of my favorite pieces that I've performed. Hurtling through ten minutes of extremely driven, violent movement, I felt like I was falling to pieces and exploding at the same time.
-------------------------------------->
 Some of those girls I haven't seen in a very long time; at least one of them I'll never see again. It's funny (in the odd, melancholy, slightly discomfiting sense) to think about how, sometimes, the people who keep you company while your life becomes entirely different exit or fade away.