Something has been coming for a while...a change or a shift in my awareness has been burbling away quietly as I have been doing my everyday, same old, same old thing.
I am doing my best to find the energy to nurture it, feed it with quiet inspiration and keep it growing. To try and find the headspace to ponder it and meditate in it and recognise the signs when they come.
I am trying to avoid stifling it, ignoring it or stomping on its budding essence and trampling it into the earth but it ain't easy.
I am a woman in my late 30's who is married to a wonder of a husband. Not without his own challenges but without him I know I would not be able to half of what I manage to. We both work full time for the goverment and I satisfy my creative urges primarily through the medium of dance.
Dance has been a part of my life for as long as I remember. I grew up in the world of theatrical western dance - Tap, Modern Dance/Jazz & Ballet. I loved it, thrived in it and had a blast doing it...until the hormones really kicked in and my dreams of a career in dance were killed very early by the size of my hips and thighs.
However, most of my adult life has been spent following a pathway that led me into the wonderful and (for the most part) very inclusive world of "Bellydance". I played around with folkloric and historically based Middle Eastern Dance for a few years as I was involved in Historical Re-enactment at the time. However, after a number of years I moved interstate and started regularly dancings with a group of Egyptian Cabaret dancers.
A few years later I saw "American Tribal Style Bellydance" and was smitten! The costuming had intriguing elements of mixed ethnicity, the proud posture of the dancers was reminiscent of the spanish flamenco dancers that I had admired for many years and the concept of dancing improvisationally screamed FREEDOM to a dancer who had spent 20 years of her life dancing choreography.
I also diversified my Tribal teachings by moving into Theatrical and Gothique fusion bellydance, allowing me to harness my previous dance teachings and meld them with my love of bellydance.
I also have spent the past few years working on a wonderful dance project that is inclusive of its participants. Women of all different cognitive and mobility abilities with or without other dance experience. It is an inspirational and deeply moving experience for both participants and our audience come performance time and unlike anything I have done before.
And 16 years later I find myself at a crossroads....a crossroads that leads me to consider my dance and my creative endeavours, my personal relationships, my working career and my dreams for the future. I guess it could otherwise be called my middle age.
You see, while dance is a vital part of me being me, I know that there are other things that I love and need that I am losing touch with. I am so busy dancing that everything else is losing ground and I find it harder to find time for.
I find myself dreaming that I am in on a barge on a river, drifting lazily along with the current and seeing lovely places and people and watching all of these wonderful events happening on the banks as I drift past. As I drift along I have on occasion stopped and stepped off the barge, finding myself a part of what is going on on the banks of the river. But as I drift along I find those stops harder to make and further between those stops, the current grows stronger and faster as I speed towards what I know is raging torrent currently beyond sight.
Long overdue travels to the country of my fathers ancestors last year gave me some timeout and I did make some commitments to myself about dance which I have begun to implement. These will slow down my dance life and hopefully permit me more time to step off my drifting barge and spend time 'onshore' a little more often.
And perhaps one day, I will find myself a quiet little corner of the river to moor my barge at so I can easily cross between the waters of my creativity and firmament of the mundane. We shall see...
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