A Work in Progress, a Showing, and a Disgruntled Choreographer

Eight weeks ago, a group of dancers and I set off on a choreographic journey.  Together we resolved to use movement to take the audience and ourselves to a place profound in terms of thought and emotion.  To provide transport to a place so psychologically deep that in comparison Toni Morrison would look like a writer of clumsy and plodding bodice-rippers. 

As I watched the showing of our new work yesterday, I was convinced we took our audience on an indulgent and tragic joyride.  One where the vehicle crashed into the divider, flipped over, landed on its roof, spun around three times and caused a ten-car pile-up.  Simply because the driver decided it would be cool to write her name in calligraphy on the double bacon cheeseburger on her lap. 

My dancers took their hands off the wheel, and raised 'em in the air like they just didn’t care.  Miles Davis treated us to “The Birth of The Cool.”  This was “The Birth of the Clueless.”

  

As I watched my “dan-cers” the shame I felt as the choreographer produced an overpowering urge to run around the theater shaking my fists at God.  How could I escape?  Should I feign some kind of desperate ailment?  Should I bash my head against the armrest of my seat?  Without irony, I prayed the ground would open me up and swallow me whole.

The emotional urges I felt were equally powerful, and filled me with questions.  How had all this work, the countless days in which I combusted into impassioned movement while waiting in line at Starbucks, the many nights I spent mapping out formations using carved cheese curds, how had it all culminated in this putrid, steaming hot mess?  I considered getting all Oedipal and blinding myself.  I thought about running into the dance space and tackling the weakest links. 

I longed for a paper bag to throw over my head so as not to bear the scorn and derision of my peers.  Surely they were wondering if I had choreographed the piece as some kind of joke, or perhaps under the influence of a Benadrylopolitan. 

How did our train get so far off the rails?  The movement was supposed to be athletic, daring, sensual.  Instead it was incompetent, lethargic and constipated.  "Someone"’s timing was so off, she couldn’t have drawn more attention to herself if she’d stood still and begun firing off a laser light show from her coochie. 

To be fair, there were some good moments.  Several dancers performed beautifully, bringing to light some of the subtleties in the work.  While unfortunately this couldn’t change things, kind of like someone hanging off a runaway bus in a third-world country, they deserve some credit. They made it totally worth that punch in the gut I got from knocking over Big Sally’s hot caramel macchiato at the 5^th Street Starbucks. 

Still, somehow, despite this extremely large and unsettling bump in the road, I know I, make that we, can turn this thing around. We will get this piece on a heart defibrillator and bring it back from the dead.  We will go back into the studio and create and think and dance harder than every training montage* in every dance movie ever made.  

My dancers better be ready. I don’t care what they have to do – take classes, get laid, or drink whatever it is the smart, new-agey people drink to light a fire under their ass.  This cast better be at our next rehearsal ready to kill it.  I know that I’ll be re-inspiring myself by watching footage of Wal-Mart opening its doors on Black Friday and by taking a trip to my nearest petting zoo.

We only have ten more days to ride this piece on into the sunset.  With wisdom this time, may the journey begin again. 

*A classic training montage for your viewing pleasure...

Mom in the Spotlight: Dancer and Yoga Instructor, Amanda Nora Legbeti

Amanda Nora Legbeti holds a B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an M.F.A. in Dance with an emphasis on choreography and fusion from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) where she studied on fellowship.  Amanda has performed professionally with several companies and her choreography has been showcased at venures throughout the US and abroad including: The Kitchen Museum (NY, NY); the Boulder Museum Of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO); Beall Center for Art+Technology (Irvine, CA), at the Centro Cultural in San Jose, Costa Rica, and in the international tour of ‘The San Souci Festival of Projected Dance’ (Mexico, Trinidad, Tobago). Her passion for teaching has led her to be a choreographer, instructor, or performer of dance at UCI, Iowa State University, Riverside College, Cypress College, Calvin College, The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago, Coronado School of the Arts, Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop, Dance Masters of Michigan, and Joanne’s Dance Extension.

A Registered Yoga Teacher with the National Yoga Alliance and an Associate Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga Instructor, Amanda feels incredibly blessed to be living her dream: teaching Yoga throughout the amazing city of Chicago, teaching Dance at The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago, performing professionally here and there, and spending time with her handsome husband and newly born baby girl!  Check out her class with your baby on Wednesdays 12pm or just you and your mat on Saturdays at 11am at BareFeet Power Yoga in the West Loop.  

How old is your little daughter?  

She’s 5 Months Old!!!!!

The biggest surprises about motherhood?

How fun she was even as a newborn.  How much of a challenge nursing is/was.  How much love I am filled with, how it amplifies each day I spend studying her divine uniqueness and personhood, and conversely how much fear I am susceptible to about her well-being now and into the future.

How purposeful I feel and clear my intentions are for everything from eating, to the thoughts I keep, to praying, and to the people I want in my life now.

You have already found a way to meld your work and motherhood by teaching Mommy-Baby yoga.  What are your goals in these classes?

My goal is to provide a space where mommies can:

•       Breathe!
•       Connect with and care for their bodies
•       Explore creative ways to practice yoga while encouraging their babies’      physical and neurological development 
•       Bond with their beautiful babies as well as other mommies 

That said, if the classes merely bring mamas and their babies together and they become a support for health, wellness, and mama-baby fun and blissfulness for each other . . . I will consider the class series a success!

What is your best "Holy hell, why me?" mommy story? 

One day mid-lunch with my hubby, my three-month-old wakes up quite suddenly and starts screaming -- not like her.  My hubby pays while I head to the backseat of the car to nurse her in private.  After the milk lets down, she keeps screaming and arching and I realize she has a massive dirty diaper.  As I reach for my supplies to change her (my 1^st time changing her on my lap), I realize it’s a blowout, the biggest blowout so far, up to her ears in back and through all of her clothes! 

At this point, my husband, on a conference call for work and completely oblivious, gets in the front seat.  I am now cursed with fumbling around trying to be quiet AND avoiding getting poo all over the place as I change her.  Add that to the fact that I am still half-naked.  Finally I get her clean(ish) and hold her with one hand as I reach for a new diaper and new clothing from my bag.  It was then that she arched again and went flying off of my lap head first toward the floor.  I silently screamed an expletive and reached out with both hands and caught her by both ankles, buck naked, her head just about an inch from the ground! I pulled her up onto my lap as my husband looked back casually and said “everything okay back there”? 

I busted out laughing uncontrollably making my little one stop crying stare at me in confusion.  My husband joined in the staring at me in confusion – I was quite a sight.  Later, Hubby asked what had happened and in the middle of my reenactment, he got another conference call.

He still has no idea what transpired in the backseat that day.

The best piece of advice you received when pregnant?  And what's the biggest piece of BS pregnancy advice you heard?  

Best advice: “SWIM!  It makes your pregolicious body weightless and thus feels amazing!” and “Savor each moment when they are newborns . . . they grow up so quickly and you can never get that time back.” 

Biggest BS: “Your eating habits during pregnancy will impact your babies’ lifelong eating habits.” And “Avoid inversions while prego.” Oh and the biggest
piece of BS: “Breastfeeding burns hundreds of calories and the excess prego weight will melt off.”  I have 20lbs of proof that that is total BS!   

What are you looking forward to experiencing as a mom?

I already practice yoga daily with my little love bug and dance salsa and bachata with her to the “Tropicales” channel, but I am really, really excited to play sports with her. I think a family soccer game (dog included), will be the coolest thing ever.  And I can’t wait to applaud and support her from the sidelines or the audience (wink, wink)!  On the sentimental side, I think it will be extremely touching and gratifying as a mom when she has siblings and they become close and loving best friends one day, just like me and my bros.

Even though your daughter is quite young, does your being an artist play into your parenting?  If so how? 

SO MUCH!  There is tons of helpful instructional information out there on “how to” this and that, but I definitely stay creative, intuitive, and improvisational with my approach.  I make up songs for her, I help her move her body in an integrated way, I offer her different colors and have her choose, I read poetry to her, I help her impersonate Chris Farley in her sleep sack.

Has your relationship to your body changed?  

Entirely!  I loved, loved being pregnant!!  For the first time it seemed like my body served a divine purpose and was really important and capable just the way it was.  It was also the first time I didn’t feel like I had to push myself so hard to my physical and emotional limit. 

What I teach as a yogi is to be compassionate to your Self and to avoid the ego driven effort to overdo it physically in order to “achieve” poses at the sacrifice of what’s truly best for the health of your body.  I was amazed to realize that I never completely practiced this!  Once I was committed entirely to the health and wellbeing of my body for the baby, I couldn’t care less about “achieving”.  I went from ‘trying hard’ to ‘trying easy’ and I am definitely going to keep that way of being alive as long as possible. 

My postpartum body has offered a brand new outlook too.  Where before I may have stared at places of my body that I thought were out of shape and felt bad I wasn’t working out more or something; now I feel really proud and confident for the reasons my body has changed.  It’s proof I’m a mommy. I have never been so proud in my life than I do now as my daughter’s mama.

Piece of advice you want to pass on to other new moms?  To new mom dancers?  

To other new moms: You are the best mother your baby has ever had!  

To new mom dancers including myself I say: dance with your baby AND get out there and dance!!!  Take class and teach class.  No need to wait until you look a certain way again, or get back to the apex of your technique proficiency.  Let’s take the dance world by storm together and increase the body experience in the prototypical dancing body.   Oh, and also tell your baby how beautiful their body is with your words and touch, so that they can inhabit their adult bodies with confidence, passion, and prowess.


To visit more with Amanda,  check out her yogi-site, and stay for some of her exciting choreography here:

The Self-Help Books for Kids Moms Really Want

The other day my kids were making me a little nutty.  Make that a lot nutty.  It had been a hell of a week, and I was losing it.  Not drown your sorrows in a glass of wine and a barrel of popcorn kind of losing it, but migraine and sobbing and puking losing it.  

It had really been that bad.

When things calmed down a bit, I talked to some friends, and they recommended books such as How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk.  One in particular, called from Beyond Time Out: From Chaos to Calm was touted by several friends as a paper Anne Sullivan. 

Now of course, I should be reading early and often to make my home more calm and orderly.  To make it more reflective of the love I feel for my family.  And of course, to stop my kids from dancing gleefully around their vanquished mother.  Still, it stinks like a poopy diaper that Hubs and I have to be the ones poring over books to find all the answers.

In a perfect world my kids could do some heavy duty self-help reading to fulfill their part of the bargain.  

If their reading skills were up to the task, and if colorful language mattered not, here are the self-help books for kids I would write in a heartbeat:

So friends, what self-help books would you write for your kids?  

June Finding the Funny!

Welcome to June's Finding the Funny!

Before we get started, several of my co-hosts are hosting an awesome giveaway. If you'd like to win a new Facebook cover photo design from the talented Cormier Creative, visit one of the bloggers below with a * next to their name.


 

  Meet the Hosts Anna @ My Life and Kids* Kelley @ Kelley's Break Room* Robyn @ Hollow Tree Ventures* Kerry @ HouseTalkN* Julie @ I Like Beer and Babies Keesha @ Mom's New Stage Meredith @ The Mom of the Year* Anna @ Random Handprints* Ellen and Erin @ Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms Toulouse @ Toulouse and Tonic

The Rules

Link up an old or new funny post. Link up as many times as you want (we're serious.) The party is open until Friday at midnight. The earlier you link up, the more clicks you'll get. Click around and meet the other funny bloggers that are linking up. Follow the Finding the Funny Pinterest board. We'll all be pinning our favorites throughout the month. We don't ask you to link back to us or include a button on your blog, but we do ask you to send out a tweet or post about the party on your Facebook page. Be sure to use #findingthefunny.

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A BIG FAT Score for The Cheerios Playbook

Maybe the folks over there at Cheerios thought they'd show an adorable little girl, with her white mom and her black dad.  They'd draw attention to their all-American cereal with a modern day American family.  Maybe, they thought, a few bigots would come out, but on the whole no biggie. 

Surely, they didn't see their sweet little ad spot as intense racist roach bait, bringing the nutjobs scurrying out of their putrid little nests to find some juicy nugget in which to sink their vicious little teeth.

As a black woman married to a white man, and the mother of two adorable kids, I was disappointed but not really that surprised. While we are nothing special here in what we affectionately call Mulatto Heaven, aka, Hyde Park, Chicago, home to our mixed-race president and countless other families, when we vacation in Michigan we realize what a rare breed we are.

We attract a lot of attention.  

Often stares erupt into smiles, and exclamations of, "Oh your family/children are so beautiful!" 

But sometimes they don't. 

Sometimes people have almost crashed their cars for gawking.  A few men have looked stonily at us - their ill thoughts almost palpable.  I'll say it now, and I'll say it again, anyone who scowls or and goes to that place of Jim Crow/mongrelization crap at cute children doing nothing but being themselves is a sick motherfucker.  

But then again, for every loser so cowardly, so misguided as to the source of his or her own failures as a modern human being that scapegoating and antiquated racial theories remain as their only excuse, there were millions of people who saw nothing more than a sweet little girl and her family -- who saw this commercial as either entirely ordinary or encouragingly progressive.  

We should think of those people and celebrate how far we've come, not be brought down by the rabble on social media.  

So you scored big time, Cheerios!  A twofer in showing us our location on the road to racial tolerance, as well as attention to your cereal.  I sincerely hope you and other brands will continue to show that in one family there can be different colors. Maybe even dare to show gay couples with children, because apparently children really yank a bigot's chain.  And if you do these things because of profit, as opposed to some greater good, more power to you.  Maybe that will show "them" that the free market actually favors diversity.   It is imperative that big, multi-national companies like General Mills keep putting out the bait to either coax out the vermin, hastening their demise, or send them outmatched, scurrying back to their squalid dens.