An invaluable benefit of being employed at Middlebury College is the opportunity to audit college classes. My job in particular has duties that can be done at any time, day or evening, so my schedule and supervisors have allowed me to use this opportunity a few times over the years.

During Fall 2009, I audited Dance 163, From Africa to America – Movement from the Core. I expect that a few of my posts here will allude to some lessons I learned in that class; this is the first.

A few times during the course, Christal Brown (the instructor who, among many other accomplishments, founded INSPIRIT, a dance troupe based in NYC) said things like “the best dancers have no idea who they are – they literally just stand there until someone tells them to move.” Or another example: a dancer or choreographer must “negate the self to embody the product.”

A creative work has its own life. In bringing a creative work from conception to reality, a dancer or artist must set aside their own limitations and expectations, either of themselves or of what the work ‘should’ be, and ‘serve the work.’

Most of my dance experience has been self-created in my living room. At the best of those times I have been so focused on embodying the music that ‘I lost myself in it.’ I think that is probably at least part of “negating the self” that Christal spoke of.

I also think ‘negating the self’ could mean losing purpose. It is the self that wants to accomplish, earn, succeed – all purposes that exist outside of an activity. To best embody a creative work, think not of what awards might be won, but only of what serves the work.

In Mark Rowlands’ interview on the CBC (see previous post), he said, When things have purposes, the purpose typically lies outside the activity … We do all these things, but there’s very little that has value in itself.

Dance has value in itself.