Making Things: Two Years In
When I was a toddler, I would ask my parents to play a cassette tape of ballet classics, and I would leap, spin, skip, fall, fling, and flail around the living room to the sweeping melodies of Coppelia, Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake. To this day, I can recall the sheer joy of uninhibited movement as I let myself get carried away by the orchestra. These are my earliest memories. Making movement.
My son will turn two in two days. In these first two years of his life, I’ve found myself hanging in a delicate balance: learning to reconcile my new identity as a mother with the person I was (am? will be?). That person was an artist. She would put herself in a studio and let the rhythms of the earth build in her body until they dribbled, dropped, flew, spun, and streamed out in phrases and gestures that made meaning of what she experienced in the world. She would arrange bodies in time and space to comment on what she saw happening. She would work together with dancers to unpack embodied knowledge in ways that provoked audiences to question what they thought they knew. It’s been two years since I’ve felt like that person.
Here’s what I do instead: I make space (for my son to grow and explore). I make time (for him to feel known). I make laughter (when we discover something new or strange). I make energy (when I help him rest and eat and do the things he needs to thrive). I’m making life.
Sometimes my former self and this new maker of things intersect. I feel them meet in my teaching, as I help my students decide how they will move forward as dancers.
These two versions of myself work side by side when I’m in the studio, trying to make a dance, trying to figure out what matters to me now.
My former self whispers in my ear as my son spreads his arms and begins to turn: slowly, then faster. As the giggles escape, I know he’s found the joy of making movement.
I made my first dance at fifteen. It went very well, so I made more dances. I ended up going to college and majoring in dance, not so I could perform, but so I could keep making dances, and get better at it. I moved to New York for the same reason. I was hungry for more, so I decided I had better go back to school and get a master’s degree in dance. For fifteen years, everything I did was focused through this goal of making things and finding validation in them. I measured success through clearly defined projects and papers and fully produced work. And in order for me to feel good about that work, I had to give it my full attention. Every ounce of energy was directed at digging deeper—crafting, tuning, adjusting, and manipulating the work until it accomplished my goals. This work happened in studios and behind computer screens and cameras, but here’s where it wasn’t happening: in a dark nursery, while I rocked a half-asleep infant in the corner at 2 AM, debating whether or not he’d cry if I tried to transfer him to his crib.
I made my first person at thirty. And it is going pretty well. Because I’ve learned that making life is a practice, and it doesn’t end in the labor and delivery room. It doesn’t trail off once the baby is weaned. Every day, we are making life together, my son and me. We negotiate the balance of when to keep our world small and when to let go. We find out together that he can climb stairs while only holding onto one of my fingers. That he loves running down hills and ramps because the acceleration is thrilling. That when he encounters new people, he will gently retreat behind me and wrap his arms around my leg…before he pokes his head out, grins, and says “Hi!” Making life is the ultimate artistic collaboration, and my son gets to participate in new and different ways every day. It’s incredible to witness, and unbelievably humbling to be a part of it.
For two years, I’ve struggled to navigate my way through motherhood as an artist. What happens to the person I was? Making things was so integral to my identity, and now, I can’t find the energy or time or focus to make art the way I used to. But here’s the thing. I never stopped making things. Who’s to say that making art has to fall on a page or a canvas or a stage? Why can’t art be the way this tiny person’s hand wraps around my finger, or the way his eyes light up when his father or I walk into the room? So maybe that’s the answer. I didn’t lose who I was. I found her. In the making of things.
Lately, I feel pulled toward making something that honors these two artists: the maker of things and the maker of life. What does that look like? I’m not quite sure yet. I know that I am enthralled with the way my son moves—the way I move—in our life together. I know that I am overcome with gratitude for the journey we are on together, and I want to pull the experience into the crafting of something tangible. Maybe a dance.