In Search of Terpsichore

Part 1: AGD (Angry-Girl Dances)

Fall 2008

I have misplaced my Muse.  

When I was in elementary, I would get ready for school as quickly as I could so that I would have time to put on my favorite music and dance before I had to leave.  In college, there were times when I took six hours of dance classes a day, then came home and played for several more hours with my newest joy--belly dancing.  In the days when I worked a regular day job, the majority of my unoccupied hours would find me doing one of two things--dancing or writing.  I have been yelled at and written up and chastised with the pounding of broomsticks for disturbing my neighbors because the urge to dance doesn’t believe in “appropriate” hours.  

Now for the first time in my life, I have lost touch with Terpsichore, that Spirit of Movement, that Muse of Dance.

Dance has always been my saving grace through the most difficult and darkest moments of my life.  “If it wasn’t for dance,” my closest friends say, “she would not be alive.”  After my car wreck, I was unable to dance for a year and a half--forbidden to do so by my doctors, but even more so, by my body.  Yet I longed to do so more than anything in the world.  At first, I could waft my arms around a bit, flutter some veils, eventually pull off some fancy footwork.  But belly dance?  No way.  And anything like my vigorous, Energizer Bunny self?  That was out of the question.  When I lost that ability and then miraculously regained it, I thought there would never be a day when I took it for granted again.

I was wrong.

Well, it’s not that I take it for granted.  I just can’t do it.  Can’t feel it, can’t enjoy it, can’t be moved.  Literally.  

When I moved out of my ex-husband’s house and began the process of getting divorced, everything that had once inspired me to twirl and leap and shimmy and bounce and smile and pop and undulate...it all just stopped.  Like something that had once lived deeper than the skin, deeper even than muscle and marrow had dried up, gotten crusty and blown away like so much dust.  

This has never happened to me before.  Not in my most heart-wrenching, soul-weary, shattered days.  Not in my most melancholy, nearly suicidal doldrums.  Not in my most devastated states of despair and grief.  Even during my recovery, while in chronic pain and confined to bed, I danced in my head, clinging to visions of the day when I would make it a reality again.  I have bounded and spun and wafted to every good beat for as long as I can remember, and my darkest experiences have always driven me to dance like a fiend.  It has been one of my primary healing and coping tools all my life.  When baffled and troubled, I’ve always danced my way through, allowing the emotion to course through my flesh until I had figured out what to do.

But this time...I am at a loss.  

As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps I have still been dancing my way through it, just not in the obvious way.  I have been still, sedentary, lying about in exhaustion, lounging about in contentment, purring in sunbeams and drinking a lot of tea.  I suppose that is a dance in and of itself.

Being the Warrior Princess takes its toll, after all.  So does being the Hummin’bird, the Prodigal Sun, and the Energizer Bunny.

When I moved out and got my own apartment, I had an insatiable, almost rabid need to surround myself with an environment that screamed, “ME!  Me, me, me and ONLY ME!  Raaaaahhhrrrrrrrr!”  I set to work creating that environment, even though I didn’t own the property and it turned out to be a cockroach-infested, leaky, arsenic & mold dripping nightmare in a crack-head neighborhood.  I had danced my way into an income that could sustain me as a single person again, but I am a belly dancer in Pueblo, Colorado, so my options for what I could afford were limited.  That was all right.  When The Recession hit, there were months in which I was relieved to sacrifice the state of my living conditions for leak-reduced rent.  Of course, the state of the economy had also made moving out an impossibility, so I was stuck there for over a year.  For the majority of time that I lived there, I was chased out of the bedroom by leaks or confined to a corner that barely fit the bed.  Often, my dance room became the bedroom, and in the last days, I was dancing in a 5X7 foot space--but only after putting the coffee table up on the couch.

It didn’t matter much.  Although Terpsichore may have inspired the choreographer of Cats to make a funny cockroach dance, She didn’t find the encroaching roaches from my neighbor’s apartment very funny and had vacated the premises within months, leaving me to fend for myself in a desperate search to find ways to put food on the table through the only career that permanent brain damage had left me--belly dancing.

I still had festivals and shows contracted.  I was on the rise, this new starlette of stage and video, sought and brought by people across continents, across oceans.  

There was only one problem.

I couldn’t belly dance.

I had already been working through a trend of gutsier, more vigorous, harder dances--a direct correlation of everything going on in my heart as I donned heavier armor, bore heavier loads, and prepared to finally leave my first marriage.  But when I moved out, it’s like my entire creative world heaved a sigh of relief and then utterly collapsed in exhaustion.  That summer, my body rebelled on me.  All of my joints ached to the point of tears.  They felt corroded, sometimes on fire.  Every morning, I had to roll myself off the mattress, slink down to the floor and then haul myself up over the course of a couple minutes.  Sometimes my boyfriend had to pick my up by the waist and set me on my feet, because I couldn’t do it myself.  Dancing and martial arts were the last things I wanted to do.  

To my utter relief, the three festivals I had through that time were with repeat clients--people who were understanding and supportive, some of whom I can call friends, one of whom I can call one of my dearest friends.  I hit my annual week in Durango like a ton of bricks.  Customarily, I would spend the first two or three days asleep on the hammock, hibernating in “my” room, twitching and drooling in the hot tub, catching up on my reading, snoozing and vegging, and honing the last rough spots out of my performance pieces.  After this recuperation, I could then emerge to spend some long-awaited time with my friends, help with the production aspects, and do some vacationing.  

But not this time.  I arrived on fumes, drastically behind on numerous projects.  I was also an emotional basket-case.  I was already concerned about a close family member’s health when I received news that my oldest cat and first pet would probably not survive long enough to see me return.  I hit the wall.  This was the first year that Shirabella was not the main producer and we had been looking forward to finally spending some good quality time together, but it was not to be.  I was a wreck.  I am amazed that I was able to pull off the dances that I did.  Of course, the Devdas Suite was tragic enough to suit my tastes, and Modern Gypsy was somber enough that I could pull it off.  But the cabaret suite that was supposed to be my grande finale...  Ugh.  My heart just couldn’t be light and happy.  Unfortunately, it was already in the printed program.  I couldn’t change it. 

When I watch the videos now, I can see the state I was in.  I can see it through all of the shows from those first years after my divorce--the strain, the exhaustion, the pain, the anger, the grief, the bitterness, the barricade around my heart.  It shows in the glint of my eyes, the brittleness of that famous smile, the twitchy, too-big, too-hard, much-too-much tension in my posture and movements.  The arches in my feet fell, like they just couldn’t bear the weight anymore.  Every step felt like I was walking on pebbles in my shoes.

There were moments when everything jived.  But they were only moments, and very few people knew what feats of architecture and machinery went on beneath the surface in order to pull out the Izzy Smile.

What I longed to do was to rest.  To sit in the park with the flickering sunlight shining upon my face through the leaves, sharing a picnic and lethargic breaths with a man who had long been my friend, and who had suddenly become so much more.  I longed to hole up in my sunroom of an office, pouring out my thoughts and discoveries and feelings onto the page.  I longed to sleep.  I longed to cook comforting food and drink hot tea in the middle of summer.  I longed to lay my head in a large, warm lap and feel the stroke of a loving hand upon my hair.  I longed to cry.  I longed to wear pink.  I longed to let my hair spill over my shoulders and to wear soft, flowy clothing and to close my eyes, knowing that for the first time since I was five years old, I felt truly safe.

At the same time, I wanted to beat punching bags to a pulp.  I wanted to scream and thrash and rend things to shreds.  I wanted to throw things and break things and kick down doors.

But belly dancers don’t do that.  

Belly dancers are supposed to be pretty.  Even if they’re not smiling or sparkly, they’re supposed to at least maintain some sort of composure.  I wanted to fling my body from wall to wall, bash my limbs against hard objects, whirl my clawed hands through the air, convulse with all the putrid, stifled rage surging up from my guts, and flop on the floor like spastic, sizzling bacon with the heat turned up too high.  Then I wanted to collapse into a shuddering heap and bawl until I finally fell asleep.

What a sight that would have made at a belly dance festival...

So I did nothing.  I didn’t dance.  I didn’t run my katas.  I just festered.  I had no space big enough to accommodate the types of moves I ached to do, I had nowhere to put my punching bag, and the thought of coming unglued like that at the dojo was abhorrent.  Every piece of music that I put on seemed at best outdated and hollow, at worst downright saccharine.  Each time I tried to practice or choreograph, I felt like a fraud.  The movements went against every gut impulse that sparked within me.

After enough time suppressing them, they finally stopped sparking.  Terpsichore had left the building.

It was only toward the end of summer when my joints finally began to cease their endless screaming, and my ceiling paused its leaking long enough to give me a brief space in which to dance, that I finally struck upon inspiration.  When I had first moved to Colorado, I was a splattered heap of heartbreak and bitterness, and had been stunned to find out I was capable of feeling deep rage.  My roommate had a CD to which I desperately clung--Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes.  I listened to it over and over, sang my heart out and did all sorts of angry-girl dances in the privacy of our living room when no one was around.  That album was one of my lifesavers in those days.

After my divorce, I discovered the joys of Pandora, the internet site where you can create your own personalized radio stations.  It was there that I remembered my old love of Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos.  I ordered Little Earthquakes and ran to the mailbox every day, waiting for it to arrive.  On my Angry Girl Music station, I added Pink to the list of seed artists.  I began playing So What over and over and over.  In the car, in the kitchen, in the office.  And then I began to move.  Finally, after months of being stymied, only dancing as much as I could force myself to by guilt and fear with the impending doom of each approaching gig, Terpsichore came knocking.

And She was pissed off.

In my head, I lip-synched Pink’s lyrics, changing them to, “So what!  I’m still a raq-star!”  intermingling thrust-kicks between snide, over-blown hip-drops and gargantuan booty-sways with my teeth clenched and my middle fingers flipped up.  There were a thousand people to whom I sang this song and they all needed to be flipped off!

When I finally got my beloved Tori CD, I bounded up the stairs, elated to see that oh-so-familiar cover that had seen me through such dark days.  I grinned an evil grin at the back cover and flipped some more people off.  Then I put it in, melting down to the floor as the first strains of Crucify wafted through the air of my dance room.  I was in Angry-Girl Heaven.

Movement flooded out of me.  Morning, noon, night.  It didn’t matter.  I was once again a Dancin’ Fiend.  All of those overpowering urges found avenues of direction upon which to explode, guided and encouraged and boiled up by the music.  Spinning, spinning, spinning...clawing, thrashing, falling...arching, twisting, knotting...reaching and coming up empty-handed, having and losing...searching, searching, searching.  Other songs came up to be noticed.  32 Flavors by Ani DiFranco.  Stupid and Fallen by Sarah McLaughlan.  Uninvited and Sympathetic Character by Alanis Morissette.  It’s My Mistake by Michelle Featherstone.  I danced before karate and after, I danced in the kitchen while cooking, I danced in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.  For two weeks straight, I gave full reign to Angry-Girl.  When I was in the shower or in the car, I sang at the top of my lungs.  Anywhere else, I danced at the top of my body’s limitations and then some.

There was just one problem.  The Northern Lights Festival was rapidly approaching and I had no idea what to perform.  They wanted me to teach Warrior Princess and Stage Presence, two concepts that had been contracted before my divorce and my Descent into the Doldrums.  Of stage presence, I felt bereft, and Warrior Princess--well, I felt nothing like one.  Except when I had my Angry-Girl Music on, my body couldn’t decide if it was coming or going.  One minute I was elated and in love, the next I was growling and snarling, then I was a weeping puddle, lashing out in the middle of it, only to fall into wide-eyed wonder at the very nature of life--which brought on a whole new wave of tears.  I had taken to fits of insomnia and nightmares, the like of which I hadn’t seen since college and my recovery from the crash, punctuated by migraines and massive depression.  Yet I was Venus Incarnate, wearing pink, frilly dresses and heels for the simple tasks of grocery shopping and gassing up my car--why?  Cuz I wanted to.

In short, I was pulled in a thousand directions and I still had a job to do.  All this dancing I was doing--I couldn’t use any of it on the stage.  Not only was it so far from belly dancing that even La Tejedora couldn’t get away with it, but many of the songs were rife with profanity and coarse, raw topics unsuitable for family audiences.  

I finally settled upon a Loreena McKinnett song I have always loved, and found a way to use some of the fervor raging inside of me--Descent to the Underworld was born.  Although by no means one of my most technical of wonders, it allowed me to express what I needed to, and it was a thrill to dance with Ariellah, who was able to perfectly embody all of the aspects of the Ereshkigal within me in a fashion suitable for the festival--something I wasn’t even close to being able to do.  Mine was all too raw and chaotic and uncontrollable for that.

Yet I am still an artist, and not one content to remain in the closet.  I had been splashing paint around in my own home for months, but I still needed somewhere to display my creations.  Something inside of me was screaming to be heard, to resonate with others of like mind, to share what I was learning, to benefit others who have felt the same type of pain in the way that these amazing female musicians had helped me through mine.  My customary stage wouldn’t work, so I decided to create some more videos in the flavor of Feels Like Rain.  I began to scout out locations around town, and put together outfits to suit the mood of each dance I wished to film.  One of my friends agreed to operate the camera and we discovered through the process that she had a passion for directing.  As we played, she began to give me more suggestions that helped to convey all these emotions that still seemed too big for a body of flesh and bone.

I returned to the Arkansas Riverwalk and began filming Precious Things.  Wearing a pair of tight-fitting khaki cargo pants and a tank top that showed off my martial artist’s physique, I began dancing a dance that had been bursting to get out of my skin for decades.  I blasted through the first recordings, only stopping to allow people to pass through.  Without interruption, I probably would have one-shot it.  My dance sandals had died and I tore my feet up spinning and spinning and spinning on concrete and brick until I was tiptoeing through the final shots.  It didn’t matter.  I needed to dance this dance.

We moved on to the fountain beside a bank parking lot on a weekend afternoon, ignoring the wolf-whistles and honks from passing cars.  It was freezing cold in that fountain!  Far colder than the one I had used for Feels Like Rain, as it is a pounding wall of water, and it was later in the year when we filmed this time.  But getting into that fountain I had been drooling over since moving to Pueblo was worth every goosebump and shiver.  We ended the day in triumph.

For our next session, we had planned to film Mother back at the Riverwalk, but upon awakening, I saw that the day was gray and dreary, not at all the sky I wanted.  We immediately switched gears. 

Little Earthquakes was filmed in my black gothy-dress at the gorgeous but dilapidated Mineral Palace Park.  This park was once the jewel of Pueblo with a lake and boat launch leading to the island, and a groovy band shell and bridge, in addition to flower gardens, lawns, groves and a play park for the kids.  The Mineral Palace itself has long since been demolished and now the freeway runs directly behind the band shell--highly annoying to anyone wishing for a sedate stroll in the park.  Most of the people I ever see at the park are older, and I often wonder if they remember it as it was in its prime, if they have fond memories that they enjoy revisiting.  It is a beautiful place, despite the cracks in the stone, the funky smell of the lake, the roaring of the semis.  All of these things are actually part of what endears me to the place.  It is not new and shiny, but I love it still.  

In my days scouting out locations for filming, I stood upon the bridge for about an hour, watching a crane at the water’s edge.  In all that time, it barely moved a step, occasionally stretched out its neck and then retracted it.  I stayed still too, although not nearly as still as the bird.  It was an exercise in patience and observation, and in stillness.  This park has remained one of my favorite places in town ever since.

When we arrived there to film Little Earthquakes, it was chilly and gloomy--perfect for the mood.  The birds flew in and out of their nests in the band shell, and the crows were out, winging across the water and lawns.  I was touched at the cameo appearances they made, given the lyrics of the song.  As the day progressed, the wind became stronger and stronger, and it became harder to get the shots we wanted.  While filming the sequences in the covered walkway with the iron fence, a squirrel pelted us with little green nuts, allowing for a good laugh amidst all that gloom.  (You can actually see one of the nuts falling through the initial shot at the walkway.)  And of course, tangled veils and spins on a hillside are always good tension breakers.

The next day, a brief rainy spell arrived, forcing us indoors and stealing my dance room once and for all with the return of the bedroom ceiling leak.  By the time that the sun came back out, our schedules would no longer allow for more filming.  Soon, autumn had fully fallen, followed by winter, which finalized the cessation of the project.  

But that didn’t mean I was no longer Angry-Girl.