Today was another rough day, as my headache still persisted. Luckily, I seem to have made a breakthrough with a quick trip to Cleveland Clinic reducing my pain significantly! Let’s hope it continues to subside. However, as much as I struggled with my physical health today, I also made great breakthroughs with my own performance. The title I have chosen for today, “Facing the Front” is both literally and figuratively: literally starting the performance facing the audience and figuratively facing the front of my confidence as a performer.

This manifested itself in both Ondrej’s class and Trajal’s class. In Ondrej’s class, I felt the pressure of performance when we danced the short sequence in front of half the class. It’s that knot-in-your-stomach feeling every time Ondrej says “Now I’ll watch you guys” or every time Trajal steps to the front of the room to observe. As much as I know the choreography and feel myself moving in the way I should be, I can’t help but psych myself out. The first time we performed the short sequence in groups, I found myself tripping over my own feet, despite being able to do the steps just a minute before. Facing the front in this sense, especially as the choreography starts with the dancer facing the side, is more of a confidence booster. Build yourself up and perform, even if you feel like you’ll fall. Because, as Ondrej had us demonstrate going across the floor, even as we fall, we will pick ourselves up. What’s important is that we let ourselves fall (to an extent!) If you catch yourself before the fall, there is no achievement. This dance sequence, although short, has taught me about being confident in how the movement feels within my own body, not necessarily how it looks. So in that case, facing the front is being able to say, “You know what? I don’t know if this looks exactly like how Ondrej performs it, but I don’t care. I feel the suspension. I feel like action and reaction. And that’s what matters.”

In Trajal’s class, the “facing front” is taken more literally. My piece combining vogue and postmodernist dance involved walking forward towards the audience with confidence. This was a challenge. In life, I tend to move a bit more under the radar (sometimes- other times I have to let some energy go through my walk aha). To walk forward with attitude and confidence was a great way of boosting my own confidence. Through the dance, I was able to pull myself up, face the front, and put my best foot forward both down the runway and through life. This persisted not only in the performance, but also while we were working as a studio. I noticed that sometimes, when he wasn’t watching Kazuo Ohno, he would walk around and observe the people practicing/working in the space. This was the same knot in my stomach from before and it wasn’t even a real performance. I felt like I needed to stop rehearsing just because he was watching me, however, just the opposite needed to happen. I just needed to face the front, even if that’s where Trajal was standing, and be confident in my rehearsal.

I am hoping that I will take the confidence that facing the front has given me and apply it to my interview/Butoh dance archive in the future.