Today I felt scared in class for the first time.

I wasn’t afraid of speaking, or presenting, or dancing, or anything specific, but for some reason with each minute passing I could feel fear creeping over me.

Although it’s been only a week since j-term started, I feel that I’ve already learned a lot about dance. With each day my understanding of dance history and of the various interrelated movements within it is being altered, as I learn more and more about pieces from the past as well as the contemporary practices. However, with all this knowledge comes also the responsibility to use it in a productive way. The more I learn, the more difficult it becomes to comprehend all of it and situate everything within the same big picture.

While working on Trajal’s recent assignment regarding prepositions (“what if in 1963 someone from the voguing community came to perform at Judson Church amongst the postmodernist dancers?”), I could sense myself becoming overcome with pressure. I feel like I have so much to say and so many representational tools to use now that whenever I try to put it all in one piece, I start freaking out as I realize that there is so much that I’ll not be able to include in this short sequence. At the same time, I think that it’s the artist in me that wants to create something special – after all, all of the postmodernist dancers we’ve looked into were so visionary and so unique for their time – yet unique ideas require time, and certainly more than a week’s worth of research.

I wish I could link this feeling to a specific moment from today, but it was really the general sensation. However, I have decided to gather my courage and present my preposition sequence tomorrow – I wonder whether I’ll feel differently looking back at this moment after I’ve presented the piece.