This is an affirmation, we call them mantras, that we use in Two Can Do. My entire dance journey has been about this - ‘the goal is the journey’. I’ve come to realise that I’ve always known this. From the age of two I’d be dancing around in my grandmother’s living room after dinner. I made everyone get up and dance. We had to! What else was there to do but embrace the journey of how good it feels to connect to the creativity that flows through us? Dance and music always did that for me when I was a child.
Since then I’ve continued on the journey of humanity. Of creativity, of identity, of remembering, of seeking, and reconnecting to the beautiful magic that lives within every single one of us human beings.
When I was small I absolutely loved to dance to music after dinner. From there I journeyed into the ballroom dancing world where I fell in love with the rhythm, the liveliness and the joy in Latin and Swing dancing. An Irish dancing school opened up in my town and my mom asked me if I wanted to try. I journeyed into the studio in a different way and fell completely and madly intoxicated with this new-to-me art form. Irish dancing was it for me.
It was everything. I could do nothing else because this made me feel the thrill of creative expression. I tried other things but they paled in comparison to what made me feel great. Years turned into decades and I realized I was seeking because somehow I had lost touch with the feelings I used to have about dance. I journeyed into New York City to train professionally in nearly every other style of dance I could get my hands on. It opened me up to new feelings and new expressions. It was enough for me to realize that I was still seeking… What was I seeking?
I was seeking foundations that would set me up to liberate myself and access my creative potential. I had no idea that that’s what it was at the time. But upon reflection I was able to look back and realize that that’s what it always was. Finding the thing that makes me feel grounded so that I can be free to fly. Take flight with my infinite creative energy. I was seeking to remember that, to come back to that. That this is what I was born with and what I am filled with. I believe that we are all filled with this infinite creative energy.
These past few years, as I ventured into contemporary dance and became the choreographer of Two Can Do, I have now been able to build a solid foundation that I now live freely within. This practice, this ritual, has become the thing that allows me to take my attention and focus it.
I feel like all along I was trying to figure out how to just get still and enjoy being here, being me. Two Can Do has allowed me to test this out, to figure it out and to continue to figure it out. This summer we will share our rituals through I Am Here Now: a virtual summer immersive workshop. I am so excited for that. It is the first time that I will be sharing so much of my artistic practice with a community outside of my team. We are ready, I am ready and that is exciting.
Image above: Two Can Do Performance
There are so many different ways to do the same thing. My personal journey has been trying as many of those ways as I possibly could until I found a way that allows me to have all of me. Where I don’t have to try to do anything or try to be anyone, I don’t have to fit into this mold or that. I’ve found a place where I can allow myself to investigate what I care about and do that with integrity and depth.
The journey is the goal. There is no end goal for me. That’s what drew me to create and continue to allow Two Can Do to flourish, and allow others to flourish and grow and transform with it as well.
Any time I find that a situation doesn’t have enough integrity to allow me to be there with the fullness of who I am there fully then I know that something needs to transform. I keep seeking and will continue to seek all whilst my creative energy finds its different expressions. Because it’s not always going to include dance forever for everybody - if my life changes and my relationship to dance changes as well - seeing those as endpoints cuts me off from the creative energy that I have. I know this now.
I associated my creative energy with my dance for so long that when I didn’t have dance I felt like I wasn’t a creative person anymore. Creative energy is my oxygen and my expression of humanity. This creativity lives within us - dancing is one way to express it but there are so many other ways to express it. What’s important is remembering that it’s always there within us. There are so many ways to do that, too.
So if for some reason your journey with dance changes too, I hope that you know that there’s one person in this world… me… who is reminding you to remember that your creativity still lives within you and is always there, awaiting whichever ways you choose to express it. It can be anything. We are walking, breathing, living creative energy.
Two Can Do is my process of remembering that, ‘yes, I am creation’. I am creation. I am creative energy infinitely. And so if it flows through me infinitely then it must be accessible for everybody else in that way as well. That is what sparks me to share the process behind Two Can Do and not just Two Can Do itself. That is why I am so excited about I Am Here Now this summer. To bring you into this journey and support and hold space for you to embrace your own journey and creative transformation. My creative practice within Two Can Do allows me to feel just like that little two year old B dancing after dinner at grandma’s again. May it continue. You are all welcome.
The journey is the goal for me, truly, friends.
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