I’m slowly preparing for my performance on Friday, and been thinking about my act a lot. How it’s matured and shifted over the years, mostly in subtle and internal ways that only I have really noticed. How rarely I perform it and why that’s how it should be. How differently I view and judge my process now than I did when I did the act for the first time in 2007.
I’ve been training hard in preparation, but haven’t been running the choreography yet. For this act it makes sense – the actual tricks aren’t the focus. I have multiple options, all of which are in muscle memory. What I’ve been doing to prep for the performance is visualizing my interactions and intent.
As I’ve brainstormed and let the visuals come to me while I listen to the music, I’ve accepted that this will not be the same act I have done before. I am simply in a different place, and that’s what makes this piece is so amazing – it’s been different each time.
For the most part those differences have been subtle things that only I knew about, or minor choreography shifts. The first time I performed the act it was about the fear I had in regards to the relationship I was in, and the silks represented him, something external to me.
After that the meanings shifted internally but the story and the sense of vulnerability and fear remained the same. I was always caught off guard by the sight of the silks as being something I’d never seen before. It’s a giant leap of faith to go to them.
I think I want to speak to the cycle, now. I’ve been telling the same story and coming to the same place in this spiral where an opportunity to perform this act comes, but haven’t represented that perception in the piece. The most difficult and least genuine part of the act is pretending I’ve never seen the silks before. Now that I am me, and not Zita, I don’t think I can do that any more.
I’ve seen them. They are a part of me, a hand I’ve yet to take, a demon I’ve yet to integrate, a mask in a dream, a lesson I am still learning.
This act helps me grow by allowing me to present my emotional self in an intense physical way, by being itself a representation for transforming and overcoming. The processing afterward is always profound – sometimes I break down crying and shaking after I perform from the waves of back breaking emotion that flood through the opening.
I don’t know what this will end up being. I’ve become comfortable enough with my process as a performer and am familiar with this uncertainty being how I produce my best work – but I do know this; I only have this performance in me once, and that’s part of the reason I’m limiting my rehearsal to this week. The people who see what I do on Friday will never see me like that again.
Next time, I will be at a different threshold, with a different demon to tame, and a different place in my life, overcoming a different thing, telling a different part of my story. I can say that with how the storm of my recent life is focused into an eye right now that this one is going to be big, big shit – at least for me. I suspect the tying of a few loose ends.
Getting in the air again on Wednesday to work with the music. Resting, until then. Starting with bed at 8. Mmmmm.