When I walked in, I saw a whole group of women stretching and wearing appropriately dressed attire to perform. (I should have kept my workout outfit on that morning.) Oh well. The director offered a few words about the performance and the audition, which caught my attention. Audition? Then the choreographer shared what would happen during the rest of the workshop.

Thankfully, my artist friend attended the event, which tremendously helped ease my nervousness about an audition. The afternoon was filled with exercises to get the performers comfortable in their bodies, and then we learned a shortened version of the performance. I managed to stay afloat and hang in there with the others, but my body was feeling fatigued halfway. During the last hour, we broke up into small groups and had to come up with our interpretations of embodying these women and their generational trauma.

I learned a great deal from the women in the room. The performative nature of dance and becoming comfortable with strangers and movement was brand new. When I work in photography and self-portraiture, the work is done alone. The physical product of the work – printed image – is the evidence of the performance, the aftermath. I can be comfortable in my skin knowing that there are no eyes on me during the performance of one. However, the workshop encouraged me to be comfortable in a public space and to be more open to the movement of embodying someone/something else. The topic, we all know, is a heavy one and cannot be taken lightly. I appreciated the sincerity and thoughtfulness the performers took to create their interpretations through movement.

I didn’t excel in the day’s audition, but I took with me an openness to what it takes to perform.