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I heard a roar two floors away mid conversation with a friend. I checked out of the conversation to wonder if I was hearing things. Internally shrugging I went back to listening to him.
“- hard on yourself! Did you hear how they yelled for you?!”
“You know that’s not why I do things… I’m just not sure how I feel.”
We were revisiting a conversation, this time prompted by a competition I’d just stepped away from. I was being critical, and he was encouraging me to be kinder to myself. As always I was growing mildly frustrated. I didn’t feel like I was being unkind to myself. I just… wanted more from myself.
A niggling sensation just out of sight, a faded emerald roar again. I patted his arm.
“I think they might be announcing winners…”
“And you were just going to miss it!”
He jumps up, dragging me to my feet and up the stairs. I feel a twisting sensation in my stomach. Awards are my least favorite part of competing. The tension and the build up, the nerves, the discomfort observed in my reaction… no matter which way it goes. It leave me with feelings that feel hard to process. I’m supposed to want to be there, and always feel obligated to be, so I try to go. We see an out pouring of people from the main room, and I have a sigh of relief. Maybe I misheard and this was one of many of the other announcements needed for a festival this big.
I regularly miss awards on accident. They just tend to slip my mind or are lower on my priorities and the next thing I know I’m being told about it. I tend to feel awkward during applause and am confused by my internal response when most people tell me they like what I do. I’m honored, but also a big part of me just wants to get back to dancing. Back to my projects. I’ve already moved on.
A friend leaves the room only to say “OH! There you are! You missed awards. You placed third. Congrats!”
why do you dance?
This question has been rolling in my head for a while now and this article has been drafted more times than I can count. Yet, I found myself struggling to find the write words and keep it out of the easy territory of “just be more like me!” Or fall into shaming accidentally. Why do you dance began to expand outside of just dance into what motivates you? Are you honest with yourself about it? How can someone have a healthy relationship to it?
I’ve bothered friends, private students, classes, fellow artists and more about this. Seeking understanding. Some answers are less socially supported than others and yet they came up again and again disguised as individual desires. Some people lie to themselves, despite their motives being clear as glass. Some just lie to me, worried I will think less of them. And yet all of it is still a part of this musing.
What, drives you?
It’s not exactly novel to come to the conclusion it’s a spectrum. There are those who are driven by process and those who are driven by recognition. Some might say this is just a rehashing of internal vs external motivation or the journey vs the destination, but I want to explore the thought anyway.
dancing for process
On this scale I am VERY far on the process side. In everything I do, I am first and foremost chasing a feeling, satisfaction. I love to cook and there is a moment when I am cooking for a group that I live for. It’s between the end of cooking and the beginning of the meal. It’s short and transient. The moment I look up exhausted from my work and focus, stepping out of flow state and back into the real world to view all that I was able to accomplish. I did that. People sit down to eat and they begin to tell me what they think, and enjoying the food. It’s nice, but very not the point.
Don’t get me wrong I like having people appreciate my efforts, the time and labor I set aside, but in terms of drive… It’s pure process. All processes must end and when that time comes I want to be able to look and feel satisfaction with my efforts within the constraints I have.
dancing for recognition
Then I met someone and asked him a version of the question, why do you dance? What drives you? We sat together at an event that requires a certain level of commitment towards the art form. He tells me of his journey with dance. That at this point he likes to work on things and wants to improve but accepts that he may only receive less recognition than he wants. He seems to be at peace with this. I find this curious as most people are not so accepting and kind to themselves about it.
Another dear friend and I had recently had a long series of conversations as we worked on a project together. He works hard and also sees the writing on the wall, as it were. Much of the time he puts his efforts into other ways to gain recognition, but in this case there was a chance for his original desire to be achieved. I struggled to understand this change in him, why he cared about the results. Why he was turning away from the enjoyment of the process of building something with me to singularly focus on this recognition. After things go the way we both assumed they might, he remains upset and I didn’t know how to help.
Others have expressed that they dance to win. They dance to be celebrated for their efforts. They dance because people should know how good they are. They are motivated to gain access into status. There is something social, some type of power, that they want and the way to get it is through some action. Somehow the focus always is much more on the end goal over all else. It’s something I struggle to understand. Being primarily motivated by others. Being driven by other people validating your worth and value.
healthy relationship to growth in dance
For some this is enough of a piece. Consider why you do thing and what motivates you. But I can’t help but think of the trend I’ve noticed speaking to dancers about the way they are feel about where they are in their growth or journey. The friend with peace, is unusual. Most folks I know feel a lot worse, at times including me. Moreover your preference to one or the other may be more complicated than saying
“Just worry less about what others think”
Or
“Just be happy with good enough”
So I spent some time thinking about how to turn these focuses from something that might hold you back to something that pushes you to be better.
how can it hold you back?
With a focus on process it can be easy to intellectualize your way into not doing much. It can be easy to discourage yourself thinking you still need to learn or work on more. Without pressure it can be hard to have activation energy. Even if you love the process that doesn’t make it easy. At times it may even feel a bit like banging your head against a wall or pulling teeth. It’s easy to feel lost and unsure. Because all the satisfaction is in the completion.
Meanwhile with recognition it seems to be easy to get lost on Black and white thinking and ego. You might have something to prove and become blinded by ambitions and/or expectations of being admired. When you don’t receive what you want you sulk, or lash out depending. Not getting certain results can be crushing, and the acceptance of that can create frustration with others that can spoil your relationship to the dance community. It can lead to focusing on the shallowest but flashiest parts to prove ones self.
Although very different motivations and relationships to the art form and yourself, I think there are a few categories that can be used to lower the stakes and raise the enjoyment of pursuing one’s goals. This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point to think of these things.
building a healthier relationship
size
How big is this thing you are trying to do? It’s easy to pick a big goal and then to be overwhelmed with trying to make that thing happen. You want to be known across the globe? Huge. You want to be on the biggest stage you know? Massive. You want to start a project many times bigger than you’ve ever done? Immense. You feel like the project may never end. Enormous. It’s easy to feel daunted when the size of the thing you want is so big particularly if you aren’t any where close to having experience with something like that.
If you haven’t done a sport before, competed and won something, why put the pressure on yourself to make the Olympics? If you want to impress someone and they have no idea who you are, maybe it’s not that you’re doomed to never make it but your goal outsizes your current ability. And that’s ok! It means there is more time to get there but maybe a more realistic goal on your way is more easeful.
If you’re not sure if your goal is too large, tell it to a friend if they gasped or gawk at you, it probably is too much. (and not that friend that supports you no matter what, who won’t give you the hard feedback. Tell it to the friend you’re afraid to tell it to.) If you’re still not sure, break it down into one step. You aren’t writing a book, you’re writing a page. You aren’t teaching hundreds of classes, you are teaching one class.
intensity
Intensity can look a lot like size, but is different. Intensity is the difficulty of accomplishing the task. Think about walking a long distance, but one trip is all up steep hill and another is flat. A goal can be big but not difficult, although something too large can make it difficult.
A way you can vary intensity is time. If you take a big goal and make it take 20 years that feels a lot easier to manage than doing it in one. 20 years of intentional work at a dance, at a project, and goal will get you closer with less stress and more happiness. If there is celebration along the way to that, then you might even feel accomplished. But to try to do the same in a year only sets you up for negativity and a feeling of disappointment, if you make it at all. As an intense person I also find a lack of intensity to be just as much of a detriment. So balance is key.
Another dimension is the threshold for success being too high. Let’s use myself as an example, as early goal I set for myself was wanting my teacher to want to dance with me as badly as I did him, one day. I assumed I might never get there and paced myself as long as I needed for it to come true. For me feeling successful was ultimately not when my teacher wanted to dance with me, but every time I push myself out of my comfort zone along the path to that ultimate goal. Success was taking a harder class, asking scary people to dance, competing, and otherwise pushing myself. So, if I never actually made it to the point that he wanted to dance with me as much as I did with him, I was still successful in the end. If I had been more recognition focused, maybe it was acknowledgment of all the friends I made along the way.
It’s one thing to want everyone to know you from finals, but what about from prelims? What if everyone knows you not from the stage, but from being a warm and welcoming social dancer. Many people wanna be known for being a good dancer what does that even mean? There are lots of ways to be a good dancer. Have you considered what your way might be? Besides, the spotlight is only so big, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to be influential. What if you make someone feel included, what if you teach the beginner lesson that makes someone fall in love, what if you checking on someone is the difference between them feeling like they can be them selves or not. What can you do TODAY to be on the path to where you want to be?
self assessment
No one likes to be bad at things and yet we all are bad at some things. if we don’t take time out to look at our actual skill it is easy to miss things. Auto pilot may get us there, or may get us to drive right off a cliff. Unchecked drive will only get you lost.
Have you dug your self into a grave trying to learn one thing and feeling unsuccessful? Have you set a goal and refused to change it? Have you started to blame others for your lack of success? One can get stuck doubling down, seeking more and more process and never finishing a thing, or seeking more and more recognition and never questioning why they aren’t getting it.
That maybe, it’s you.
Maybe you don’t need to know more, maybe you aren’t reaching for more difficult things, maybe you aren’t trying. Maybe you are focusing on the wrong things, maybe you aren’t as good as you think, maybe you have conflicting interests, maybe you aren’t willing to sacrifice. It’s just information.
Maybe you were trying too hard, maybe you’ve missed the point, maybe you have more to learn, maybe rested on your successes too long. Maybe you got lucky.
It’s just information.
Using this information to inform your process can allow you to continue to grow.
Audit yourself or ask a trusted (!) someone to do it for you. For process folks, kill your darlings. For recognition folks, ask your self if you are getting the results you want, and are you happy while do are attempting to. Personally if the answer to either of these is, no, I’d change Something.
Are you pinning everything you are, your identity, on this? I would suggest you diversify. Reality is no matter if you are focused on process or recognition you may not achieve your goals. To place your worth on one thing so precarious, makes it impossible to be chill. It’s what sours passion into arrogance, entitlement, and ego. If you make this thing happen or not has nothing to do with WHO you are. Knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, can only help you on the path to what you want to achieve for yourself.
acceptance
The biggest bit, is acceptance. Remember old trees don’t grow at the same rate as saplings, we aren’t meant to. Slow growth isn’t NO growth. And sometimes, it is. Accept where you in terms of what motivates and if it is working for you. Common advice is to only be motivated by internal reasons, and I do think those are more sustainable, more controllable and less volatile, but maybe you aren’t there. Maybe you are just wired to seek belonging over some internal desire. Just like I am coming to accept that I am simply not motivated by accolades and recognition. Acceptance of this may ease some of the tension.
After reflecting and adjusting you may not find yourself closer to what you want. There are no guarantees in life and even if you do “everything right” you still may not get what you want.
If you are recognition seeking, if you don’t stay on of the treadmill you may find yourself flung off it. In all likelihood, one day you will find yourself out of the limelight. So, if you can’t pivot your motivation, maybe you change your audience. These folks have gotten all the inspiration they can from you, and that something to be celebrated. Still, maybe there are others. Maybe you get your recognition need met elsewhere and dance becomes about sharing, or representation. Maybe you change what it is you want to be known for.
If you are a process focused, you may lose interest. You may hit a plateau and never seem to be able to get over. You may run out of ideas. You may get bored. So what? There is nothing wrong with maintenance and deepening a craft at a certain level. If you assume that you’ll only keep improving and it only looks one way, one day you might find yourself like Sisyphus. I’d like to imagine you are at least happy. But only you can decide that.
There is a chance that in acceptance there will be movement as well. Rest is sometimes the antidote to being stuck. Sometimes rest is just rest though, and it must be enough. To sit on our plateaus and watch the sun rise to warm us yet again.
so, why do you dance?
Why do you dance is a complicated question and what keeps you dancing even more so. I don’t have answers and I don’t wanna pretend that I do. But I’m hoping for someone at least, these questions and reflections on what drives you to dance and how to maintain a healthy relationship with those drives, is helpful. These are just some of the things I’ve been thinking about having talked to many a dancer about their feelings around their dance. I really think a combination of being honest with ourselves, realistic about size of our goals, and setting them at a reasonable intensity level will help with a lot of our feelings around our process of growth. It surely isn’t easy, but I also think the worst thing that happens is we learn a little more about ourselves.
What are you working on in relation to dance? Are you driven by process, recognition or something else?
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