Happy Day!

My good day begins at IHOP with the $2.99 weekday special. With full belly, I stop home to gather all the things I will need for the day: iPod, iPod dock, notebook, laptop, a change of clothes, DVD's of performance and film work, press materials, water bottle, purse. I pile everything into the car and drive to High Point to teach the day's dance classes.

After my experience with the girls yesterday evening at NCSU, I decide to teach my students at HPU the same phrase I taught during yesterday's rehearsal. It is a round, sweeping combination on 6/8 time with accents falling on the 1 and 4 of each musical phrase. I watch the students glide through the space, ebbing and flowing like waves on the ocean. I feel my head moving smoothly this way, then that way, atop my shoulders, mimicking the paths the students take as they progress through the movement. I am pleased with how this movement is settling into the dancer's bodies, beginners and experienced dancers alike, so I have decided to move forward with this material, possibly to use for the students' final showing at the end of the term.

Upon completing the day's classes at HPU, I make my way to Wake Forest University. There, I have been asked to lecture at an Arts Entrepreneurship class by Jan, who is the professor for the class, and the woman on whom I am completing a documentary about art and grief. The class is small, but attentive and interested in what I have to share about being industrious in the art world. I tell them to be open to new experiences and fearless about "going out on a limb." I tell them not to limit themselves by what mediums they have trained in during school, but to invite new interests into their spheres of making and doing. I show some work samples, which are well received, and answer enthusiastic questions about each. I tell all about how my experience in the art world has been so different than I would have ever imagined it when I was in school, and how many exciting surprises I have encountered because of that. I hope that if nothing else, I have instilled in the students that there is no right way to engage in art, only the ways that are honest for the individual.

Tomorrow, there is more editing of the documentary to be done and more rehearsing at NCSU!