Mydwynter:

And no, I don’t mean in a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” kind of way.

I mean in a “holding on to the feeling and the moment as you perform, with both hands and a mouthful of teeth” kind of way.

As an actor, you learn about commitment in terms of acting from deep within your character. In a drama, commitment is what allows you to be so blind as Helen Keller that you accidentally hit your co-star in the head with a glass pitcher on opening night* because you really didn’t see her. (Trust me on this.) In a comedy, commitment is what allows you to walk face-first into a closed door and have the audience wince. And commitment is everything in improvisational stagework; if you aren’t right there, in the moment, being whatever you’re supposed to be, the whole scene is going to fall apart.

Even if you’re in the wacky land of a musical, commitment is everything. It makes the difference between a cheesy flit on the stage and something truly heart-felt and wonderful. And it somehow makes something objectively silly (“really? the guy is going to get up and sing now?”) into something real.

I’m going to say it again, because it bears repeating: When you’re on stage, commitment is everything.

For example, let’s take this moment from the most recent revival of Company (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth). A brief bit of background: The central character, Bobby, is a bachelor who is surrounded by a large group of married friends. His journey through the show takes him from a place of stagnation and fear and an inability to commit (!) to the idea of marriage, to place where he’s finally ready to take that step. Up until this revival in 2006, the show was a relatively light-hearted look at relationships. Bobby was glib and sophisticated and lonely and slightly sad. This version, however, takes it up a notch. Watch this.

(If you have the time and inclination, you really should watch it all the way through from the beginning. The progression from the obstinate beginning, to the more pleading middle, to frustrated and confused, to joyous resignation, is GLORIOUS. But I’ll talk about emotional progressions in another post.)

Raúl Esparza, playing Bobby here, has 100% committed to his character. He’s in there. You know those moments in life where you’ve been fighting a fight within yourself for days, months, or years now, and you’re sick of not having a clear answer? You’re tired, and you’re frustrated, and maybe you’ve been crying. You just want to get that emotion out any way you possibly can, and it seems like the best way to do that is just to yell at the sky. That? Esparza just channelled that. On stage. While singing.

Commitment, baybee.

So I’m bringing this up, because I’ve seen a lot of performances recently where the people on stage were just sort of…there. They went through the motions, they knew their moves and hit their marks, but there was no spark. There may have been a storyline in there, but they didn’t feel it. So I sure as hell didn’t.

One of the most important things you can do as a performer is to learn how to commit to what you are doing. For one thing, you’re making the job of emotionally involving your audience WAY tougher if you’re not emotionally involved yourself. It can be done, but you have to be a fecking brilliant classical actor to do it, and let’s face it, sugarpie; you’re most likely not a fecking brilliant classical actor. So make it easier on yourself; learn to tap into that well of emo you’ve got down deep in there.

For another thing, being committed to what you’re doing will pull your audience into the story and make even that luke-warm storyline better. A so-so throughline concocted to stitch together a handful of disparate performances will seem much stronger if your audience is along for the ride with you. Think about it; if they’re in it too, they won’t notice the glaring plothole in the third act. They’ll just want to see what’s next. Really. (Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t freakin’ try to do it well first off, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And committing to that will help.

Which brings me to the last—but still extremely important—bit; if you are truly committed to what you are doing on stage, if you or someone else screws up, it won’t matter as much. In fact, it might not matter at all. There are two main reasons for this.

Let’s go back to something I said at the beginning. Improvisational acting depends completely on the actors being right there, right then, rolling with the punches. If they are committed to that moment, when actor number 1 does something totally unexpected, actor number 2 can just go with it. She can react as the character would have reacted, because she is absorbed in her character. Think about it. This works for all live performances, yeah? If your troupemate suddenly zigs when he should have zagged, if you are totally there on stage in that moment, you’re going to be able to go along with it way better than if you were just floating along in a haze of nothingness. In fact, you might be able to make something even better from it.

The second reason? I need to pull your audience in and get them invested in what you’re doing, because then if you fall on your ass…or drop something…or forget your line…or your headband falls off…you’re probably going to be able to completely gloss over the mistake. I’m cribbing a line from the drum major academy I went to when I was fifteen when I say, “if you screw up, screw up with enthusiasm”. If you have committed to what you are doing, and you have hooked your audience in, you can totally jedi-mind-trick them into thinking nothing is wrong. Seriously. This shit works.

So, please. Spank your inner moppet. Read some Coleridge. Do what you gotta do. But take that emotional energy and let it suffuse your whole self, from your core all the way out through your fingertips and the ends of your hair. Do it. It’ll be brilliant.
Show us what it’s like, being alive.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about dancing and “the rules” (perceived or real), and when it’s okay to just do your own thing.

And since I’m at the point where I’ve begun to focus pretty hard on coming back from that (stupid, ill-judged, only-slightly-voluntary) dance sabbatical, and I’ve just split this blog off from my business one so that I can keep more honest and personal entries separate from the more commercial ones, I’m just gonna ::blahh:: let it all out here. Bear with me.

I’ve been having a bunch of conversations lately, with friends who are beginning to question the influx of “other” that has been pouring into the tribal and fusion bellydance communities lately.

You may have noticed that there’s a hell of a lot of steampunk and steampunk-esque stuff floating around culture these days. Everybody wants a piece, because it’s gotten hip and funky and there are cool shiny things involved in it. And burlesque scenes are growing, as are the fire and circus arts. And there’s a bit of overlap there, and quite a bit of mutual admiration, and surprise! it seems like everywhere you turn people want a piece of it in their act. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it’s just this thing they do instead of dancing.

And then there are the people who stop dancing in the middle of their set to sing a song upside down, or ride a unicycle, or play a trumpet, or something. At what point do you just admit that you’re doing something wacky just to do something wacky? At what point is it just schtick?

I’m usually pretty damn good with grey areas, but I think for me the line has to be drawn when it’s no longer furthering the emotional throughline of the act. If you have to basically stop dancing to do your crazy-wacky-thing, it’s gonna be hard to convince me that it was necessary to convey what you wanted to convey. If I think, “huh. I wasn’t expecting that” in the middle of your piece when you pull some flowers out of your crotch, it’s not going to be easy to convince me that it helped you tell the story. (Unless your story really was about this new product you bought at the drug store…er, nevermind.) And really? If after the dance is over and all people remember about it is the new thing you did where you pole-vaulted over a dressing dummy covered in string, and how cool was that? and man, I wish I thought of that, and they aren’t thinking wow, when she soared over the guy it really made me feel like I felt the last time I was overcome with joy, then I’m calling foul.

The whole subject is a bit near and dear to my heart, since some of the ideas I’ve been having lately as the choo-choo train engine of my dancer-mind starts back up again have been about mixing in some of what I’ve learned over my vast and varied performance career into the bellydance that I do. The conversation I have with myself often goes a little something like this:

Me1: This song is so raffia, so Africa, so sun-breaking-through-the-clouds. It’s a lion running through amber grass. It’s…Oh, snap! You know what would be fucking awesome with this? I need to have this giant raffia mask, like that one I made five years ago, and everything needs to be golden and brown, and string skirts, and emergent, and lots of jumping and smiling and being like a playful cat.
Me2: Oh, c’mon Art-School. A giant raffia mask? What, are we in “The Lion King” all of a sudden? Can’t you just do it without the mask?
Me1: …Well, sure. But…it won’t be the same. There needs to be some sort of coming-out-of hiding right at that point in the song, and the mask conveys the feeling of the song and the story…and…and…it all matches.
Me2: But what if nobody gets it? Then you’re just some idiot onstage with a Julie Taymor fetish.
Me1: First of all, I don’t care if Taymor has hopelessly connected raffia with African music and jungle cats. This song is just screamin’ for it. And besides, that was years ago. Nobody’s gonna notice the connection.
Me2: The readers of this blog are certainly going to.
Me1: That’s not the point. The point is, I am not her, and she is not me. This piece is not from the bleeding Lion King, and I’m truly feel that this piece is gaining something from the use of the mask. It’s part of the story.
Me2: And where the hell do you think you’re going to perform this freak of unnature? You certainly don’t have appropriate places now. You know you’re not gonna do it somewhere specifically for tribal or classical bellydance…
Me1: Who cares? I want to dance to this song. This song makes me want to dance. I can make it, and maybe a show will show up someday. Where to perform it is not the whole point. A big part of the point is the creation. But maybe you’re right. Mask-work is kinda weird to be bringing into bellydance. What if all this is in my head?
Me2: Well, technically we are, Harvey.

And so on, and so on, like Ouroboros eating a snake sandwich.

I still haven’t decided if I’m going to make the mask. But I’m hoping the decision will come upon me when I finally choreograph it, when I can decide whether I really, really need it or not.

But this is just one piece out of many I have ideas for. The bottom line is, this: I took puppetry classes at university. I’ve been a mask-maker. I’ve been tap dancer, a modern dancer, a ballet dancer. I’ve danced on pointe, I’ve danced barefoot, and I’ve danced in four-inch heels. I’ve done Commedia dell’arte, musicals, and more Shakespeare than I could possibly begin to tell you about without quoting things. So I’ve begun to wonder: What have I learned from these things that I can bring into fusion pieces? All these things combine with others to make me me, so if I want to tell a story, can’t I use all the tools at my disposal? Isn’t the point to calling it “fusion” to mix elements of two or more arts together to help increase the value of the piece?
And if I do mix these things in, how do I do it so as to preserve what I think of as the soul of bellydance, to save it from being dropped out the window? How do I keep it from being generic performance art? And how do I keep it from being nonsense distracting people from my dancing, which—ultimately—is what I want to use to move people? How do I make it ethical bellydance fusion?

I don’t know the answers yet. But please, stay tuned as I try to find out.