Do you ever get a voice in your head whispering to you that you’re not really an Actor? Or a Dancer, a Teacher, an Improviser…A friend of mine wrote to me a few weeks ago that because of feedback they’d had about their body, they felt like they couldn’t call themselves a Dancer.
This led into a conversation about artistic titles, and who gets to claim what and why, and how artistic titles can be wonderful and empowering, but can also hold us back.
My friend very generously agreed to share our back-and-forth here, for you. I look forward to hearing if any of this resonates with your experience!
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ARTIST: One thing that comes up for me a lot is the “but I’m not [insert title of skillset]”. For me, it’s Dancer, but for others it could be singer, improviser, etc.
This belief kind of rears up for me in response to feedback I’ve gotten about my body and how it is perceived by others—the idea that at my size, I am not expected to be a mover, and then I kind of hear myself reinforce it (internally and externally) to get ahead of anyone else saying it…
So what’s my question? Ideas about challenging limiting beliefs based on old feedback? Or ways to reframe the titles of who gets to do what onstage? Or just how to practice the thing that feels not-mine until it is mine?
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CAITLIN: Not-enough narratives can be wickedly painful. And powerfully compelling, in the sense of believability.
I think scarcity narratives work their most powerful magic when there is some other — someone else’s — seeming-reality or seeming-truth which backs them up.
There are institutions, after all, where students train to be Dancers, with a capital D. They graduate and seemingly earn that title, Dancer, and then they go off and audition for Dance companies and they become professional Dancers. And culturally, when we think about the bodies inhabiting Dancer with a capital D, they do tend to have a type, don’t they? So from this very specific, very dominant lens, Dancers know certain things and they look a certain way and they can do certain things.
The goal of Scarcity Mindset is to help us survive, and she does this by creating tunnel vision — meaning, whether we are in real or perceived scarcity, how our brain perceives things becomes limited to solving the scarcity at hand. And we have been living, for hundreds of years, in a culture built on the assumption of scarcity. So we see through scarcity-glasses everywhere, all the time.
I wonder if the title of Dancer, and the way in which we’ve gate-kept that title so that only some can access it, is a mindset birthed in part from colonialism. When our ancestors* left home and landed here with all of their fear and their scarcity (some of them, anyway), they looked for ways to meet the needs of their fear, and probably also a need to feel in control. They began to take things that were not theirs to take, and label things, and control things. It sort of makes sense how ‘Dancer’ might emerge from this mindset, this fear-induced labelling frenzy. Perhaps it eased someone else’s fear of chaos and scarcity to create ownership over something that can’t be owned.
Because this is the truth, isn’t it? If we’re in a car traveling through the dark tunnel vision of scarcity mindset, and we put the car in reverse, and we slowly back out of the tunnel, back into the sunlight — we might realize that there’s a whole valley below us. A mountain above us. There’s lakes and rivers and trees and birds. And when our perspective widens in this way, we can remember that Dance is not a thing with a capital D, but is in fact simply a joyful framework for looking at movement of all kinds. Everyone, every thing, dances. Leaves dance on the wind. Birds dance to mate. Fingers dance across a keyboard. Pea plants dance, slowly, up a trellis. Bees dance to communicate, roots dance through the soil. It’s one of our better human constructs, if I may say so myself, because through the lens of dance, suddenly a whole forest becomes a joyful choreography, of which we are innately a part.
So I wonder what happens if, when scarcity starts to take hold again, if you can start a simple tap with a finger on your knee. Take a deep inhale, as you remember even our hearts have rhythm, and release a slow exhale as you find that beat. It’s inside you, it’s yours, it’s no one else’s. How you move to that beat is entirely your own, and what a joy to frame it as ‘dance,’ knowing you are participating with something ancient and old and beyond any boundaries our institutions can construct.
And absolutely – claim that title ‘dancer,’ if it helps to remind you that you belong to something as ancient as life itself.
What do you think? Any pieces of that resonate with you?
*I’m specifically referring to ‘our ancestors’ as white, European colonizers, as these are the ancestors that belong to myself and the artist.
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ARTIST: I love this. I really resonate with the natural imagery (I mean, yes!! The dance of my bean shoots is SO present in my life right now) and I hear you on the ancientness/ubiquitousness of movement—something we have the right to inherently, without need to commodify the training of it.
This tension between Dancer and dancer is interesting to me too. Makes me think about how I understand myself as an Actor. Am an I actor because I am trained to act? Because I’ve been paid to act? Because I have devoted substantial time and energy to learning to act? Because I love to act? Or simply because I act????
I really value my training and I respect the depth of skill and knowledge that training can bestow… I wonder how to reckon this idea with my true belief in the right of all to do the actions that some train years for, and the validity and value of the untrained contribution…. Some part of me wants to reserve Dancer as a term of respect for those who dedicate the time, effort and devotion to dance.
Sticky! Capitalism is sticky!!
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CAITLIN: Ah lovely. I’m glad there was some resonance there.
I feel like the answers to your follow-up questions are…yes? As in: Yes, you’re an Actor because of your training. Yes, you’re an A/actor because part of the human condition is that driving need to tell stories.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Dancer or Actor as a term of respect for the folks who have really invested their time and energy training in those professions. I wonder if the stickiness happens when we try to create firm, binary divisions, and create gatekeeping around particular titles. For example — there is so much power and validity and freedom to be gained in the ownership of queer labels in a heterosexist world. Names carry power. They can create belonging and ease. When I found the term fluid as a descriptor for my sexual orientation, I could feel that power. I felt myself settle. Yes, yes, this feels like me.
But I think where we can get stuck is when we start believing that the name, the label, is the thing in and of itself. Fluid or Bisexual or Gay is a framework. But even without that framework, we would still be experiencing love in all those different ways. Without the framework of Dancer, we would still dance. dancing is the thing. Dancer is a framework that has uses and power — so long as we don’t mistake the title for the actual, living, breathing joy of dancing itself.
How’s that? 😀 What do you think?
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ARTIST: Yeah, I love this distinction of the name and the thing itself. The map is not the territory. And I do think that the “Dancer” “Actor” “Painter” titles (hilarious that we capitalized the capitalist labels!) are often held up as special because they have been “professionalized” (read: done in exchange for money). And these expressions/arts/ways of moving through the world are more than their professionalized slivers! They are more than the exchange! So I am strongly in agreement!
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What do YOU think? How do artistic titles nourish your creative practice — or hinder it? I wanna hear! Let me know.
Until then, so much love to you. I hope you seek ease today.
With love,
Caitlin
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Would you like to chat about the ideas here? Or read more about this sort of thing? I send call-and-response email newsletters whenever I have the capacity to do so. It’s called “Rest & Love in Creative Living,” and you can join here.