Most of the concepts for this show have been cultivated over the last year of my life. After moving to San Francisco from my grandparents house in San Diego I became overwhelmingly aware that I had been living a life in which I was mostly looking and trying to create happiness but very rarely experiencing it. There was a unauthentic feeling about the way I related to others and the way that I conducted myself. I was comfortable and content but not satisfied or happy. I tried to get rid of this feeling by incorporating things that felt “real” into my life. Through music, events and art I tried to rid myself of this horrible fakeness that seemed to curse me and the people I knew and grew up with. It wasn’t in till I had a bit of a breakdown and found myself moving into an ashram that I could get the perspectives I needed to examine these feelings and ideas in a constructive way. My life like most have been flooded with ideas and messages telling me that things should look and feel a certain way. We are told that food and shopping will make us feel better and that sex and money should be at the forefront of our minds. We have paths laid out for us to follow and we have an endless mouth of desires to feed. Its easy to see why happiness can be hard to find hidden behind billboards and skinny girls in jeans.
My spirituality combined with the amazing group of dancers that I have worked with have allowed me to explore these ideas more and discover and define my love hate relationship with pop culture. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to gather, colaberate and share my visions with these other dancers. They became so much more to me the just girls that were going to learn some dance moves. We became friends. The rehearsals became an open floor for expression. We got to see each others strengths and weaknesses and we worked in a way that was sensitive to that. We developed a style of dance vocabulary that is both powerful primal movement with the awareness to detail and a graceful sensitivity .
Mantis Dance Collective only happened because of the love and trust that was formed between us. At times I felt undeserving of the trust that my dancers gave me but it was always the eagerness and faith that they showed towards me and the show that allowed it to go on. They helped me to get over the moments of self doubt and fear that went along with sharing this performance.
So in so many words, thank you to CounterPulse for allowing us this opprtunity and we are looking forward to April 10th.
Tarren
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This post is very honest and very moving. I can totally relate to when you say “I tried to get rid of this feeling by incorporating things that felt “real” into my life. ” and “My life like most have been flooded with ideas and messages telling me that things should look and feel a certain way.”
I’ve dealt with that by making “only disconnect” my mantra. Turning off all electronic stuff for a whole 3 days, from fri to monday. TV Computer Internet Phone. Blocking out all that flood of spam and chatter. Just one little thing and you feel like your life belongs more to you.
I looked for your company on youtube to see if there’s anything out there.