So a few weeks ago, I wrote about one of my first big Trueing decisions: deciding upon graduating from college to pursue acting professionally.
But I realized that my Trueing journey started before then, and that that big decision had everything to do with what had happened in high school and college.
In high school, I found myself. I found myself as a dancer, as a choreographer, and as an artist in a community of creative people.
In college, I lost the thread.
And I think that is true in our Trueing journeys. Some seasons bring us closer and closer to the core of who we are and some seasons see us spinning away from our real path. And we need both experiences to know what is really ours to do. And to recognize the forces that pull us away from our True.
I had always loved dance. But for a long time it was a hobby alongside other passions like horses and making chocolate chip cookies. I studied ballet from 10-12. I liked our funny curly haired teacher, and I was thrilled when I got into toe shoes. But I dropped dance when I got my horse Rosie.
In ninth grade, when we lived in England, my mom signed me up for a jazz dance class. My best friend Annika (another foreigner like me, half American and half Swedish) would walk to the train after school in Didcot, and take the train in to Oxford for the evening class.
I mostly remember warm ups to Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine and learning to do isolations, moving one part of your body at a time. It was a high point at a time that was challenging and stressful in so many ways.
When I got back to California and started 10th grade, I was signed up for dance as my PE class. There was a popular teacher named Marcia who taught Modern Dance, but her class was full, so I was placed in the “other” class. At first, we had a little old lady who put us in a circle and taught us folk dances, but she suddenly disappeared, and instead we had Elvia, a tiny black woman from Panama with large eyes, who played Michael Jackson and R&B.
Eliva was as strict as could be for the technique portion of our class. Pushing us to build our arms and our core, to raise our legs higher.
But as soon as we moved to the choreographed part of the class, it was all about heart and expression and feeling the music. Unlike a lot of dance teachers, who might teach you a different short routine each week, Elvia would choreograph an entire song, and each week, we’d learn the next portion of the song, until we had the whole number down.
The songs she choreographed to were all about heartache and pain. Being alone, or having your heart broken. Finally, someone was giving us permission to feel as much and express as much of the most hidden and tender parts of ourselves. For three and a half minutes, laying our souls bare was all that mattered.
At some point, Elvia left the high school, but she taught classes in the evenings nearby and many of us migrated with her. At school, I took class with Marcia who was fine, but a little subdued next to the fire that was Elvia.
Our school offered something once a year called Dance Production. A group of chosen dancers would choreograph and perform individual numbers that together would make up a full-length dance concert.
At the end of 10th grade, they held the auditions for the fall Dance Production. I was excited. I idolized the performers I knew who were part of the high school musicals, some of whom were becoming my friends.
We auditioned in random pairs, performing choreography we had been taught, and filling a few counts with our own choreography. I was paired with Monica, a serious, classically trained ballet dancer. And I forgot my choreography and had to improvise.
Still, I was hopeful. I was starting to feel like I was one of the better dancers in my class.
So when results were posted, I was crushed. Not only did I not get in, I got one of the lowest scores. And at least two girls I knew I was better than did get in.
So my junior year, instead of Dance Production, I was in Advanced Dance. And we got to perform one number that we put together as a group as part of the big Production. The choreography for my section was fun for me and I took the lead in our four person group. I could easily picture fun things we could do that would look cool onstage, doing a special kind of leap onstage, and kicking over each other’s heads.
Advanced Dance was right before Dance Production, so as our class wound down, the folks for the next class would come in. And I started getting great feedback. That I was a great dancer, that I should be in Dance Production.
I continued to work on my technique (Elvia taught Afro Latin Jazz Blues, and then ballet for my technique). And when auditions came around at the end of junior year, I easily got in.
My friend Kirk and I put together two numbers, one a duet to Hall and Oates’ You Make My Dreams Come True, and one to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, a group number that represented the sole survivor of the Apocalypse. Kirk didn’t have much dance training so he came up with the music, and with wild ideas. I was good at putting his ideas into clearer form and connecting the pieces together. We spent many an evening in my living room, pushing the furniture back, and trying out crazy combinations and laughing.
I had also worked up the courage to audition for the high school musical, even though I didn’t really sing or act. It came up first in the fall. I was in the chorus for Anything Goes, tapping and dancing as one of the Angels. On opening night, me and another dancer were downstage, maybe six inches from the edge of the stage, turning and spinning. I felt so at home. I knew what I was doing, I felt good in the spotlight.
Dance Production a month or two later was even better. In addition to my two numbers with Kirk, I was in a number of other pieces, sometimes with featured duets or small groups. And our duet was a huge hit.
I felt, rightfully, like one of the stars of the show. That my creative ideas, and my performances, made the show as good as it was.
Second semester was nothing as grand. But there was a class called Dance Projects that collaborated with Concert Chorale. The Chorale was singing Benjamin Britten’s A Little Nonsense Now and Then. Kirk and I once again collaborated. We were inspired, having the group march in a line on their buttocks, or to have one dancer run in, circle around the rest, and run out again. Choreography was easy, creative musing and experimentation. For all my academic success, I don’t know that I had ever felt so capable at something, gifted. And I was good at choreography without any real training in it.
And it wasn’t just being in the shows. It was being part of the creative group. I had felt pretty isolated in junior high and high school. Different. And now I belonged. The shows weren’t just me. They were all of us working together to make something rare. I belonged in the hang out space by the side of the theatre building. I belonged at parties that came after the shows.
So when I say I found myself in high school, what I mean is that I discovered something vital about who I was. I discovered something I was good at. I felt alive and invigorated. I cared about what I was doing. I found a place I could shine easily. I knew without a doubt that my presence, and what came through me, made a difference.
I would have loved it for what it did for me alone, but I also saw that people were touched, moved, enlivened by what I had created and that meant a lot too.
In high school, I Trued without knowing that was what I was doing. I was Trueing by luck and by accident. By finding myself in the right place at the right time to unveil this part of me that had never had life before.
But then in college, I lost it.
But that is a story for another day.