It was only last year that I was wishing to be taken on by somebody. One year into my course at Trinity Laban, I felt under-experienced as a dancer - I didn't know how my body would respond to the demands of a choreographer. How far could my body go, and what it could do upon demand? I wrote on my conservatory-come-studio window, with my red chalk pen: "Get experience with companies / choreographers." A couple of months later, I was spending 9 hours a week in the studio with Yanaelle Thiran and couldn't believe my luck. She wanted to learn from me, and I was confused. "You want /me/ to make a sequence? Anything?" "Something that travels." Our choreography explored what it was like to exchange dance material that was highly individual to our very differently-trained bodies, and our premiere at Resolution 2018 was my first wholly joyous stage performance for many years. Yanaelle taught me how to be patient in the studio and how to find value in the ordinary. Our process was slow, rigorous and focused, and ultimately very different from what awaited me in the rest of the year. 2018 has bestowed me with a patchwork quilt; different experiences under vastly different choreographers. Rosie Kay demanded conviction from me in an R&D for a new work, and demanded physical strength for an outdoor martial-arts piece. Heidi Rustgaard demanded courage, urging me each week to get closer to the work I was too embarrassed to make. Seeta Patel demanded technical precision, and Shane Shambhu demanded honesty - "tell them how it is." Most recently, Sonia Sabri has demanded the inhabitation of childhood fears.
I am finding some of the answers that I set out to find last year; I know more about my body, its inhibitions, strengths and weaknesses and I have been lucky enough to see the creative process tackled from different angles. Holding all this 5-dimensional data, I'm sitting here under this quilt buzzing with a new kind of anxious energy, and a new red chalk objective on my glass wall: "Create." I have a feeling this journey is going to take much longer to begin.