Common Fate (2019)

Sometimes my ears buzz, and I feel bright lights. The fluorescent kind. They make a sound I can feel on my skin. It hurts a bit. It’s ballet class first today. The instructor gives a correction, the piano continues to play, the fluorescent lights are buzzing, my skin is hot. My throat closes because I can’t remember the correction. My face flushes. I’m a failure. I can’t tell the difference between my right and left, there is a blank spot with no bodily feedback. No internal perception of where I am in space on the right side on my body. What is that? I fight with myself.

It is modern class. I’m lying on my back staring at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights right in my eyes, buzzing tiny needles into my skin. The drums are pounding and echoing, I can’t hear the instructions because the teacher is lying on the floor with us. I feel panic creeping along the edges of my focus. I came early to class to orient myself to the room, to not be overstimulated. Everyone came in loud and last minute, disorganized and excited. Their nonchalance makes me feel shame. I need to prepare so much, because I’m different right? Not as good. I need help. I hate needing help. Just leave me alone, I can do it, what was the combination again? Everyone is rolling in their floor patterns now. I’m behind. How can I dance if I can’t dance? I should have been listening but the words don’t make sense. Have you ever seen the Muppet Babies cartoon where the nanny sounds like a horn? That’s what the instructions are. The lights are still buzzing. I go home and sit in the dark. Cut out all stimulus and informational inputs. My body breathes a sigh of relief.

I should quit. Why not. Because I remember those moments…those brief moments when you get the combination right, when you go beyond sequences and instruction, when the movement comes from you and you come from it, that moment when there is no separation from the movement and music, the inner and outer, from you and the world. You are open. You dance.

Common Fate is a graduate thesis that premiered Spring 2019 at The Edison Theater in St. Louis. Comprised of seven dancers and six choreographic sections, set inside 16x14 ft. moving walls, the work tackles cognitive issues surrounding learning disabilities, specifically my personal experiences with having dyscalculia. This work begins by asking the question “What would it look like to see hidden mental deficits?” and “What does it mean to dance with others when one has a learning disability…a difference?”.

As I analyzed these personal questions, I continued my research in cognitive functions and movement, and ran across a Gestalt principal in perceptual psychology known as common fate. This unique term refers to our understanding of visual elements (people, patterns, animals, objects) moving in the same direction, as being in a relationship. Consider a flock of birds. Birds flying in a flock the same direction are perceived as being one entity. In other words, humans see things that move together as belonging together. As a species we fantastic at noticing when the law of common fate is broken. In short, we are exceptional at noticing differences. This is a vital component of our senses that allows us to understand relationships in our world.

Using the law of common fate as a lens to frame disabilities on stage, I decided to generate work based on my unseen cognitive differences, and express it as seen on stage. The final product is a half hour work of six interrelated sections, based on my graduate research in dance and dyscalculia. Common Fate has demanded that I confront my “disability” head on, and above all continue to advocate for alternate learners in the arts.

Common Fate

I. Effort

II. Memory Chase

III. I Am My Other Self

IV. Common Fate

V. Victory

VI. Stomping Grounds