A Dancer’s View: Photo Essay

Brooke Kesky

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A Doughnut Closeup
December 11, 2017
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Channeling emotion through dance can be an effective and healthy stress reliever. Putting on the ballet shoes as if you are putting on your boots for combat. Stopping the negative thoughts with every sharp movement of your body.
Learning to stretch the muscles as if you’re preparing for a fight against yourself. It’s so easy, but so hard. You know the thoughts build up as if they’re creating a wall between reality and your conscious.
The first leap is the beginning. Freeing your body from the strings pulling you to the ground. Freeing your body from the weight of the world. Letting all of the anger and sadness fall off as you push yourself into a world unknown.
Covering up your emotions is the easiest way to move on each day. In dance you can cover up your emotions through the art of makeup. Brushing on a mask to hide behind, so you don’t have to face reality.
Your worst enemy is yourself. You hear that over and over again, but it’s true. You say things to yourself that would only ever be said by a monster. You are the monster. So take those emotions and twist them so hard until they make your body move with the anger and before you know it, you’re dancing.
Allow your body to move with fluidity. Ignore the thoughts of pain and sorrow and focus on the way your arm moves when you stretch it. Focus on the way your body seems to float in air. Focus on the way your hair blows when your body moves as if you’re underwater.

As one of my favorite song quotes says, “The pain that comes today, is here, then goes away”. You must learn to embrace the pain and use it to better yourself each day.
Pushing the limits is your body’s way of rebellion in dance. There will be movements that seem too much to handle, but never impossible. Always push yourself to envision what kind of dancer you can be tomorrow or the day after that. Push yourself so you will never give up. Be rebellious.

Progression into the unknown is your weapon. You have felt things that you can’t explain when you dance. The feeling of weightlessness, passion, and relief. It’s like all of the negative thoughts that kept building up were suddenly knocked down by a bulldozer. Or a chain that was suddenly broken. A feeling of freedom.
Sometimes you have to leave the monster on the dance floor. You have to part ways with it and look back and say no more. Because if you always listen to the monster inside you, you will never get to see the beauty of what you are doing. The beauty of the way you may impact others.