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I have been involved in the pursuit of perfectionism since I can remember. I don't remember when perfectionism became clear to me as a concept but I know I grew up knowing intuitively that all that was me was not acceptable. It was clear to me I needed to go through a type of dissection in which the less favorable parts were removed and the perfect parts kept. Life was a continuous search for what the ever-changing view of what perfection was for each person or group I was with and the intuitive reaction on my part to try and fulfill those roles. It was not a conscious process. It was a learned, involuntary reflex.
When I became involved in ballet training, I had found the ideal place to act out this perfectionism. A world with strict, clear and relatively unchanging views on what the desired form should be. This gave me very clear goals from which I could aim to mold myself into.
At the same time as providing me a place in which to act out my perfectionistic tendencies, dancing as well gave me a place where I would learn to express the deepest parts of my soul through movement. A contrast developed between these two aspects in my dancing that created a chasm over which many personal battles were to be fought. I danced because it was an expression of my soul. I dieted so I would be thin enough to fit into the ballet world so that I would be able to dance and express my soul. The repercussions of obsessive dieting would eventually diminish my health and my sense of self. I would then need my dancing even more to help build up my sense of self again and it would become even more important to diet in order to be thin enough so that I could dance.
Dancing helped me to live more fully as I am, and at the same time was that, which through its demands, sucked my body and my soul of its energies. This struggle between who I thought I should be and who I actually was and the need somewhere within these issues to find an expression of self, took me into places close to death.
One of the repercussions of this struggle was a ten-year battle with Bulimia. This disease was a metaphor about the hunger of my soul versus the relentless desire to not feed my soul in order to fit in: to be small enough to be allowed to be in my chosen world. I acted this metaphor out physically and psychologically.
I had chosen a profession where big girls weren't allowed in. I was like someone trying desperately to become a stewardess when my body was too wide to physically fit past the rows of passenger seats. It was my own choice to stake my life on trying to fit into a world that I was too big for, but when you are 14 and have a dream, it is hard to have a clear perspective on healthy life choices. I did not think that maybe I should search out a bigger plane or that the distance between the passenger seats maybe could be widened.
We can certainly widen the aisles. Should we? Will we? Would we, "the dance world," dare to let dancers dance at their natural body weight? What would be the repercussions of such an action? It would certainly change dancing, as we know it.
Somehow we need to change or start the processes of change so that we can begin to help young dancers find the balance between trying to create the perfect form and staying honest to themselves? I suggest that there is a way to teach and train a young dancer that encourages an acceptance of self. Through this acceptance of self there would be many wonderful exciting gifts of self expression that could be found and that maybe would have been lost if body form had been the only focus of the training.
If we, the dance world, let people be their natural sizes, what would be lost? Is the pursuit of body perfection necessary in the production of the dance as an art form? Could my suffering have been avoided? Was there another way that I could have been trained that would have encouraged a greater acceptance of self and if so, would this take away from the quality of dancer I became?
It is necessary as a dancer to strive through physical barriers. To finally, after years of work, master the double pirouette, and what a magical thing after years of trying to find a natural leap that lets you float through the air. It is a natural pursuit for a dancer to work against the boundaries that their bodies present. That is partly why most dancers are drawn into the profession of dance and that is partly why audiences come to see dance on stage because the dancers do things that most people cannot do. Can dancers still do these things and at the same time be accepting of who they are in a manner that promotes health?
But when has this pursuit to reach for such strict ideals of form and abilities gone too far? At what point does this work with our bodies become a fight against our bodies? At what point are the repercussions of this fight too great a sacrifice for the art being created? At what point do these struggles begin to damage the outward look of the dancer on stage? Who is there to guide a dancer through these difficult questions when this pursuit becomes a battle for spiritual or physical life?
What would happen to the profession of classical dance if we loosened our hold on what a dancer should be? What would happen to our rows of Swan Lake Corps de Ballet if dancing became an expression of who each dancer naturally was.
Some audience members might feel a greater sense of beauty in the honest expression of each Swan's individuality and then others might be disappointed in not being given the ethereal perfection that symmetry and uniformity create.
I don't know the answers to all these questions that I am presenting here today. I do know my journey and the personal answers I found through it. Being a woman who was ten pounds over the ideal weight of a ballet dancer, my life had become an endless pursuit to lessen this gap at whatever the cost to ensure my success as a ballet dancer. It was a battle that left me physically and spiritually empty and in chronic emotional pain. To heal my wounds, I had to leave the classical ballet world and create for myself my own internal world of acceptance. I then took this new frame of mind and searched and created places where this me was allowed to fulfill the role of a dancer.
My journey of the soul was to find a way to be that expressed who I was without compromise and without censor. This was and still is a process of letting go, of falling into the murky sea of imperfections, and what gifts I have found in these places of unwanted flesh. That is where I have found my artist that I am today, not the one trying to become something, but the one who is. My work has taken in the delights of different shapes of people with different abilities. My work as a dancer and choreographer now embraces what is often viewed as ugly, as something, that when displayed with honesty, is a thing of radiant beauty.
The sublime ethereal waif seemingly effortlessly floating across the stage, the perfect essence of our desire to escape from the ground we stand on; the super human defying the laws of nature. This has an appeal to it. It captures us in our imagination in the way trying to fly did when we were young kids. I admit it can be an amazing thing to see an artist seem to defy the rules of physics. These types of physical attributes and abilities are of interest but for me they are not what makes a dancer. What makes a dancer is someone whose soul flows through his or her body towards the audience and this can be done along with or regardless of size or physical ability.
I find that dancers who are grounded bodies in a natural way, regardless of their size, are for me the most interesting vessels of dance expression. Their experience is lived out in their flesh. I do know, that it was through finding this grounded place, that I found a balance that has enabled me to find my own health as a dancer. My every creative move now depends on maintaining an honesty of soul rather than a perfection of body. And if I can maintain this honesty of soul then whatever my body looks like or does, no matter how ugly it might seem by society's standards, will take on a beauty that comes from an expression of the human experience.
I do need to actively pursue this honesty of spirit while maintaining a healthy body to act as a vessel to channel my creativity. Any deviation from this pursuit of a natural state of health leads to the lack of soul in my dancing and my choreography. I have learned in my career that trying to lose weight is a deviation that leads me further away from my self. The strict structure, the brutal judgments, the self-hate that accompanied me when I tried to lose weight did not create an optimum situation for a natural process of self-discovery. So I would say that I have found a new definition of perfection in which I embrace all of me, every last imperfection, as a means to find the truest, most honest expression of myself. That is the place where I found my own beauty.
This is the path I have found in my career and I understand the experience is different for everyone. I understand the realities of the dance world today and the slow process of change. In my utopia, all dancers could be any size they naturally are and the focus would be on training that would be geared towards an honest expression of the soul. Since this is often not the case, I recommend that dancers search for a form of expression through dance whose ideals match as closely as possible to one's natural way of being thus lessening the gap between what one is and what one feels they should be. By lessening this gap there is less risk of symptoms of self-hate and self-blame for not being the ideal form. This prevents abusive behavior that might occur in the driven pursuit to become the ideal. For every dancer, this will take them to a different place, for we all come in different sizes and have different abilities and strengths. It requires strength of character to let go of the expectations of others in order to find a place where you fit in.
It is a simple answer that has taken me 15 years to find.
Find out who you are and then find or create a place to be this person.
This can be a very challenging journey. It is often easier at the time to change oneself in small or large ways to be closer to a presented ideal. Easier at the time but fraught with consequences that sweep deep into one's soul. Like drops of water into a bucket, eventually you will overflow and the natural you will come out in one way or another. It is when the bucket overflows in this manner that who we are, can take on soul-depleting pathologies as we try to contain it. After having been held back, twisted, formed into something else, the real you pours out eventually in the form of any plethora of symptoms. In my case, these symptoms became my bulimia. So although it might seem more challenging to strive to be only exactly who I am in the end, it is the simple, easier road.
This equation, in its acceptance of the self, is a letting go of perfectionism, as we know it, to make room for the beauty of what is really there.
"The sweetest gift, the only gift, we can give our selves, our community, the earth is our fullest, truest presence. Simply put, our presence is who we are or would be, if we weren't always trying to be someone else " (Roth, Genean (1996) Appetites. New York, USA. Dutton.)
With the desire to promote healthy body image Kathleen Rea offers affordable speeches and open format discussions on topics such as eating disorder prevention, body image and dancer's health.
With the desire to promote healthy body image Kathleen Rea offers affordable speeches and open format discussions on topics such as eating disorder prevention, body image and dancer's health.
Contact to inquire about speech bookings
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