When I was on a year abroad in college, I choreographed a piece called Cowboys and Marlboro Men. It took leaving the USA to become aware of how much our culture glorifies the self-made man, the solo journeyer, the exceptional individual.
I held auditions last week for a new choreography on my Pollination sculpture which arrived last month. I had groups of five dancers move on the sculpture at once. It was super satisfying to see the sculpture in motion, one that I had designed in miniature out of wire during Shelter in Place. Now it’s 650 lbs of stainless steel and sits 16’ wide by 8’ tall.
After the audition, some dancers asked for feedback when they were not accepted. There were a few of these dancers who made a mistake that I know I myself have made many times in my life and very possibly continue to make.
An audition is by definition competitive. The director can’t accept everyone. Some make it, some don’t. We are trained to stand out. We become very aware of the competition and if we are strategic, we position ourselves as different in some way.
In this audition, the five-performer groups had to make the flower sculpture bloom by slowly moving the petals down. I noticed that a performer wanted to show she was more precisely following the direction and knew better the length of two minutes. This comes up in dance sometimes - the ability to know how to keep time without a sound score or clock. Her petal was more correct, but it was very out of sync with the rest of her group. Her effort rendered the overall visual experience ineffective. I don’t blame her, she was doing her best and was trying for a competitive edge in the audition.
Another dancer felt that the rest of her group was trying too hard to stand out with a lot of energy, so she chose to be very relaxed and act as if she was falling asleep. This wasn't ultimately successful because I was looking for sparks of excitement. I was looking for dancers who could make this sculpture sing.
In both of these cases, the dancers over estimated the importance of being different from the others. If they had focused solely on delivering their best performance on the sculpture, their minds would have been less busy and more available to achieve the task at hand. They each would have been more amazing.
When I began my Creative Journey practice two years ago, I asked myself, ‘What do I have to offer that other people in this field don’t?’ I have 28 years of working with psychedelics in creative process for personal growth. This is a truly unique offering. But initially, in my insecurity, I felt like I should position myself against what was already on offer. I justified my approach by saying that it was different and better than what was happening in research labs and more customized and involved than what was being offered by other guides in the underground. Was this necessary? Most people just want a good, reliable, stable guide who doesn’t annoy them. Some want my specific approach.
Regardless, I now feel like it was a misplaced competitive impulse. I have since taken to running Creative Journey in the way I have always run Capacitor, my arts non-profit - by engaging in the favor economy. I look for ways that I can support other people’s goals while pursuing my own.
I also see how all the other approaches to psychedelic work can feed my own deeper understanding. For instance, I relish the morsels of insight the diligent researchers offer up from their standardized, less bespoke approaches. I am grateful for the wealth of knowledge from underground practitioners who have been performing their own experiments for years and sharing their findings.
How can I, like the dancers in my audition, deliver my most powerful, moving work irrespective of my position within the wider community? How can I be my most amazing - rather than simply win?