she becomes flowers

This week, I noticed that my body wanted to move big. The warm-up used no music so I was able to focus on the floor exercises without distraction. Without music, I was constantly forcing my mind to focus which was another layer of effort in the dancing. Once we got up, I felt really ready to move and was excited by the phrase. The floor was slippery, but I did not want to stop dancing.

It was the end of a very long audition. I was at ODC auditioning for the NYU MFA program in Dance. The two people running the audition looked up at with me with sleepy eyes after I had finished dancing.

“So… is your work always this political?”

I was caught off guard. I had never before thought of my work as political.

I was led into the choreographic process through felt movement, embodied performance, and personal narrative by Joe Goode during my undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, but I had never sought out to try to *make* political work. I work to subvert a heteronormative narrative based on my lived experiences, but I don’t really have an agenda, it is more like story telling…. and doesn’t everyone do that?

It became blatantly clear that as a person of color, centering the narrative of my dances around my lived experiences, I am participating in a radical act of resistance.

So I was waitlisted, but I ended up at NYU anyways, in as a graduate student in the Performance Studies Department. I wish I could say, and then I fit in perfectly, my happily ever after, but it has been incredibly difficult. It has been a HUGE learning curve for me, especially since the PS Theorists I studied in undergrad were different and NYU has been all about liveness and ephemera as evidence which once I figure out what it meant, I absolutely loved.

So speaking of evidence… I am participating in my friends’ show, “Evidence” next Friday, Sept 23rd @ 7pm at the Kraine Theater.”

Evidence” is a new multidisciplinary performance series featuring NYU Tisch’s Performance Studies cohort(s). The name ‘Evidence’ draws upon José Muñoz’s seminal ‘Ephemera as Evidence.’ With his presence deeply missed in the department, his influence on the staff and students still lingers. We saw his potential for queer world-making and Utopia as a call left unanswered.

  My submission is my solo piece, “And other ways for her to be QUIET”.  I won’t describe the piece right now, but for a little preview of what you might see, please enjoy SILLY GIRLS:

SILLY GIRLS from Rosalia Lerner on Vimeo.

  and the answer is  yes, my work is always political. 

During my time at Gibney, I am going to explore separation.

  This is all I have so far.

I think the idea will be a best CELL-er.

This is just who she is: Always a place for this, a time for that, everything under (CONTROL). She just loves (CONTROL), doesn’t know who she is without it.

–“And other ways for her to be QUIET.”

  So burnout is real, people.

And I didn’t really realize how real it was until I was knee deep into my last project realizing that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I couldn’t keep bankrolling my groovy lifestyle. The stress of it was physically affecting my health and it just wasn’t fun. I knew that during the creative process there was a chance that I would feel like I was an island. It was lonelier than that. I knew that I was pouring money into one show that I would make for one night, but something wasn’t right, something felt different this time. Maybe it was the fact that now that we were fiscally sponsored I felt like we had to live up to some expectation of how a budding dance company was supposed to look. Perhaps the combination of how stressful my job was with the added stress of the company took all the fun away. It was hard to focus on the quality of work and creative process; the two components that got me into this game when I didn’t have any energy for it. Excuses, excuses aside, I know that in my heart don’t want to make work in this way anymore. I need a break to shift my personal paradigms of how I expect to be creative.

i n t i m a t e spaces was supposed to be about how vulnerable it feels to be intimate with people, but I think in the end the piece was about disappointment. I am beyond excited to move to New York and start at NYU, but I also feel like I kind of failed with the whole dancing thing, and this was not the first time either. Over and over I kept redefining what it meant to be a dancer/choreographer, but I never lived up to my standards. I was working so much to be able to afford to rehearse and show work I didn’t have time to make. That being said, I think that the piece turned out beautifully. I couldn’t have asked for better collaborators and designers and I am so grateful that everything came together and we were able to make this piece. It was a perfect goodbye.

I am looking forward to moving to NYC, to be able to have a singular focus, and just to have fun again. I want to be light hearted again and laugh… just laugh all the time.

i n t i m a t e spaces explores what makes a space intimate. Whether is it the smallness in size or the experiences had there, why does intimacy, even platonically feel so vulnerable? Unfinished People will combine video with live performance by four dancers to delve into intimacy. 

  Collaborating Artists: Blythe Berg Catherine Liu Hannah Westbrook Robert Lowman (Costumes)

  Unfinished People was officially founded by Rosalia Lerner in January 2015 to create a platform through which she could create and share her work. Unfinished People seeks to empower and delight audiences by sharing movement based performance created around topics of identity, illuminating truths of what it means to be human.

 This was the first blog post I ever posted in my old blog. I remember having such a hard time coming to terms with failing as a dancer. I mean when I moved home from NYC at age 22 to go to college, I really felt as if I had failed, and that failure was the most heartbreaking event of my life. I took a much needed break from dancing when I moved home which changed the trajectory of my life and led me to create a space where dance works for me rather than trying to fit myself into into someone else’s idealized definition of what dance is and who is allowed to be a dancer.

As I gear up to move back to New York for graduate school I feel something so indescribable, not happiness, not relief, but the feeling that I am more than what happened to me when I felt my first shock of failure. Sometimes things happen that are beyond your control and it isn’t failing, it is time spiraling, leading us toward the next great adventure…

The Places We Go.

January 31, 2011 § Leave a comment

I was always dreaming big. I wanted to get out of my hometown. It suffocated me. It felt stuffy and rigid and stuck. Like everything was backward. I was the big fish in the small pond. I traveled to Europe thanks to a dance scholarship to the Czech Republic living in the city, Ostrava, on its eastern border. There I danced in the ballet academy being coached to perform the black swan variation from Swan Lake and the pas de duex from Romeo and Juliet for the Gala. I wanted a job so bad. I wanted to stay there, but they didn’t want me. ‘

But I wasn’t ready to give up.

I moved to NYC living there for two years. I think I changed there. I felt small. I was small. I was insignificant. I was nobody. I was worthless. I did not have the body to be a ballet dancer in NYC. Technique, drive and talent was not enough. I did not look the part and so I gave up. I tried to find another niche. I tried jazz and hip hop where I could hang, but I did not love it.

I was working so much that I did not get to dance that much. My dream felt like someone else dreamed it. How could I ever have deluded myself into thinking I could dance? What a waste of a life. I did not take care of myself, I did not feel like I was worth it. I hated myself. I hated my life. I begged my parents to let me move home, but they refused saying it was not a good time for them. I sunk lower and lower into a depression.

The places we go when we are alone. The places we go where no one can find us.

I moved home. I was not the same person. The dry wind hurt my eyes and cracked my skin. My hometown felt so big. I felt so cold and alone with the wide open spaces. Too wide. Too open. I don’t really remember my first week home. I said I was jet lagged and stayed in bed. My curtains were closed. My door was closed. I closed my eyes and hoped everything would go away. The terrible memories in NYC. That concrete jungle that chewed me up and spit me out.

I started summer school. I mean, I might as well get on with my life. The ONLY classed that were a still open when I registered was intro to theater and something else that i don’t remember. The class was held in HBT. I had no idea where that was. I circled the theater at school 3 times until I figured out that HBT stood for Howard Brubeck Theater. I walked inside. I knew I was home. I mean, I could not remember that last time I had been in a theater. I missed it. I was supposed to go to another class in another room afterward, but I did not want to leave. The next class in the theater was an acting class. I ditched the class I was supposed to go to and just sat in the back. I ended up adding the acting class and being scared out of my mind to get on stage and perform. I could not break out of my shell. I did not even make any friends in the acting class because I didn’t talk. But I watched everything. I absorbed most things….. and I wanted more.

During fall semester I tried another acting class. I talked and made friends and broke out of my shell. I loved it. I auditioned and was cast in the first play of the semester….. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved the process of rehearsal and performing. I finally had a goal.

The places we have traveled affect how we see things. I don’t feel suffocated or stale here. And I don’t feel like the world is too big for me to handle. Now when I drive in my hometown I have a destination. When the warm air blows on my face it comforts me and I know I am home. I can breathe here. I can finally speak.