All I know of life is that it changes. These words, I have written but they can’t be written enough, battered into the daily slow pondering — — too minute to notice — — blink-and-you’ll-miss-it time passing life passing — in a second over, rebuilt in a lifetime that could last anywhere between a breath […]
There are strange flowers growing in the garden of my mind. Insidious weeds, they are, but delicate: fresh, luminous things that light the night, throwing shadows like full moon light. I’ve seen them before, these flowers, and too many years of plucking them and giving them to the wrong person has left me suspicious, unsure
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog, so let’s start with the spoilers: I’m still in Pakistan. In fact, in a twist of life that I still have yet to properly understand, I live here now. I have a flat that slowly becomes more of a home space every day, a motorcycle,
An American Dancer in Pakistan, Volume 8 Read More »
No to being a Changemaker No to leading as Leader No to stigmatizing the normal No to being a Savior No to focusing on impact No to seeking followers and views No to drama No to questioning and analysis No to hope and expectations Yes to presence Yes to local Yes to intuition Yes to
In all my blogs thus far, I’ve focused almost exclusively on dance, which is partly because that’s obviously what I do and what I’m here for, and partly because I wanted to showcase that in Pakistan, of all places, there is lots of art, dance, and performance. I’ve tried to stay away from getting political,
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Beginnings are easy to write. At that point it’s just impressions, first thoughts and ideas, things are different like this, life works like that. But once I’m in the middle, I lose my words. I don’t know what to write anymore, what to tell you that I haven’t. Life dwindles from the initial sightseeing and
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Me being here raises eyebrows and turns heads. It’s strange to be here, strange to be onstage, strange to be out on the streets. I’m used to the staring, and used to being the only foreigner. It occasionally gets uncomfortable, such as one meal in the walled city of Lahore when the group of guys
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Before I came to Pakistan, I really had no idea what I was going to do. Of the four months I was initially planning to stay, I had one week of schedules, and a few nebulous half-possibilities. I just had the word of a friend, and my own gut feeling, that there was something to
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“Do you think you actually changed in Korea? Or just sharpened?” During the course of a lovely 2-day wellbeing retreat with Recipes for Wellbeing in Lahore, we made something called a wheel of wellbeing. There were a number of factors to consider, such as mental/emotional needs, social and environmental, physical health, finances, personal growth, and etc. We
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The studio space for the Wahab Shah Dance Company is not very easy to find. I was called to rehearsals to join the troupe performing Norwegian folk dance for a conference in Islamabad, and besides the initial “what the hell??”, I thought it seemed like a great idea. I researched the address as much as
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Stories of an American dancer/choreographer spending 4–5 months in Lahore, Pakistan working to expand the nascent contemporary dance scene. In production Adnan’s house is the house of an artist. It is not a show house — there is no dedicated sitting room or hidden kitchen where the cooks prepare food. What might have been a
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In South Korea, there are certain paths that everyone follows, or is expected to follow. From dating to business, from family to friends, from fashion to haircuts. There is a Way to do things. A Way to speak. A Way to treat someone who is older, or younger, or superior in position, or inferior. There
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The 88 year-old man doesn’t say much. He considers each sentence carefully, his jaw slowly working. His face is fearsome and strong. He wears a traditional Pakistani tunic and trousers, with a yellow scarf carefully laid on his shoulders like a mantle. He drinks black coffee and smokes long cigarettes. The 88 year-old man speaks
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One of my first memories of performing was being a bon-bon in the Nutcracker, one of the little kids that comes out from Mother Ginger’s skirt. I remember being backstage, lined up with the other bon-bons, with the blinding spotlights making the stage nothing but light, watching our leader go through her quick change from
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