Archive for the ‘performance arts’ Category
How To Make Your Move From Hobbyist To Contender
“Hey, I heard you’re a [fill in the blank for your art form]. Are you like, a Professional?”
If you’ve been actively creating in your art form (dance, music, visual arts, theater, other performance arts), chances are you’ve been asked this question. Without hard numbers for benchmarks, it’s hard to know how to judge when it’s time to step up your game, and when to stop thinking of what you do in the art world as this “thing” that doesn’t really mean much to you.
Paint by numbers kittens are cute, but they won’t help you move from being a Hobbyist to a Contender. Learn how to make the transition.
A few years ago, I listened to a well-respected blogger advise a room of people at BlogWorld that the most important way to know you’re good at something is that you express PASSION for what you do, and you are simply BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE. That might work with selling a product, but with art, everyone can express passion, and so many people can be really, really good at what they do. Now what? I began thinking that there was a difference among these bloggers. Some of them were blogging “just for fun”. Others were blogging for their livelihood, to sell a product, or to promote a cause. Although I was completely new to blogging back then, I realized I was a “nOOb”; that is, a person who appears to know much more about a subject than s/he actually knows, mostly because people assumed with my knowledge base on my subject that I must be a Contender (that is, a person taken seriously when it comes to my art). I made a note that I had better catch up on the actual knowledge base of blogging, Social Media, and community building in order to move away from a nOOb status, and plant myself firmly in the land of Contenders.
How do you know when you’re no longer a Hobbyist? Whether it be painting, modern dance, or music performance, , can you measure success by the number of fans you have on Twitter, or the amount of dollars collected for a show? How do you move from being a Hobbyist to a Contender in the world of art?
What’s the Difference?
Sometimes the difference between Hobbyist and Contender involves superficial things that are hard to put your finger on. It’s the difference between the confidence of the smile and handshake, or the willingness to accept a compliment for a job well done instead of deflecting one. Maybe it’s the comfort a Contender has with what s/he has made, so much so that she’ll stand right next to her art on the wall without fidgeting, even when person after person walks by. Other times, it’s just the fact that you keep seeing this person show up to every small, medium, and large event that has to do with that art form.
I know it when I see “it” – this Transition – on someone else. When they’ve crossed over in their bodies, if not in their heads, from treating themselves as a Hobbyist to living life as a Contender, a new picture begins to form:
- a part of their home gets converted to a dedicated workspace for their art.
- there are bits and pieces of their art with them at all times (car, bag, studio, office, home, etc)
- they start dressing differently, as if there is a uniform associated with their art
- their social lives fill with people who like or do the same kind of art
- their free time becomes saturated with more events that intersect with their art
- business and their art begin to merge (i.e. business trip may be combined with art interests if it works out that way)
- in some cases, their bodies change to accommodate the lifestyle (in positive and negative health states)
- they begin to display expertise or access to resources that are a step ahead of others, because they are willing to do the work
Moving from Hobbyist to Contender involves small and big changes.
For my dancer pals, I’ve seen this transition happen many times. While they might first start dancing in front of their bathroom mirror, eventually their living room gets a makeover, or an office gets turned into a mini dance studio with paint job and a mirror. Men who started taking salsa lessons once a week find themselves out every night they have to spare, dancing with new and old dance partners, trying out new moves, and asking others about comfortable dance shoes. People who started out with a simple PAS (point and shoot) camera one year end up investing $15K in a new camera, lighting equipment, a website, and other photography gizmos, while saying shyly, “I’m just getting started.” Next thing you know, they have a gorgeous website with their photos on it, replete with copyright stamps and watermarks to prevent others from stealing their work.
No matter what you’re art form, learn the tools of the trade, and try out the best equipment you can afford to improve your game.
In the recent months, I’ve been working my way from Hobbyist to Contender in a completely different forum: running. Running was something I gave up six years go because of nagging injuries that wouldn’t go away. After a respite and physical therapies such as yoga stretches and Shiatsu massage, I’m back to running every other day, hoping to build up the ability to complete my first half-marathon with people still running behind me [translation: I'm not the slowest for my age group, gender, or slowest overall] . When I first started running in May 2012, I mostly ran alone, rarely if ever greeted by fellow runners decked out in cool gear and tech fabric shirts. I borrowed a baseball cap with a broken bill from the Man-Geek to shade my eyes. I wore plain cotton sport socks. Runner after runner passed by. Nothing. Not even acknowledgement. There were ladies with their bright colored water bottles on a hand strap. Men sported cool watches that measure heart rate, caloric burn, distance, and speed. I didn’t have any of that, except a new pair of sneakers, and socks that kept annoyingly slipping under my heel. I felt alone.
This little voice nagged inside my head to figure out how to run and look cool. I have no clue where that came from, as I feel perfectly comfortable as a geeky person without a sense of socially acceptable fashion. In other words, I wear the fuck whatever I want without a lot of consciousness of whether it’s the “right” thing to wear, as my pal SuperBetch on Twitter has kindly pointed out. Frankly, when I run, I imagine myself looking like a frightened chicken, arms flailing, mouth open, sweat pouring down my face and dripping onto a nasty cotton T-shirt that sticks to my underarms and belly in a most unflattering way. If you think this sounds silly — this attention to how you look while you run — think about the dance hall, and how much primping goes on there. You have to wear the right shoes. Your skirt has to flow or your pants need to have a certain crease or give. You need to know what looks like a “I’m here to dance” shirt, and what makes you look like “I’m about to head back into the office” apparel. You see, when it comes to dance, I know what I’m supposed to wear to look and act and move and think and eat and smile and sleep like a dancer. But when it comes to something new like running, it took me awhile to realize that my Nike shorts from six years ago – the kind with the built -in comfort panty and the drawstring on top had been replaced by Three’s A Company white piping trimmed shorts from the 70′s. My Saucony’s in dark, nature-inspired colors like black, brown, and tan had been overrun with shocking neon colors of orange, green, yellow, and cobalt blue, and narcissistic names.
Part of the transition from a Hobbyist to Contender mindset is that you envision yourself as that Professional, and that Professional has no problem equipping him or herself with the tools of the trade. While I’ve heard some trash talk from experienced belly dancers towards younger dancers who buy expensive costumes beyond their skill level, I understand how these costumes make us feel: Marvelous. Beautiful. Resplendent. Radiant. Joyous. In the world of running, a professional video of your running to analyze your form and correct problems before injuries occur is available to all, not just the pros. New runners can improve faster with the same tools the Contenders and Professionals use. Why shouldn’t I try them?
Decked Out
And so I did. One Sunday, after completing my first 5K and 10K races, I set out on an easy run wearing the following:
- one pair compression calf sleeves
- tech shirt (that does not stick to my belly in an unflattering way)
- water belt (with pocket to hold your phone and keys)
- Garmin watch (beeps every mile, displays pace and distance)
Something weird happened. Other runners smiled at me as we passed each other on the same trail I had run at least a dozen times before. I thought something was wrong, like I was showing camel toe my female bits and pieces. I kept looking to see if they were smiling at someone behind me. Nope, they were smiling at me! And they were smiling because I had become one of them. A runner! Me, a runner! [I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.]
You know, I still had to do the work. I still sweat on my face and run like a chicken down hills. But this lesson got me thinking: it’s the minute I treat what I do as something not only fun to do, but with a certain response-ability to it to treat it with a high degree of seriousness mixed in with my enjoyment. It’s work, and it’s play; it’s what I love AND I find myself talking for hours about my Craft with others, teaching people on my own hours, and sharing what I do with others.
Can you identify the Contenders all around you? What might be the missing element as you transition from Hobbyist to Contender? Share your stories of your crossover, or what you think might help you make that transition.
Be All You
Be All You: How to Be An Authentic Artist
One of my favorite things to hear from friends and fans of my work is the phrase, “You can totally pull that off because that is so you!” It is a spontaneous affirmation from those who have observed your path and find that even a new work in progress has a strong trace or element that is strongly tied to your character, a past piece of work, a progression or outflow of your energy and interest, and your obvious skill set and experience. As I have mentioned on my blog in a previous post, I’m a fan of Julia Cameron’s description of finding one’s “vein of gold“; that is, not just a project, product, or performance that results in a high monetary gain, but one that uses the artist’s craft and technique in such a way that converts towards brilliance. My argument is much more simple. Do you want to put out credible, honorable, creative, provocative work? Rather than just imitating (and I have little against good imitation), my simple mantra has been this: BE ALL YOU.
1. BE
Lati.n veil dance by Imei. Photo credit: Chris Yetter. Used by permission
The “be” of “be all you” is really about presence. Just show up and shut up. Bring your attention to your work. Don’t come to it distracted and encumbered with other sh!t. Leave that at the door of your studio or place of creativity. Stop yaking about your kids or your kitties. Put on the headphones and block the world out if you’re working by yourself. Turn off the damn cellphone, and shut down computer notifications. It’s time to just “be.”
My piano teacher Mrs. Hahn would often have me listen to a piece of classical music after we had studied it together for some time. We would take the sheet music in hand, and sit with it, hearing the music without striking a key. Today, I often come to choreography this way, having listened to the music for weeks — and sometimes months! – before I attempt to place the movement upon the work. I take a moment to breathe, to attune to where I’m “at”, and then to remove anything that might pull me away from sitting with the work and just being with it. It’s not some mumbo jumbo magic juju. It’s presence.
I would find out many years later that the principles built into my study with Mrs. Hahn share similarities with Mindfulness Mediation. From John Kabut-Zinn:
“Mindfulness means paying attention
in a particular way;
On purpose,
in the present moment, and
nonjudgmentally.”
Without being completely reductionist, it appears to me that much of Mindfulness is about intentional attending and focusing, with no agenda to jump ahead and criticize. Just be in the moment.
2. ALL
Bringing all of yourself to the creative process is actually tougher than it sounds. I assume everyone is busy. Life is full of the mundane, the tyranny of the urgent, deadlines and day jobs, and health challenges. Bringing all of yourself requires you to plan ahead, to take care of your responsibilities, and to set aside your best hours — not your worst! — for your creative projects unless you don’t care about quality.
While I’m not saying you can’t write a decent piece if you’re tired, or you have children, or you have day job, I’ve seen good writers put out articles rife with grammatical errors and missing words. I’ve observed dancers with hunched shoulders and ”heavy” legs (low-level leg extension) who didn’t make time to eat properly and rest between performances. Many of us have attended rock concerts where the lead singer still looks like he or she is recovering from a night of bus travel and heavy drinking. How can you bring your all if you didn’t plan ahead for your all to be available to you?
An example of planning for my “all” to be available to me was to surrender my Sundays and a part of Monday morning to balance my busy schedule. I found that if I stopped accepting performance gigs on Sundays and did not spend time writing for hours on Sunday night, I had energy and “pop” for Tuesday through Saturday, which are the busiest days of the week for both my professional work as a psychotherapist and my artistic endeavors as a writer, dance artist, choreographer/instructor, and budding amateur photographer. I needed “downtime” more than ever, and while sleep is some of that downtime needed to recharge my batteries, having waking time that isn’t drowning in sound, motion, and phone calls is important to my creative process. I reinstated the 10 pm cut-off hour as the final hour of the evening that I cannot respond to emails and phone calls, no matter what the time zone of the sender, until the following morning at 8:00 AM.
Those of you who work a corporate job will roll your eyes at me. It’s just not doable, you’ll say. Those of you with small children will smirk at my naivette. OK. Fine. But you get my point. If you can’t bring your all to your work by creating the space for your all to show up, then you should not be surprised if your work does not produce the results you were hoping for, whether that be innovation, improvement, joy, fans, making a difference in this world, or money. Even if you are an accomplished artist with past success upon which you glide upon with golden apples coming out of your a$$, I can tell when you are slipping. If your all isn’t into your work, it shows.
3. YOU
With all the Social Media platforms changing their TOUA’s to include language that may make it easier for them to share your work without crediting you or owing you royalties, I stand on the boundary between hypersensitivity to the issues of privacy and stealing, and the marketing aspect where you as an Artist has to give away a lot of your work — books, photos, music, workshops — in order to get something back in return. But besides the monetary act of stealing someone’s work, such as “fauxtographer” Megan Kunert‘s actions against wedding photographer Amber Hughes [HT to Jackie Baisa Donnelly for bringing this story to my attention], my point is that your art should be a representation of you: your work, your life, your beliefs, your intentions, your hopes for the world, your vision of beauty or violence or ugliness or joy. It should have “you” written all over it.
When I first started collecting pictures from my point and shoot cameras, I wondered what I should be shooting. Some people are great at shooting nature, and they travel to the ends of the earth for it. Others are good at shooting food and architecture. For me, it made sense I would start with two subjects I know something about: performance art and my cats. By practicing on two things I love, I could use them to gain experience on lighting, setting up the shot, posing, and patience! But a third subject that naturally arises in my shooting is emotion, and while I would never think to start painting faces, I have found it irresistible to shoot faces and bodies with a camera to express the vulnerability found in the changing landscape of the human body. I’m so excited to share with you very soon my professional project uniting photography and psychotherapy. You’re going to love it!
My point is this: it may not matter the medium you chose as much as the intention to bring the “you-ness” of you to the creative moment. And so while the first novella I attempted to write was all in the first person “I”, my current writing project will have as many third person stories because this is where I am at; that is, you will need to commit to being you — and no one else — even if you are writing about someone else. You can still apply craft and technique to get authentic renderings, but guess what? Even those renderings will have the trace of you that is as unique as your scent and your fingerprint.
In a couple of weeks, I will have performed my unique choreographies to two pieces of Latin-inspired music for a bellydance show. While I did not create the props nor the styles of prop use that will be featured in those works, I have applied the above principles of being, bringing my all, and sticking to who I am. The end result are two pieces that reflect not only where I’ve been as a dance artist, but the unique flavor to which I bring to the moment to express the stories found within both the music and the Artist.
This is my art. And that’s the kind of art we can own and be proud of.
Artful Earth Day 2012
Besides the message I received the other day concerning fecal matter found in a storage area of my building [eww], I can’t say my thoughts have been centered on sewage, waste, landfills, and the environment. But in the last 24 hours, I’ve noticed these topics coming up in conversation with greater frequency. Perhaps because it’s almost Earth Day, you have been thinking about more responsible ways to care for our planet whilst accomplishing your usual ADLs (activities of daily living, in nurse-speak). And since this is an art blog, today’s blogpost is all about having an artful Earth Day this year, and every day of the year.
FUN WAYS TO CELEBRATE EARTH DAY
1. Solar Power It
I use Joos Solar Panel to charge up my iDevices and other small gadgets. Even on a grey day in Seattle, a little flashing light indicator lets me know my solar panel is collecting enough sunlight to keep them energized. Now, which one soaks up more rays: my cat Lumi, or the solar panel? [Both are pretty cool in my book]
Each Joos panel comes with a packet of cable ends for most of your standard items. You can even leave the panel in your car and have it available to power up your devices. Woot!
2. Get The Poop On Conservation
Thanks to Tony Shin for sending me this great info graph about poop and sewage waste. Who knew? I’ll be more conscientious about those flushes, but we can also put our money where our Read More…
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