Filed under: age, art, dance, theatre | Tags: commitment, cost, dance, dancers, dedication, injuries, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, performance, performers, scars
Because one of my beloved collaborators loves the work of Monica Bill Barnes, I sought out a performance. As soon as I saw Happy Hour, I, too, was in artistic love. I laughed and cried. I laugh-cried and cry-laughed. It was one of those shows that made me feel as if there might be a reason to go on. I’ve seen it multiple times.
I’m not going to lie; there are some days in this artist’s life in which I get a bad case of What’s-the-Point-itis. When the labor and heartbreak of making theatre just doesn’t seem equal to the reward. For me, seeing Monica Bill Barnes and Company perform is a great cure for that feeling of wondering what the point is. Good art is the point.
Monica Bill Barnes’ latest show (One Night Only) was no exception in this way – but it also brought to the surface a new “-itis” that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with at first. I learned in this show that Monica Bill Barnes and I are the same age. I learned that we share a lifelong commitment to our respective art forms. And in learning about the cost of that commitment to the dancers during the show, I learned about the cost of my own.
This may be a spoiler (DANCE SPOILER ALERT – skip ahead if you’re going to this show and would prefer not to know what’s going to happen -) but towards the end of the show, the two dancers listen to a list of injuries they have sustained over their lifetimes in dance, as we watch them continue to dance. There is a concrete cost to dedicating your life to dance and as I listened to it, I cried my face off.
Partly I cried out of admiration for the performer/creators who are facing the accumulation of that cost (for my benefit as an audience member) and for whom there is a finite amount of time to continue to dance the way they want. But I think I also cried for all the things my own dedication to my art has cost me. I can’t list them for you, not by year or by category – but watching this show made it very clear to me that all these years of dedication to art have taken a toll. Is the toll physical? Maybe not directly – but as everything that happens to us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, happens through the body, I don’t see how it couldn’t be. There is a cost to this kind of dedication. I knew there would be costs and I made my choice to pay that cost willingly a long time ago. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have scars.
Watching an artist (who is my peer in age and commitment) honor the injuries, the pain and the cost along the way helps me honor my own. Seeing the sacrifices of a life dedicated to art laid bare, I can see my own dedication, my own sacrifices and how hard the road has been but also why it was worth it.
Seeing the cost, I also understand the point. The point is that we keep dancing, we keep writing, we keep creating, we keep producing, we keep performing, we keep making things because art is important to our humanity and each encounter with it, whether in the audience or on the stage, has the opportunity to teach us something about ourselves.
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One Night Only is still running for another couple of weeks, click here for info. And Happy Hour comes back soon, too, I think.
photo of Happy Hour by Grant Halverson (I lifted it from MBB&Co’s Website.)
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