Final Preparation

"Imagine ... a dance ... whose body dances in accordance with a music heard inwardly, in an expression of something out of another, a profounder world, So confident am I that the soul can be awakened, can completely possess the body, that when I have taken children into my schools I have aimed above all else to bring to them a consciousness of this power within themselves, of their relationship to the universal rhythm, to evoke from them the ecstasy, the beauty of this realization. The means to this awakening may be in part a revelation of the beauty of nature and it may be in part that sort of music ... that arises from and speaks to the soul." ~ Isadora Duncan

Another day of class has ended. Today we finished relatively on time and after a great conversation about embodying emotional sound to create movement with my improvisation instructor, I find myself thinking back to my first week here. It's hard to believe that I have been in class for almost three weeks, so much has been going on. Life has been filled with so many adventures the past couple of months that it's been hard to take time to decompress. I finished up the semester at UD and had an emotional end of the dance year at DDC, this is my first summer away from my DDC family. Those two things alone are hectic with the end of year meetings, evaluations, grades, extra rehearsals, auditions for next year, planning for next year and the list goes on and on. Add to it, finding a home for my dog and cat for seven weeks, a home for myself for seven weeks, packing for Milwaukee, moving out of my apartment, saying good bye to many dear friends, unloading a uhaul in the rain, getting little sleep, loading the car and driving 800 miles ... well, you can imagine the variety of emotions I was experiencing.

I met my Mom and Grandma in Milwaukee to give my Mom a crash course in Jonson-sitting and they helped me unload my stuff into my on campus housing. It was pouring rain the Sunday I moved in to Purin Hall. I have a student "apartment". It consists of two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and table. It was on this rainy Sunday while trying to get into my student housing after a long drive and exhausting emotional roller coaster that I first noticed the trend that undergrad students are the majority of the people who seem to work here during the summer. They assume that you, the new student, know everything there is to know about UWM. I was given an envelope full of keycards, keys of different sizes, a grey wand thing and a garage door opener from 1987 and was expected to just be on my way. I looked at him with my rain soaked head of hair and pulled out everything in the envelope like it was a game, asking "what's this?" "what does it do?" "where is the parking garage?""a panther card for laundry?...please explain" ... I think you get the idea.

To distract myself from being nervous on the first day of my new adventure and already missing my dog who had been gone a total of 30 minutes, I nested. While organizing my new home I discovered that the internet didn't work. It's a little difficult to find a place to get cleaning supplies and extra long twin sheets in a town that is foreign to you with no internet, phone books, maps, or helpful undergraduate students ... but eventually I did discover a Target. I ended up walking around that Target for about two hours. It was nice to be in a familiar place. I had started to discover that I was feeling pretty lonely. I had been going a million miles an hour for a couple weeks with a either a person or a pet with me 24/7 to realize that I was now in a new place, completely alone, and about to embark on a new adventure. But while having that thought in Target, all I could think about was that I really just wanted internet so I could watch my Netflix on instant watch .... little did I know that the urge to watch netflix on the internet would haunt me for the next week and a half when the internet was finally fixed.