Inspired

Sometimes the greatest gift a person can receive is to be inspired. To be inspired to work. Today I have been inspired to let go of even more inhibitions, to be vulnerable, to work my ass off, to try and try again and even if I fail to get back up and try again, to not be perfect all the time, to do me, to work for me, to have big dreams but smaller ones too, to stay humble, to take huge risks and commit to them, to always remind myself why I'm in this business. I do this because I love it. Because I'm hungry for it. Because I desire to work and explore and play. I don't need to be rich and famous, I don't need to be a star. I need to be fed creativity until I'm full. And then once I'm full I need to get hungry again. I don't need to do this for the compliments of my peers. I don't need to do this to make my teachers happy, to prove to the world that I'm talented, to give directors what they want to see. I refuse to do this for those reasons because they're cop outs and are a lot less fun. I do this to tell stories. To communicate. To reach out to people and shake things up a bit; to make them think about things they didn't know they were allowed to think about. And maybe, if I'm really lucky, to inspire someone else the way I've been inspired.

Becky Kalman, Choreographer

I've been "making up dances" since I was seven years old. My friends would come over for a play date and I'd ask them if they wanted to make up a dance with me. We'd create and then show it to our parents at the end of the play date. It was fun. I had no idea that I was being a choreographer. As I got older and started to take my dance training more seriously, I started to understand the concepts of choreography and appreciate it as a creative art form in itself.

This past summer I choreographed a fun, high energy theater dance routine to "Everybody Wants to be Black" from the Broadway hit Memphis. This wasn't for any sort of showcase I was involved in, it was for my own creative satisfaction. I didn't rent out a studio and audition dancers for me to choreograph on. I locked myself in my bedroom, turned the AC up really high, blasted the music from my mac book, and worked it out. I had a ball and am proud of what I created. I'm waiting for an opportunity to do it in front of an audience, or even better, to cast a group of technically advanced dancers/enthusiastic performers and make it a group number.

So today when I found out my afternoon ballet class was cancelled I decided to go to the dance studio anyway, since it would be empty, and play around a bit. I started choreographing a tap routine to KT Tunstall's "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree" a few weeks ago so I figured I'd work on that. Despite the fact that I had to work in my bare feet (we're not allowed to wear tap shoes in this particular studio) I felt the music in my bones and translated the rhythm down to my feet. This is something relatively new for me since I've never choreographed a full length tap number before. Although I started taking tap seriously when I was twelve, I've been in many tap dances, and did 42nd Street with all Broadway choreography, I'm a baby when it comes to the world of tap choreography. Any of my past tap combinations have been maybe thirty-two bars and I never really went anywhere with them. But this time I'm getting into the feel of the music and creating my own "fascinating rhythm" with my feet.

I enjoy choreographing. I think I enjoy it as much as I enjoy performing. I love the feeling I get when I come up with something really cool or different and find a way for it to work in the context of the piece and the music. I would love to have a barrel of dancers at my fingertips to choreograph on. Actually, I kind of do. The Wagner College Theater Department is bursting at the seems with all kinds of talented dancers. Last spring the Dance Club sponsored Dance Week: Dance Across Campus which featured student choreographed pieces all over campus: on the oval, in the student union, in the art gallery, etc... Last year I was in a piece but this year I definitely plan on choreographing something or using something that I've already created and putting dancers in it.