Me vs... Creative day and 1st rehearsal

By Jamie Erin Murphy
What is identity? What makes us what we are? What parts of our identity given or created? Why does discussing our identity make ourselves and others uncomfortable?

These are a few questions I have been asking myself while I begin down the path that is leading my creation of Me vs... I began this journey a few years ago when my artistic partnership with a good friend and collaborator ended. I felt lost as an artist, choreographer and person. Why did this relationship define my artistic voice and why could I no longer find a way to create. I didn't know who I was anymore. This lead to the works-in-progress piece Words on Lost that would be my initial step into the large world of exploring identity and my section of The Missing Peace.

Last week I hosted a creative day/open rehearsal for the dancers involved in my work, as well as, dancers from the community. We started the day with the question "What do you see about this person?". We judged each book by their cover and discussed how that made us feel as both the person being looked at and the people that had to do the judging. We started to notice that we avoided things such as race and gender or things that could "offend" anyone and talked more about each persons clothes, eye color and nervous tendencies. 

We moved on to a Post-It exercise where I gave a list of categories we get put into when discussing identity [Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Socioeconomic Status, Age, Physical Ability, Mental Ability, Profession] and anonymously wrote a word, short phrase or drew a picture for each one. We covered the mirror in these post-its and then walked around and looked at what everyone wrote. We started to find similarities between us that we didn't know that we shared. I found the post-it's to be moving, inspiring and eye opening in this process.

The next two exercises were movement based. We first lined up by the mirror of post-its as I read allowed prompts that would allow the dancer to improv across the room if it applied to them. If the dancers moved across the room they would then have to look at the dancers opposing them then walk back as a group to join the others. These 25 prompts spanned from "if you like the color red" to "if you have ever been judged by the color of your skin" to "if you find joy in who you are". Some of the more emotional questions made it harder for the dancers to move. They found connections with the other dancers moving with them and started to feel empathy for the dancers who moved as they looked at them from the opposite side.

Our second movement exercise was to build a phrase based off 10 statements that would lead the dancers to a sign with an identity category on it that were hung across the room. These statements ranged from "The part of your identity that is most difficult to talk about with people who identify differently than yourself is ______?" to " The part of your identity that garners you the most privilege is ______?". Some of the dancers said they had not thought about their identity in these way before. This exercise stemmed a lot of conversation of different ways we haven't viewed or categorized ourselves before.

We finished the day with our first exercise but changed the question from "What do you see about this person?" to "What do you know about this person?". It was a nice way to wrap up what became a very therapeutic creative day for myself and the dancers. We started to see that while we are all unique beings we can find common threads that sew us together. Finding someone to relate to helps us build community and support us through the difficult times. I'm excited to continue on this exploration with these wonderful, open artists!

​Check out the dancers wrap up thoughts below!!!!

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