Falling Back in Love... With Movement and Myself

During the first semester midterm for my movement class in Boston University's BFA Acting program, my professor, the one and only Yo-El Cassel, challenged me to not always need words. His movement class teaches us that words are not the end all be all. There are other, more powerful and profound ways of communicating other than words. When you release yourself from the bounds life has tied you into that which fuels the need for a definitive way to describe, grasp, and label our lives and happenings, you might find that you hold a much larger capacity for understanding and learning than you would have within said bounds. I've found that, when I put aside my need for words, my love and appreciation for myself, my body, and my movement grows astronomically. This has provided a sense of freedom and play that I had thought I'd never have access to before.

I believe that movement is in everything we do. It's ever-present, always encompassing our every action and thought. I mean, I wrote a four page essay about the movement of a sitting guitar for one of our Out of Practicum assignments and I could've written 40 more pages... Not only this, but one's movement, body and soul, is always the vessel for their art. Especially as actors. No matter one's style and/or technique, the body is where our art is perceived. And then, our artistic mark is impressed upon by our movement and bodies. I meet all of my characters-whether I am portraying, writing, or directing them-first and foremost with how they move about the world. Their physicality, posturing and presence are what their voice, words, and thoughts come from. Same as my own. Simple as that. It then astounds me when people come into acting training questioning whether they really need movement as part of their program. I've heard many people on different college forums, including dancers, asking if they could substitute their movement classes for dance classes... Which... Oof.

Yo-El, a dancer himself, reminds us constantly that while movement is incorporated within dance, they are completely different forms. Dance is the function that movement flows into. The former innately harbors connotations of restricted and formed movement, while movement itself is the relinquishing to true movement. This thought process and constant practice of the release that movement provides me allowed for the space and time to truly fall back in love with movement and myself. As I've said, I, along with literally anything and everything else you could possibly think of, am constantly moving. I need movement to be happy. Even on days where standing up plagues me with pain, movement in general, but especially Yo-El's class, offers me so much natural joy that I have never really found before with movement.

Being an ex-competitive gymnast and dancer, I harbor so much physical and mental trauma from the institutionalized environment and territory of those industries: practicing 20 hours a week with a broken back at age 8, being criticized for wearing wrist braces because of the excruciating pain in my wrists that ten year old me described as fire, being yelled at because my legs weren't straight when I did a leap when they were actually hyperextended because no one took the time to warn impressionable children of the dangers of hypermobility nor to question if their little machine was disabled... the list goes on and on. I love gymnastics. I love dance. But the people who present them to me don't always love me back. And if they did, it was always second to perfection and making them look better with me as the vessel.

Taking movement as part of my program has helped me relearn and re-associate those bad memories and feelings with better, safer ones. Yo-El and the safe and supportive environment he naturally fosters in his class has been a huge part in that process, working with me as well as my peers all along the way. This partnership with oneself and others from movement is integral for any type of artist and person. I'm not even finished with my first of four years of movement class and my art, my movement, and how I feel about and interact with all of it has changed for the better. And I could never thank Yo-El Cassel enough.

*Photo by Nicole Sage