What do you think about when you think of ballet?
When you imagine people attending ballet, what sort of picture does your mind’s eye paint?
I see older, snooty people. I see people wearing fancy clothes and sitting near silently, watching the people on stage move their bodies in a foreign language the audience may or may not understand. I see chandeliers in the lobby, rich colored tapestries and I can sometimes, if I listen carefully, hear some audience members falling asleep.
This may not be an accurate view at all, it is simply what my mind conjures.
I don’t picture those same formal-clothes wearing audience members rioting with rage, I don’t imagine mayhem breaking loose. Yet this is exactly what happened on May 29, 1913, when Igor Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” premiered to a standing-room-only crowd in Paris at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
This surprising turn of events instantly became legendary. There weren’t people with cell phone cameras recording the incident. Few facts are known about what actually took place that famous evening.
What remains true is Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky created an extraordinary moment that opened a wellspring of creativity for those outside the norm of acceptability inside the status quo. Artists across genre convened separately together to make art differently, to toss out tradition yet at the same time use those skillsets forged in traditionalism to make work that was significantly and viscerally different.
I realized this morning for the perhaps three thousand twenty seventh time how much writing in a free flowing, stream of consciousness style frequently changes how I see what is in front of me whether it is the beads of water on a paper cup on my writing table or the smashed front end of a car just fractured in a car accident or the scabs on the face of a young homeless woman I frequently speak with and supply with books to read.
I was reminded again as I wrote my morning pages and for no reason at all decided to string together rows and rows and rows of two word sentences, translating one long sentence into a bouquet of other sentences, seeing how much meaning I could retain in spurts and dots and dashes rather than the natural flow of a more attuned and more familiar sentence structure.
Originally I wrote, “He grunts at me when I comment to him about my love for making him pancakes.”
In two word sentences (and one may argue whether any or all of these qualify as sentences) I wrote the following.
He grunts. Pancake making. Sacred smell. Translation lost. Adolescent whispers. “What?” vocalized. Nothing smiled. Coffee lips. Feeling ready. Let go. Almost forgot.
I went on to play with “mismatched” two word sentence that started with the clichéd “Tomorrow’s promise” with “tomorrow’s untruths” and “Tomorrow’s rips” which birthed this tiny sentence parade.
Stained yesterdays. Broken tomorrows. Shattered bluejeans. Expansive hallways. Torn concrete. Silver granite. Armchair colony. Choir suspended. Herald silences. Distinctive tracthome. (It is probably “tract home” but combined with “distinctive” I couldn’t resist cheating a bit to create a compound word.
Potent boredom. Frantic peace. Stillborn harvest. Containerized creativity. Listless passion.
I read this stack of phrases again and new images appear.
I argue with my idea infested imagination to stay here, to stay still to enjoy the combinations as they are and not relentlessly gallop after more and more and more.
I lean back in my recliner, satisfied with the writing as is.
I don’t have to take it any further today or any other day. And I may take it further. It is and will always be my choice. This love affair with words, with meaning, with the creative process.
I’m curious now, though, what you think about when you think about ballet.
What images dance into your mind?
Can you now conjure a riotous scene, of people so upset by their status quo being upset they behave completely contrary to their societal norms?
I challenge you to try it out, to purposefully create a changed scene in your mind.
You may use a different scenario and shift it around, just for fun. Then write or paint or sketch or collage it. Your interpretation may be abstract or as wildly realistic as you like.
Watch how suddenly your creative process, your artistry, shifts your perceptions - and your world - almost instantly.
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in Fall, 2015 and beyond.
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
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