Potential

potential

released!

P O T E N T I A L

At SOZO I teach a basic dance science and movement theory course to first year students. We usually spend a whole session talking about potential and kinetic energy. I like the students to actually notice, analyze and talk about physical examples they experience in a ballet class or a contemporary technique class. So, the first thing we take note of is that potential energy is stored energy in our bodies that could potentially become kinetic in the perfect situation with a right amount of ignition of force and therefor the kinetic energy is the potential energy in action… RELEASED!

When the energy is just in the potential state we may not assume or guess what could come out and be released. That gives the performing dancer an amazing playfield to be exciting in movement down to a fraction of a second and I could go on about this because I’m so passionate about it, but I actually was wanting to write this blog about the POTENTIAL in all of us.

What does it mean to say flatly that someone has “amazing potential” in something? A seed has the potential to grow into something, but without the right liquids and food and light, it will dry up and the potential will diminish and eventually die. Another logical and physical example. Potence is also a word we use to describe just how much strength and intensity something has to make a difference, break through, become powerful or even dominant.

Often, we can observe others and cannot quite describe why we feel this potential in them. We can’t really measure it or accurately name it. Society has trimmed us to even feel threatened by this potential of others around us. That’s sad. When do we finally give up trying to outdo each other or get tired of putting up with secret jealousy we feel when someone is excelling right in front of us. It catches us all.

One of the biggest learning fields for me is the school I created, SOZO visions in motion. My motivation was to create a space where potential could unfold and be released in a safe and sound space (meaning not without some edgy challenges determination and hard work).

I was still relatively speaking, a young dancer when I created the school and gave myself the job of an artistic school director at 36 years of age, still identifying myself completely as a professional dancer. Little did I know that I was stepping into the perfect situation to let a deeper layer of potential in myself come out and be released. People who knew me in my 20s will remember my shy, insecure self who only became fierce onstage (my safe place). I remember the first young aspiring dancers coming to audition and I felt an unexplainable potential in different ways about each one of those I asked to take a study place at SOZO back in 2007. Over the past 15 years I have learned that I can trust my sensing of potential. I decided to want to see potential in young people. I want to connect with it, to resonate with it. Actually when I really analyze what’s going on, its more that I make myself available in the moment and the potential shining out of someone in an audition, in the words of their motivation letter, resonates with me, brings me to a place of opening up my vision and enables me to see what that little spark I saw, could become with the right “food, water and light”, hence the SOZO ZONE.

A ZONE full of SOZO is what we offer.

SOZO - to be safe and sound, to recover, become liberated, whole, reach full potential.

ZONE - is an area that has particular features or characteristics (see above).

To be “in the zone” - in a mental state that enables one to perform to the best of one's ability!

At the time of writing, I´m almost 52 and I fully identify myself as a mentor and host that enables potential to develop, unashamedly, radically, righteously and truthfully in a space where everyone else is also entitled to the same. To encourage the celebration of each other and the self. To see others not just as an accessory around our own selves (who judge, critizise or praise us – and therefore forming our own self-image always based on that), but to see them as heroes of their own lives and training ourselves step by step to really notice them, look at them, listen to them, in the moment. This is giving potential a chance, giving it space to resonate.

I couldn’t even say that as a teacher or mentor that I actually “dig up the gold”. I believe someone must do the digging themselves. It’s enough to just tell someone they have potential, to help them find a “tool”, guide them with a first step, encourage them when I feel they may be weakening, almost giving up, have fallen, or partly failed. Nothing can be perfect on this earth so every effort, every courageous breath that musters up repetitively the decision to keep trying, is shining brighter and without a doubt fueling the potential. The moment you lay down on the studio floor and take that first in-breath of the Pilates exercise at 08.00 am or in the moment you walk home, reflecting about the day and you decide again FOR tomorrow… it’s the food, the water and the light, the comfort of safety to just try and find out, the truthful connection to the others around you all doing the same – a ZONE where potential is released. SOZO!

The joy of advancing in the infinite ...and leaving competition behind.

The joy of advancing in the infinite

… and leaving competition behind.

My instinct told me as a young lady that competition was useless and possibly harmful. I was entering already as a teenager the competitive ballet universe. Auditions, competitions and exams and I was not immune to developing a competitive spirit which led me, on the one side to succeed; to continue gritting my teeth into my goals with super-human discipline and stubbornness. On the other side, it led me to destructive, isolating behaviour because you see I wasn't "perfect" for the professional dance world. Not my physical build or ideals such as flexibility or my personality type, lacking charisma and guts (to the outside eye). 

I was so shy as a little girl that my mother couldn't even leave me at a nursery alone, not to mention that I refused to go to any children's birthday parties. Later in school I was never able to stick out my elbows, to shout out what I wanted, needed or thought. As a dance student, I had to adopt certain attitudes towards the voices around me saying I wouldn't, succeed and these voices were not those of my parents or my beloved ballet teacher (who lovingly believe in me to the current day). They were some of my educators, the gaze of a mother who thought her daughter was superior, advertisements, glossy articles, chatter and gossip amongst other dance students in the changing rooms and of course my inner self-talking voice.

Zooming forwards to today…

Today I am the artistic director of a creative, educational, dance and performance platform, hub, community (whatever you describe it as), called SOZO. I created it myself at the age of 34 after deciding to leave steady employment in a state opera house as a contemporary dancer. 

It wasn´t that I was tired of performing but I felt something awaken in me that urged to be passed on. I had learnt during the work, especially with three choreographers over 15 years that all the continual justifying my right to become a dancer, the continual playing with my diet to reform my body to one that others would "respect" and consider worthy to be a dancer and to be competed against - was most probably done, to the extent I did it, all in vain. 

I cannot regret anything that I did in those times of surviving and proving to myself and to others that I could become the dancer that others said I would not be, BUT remembering the words of choreographers continually giving me main roles in their creations, such as "you are my muse" or "I am so moved and inspired by your presence and your performance", slightly pains me that I then listened to the changing room talk behind my back of other dancers speaking out their thoughts negatively against the fact that I had yet again been given the main role that could have been danced so much better by "so and so".

The what's in and out, changes continually in every industry. Sometimes at an alarming rate and sometimes so you hardly notice it happening. Who decides? Who makes the rules? For every trend, there is also an "anti-trend". Now at this present time in 2020, it doesn't make sense to compete at all. Wasting precious time looking left or right and checking to make sure you are always winning. Winning what? I decided that if I was to look left or right then it should be to learn something, to edify myself and bring advancement in what I do to help others.

Joy doesn't arise through comparison. Joy arises through advancing in what we know we were born to do. 

I think I was born and given the gifts by God to move and inspire people, just as those choreographers told me I was ALREADY doing serving them as a dancer in their creations. I don't need to win every battle and prove myself as the best director and SOZO as the best dance community and educator.

I need to concentrate on the INFINITE, ever, ongoing advancement of my calling on this planet.

Looking to my right and left, allowing my spirit to adhere to an issue that is so finite and shallow as comparing myself or my mission to others, leads to stagnating and most probably missing many key moments to advance. 

Looking back, there was a pattern to my competitiveness. My family, loved ones and friends were really believing in me and encouraging me and yet a stubborn perfectionist inside insisted on only comparing with the best (whom I defined). I had set my goal high which is a credible thing. The problem was that those individuals or ideals who I named to be the best, who I made "my competition", were only being seen from my very own naive perspective based on my experience in life so far. 

I have learnt to be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.

Another issue, and yes, I have worked through a few self-help books in my life BUT staying with the focus just on me often led back to comparison or another new dogma in my life. Why are there so many "self-help" books and hardly any "help-others" literature? For me, advancement has always come with the decision to help and contribute to making the lives of others better. As a mentor for young artists, I would wish for each one to be free from a type of competition that keeps one away from the true power of one's calling. YOU are your competition; YOUR VISION is your competition. 

"We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise." (2. Cor. 10:12)

A vision in motion ...sharpens your intension!

a vision in motion

sharpens your intension!

"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.

“Which road do I take?" she asked. 

"Where do you want to go?" was his response. „I don't know," Alice answered. 

„Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." 
- Lewis Carroll - Alice in wonderland

Working with young dance artists on a daily basis I experience them coming into the studios every morning to train, to rehearse, to think and move together. I try to remember if i had a clear vision when I was 20 of what i wanted to do with dance as a career. I can remember vividly that I had a plan. My plan was, after graduating from the royal ballet school in London to come to Europe and get a few years experience as a professional dancer so I could return to London and start my own company. 

There you go, I said it. I visioned having my own dance company. I even have it written down somewhere.

In Germany I found work in State theaters and opera houses for 15 years of full employment. You see the "few" years of experience turned into many more. Returning to London never happened. Marriage and a beautiful daughter happened to me. Meanwhile I have lived in Germany for longer than I grew up in England. 

Having a vision means it will rise within you again and again in life and revisit your heart. This happened to me 2 years before I decided to leave the opera house lifestyle. I set out to chase my vision. I felt ready and courageous, passionate and unstoppable. When I look back I would say I was downright naive. My vision that I had planted would save me in my own doubt, it would protect me like a big brother against the ridicule from others and it was and is indeed unstoppable. WHY?

Its an offering from the heart that cannot be rejected. It will fall where it should fall, it will touch those it should touch, it will form and reform as much as I form and reform as a creative personality. Its sharp because I keep it sharpened. It is a vision in motion because I am moving. My vision is a work in progress I keep on making a next MOVE.

Your visions create futures and as they are like the rhythm of our heart beat that adjusts to our bodies need even to the point of skipping a beat. 

...and thats sharp.

Deborah