I recently performed in the “Dancing Dreamscapes” concert at The Dalí Museum. It was a collaboration with the current exhibit, “The Shape of Dreams” which includes dream-themed art from Frida Kahlo, Giorgio de Chirico, Orazio Borgianni, and Dalí himself.

This was my second time performing for The Dalí; I also performed there when they hosted the "Van Gogh Alive!" exhibit a few years prior. You can read my reflections on that performance here.

The Dalí Museum asked the Central Florida Choreographers Collaboration (CFCC) to design a show based around any piece on display. Amanda, the director of the CFCC, took on the job of choreographer for this gig, and she recruited 4 dancers, me included. Our other 3 dancers were:

You’ll notice there are zero men in this painting, just three women (mannequins?). Moreover, Amanda the Choreographer advertised on the open call that she was looking to “emphasize the femininity in the piece.” So I was surprised she drafted me.

My original theory was that I was getting cast as Big Rock, as evidenced in the following photoshop I sent to the group text:

My theory was incorrect, as I ended up representing Dalí himself. We were going the “meta” route: the first minute of our piece was just me sitting off the downstage edge, pantomiming the painter’s process.

As I paint, the ladies start progressively moving, giving the impression that I’m painting them into being. But then I move upstage as the graces move to the front doing their choreography. I eventually join them on the same plane, making it look like the artist is blending into the art as he creates it.

I even did some research by finding a few old videos of Dalí painting, so I could copy any distinctive movements he made.

Alas, Dalí did nothing visually unusual while painting, at least in what little recorded footage remains of him. His motions while painting may be the most normal thing about the guy. I made do with what I could.

I didn’t get the part of Big Rock, but Shianne did get the part of Big Fabric.

Our piece used a giant sheet of fabric that spanned the stage, probably about 10 yards long. The fabric helped translate the dreamy feel of Dalí’s surrealism into real life.

We cut holes in it so the ladies could wear it like a dress. Shianne wore the giant cut and stayed center, with the two tails of the fabric reaching to the ends of the stage like a bridal veil. Roselana and Thaís got cuts of the fabric to wear like togas since they needed some independence of movement to do their duets.

Big Fabric was effectively both the prop, background, and costume(s), which captured the perspective-bending effect of the original. In my mind, it was a great illustration of the weird phenomenon where one thing can take on multiple meanings. One object can act as a sign of many different things at once.

In the painting, the graces are in the forefront, but background scenes form parts of each body. We mimicked that effect by blending the costumes together with the prop that also acted as our background.

In the last minutes of the piece, Thaís and Roselana each grabbed a “tail” of Shianne’s “veil”, ran it to the foreground, and raised it shoulder-height, creating a giant white foreground screen.

Then Shianne and I posed and partnered behind it. The idea was to replicate the painting’s impression that the landscape itself is alive, blurring into the graces’ bodies and motions.

On top of the fabric, all 3 ladies had zippered skintight face caps to make them resemble the painting’s faceless silhouettes. They ended up looking just like Dalí’s originals, but had the unfortunate side effect of making them all blind.

Now the stage is a raised narrow rectangle, maybe 5 yards deep, with a 90-degree 3-foot drop into the audience. And it’s a multipurpose revue stage, so it’s got 3 non-recessed electrical floor sockets for either:

1) powering a lecturer’s laptop, or

2) tripping over.

So being blind wasn’t ideal.

The average dancer has great spatial awareness but lacks the faculties necessary for echolocation. That usually isn’t a problem, but it was this one time.

Yet everyone learned to navigate the stage by proprioception alone, with only 6 minutes of tech rehearsal time on the stage.

That’s impressive even for dancers.

We were the last of 12 pieces. To match the exhibit’s dream theme, we re-imagined each piece as a distinct “dream”. Half were live, half were selections from our 3 previously published films.

The format let us recap what CFCC has already accomplished, while teasing what’s coming later in 2023. Beyond the theme, we didn’t need to supply any overarching story to connect all the pieces together. Every dream was stand-alone.

It’s impossible to capture any dance—however short—with words, and I honestly don’t see the point in trying. Motions and words are two different signs, and they’ll never be equivalent.

But here, let me throw you some stream-of-conscious summations of a few “dreams” from our show. That way you can get an impression, then come to the next CFCC show and see how the real pieces compare to your imagination!

This was my first artistic performance since getting my PhD. I felt a difference for the worse, but I don’t think it showed.

Rehearsals were 3 hours each, and this was the first time in a year I’ve gotten to do anything for 3 hours straight besides write or lay on the floor and act like garbage.

It felt good to commit entire afternoons to dance once again. I’m still cloudy-minded, but being alive again is a positive development. My body was stuck in anxiety mode for most of 2022 due to 2 things:

1) having a surprise delay in my PhD, and

2) the 6 months of panicked overtime in reaction to the delay.

My defense was delayed from May ’22 back to January ’23, and I just finished the proof editing in late March, so my body is still snapping back into anxious-overwork mode. Habit is still working against me and I hate it.

My fight-or-flight response doesn’t work properly even on the best days. It was fighting me for this show.

I have doctor-prescribed beta-blockers in my dance duffel for performance anxiety. I didn’t take any this time because I assumed I wouldn’t need them given I was only doing 1 piece.

Wrong.

Within seconds of taking my initial position on-stage, my hands started shaking. Trembling hands wouldn’t matter in any other performance I’ve ever done. But in this one, the first minute was just me pantomiming as a painter.

All attention was on the motions of my right hand.

I started the piece by sitting on the downstage edge, close enough to reach out and touch the first row of audience. Everyone could see my every twitch.

Hell of a time for my right hand to be uncooperative.

It’s good I only had to pantomime painting, because I probably would’ve involuntarily flung a real paint brush. I cupped my hands to compensate, converting the shaking energy into gripping energy.

Realization to compensation took about 2 seconds in real time. In reality, this didn’t affect the performance. But it did serve as a reality check I wish I could ignore:

I’m not out of PhD burnout yet.

My unconscious body isn’t where I want it to be, and I have to respect its limits. I keep underestimating how long the burnout effects will linger.

Burnout is a poorly defined response to stressful situations, which are usually stressful because the situations themselves had poorly defined boundaries. So I can’t expect a sudden recovery within a definitive time-span. And that reality has been frustrating me for months already.

But I made every rehearsal, did a show without mistakes, and gave the audience a nice evening. I gotta be grateful my body has accomplished what it has.

The theatre had 96 seats, and we filled nearly all of them. We could tell the audience was engaged and enthusiastic because they took up all the allowed Q&A time asking questions. Then we stayed an extra hour discussing our arts with the museum personnel.

We learned a Spanish dignitary was in the audience: an Encomienda (Commander) of the Order of Isabel the Catholic, knighted by Felipe VI, current king of Spain. The Encomienda loved how we engaged Dalí’s work and translated it into movement. You literally cannot ask for a higher Dalí-related compliment than that.

My audiences as a dancer are tiny compared to the audiences my football teams used to draw. But while football gets big audiences, the quality and engagement was never meaningful to me. And ultimately, it was just a bunch of boys attacking each other for vainglory.

I did primary school in Texas, and by middle school, my football games would draw well over 100 people. My varsity teams played in professional soccer and university stadiums.

But what’s the value if you’re just another randomly assigned number in a human wave attack, 75 yards away from the stands?

How many faceless thousands saw me playing football? And how many of them could recall a single action I took? How many could distinguish me from Teammate #72, #64, or #76?

The average audience I draw as a dancer is much smaller than the average audience I drew as an offensive lineman. But the quality, engagement, and positivity I draw as a dancer more than compensates.

Each of us got to be a unique character to each observer at The Dalí. And we did so without needing to conquer each other.

“The glory of God is a human fully alive...” (Saint Irenaeus of Lyons) And dance performances like this one prove humans are fully alive only as teammates, not as rivals.

Nobody needs to steal the show in order to be “the best”. We give our most perfect performances when we’re the most harmonious with our cast. It’s in experiences like this when we become fully alive, if only until the curtain comes down.

The Dalí thanked us with comp tickets immediately after the show. We got to pose with the painting that started it all: