Lucky to be a Sister

As I read this exercise on how to be lucky I realized two things: 1. Twyla Tharp likes to title her exercises the broad sense of what she is talking about and 2. I could relate very much to what she was talking about.

            Twyla stated that you need to be generous, what this has to do with luck.. I am still not sure. She stated that, “to be a great choreographer, you have to invest everything you have in your dancers.” That is the difference between great dancers that have the ability to teach well and choreographers. This made me think of the situations I have been though. Mostly, the difference between a best friend and a sister. The sisters I talk about happen to be my sorority sisters. In order to work with all 80 girls to my full extent, you have to be generous. You have to be willing to help out when they need it. And you have to be generous enough to do it without asking anything in return. This reminds me of a story one of my best friends and sister, Lynn, told me. She got out of her bed when she had the flu at 3 in the morning to help one of the sisters that ran out of gas on the side of the road. Situations like this stay deep in me. They show me that when you are generous you have 80 other sisters willing to be just as generous.

Just some of my sisters

            This is also how I relate to the title, “how to be lucky.” When joining this organization I realized I would be giving the same generosity needed and getting it in return. To me this is luck. Finding people that you can trust well enough with your life and always knowing they are willing to give you their all. 

Fear

The problem with fear is that we can never run away from it.  It is always changing as we change and eventually we need to face it. Twyla Tharp shows her top five fears and how she deals with them. I believe that fear is not something we can get over.

            We fear things in the moment. It is my opinion that as we change, our fear changes too. We do not teach ourselves to not fear something by repetition or the will to get over something. As we change our fear evolves, it moves with us building and coming apart. As a dancer, I fear many things. Some of which include the fear of not putting on a good show, the fear of getting injured, and the fear of losing inspiration. As I work through it, my fear works with me. I will always fear getting injured. This could happen at anytime but the more I dance the less I think about it. The fear doesn’t leave me though. I work through it and trust that I have enough skills to do the move.

            Not putting on a good show is something that we all fear as performers. It is the judgment that is sticking with us. Although we put on a show that we think is good, we take this fear and use it in other aspects of our lives. The judgment moves with us in different situations.

            In my personal opinion that fear moves with us. The way we “get over it” is by trying not to listen to it and doing what we want to anyway. Once we accomplish our goal though, our fear changes as our goal changes. 

Creative Thinking

            The semester is half way over and by now it is easy to see just where the direction of our class is going. Our discussions of creative thinking and how to mentally grow can be tracked as the year goes on. The readings in Twyla Tharp are no exceptions.

            The fact that she is writing from a dancers perception makes me have a connection in a way most people wouldn’t. That doesn’t mean that you need to be a dancer just to understand though. Twyla explains concept of creativity in forms of art, business, etc.

            So far the book has been about how creativity consumes you. It explains where creativity comes from and how we can fine-tune it. One concept that stayed with me was that you had to know yourself in order to be the best you could be. At first this seems obvious but when taking he quiz, it dawned on me that I honestly didn’t understand how deep creativity went.  Not only does it take over your identity, it also comes from your memory and is hardwired by our DNA. This to me seems insane. When those moments that we just cant think of what to write or draw or dance become moments when we need to know ourselves the most.

            This connects with what we talk about in class by showing how we will be able to grow. Being creative in college is very important. You can have it when you are in a club, finding a new topic to write about for homework, or decorating your dorm room. I look forward to reading the rest of the book to help me define my creativity.