You (still) Live In My Spine

In May of 2022 I decided I was tired of waiting for someone else to ask me to choreograph dance, so I threw all my savings at creating a new original work which had been living in my body for quite some time. “You Live In My Spine” premiered 9 months later, just as we entered 2023. The story of the work, the process of creating it (and restaging it in 2024), and the deep emotions that came after the work was finished gave me so much insight into my current state as a survivor, which is why I’d like to share a bit of it here.

‘You live in my spine’ is a phrase I found myself mulling over internally during the year or so I spent interviewing my ex-friends about how our friendship fell apart in high school due to my abusive boyfriend. I knew I wasn’t referring to the friends when I said ‘you’, though for a while I wasn’t entirely sure who I was referring to. One might naturally think I was referring to my ex, but that wasn’t it either. I know he lives in my chest, in the keloid scars that are still there, and still ache from time to time. He also lives in my gut, occasionally, as a small rock, though the edges have been worn down significantly over the years, and all that’s left is a shiny marble.

Without knowing the subject of the phrase, I forged ahead creating the piece under that title since its inception. Working with six dancers (Amina Yufanyi, Amanda Sun, Alexis Amundarain, Sierra Henry and Alyssa Milligan) we spent hours doing and undoing small gestural phrases until each dancer had a phrase that was ‘theirs’, and a few phrases that were in duet with others and were ‘theirs’. The gestures (originally created by the six dancers themselves) became both a moniker for each character to be uniquely identifiable as well as a shared language that all dancers had in common.

Many of our rehearsals started with Body Memory sessions, and movement that naturally came about during that time was then fodder for inspiration to create new phrases for the work, or to add different textures to what we’d already set. On occasion, I’d get a jolt of creative inspiration outside of rehearsal, and would choreograph set movements that I later gave to the dancers, but at least 75% of the piece was created in real time, collaboratively, with the cast.

We each brought our own relationship to the word “survivor”, we each carried something different in our spines, and we each related to the work in different ways. Yet, because I was fairly clear on what research was driving the work, and where I needed it to go, we were able to work in unison throughout the process. It was cosmic, considering these dancers were selected through an open audition and I had never met any of them prior, nor had they known each other. 

Throughout the process of creating the work, I thought that the ‘you’ in the title would simply appear. It never did. Perhaps, what lives in my spine is the broader trauma that I went through, or perhaps it is another version of the way my ex still inhabits my body. It could be the weight of the memories I still have, or the confusion those memories pose, since I know they aren’t all accurate to what really happened, possibly explaining the nerve issues that come up in my spine frequently (confused memories = confused nerves?).

I was curious if I’d go through some major revelation while making the work. I fantasized about having memories come back to me mid-rehearsal, perhaps memories that could explain things I still had questions about, or that could corroborate my hunches, elevating them to fact. But nothing of that nature happened. In fact, as opposed to a sort of gasping above water for air moment (like I’d anticipated), creating YLIMS felt more like sinking deeper into the ocean, bringing with it a calmer and surer sense of knowing what I already knew, rather than coming to some unknowable brand new conclusion. 

I think what lives in my spine is my deep commitment to sharing my survivor story, elevating other survivors and amplifying their voices, making sure I do everything I can to provide the very education that could have prevented what happened to me to other young people. I think what lives in my spine is the way I have come to feel about my survivorship, which is sort of tender, hesitantly joyous, and somehow grateful. What lives in my spine is me, who I am at my core, what I’ve always known yet must keep relearning throughout my life. 

Sharing YLIMS was deeply scary. I had shared an evening length work once before in 2019 (“Once It All Ends” presented by Awakenings Art) and the way it left me feeling like a burn victim — raw and fleshy and scarred and extremely vulnerable — was still palpable in my body when it became time to show YLIMS to an audience. But the experience was gorgeous. I felt supported by survivors and dancers alike, and felt sure enough in the work that I wasn’t over analyzing the audience as they watched it, but instead I got to experience the show as an audience member, too. That’s one major difference between my previous work and this one — I performed in “Once It All Ends”, and I’ve learned that if I’m to continue choreographing such personal works (which, of course, I am), then I cannot also be a performer in them. It’s simply too much.

Then, I put it down. Nine months of intense rehearsals (up to 12 hours a week at times), long conversations with my composer Max Berlin, hours and hours of journaling, and a few weeks of stress-heavy production meetings with me, myself and I were suddenly gone. It wasn’t hard to fill the hole that the end of the show left — in fact it was a welcome reprieve that allowed me to refocus my energy on my other projects (such as The Sunflower Project, of course) — but it was a sudden change that left me slightly off balance for a time. I didn’t watch any footage from the show for nearly a year, afraid that I would come to find that I hated the whole thing (which has happened to me, and many artists, before). But when I did finally get to the footage, I still loved the piece. It’s the most personal work I’ve ever choreographed, the dancers are so caring and tender with what we made, and the music just soars. 

When I was given the opportunity to restage the work, two dancers were unavailable for the performance, and I didn’t think twice about simply reworking the piece for a cast of four rather than recast the missing two. I don’t think this dance can be performed by anyone else. It’s theirs as much as it is mine. We jumped back into the material over a year after any of us had touched it, and it was immediately comfortable and exhilarating all over again. Performing it for a second time was so different — the space was entirely different (originally we’d performed it on the same eye level as the audience, with the audience sitting on three sides, and now we were in a more traditional auditorium set up), and we didn’t have live music but we did have professional lighting. Watching that performance (which was part of the Odyssey Summer Dance Festival in 2024) was both exactly the same and entirely different from when it premiered (which was at G-Son Studios in Atwater). 

Thinking back on it now, both times I watched the piece performed felt like I received a warm hug, somehow, from myself. Though the piece tackles the pain and heft that come with living in a survivor’s body, the overwhelming feeling I have from it is that this piece comes from a version of me that is from the future, and she is whispering to me: ‘not to worry, it will get lighter’. 

You can read more about You Live In My Spine, see photos and videos, and read reviews of the performances here. YLIMS is available for restaging commissions.