07/18/2025
I'll be performing one of my first ever numbers tonight - Darkness - at the - show starting at 8PM at
I was in one of my darkest phases of life when I created this number. I was in a "double depression" and dancing was the only thing that kept me alive. It was the only platform where I felt I could share what was actually happening in my body.
In my number I throw myself on the ground a lot to represent the struggle. I made sure to showcase myself looking like a hot mess - sexy outfit but hair a mess and holes in my tights. During the dance I feature the struggle with the depression and anger stage of grief, and I have a few nods to su***de ideation (strangle myself with my nylons, push my wrists out to the audience). When I was creating this number I had the hardest time finishing it because it had no resolve. My story and my depression had not resolved, and I didn't want to end the number inauthentically. I ended up not ending with resolve and just having it end in the same depression spiral it started with as I wanted to represent the true struggles of depression. Over time, as I healed, I very slightly adjusted the end to have a minor resolve of healing where I end in a powerful standing pose. That's all I gave it though because people will always carry around what happens to them in their dark whole of mental health disparities. We learn to manage them and heal with those tools, but the feelings of it, not many can forget.
It took me over 2 years to heal from this period of my life. Through MANY doctors visits, tests, sampling years of different meditations to find the right ones for my body, medical genetic testing, psychiatry, extensive therapy, dance, and finding a supportive friend group who loved me through the dark is what eventually gave me the strength to crawl out of that dark pit of sorrow, loneliness, and helplessness.
I don't perform this number much anymore because it's hard to re-live, but I figured the DisabiliTease fest was an appropriate place to share this message.
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