Saturday was the last day of Cultivation. After 8 days of training and studying, it feels really weird to not be going into Datura with my fellow students to learn and dance all day!
I feel really grateful that I was able to do Initiation and Cultivation in the same year. I feel like 6 months was enough time to learn what I needed, but soon enough that Initiation was still fresh in my mind.
As for Cultivation itself, I loved it. I feel like the pace was pretty similar to Initiation, with slightly more challenging material and more homework requirements — but still totally doable. You’re not expected to memorize the exact wording of the required books, or demonstrate mad layering skills. It’s more about understanding the underlying concepts of things like Arabic music, musicality in general, and dance composition (whether composing a choreo, structured improv, solo, or group piece).
Cultivation seems to serve as something of a bridge between Initiation and Culmination… we spent some time looking back at and refining what we learned in Phase I, while getting some previews of what we would need to be able to do to pass Phase III if we chose to continue our training. That said, the info given and the lessons learned are still complete and valuable even if one decides to stop at Cultivation.
Of course, I’ll be continuing my training. I have my eye on possibly doing Culmination in July, or in the Fall. I’m really enjoying the opportunity to be part of a training program that is about giving dancers the knowledge and tools to be their own artists, rather than being focused on developing a specific technique-based vocabulary.
As a side note, I feel like the lessons in Cultivation meshed well with the lessons I learned in Mira’s NM retreat. Mira talks more about narrative dance, which is something that I enjoy doing, but which Rachel Brice currently doesn’t do. Rachel seems to get more into the underlying theory of dance creation, and Mira gets more into the emotional side of it. And then both ladies talk about the artistry, the importance of projecting on stage and making deliberate choices about the arc of your dance (whether it’s a narrative arc or not). I feel like combining the lessons I’ve learned from each of them will allow me to be the kind of dancer I want to be — elegant, expressive, technically adept, beautifully costumed, and above all, true to myself as an artist.
Anyway, I’m feeling super inspired to keep working on new dance material! And I’m patiently awaiting my test results, confident that I most likely passed, but knowing that if I need to retest, I have all the tools I need to succeed on the second go-round.