MPD Dance [Me]

This weekend we drove to my daughter's college to watch a dance performance she was in. Not only as a dancer, but as a choreographer. We've been talking for months as she put together choreography for this one, because she did the dance about being multiple. Here's the music for the dance; you should listen to it while you read:

It was a long dance - six minutes - but she had a lot to cram in a short time. She had two dancers, one male and one female. The male dancer represented the outward appearance of the host body, and the female dancer was only in the mind. Because the male dancer had to be all the alters, there was a lot of 'face' acting required for this song. And because my daughter chose to use different styles of dancing to represent the behavior of each alter, the dancing was pretty demanding as well.

The first point where the dance got me was when her host dancer was doing a fairly strong dance, with the mind dancer writhing around on the stage nearby. I thought, "how distracting," and then smiled. Because yes, an alter writhing around in my head with one emotion while I'm trying to be solid and dependable and strong IS very distracting, indeed. Another part that I loved was seeing the merry-go-round effect I've tried to describe, where the host was spinning around, and the mind was pushing him around and around and around some more.

The dancers echoed each others movements at times, sometimes coming into unison dancing, other times splitting completely and competing for the audience's attention. And then occasionally they cooperated, like the moment when the host sat on the ground broken and hurting, and the mind circled behind him, comforting and encouraging, and finally helping him to rise up and face things again.

There will be a video of the entire dance show coming out soon. If we can get it cut down to a video of just that dance, I will come back to edit this post and include it. I'm terribly proud of my singleton daughter trying to design a dance to portray what she has come to understand about my multiplicity. It's a touching tribute, and I won't say that I got through it without tears.