Parental Choreography: Coming Out with Our Dreams by Ori Lenkinski
*originally published in Hebrew in the Parental Choreography column in Haaretz.
I am currently working with a group of young dancers, women in their early twenties who are finishing a three-year professional training program. During our last rehearsal, we got to talking about the moment in which they decided to pursue dance, or rather, the moment they told their families that they had made that decision. One dancer described the “journey of persuasion” she embarked upon to convince her parents to support her passion. She recalled crying and pleading with them to drive her across town to go to a specific studio, the debate about whether she could transfer to an arts high school and having to ask her parents to pay for a training program once she had finished her army service.
Another dancer spoke about leaving the hi tech field to pursue dance and the disapproval her work colleagues betrayed when she informed them of her decision.
All of them could easily relate to the fear associated with admitting that dance was not a hobby in their eyes, rather a professional aspiration.
The conversation took me back to a phone call. I was eighteen and in my first year of studies at McGill University. It was February and it was snowing outside, as it often was in Montreal. I had recently returned from a trip to New York, where I had unsuccessfully auditioned to transfer to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. I returned with an image seared into my mind: my life was a train and I wasn’t on it. I knew that if I wanted to get on board, I had to make a change. I woke up the next morning with a sense of clarity about what I had to do. I picked up the phone and called my parents’ landline. They both answered. I laid out my plan- I would take a year off of university studies, move to New York, and “become a dancer.” I didn’t know how to do that but I knew I had to try to do it or forever feel I was on the wrong side of a sliding door. I remember my stomach churning as I talked and the seemingly endless pause while I waited for them to respond.
For me, pursuing dance meant diverging from the path that had been laid out for me since I was little, the formula for a happy life spoon fed to me alongside apple sauce and mashed peas. That foolproof plan included high school, college, a job and a family. And here I was, jumping ship after having only completed one of the four steps.
Abandoning the path paved for me felt like coming out of a type of closet. It wasn’t about who I loved rather what I loved but the questions were the same. Did pursuing dance mean I wouldn’t have a job, a family, security? Would I ever achieve financial independence? Would I be uneducated? What did this mean about the rest of my life?
“You’re going to be a waitress forever,” was my best friend Brandy’s reaction.
I assured her I wouldn’t but I wasn’t sure.
Luckily, and I say that not with lightness but with the full weight of the concept of good fortune, my parents took a different approach. They agreed that a year was a reasonable amount of time to take off from school and that they would support me however they could. I don’t know if they realized then that a year off would become two years, three years, a decade, but they were on board. That year off opened the door to a lifetime that led me to work with a group of five, talented young women at the brink of their own professional careers.
Listening to them talk about similar moments in their lives, I suddenly could see that call with my parents half a lifetime ago with new eyes. After all, I am closer to the age my parents were on the other side of that call now and the dancers are closer to my daughter’s age today.
The parent’s perspective is so very different from the child’s.
As children, we are often terrified to share our dreams with our parents for fear that they will try to shut them down.
As parents, we are terrified that our children will never find a dream they feel strongly enough about to pursue.
From a young age, we expose them to different classes, hobbies and experiences that will spark their interest. At school they are exposed to musical instruments, chess, sports, the arta. These attempts aren’t necessarily geared towards finding a career path rather engaging our children in activities that will enrich and enlighten them. Perhaps this is a symptom of modern, western parenting but there seems to be a clear consensus that stimulating hobbies make for a better childhood. Or, on the flip side, admitting my kid doesn’t go to any chugim can often feel like exposing a failure.
Hearing about the sacrifices and hardships these dancers went through to arrive at the small studio in south Tel Aviv where we meet twice a week, I could only dream that my children will one day be passionate enough about something to face down risk, uncertainty and rejection to attain it. That they will love something enough to insist upon it, even if, as their parents, we have to stretch to understand it.
Ori Lenkinski is a Tel Aviv-based dancer, actress, choreographer and journalist. Her work, be it on stage, the Internet or on paper, is devoted to exploring the connection between words and movement.
As a dancer, Ori has worked with independent choreographers in the USA, Europe and Israel. Ori’s writing has been published in Dance Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and others.
Her choreographic works include The Painting, Portrait #2, The Suit, Meet Me in the Market, Help Desk, Birth Preparation Course, a dance piece, Jackie Pink and Black, Escape Room as well as the dance films Carriage and Expecting. Ori’s works have been presented throughout Israel, North America and Europe.
She is the founder and editor of Creative Writing.