Colleen Leonardi

You Will Be Found

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I know exactly where I'm going when it happens. I know which exit to take. I imagine the feeling of the bend of the exit, the curve around the dairy barn that leads to a deeper grove of trees that soon reveals a Christmas tree farm on my left and a field of sunflowers on my right, both of which end in a graveyard and then the town - Yellow Springs, Ohio.

I could see it in my mind an hour ago when I got into my car without my camera, a book, our GPS or even my journal. I was prepared to not be prepared for the worst case scenario then as I am now.

I want an adventure.

The grey strip of highway advances before me. I am excited. An afternoon outside of the city. An afternoon away from routine. Who knows what will happen! I need this so badly, I think to myself, over and over again with each cornfield I pass.

So when the car suddenly sputters and won't accelerate past 50 mph, I'm not phased. It's failing on me, I think. I can handle this. The car slows down and within seconds it becomes much harder to speed up. It feels like the engine will stop on me at any moment as I'm holding close behind a semi. I think of the saying "driving the bus into the ditch" and stare forward.

The exit to Springfield, Ohio appears in less than a minute. Thank you, I say to the angel watching over me. After a call to my husband, AAA and my friend who I'm supposed to meet for lunch, the panic starts up. I'm in the middle of a strange place. The gas station where I am is perfectly normal. I realize it could be worse. But people look at me funny, as if I'm wearing a sign that reads - My car is dead. I'm lost. I'm freaking out. I want to go home. I know you can't help me. But I want you to know what I'm thinking anyway! 

Food. I pee, grab some potato chips and an iced tea and pace, waiting for the tow truck. When my friend drives past the gas station without seeing me, I smile. Oh, there is some lightness in me and some serendipity in the day, I think, for it's a sheer coincidence that she's driving this route to meet me for lunch as I look up from my bag of potato chips to see her when I do.   

The mechanic is white-haired, newly bronzed from the spring sun and kind. We can help you. That's what we're here for, he says. His wife sits in the passenger seat of the tow truck. She looks content this afternoon. I wonder if I broke down just to give them more work today. My friend offers to come with me to the shop. We agree to grab some lunch at some point. My panic cools with her presence.

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I am glad she is with me. The shop is in the middle of nowhere. Stalling at the side of the highway at a gas station is nothing compared to the strange distance we travel to the place where my car will eventually get fixed. Past rows of white homes with hay-colored grass and no trees to grace the front yard with shade, I recognize a certain kind of poverty, one specific to the small towns of Ohio and the Midwest.

A lunch of iceberg lettuce, turkey cold cuts rolled up into little cylinders, well-fried bacon and bleu cheese dressing later and it's confirmed - my car won't be fixed tonight. I need to come back another day. They still don't know what's wrong.

My friend offers to drive me home. I am so thankful for her. I wonder if I broke down just so we could have more than lunch together. We spend the car ride back to my house talking about the difficulties of having children and what it means to be ambitious as an artist.

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The next morning, as I'm walking back in the early heat from the market with my bag of groceries, I get a call. My other friends are planning to drive to Yellow Springs on Sunday. They'd love to help me out and take me to get my car. It should be ready by then, I tell them, still not knowing what the problem truly is. The mechanic called the day before, told me how they needed to take it out for a ride to test it, yadda, yadda, yadda. I panic when I think of this - someone driving my car on a back road at 70 mph. But then I remember the white-haired mechanic and his wife.

Our trip to Springfield is fun. We pack into the car, tell each other stories and laugh long and hard on the way out. We take the same exit I was so thankful for two days ago. I lead them to the location of the shop. Down the back roads we travel. Where the heck are we? my friends ask. Are you sure this is right? Where are you taking us?

After we revive my car, we decide to visit Yellow Springs for lunch. I'm happy for this day - to have my car, be in the presence of friends and, now, finally taking my trip to Yellow Springs. We venture down more back roads. And that familiar exit I know so well and its bend - we don't travel that way. We witness even more poverty. Our hearts sink. This unknown way spits us out onto what now seems like an idyllic road into today's choice of town. I realize I'll never think of YS in the same way, having seen the poverty of the surrounding farmland.

We are thankful. Our trip was filled with plenty of luck. And as I call it to memory now, there is a sense of fondness for everything about my journey. It was the best of both worlds for me to visit YS and spend time with my friends. I wonder, too, if my car broke down so I could have that time with them to laugh and share in our gratitude for what we have, broken cars and all.

I wonder, too, if my car broke down to remind me of something I was forgetting, as I stared out my window during work each day. That it's in the getting lost that we are found, and not just because we summon up courage and fortitude when we find ourselves trapped in a strange place. We find ourselves, too, by the light of kindness in others.

I spent time that day, when I didn't know whether or not my car was going to take me home, seeing and being seen in a strange place with people who were kind to me and curious about me, as I to them. That kind of isolation within compassion did something to me. Above the shock and panic, it allowed for a certain amount of wonder and the softness that comes with it.

I think to myself now, Your story will reveal itself to you in the moment, if you listen. What you were trying to lose in the beginning turns out to be different in the end. What you were focused on as the problem in the beginning has become your solution. You see by being seen in a strange place. 

You will be found. Adventure awaits.

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Going Solo: Thoughts on choreographing self-portraits

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I'm going solo. I'm interested in choreographing a series of self-portraits for my next project. The last two works I've choreographed and performed have been solos. And they've felt like the tip of the iceberg. Do you know how that goes? Making a dance, or a work of art, that, once performed, shared, feels like it's just the beginning. It feels like there are many other dances underneath it, ready to emerge, each one a bird in a flock of something vast and so fleeting that one knows they have to tap into it before it leaves them.

Whew.

So yeah, I'm interested in self-portraits in the visual arts and how that translates in dance. As a painter, say, one usually at some point in their career paints a self-portrait. And oftentimes they paint more than one. I was struck by the Rembrandt self-portrait a few weeks ago. His eyes held so much of what he'd seen in his life, and perhaps in other lives. {For me, there was a depth in the painting that felt connected to a spirit world.}

I started out making solos when I decided I wanted to be a choreographer. It's when I arrived at the Ohio State University to pursue my M.F.A. in dance that I took on group work. I'd made group works before, but always in a collaborative way. To choreograph "on" other dancers had never been an interest of mine. But I suppose that lack is related to the fact that dancing "for" other choreographers has never been an interest of mine, either. {Well, to be fair, it's been a lot of fun dancing in Set/Reset by Trisha Brown, Bebe Miller's Hendrix and some other fabulous dances.}

But back to the solo form. I believed that you were not a real choreographer if you didn't choreograph on a group of dancers. Someone, somewhere told me that and I believed it. I came to OSU thinking I had to make dances "on" dancers to be a legitimate choreographer. And I did. And it has been good.

Now, however, I'm writing more and more, working on poems and stories again, and I'm gathering much inspiration from female artists, particularly visual artists, and females as portrayed in art. I'm not sure why, and I don't want to know why, nor write about why here.

What I did want to  share is the notion of the solo in dance and how it can often be perceived as just the self dancing around, or how it can be perceived as so hard to choreograph because it's just you. And I'm curious about that because for me solo dances have always felt like a way to not have to be myself in performance. They've allowed me to be something else more universal, a character-based figure of a woman, an old man, a child - whatever I'm exploring. They've been a way for me to call on the spirit world, I suppose, in some way and channel voices not my own, in the same way a writer waits and listen for the voices of his/her characters to come through onto the page.

This is what I'm interested in exploring these days as a choreographer. 

And you? Solo to group, self-portrait to landscape - which do you prefer and why?

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Walking into Summer

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Today I thought about attachment. I noticed myself getting attached to ideas about attachment. I noticed myself thinking about how I wanted to write a blog post about my ideas about attachment. And I remember feeling like I had discovered something new about myself while thinking this hard about attachment, as if an opening had been created. Really, I'd just become attached to ideas about attachment.

A funny family member once said to my husband and I as we were preparing to leave town and his wife ran upstairs to check if we'd left anything, "Well, you could just drive off without saying good-bye and teach us about non-attachment."

It's funny because it's true, but also devastating, the idea of having driven off without giving a hug and a kiss and saying goodbye.

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I'm thinking about attachment lately because I've finished teaching yoga to children in the schools. I won't return until the fall. These children are a light to me. They become like friends, whether or not they know it. I have no children of my own, but working with them keeps me humble and grounded in non-attachment, to be sure. I learn how to go with the flow, accept whatever arises with kindness and an open heart, have fun each and every practice and ask the questions no one ever thinks to ask.

So to say good-bye to them for the summer, well... it makes me a bit sad, you see. I'll miss them. And I know as it goes with children you teach, they probably won't miss me much as I'll miss them and think of them. But that is besides the point.

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It's in seeing them walk off into summer that I am reminded of my own summers spent in Florida at the beach or in Chicago in a cool, tiny bedroom. I'm reminded of the comfort of home and what I did not yet know. And how I had a longing in me to grow up and be an adult. A longing too long to bear. I thought it would never come.

And it has.

I took a walk tonight, thinking it might unhinge me from ideas about attachment and my greater attachment to the kids. I watched the sun set. I listened to the birdsong die down for another night. And in all of it, I felt the full rush of one season leaving us and another one arriving - summer on the heels of spring like a dog.

And all it did was cause me to cherish my time with the kids even more as I missed them, all in the same breath. A longing too long to be called a longing. Much more like something called grace.

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