One Year On...
Time to kick back and read Dr. Seuss books
Dear Dancers,
It’s been a year. Yes. A whole year. On the 16th of December 2023, I published my first post on Notes to a Semi-Fictional Dance Company, which, back then, just had a working title for a name.
And I’m pretty pleased with this little project.
Here are some of my favourite pieces, or one that people particularly seemed to resonate with:
Three (and a half) Dramaturgical Questions
Three (and a half) questions reliably come back again and again in my work as a dramaturg.
Sharing them with you feels a little strange. It’s a bit like I’m sharing some secret sauce, but I’ll explain why that’s nonsense.
On Starving and Independence
Fatherhood plunged me into an artistic hiatus. Between navigating a turbulent relationship with my daughter’s mother and trying to keep afloat in a part of Devon where work was scarce, I was trying to not go crazier than everything around me.
I also wrote this poem:
If you’ve stuck with me until now
If you’ve stuck with me until now, then, without getting gushy, it means a lot to me. Since starting this publication, many people have said stuff along the lines of how, as dancers, we develop a lot of knowledge in the studio but how nobody seems to be communicating it outside of the studio, and this writing seems to be contributing something to that.
I’ve heard this from people on the side of my dance colleagues and the broader readership. There seem to be a bunch of you who are not trained dance professionals, or even dancers in any usual sense, but get it anyway.
Perspectives for 2025
I’m honestly not sure where I’ll take this for the coming year. A year ago, my professional life was mainly that of a dance dramaturg who was looking at starting training as a psychotherapist. Now, my focus has shifted to being a psychotherapy trainee.
Some of the soil of my dancing body, my dancing body, is wearing a little thin to write about dance. I don’t know the extent to which I need to feed this soil again or shift the focus of what I’m writing about.
I need to take the winter off (the rest of December, some of January), write my psychotherapy essays for my training, get my moving plans a little more settled, etc. I’m also thinking of dropping my publication rhythm to every three weeks rather than every two. At the beginning, I wanted to get into the habit of getting stuff out, but now I care more and more about quality. I thought about doing a small survey — what would you prefer, but I think I know how I want to do it, and will make my own decision and trust that you’ll follow me along or not.
I am still reading the Earthsea Cycle to my partner, Clémentine, and we’re on to book three out of six. The protagonist, Ged, says to his young companion:
“The first lesson on Roke1 is to do only what is needful. No more.”
Who replies:
“The other lessons, then, consist in learning what is needful and what is not?”
My comment on the Earthsea cycle is that they’re books about Taoism disguised as a series of fantasy novels. Seeing as Ursula Le Guin also did a translation of the Tao Te Ching, this is not wild speculation.
Right now, I’m still busy figuring out what is needful. I’m still shifting my stuff from my old flat (which I’m about to hand the keys over for, finally). Once that is done and Christmas has happened, January marks the start of a transition whose pathway is still gloriously obscure. These thoughts are an echo of A Narrowing Path:
A Narrowing Path
As a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower, until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.
My reading list
On Substack, I don’t read many writers, but there are a few I want to direct your attention to briefly:
Breccia is the publication of a geologist turned Humanistic Psychotherapist, turned Ecosomaticist. She also wrote a book, Weathering, which I hear is very good, but since ordering it this Spring, Clémentine stole my copy and won’t give it back.
Breccia is really worth a read. It’s got the perfect mix of psychological depth, without feeling academic, with something bodily and a lot of rocks. I think Ruth is treading in David Abrams’ footsteps in the best possible way.
Tom Cox could also be described as a nature writer… in a way… if you take his ramblings around Devon and bumping into various livestock as nature writing. I don’t know how to describe his work except that his paragraphs are way too long, but it’s definitely worth it.
This is brewing but hasn’t launched yet. Clémentine, with whom I live and who stole my copy of Weathering is starting a new publication about Ecosomatics. She’s a brilliant poet and a deep thinker, so I think this will be good. No pressure, Clémentine, but 200 people are about to hit subscribe…
The first posts will be early next year.
Christmas is coming, and I’m usually a Grinch
This year, I will spend the first-ever Christmas with my daughter Heide. We’ll be with my family in the UK, and I’m looking forward to it for the first time in over a decade. Christmas is a time I usually associate with feeling very melancholy and lost, but this year feels different. Letting my Grinchiness be the main Christmas vibe has been good for me. Maybe I got it out of my system. Gradually, my belting out Mariah Carey covers at my piano has taken over.
Shame on me.
I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll see each other in the new year, one way or another.
Love,
Sebastian
Earthsea’s school of wizardry predates Hogwarts by about 40 years.