Insecurity

I'm about to do my last dance performance before baby is born. I am awash with insecurity.

Now usually I am an insecure dancer. I trust explicitly what my heart and mind can do on stage, but it has taken me a long time to trust what my body can do and it is wavering now. I cannot feel the edge of the stage. I doubt my choices, my feet (always a source of confidence in the past).

I doubt my ability to give birth to this creature living inside me, even though women have done it for thousands of years.

Perhaps it is strange for a dancer or an athlete to go through these last weeks of pregnancy, as the body does what it must without any input or direction from one's intelligence, from one's ability to reason. It just goes. Practicing contractions, softening, deepening. As a professional 'mover' I am used to considering, deducing and compelling the body to move, to contract, to soften, to deepen. Even in improvisation there is an element of intellect participating. There is learned behaviour variegating on itself.

But my body has not been pregnant before and it is choosing, without my feedback, how to be pregnant, how to be ready to give birth.

I find this, in an objective way, very amazing. Subjectively, it scares the crap out of me. My legs dangle from my pelvis by thin threads, my pelvis vibrates like a bell that has been struck by its clapper, my feet are concerned with providing weight to the dangling legs, but seem not to care so much about the ground itself. My arms keep throwing themselves out of alignment. And yet I do not feel like an alien has taken over my body, I do not feel disassociated from myself.

Only a wee bit scared. My confidence drops back to when I was 21 and crying in ballet class every day. What am I doing here? Is any of my dancing worth watching? Worth investigating? Will I be able to uphold all the artistic and personal ideals I set out for myself throughout the pregnancy? Will the force of stating these ideals again and again be enough to make them bloom?

It worked when I broke my arm.
But this is a different beast entirely...