190. One Hundred Small Dances – Sofia Tsirakis
Sofia Tsirakis in motion
I think of it as a ritual, one I use to this day in my own personal practice and in teaching and choreography.
Almost a decade ago, when dear Suleika was first diagnosed with leukemia and began treatment, she invited me to join her in her first 100-day project. I was inspired by the invitation. I thought of it as a way to stay at Suleika’s side—to be in constant communion—even when we couldn’t see each other. I had a gorgeous new sketchbook, and I decided I would fill one page a day with drawings and writing.
Yet despite my initial enthusiasm, I struggled to make it stick. I had a few false starts, but I couldn’t find a rhythm, and eventually those blank pages began to feel daunting and anxiety-provoking. It didn’t help that I was at a crossroads, both personally and professionally. I had studied philosophy and visual art in college, but I was considering devoting myself to dance—a true love of mine from when I was very young. I was also torn on where to live. New York was appealing, since all my friends from college were there, and I was starting to break into the local dance scene. Yet I missed my home country of Brazil: the humid, tropical climate with its thriving green life, the way the plants, animals, insects manage to dominate even the concrete jungle of São Paulo.
Finally, I made the leap and left New York in the summer of 2012. I planned to spend a few months participating in dance festivals in Europe before moving back home. In the transition, I put aside the 100-day project—though it’s actually more accurate to say that I started a new one. During that trip, I began a new daily habit: I simply moved in whatever way my body wanted in that very instant, and I recorded these short, improvised dances on my phone. It was only sometime later that I realized this was my 100-day project. This was journaling in dance form, helping me navigate these decisions that were so based on my visceral feelings. It was also something I could look back on and see how I was doing day-by-day, how my mood was evolving and changing, and my dancing too.
My small dance practice deepened along an intuitive path. I would close my eyes and focus first on breathing, trying to listen, to let my body guide me. Sometimes I listened to music, but often I did it in silence. I began using a timer, choosing an interval that felt less predictable than five or ten minutes. Instead, I would inhabit this practice continuously until three or maybe nine minutes had passed.
With time, the 100 dances multiplied, the videos accumulated, and to this day there is a folder on my hard drive entitled “1000 dances.” (Initially it was a typo, funnily prophetic.) I think of it as a ritual, one I use to this day in my own personal practice and in teaching and choreography. When explaining this practice to my collaborators and students, I describe it as a road trip with no fixed destination.
– Sofia Tsirakis
