Oneness

Is oneness an adjective?

Today felt like a culmination, one of those rare days when every thought, emotion, and experience from the past few weeks finally reveals the thread tying them all together.

I feel myself growing so much right now. It’s as if my soul isn’t orbing outside of me but living throughout my entire body. Some moments it’s in my heart; others, in my pinky toe.

And much of this awakening is thanks to the privilege of working with Jacob Gómez, the incredible, groundbreaking choreographer from Barcelona. He came to SMU to create a piece in just seven days to bring the Meadows Museum Spanish Art Exhibit to life. After that, he’ll take the work we created to the Spanish Embassy in D.C.

So yeah — one of the highest honors of my dance career.

In these seven days (a process that normally takes him six weeks), Jacob has given us so much to think and unthink. And sometimes, he’ll look at you and say he’s about to give you a gift, a present for your life. Mine came when he told me he wanted me to explore the idea that my body doesn’t have one center, but many.

This morning, that idea shined through in one of the most magical ways I’ve ever experienced: I moved myself and others to tears through dance.

In our dance history class, we had a rare opportunity to leave the lecture room and improvise to live piano. David, the composer, chose me for a duet with a dancer I deeply admire, someone whose movement language is so unique and signature to her that I instantly worried about how I’d look next to her.

But David told us something that unlocked so much: to improvise is not to have your thoughts slow you down, it’s to remove the experience of judgment.

So I did exactly that.

As the piano organized us, I found myself writing a story with her. For me, it was about desperately wanting to connect, but feeling walls of emotion and heartspace blocking us from becoming one. I mirrored and mimicked her, then created my own variations, a physical expression of longing and almost-contact. Processing, somehow, all the moments in my life where I’ve tried to be there for others in pain but felt powerless in my attempts.

Ironically, or not, that is Jacob’s entire motif in the Spanish art piece: the powerless feeling we have against the politics and injustices of the world, no matter how much we feel inside.

When my dance partner and I finally made contact, we shared the deepest hug. When we turned back to the room, my teacher was crying. She said, “This is why we dance.”

I was overwhelmed with emotion. This year, it’s meant so much to collaborate with dancers I’ve been beside for so long but had almost been dancing around. So when we were asked to offer an adjective at the end of class, I had nothing else to say, and wasn’t convinced it was grammatically correct, but: “Oneness.”

And that’s when the revelation clicked.

A tribe is one created through the many

This thread didn’t begin today, it began over fall break. I went to Colorado with 8 girls, only three of whom I knew. Over five days on a mountain, surrounded by the kind of laughter that makes life worth living in every fiber of your being, we blended in a way that felt otherworldly.

Nine completely different personalities, backgrounds, and stages of life, and yet if one person walked away, her absence was immediately felt. A constant pulse of connection.

One of my favorite moments (and choosing one feels impossible) was when we turned on music and created an interpretive dance session for hours. At one point, I struck a movement, partly sincere, partly drenched in the liquid blanket I had around me, and my Samantha snapped a photo. That photo ended up foreshadowing the exact dance step Jacob later created to symbolize angels in the piece.

A perfect trip with these 8 life-giving girls is where my new tribe began.

And then came the tribe within Jacob’s cast.

His piece was open to freshmen and dance minors to audition for. I’ll admit, it was a mental hurdle at first: the six other dancers in the cast had been dancing together for three months, while I walked in knowing none of them. I had to learn their timing, their personalities, their rhythms— instantly.

But slowly, we became one living, breathing organism. Seven characters. Multiple art pieces. One soul finding power in the powerlessness of many.

Jacob’s work itself criticizes evil and injustice through the lens of Spanish art. It cries to the diplomats on the right side of the room. It pleads with the Virgin Mary in the back. And our task has been to find personal meaning within the choreography, which, for me, has meant accessing every center, every soul-space, every emotion I usually can’t bring forward when ballet demands illusion, elegance, and lightness.

And this is where I noticed it: my brain loves to turn on when emotions come up.
The labeling. The judgment.
The, “That’s a good emotion; bring that one. Oh, that one? Too messy. Too ugly. Not for the stage.”

I did it again tonight before our run, until I consciously shut down the slow, controlling mind and surrendered to raw emotion.

And it worked.

We had our strongest run yet. During the panel afterward, when I spoke about the piece, an audience member came up to me and said, “You’re going to be a choreographer.” Through my honest surrender to my inner compass, he noticed the possibility of true creation within me.

Today, I learned I can move an audience. I can bring someone to tears, a teacher who sees me twice a week but saw me anew today, and inspire curiosity in strangers watching for the first time.

All because I didn’t filter my emotions.

I let everything pass through, because emotions, like people, are all one.

And for true oneness, it takes a tribe, a piano, a composer, a choreographer, a teacher, dancers, a vision, and many souls made one.

So yeah, oneness is a noun, but it can be pretty fun to think of it as an adjective.