Failure: Making it Look Good

All artists fail. I know. Nice opener. Not exactly an easily apparent selling point. Here's another statement. Fewer artists are failures. Let me explain starting with an example.

I study Classical Indian Dance forms. Beginning in my undergraduate years of college I took up research and training in various Indian dance forms. What I first noticed is how much of a failure I was at the forms. As a life-long dancer I was bewildered at how challenging the learning process was for a form culturally so foreign to my background. I was passionate about not only learning the form but understanding the form. Then in my quest to understand the form, I realized that my failure was the lesson. Over time, I did get better. I have performed in professional settings in various venues, and yet, what I value most are the learning lessons I have about what I fail at in the form. For me, the areas of the dance that I fail in are the most rich in knowledge and understanding of the dance forms and how they reflect the values and daily practices of the culture in which the dance form was born. Basically, where the failure occurs points to where I differ in bodily knowledge and understanding and culture from the form of dance I am learning.

Take for example the ability to "sit." In Bharatanatyam and Kuchhipudi in particular (Odissi to a lesser degree) it was extremely difficult for me to sit in the position very similar to Ballet's demi-plié for the duration of various items. But my failure to do so was an invaluable key to the puzzle of understanding an aspect of the dance form and the culture out of which it grows. It gave me a valuable clue to asking questions about the relationship to the earth in Indian and Indian diaspora culture. So instead of seeing failure as the final result, I found the value of seeing failure as the generative seed of curiosity and eventual knowledge.

This is one small example of the value that so many artists know and get drawn in by in the art-making process. The artistic process' ability to not only introduce endless moments of failure but to enable wonderful, rich, critical, profound discoveries from these failures is what so many artists respond to in making work. And for those that push forward beyond the failure with inquisitive imaginative minds, failing does not result in the artist becoming a failure but instead a success if not in the eyes of others than at least to those involved in the creative process.

So what about dance? What makes failure unique in dance is what happens when your very vehicle, or vessel that makes you alive and expressive fails you. In dance failure is oftentimes not a failure of technique, or speech, prop, or visual appearance. It is often a failure of the body itself. No matter how much technique or how eloquent one may be in the written or spoken word, the momentary failures and missteps of the body are inconsolable. It gives rise to the constant reminder that at every moment there is room for error, room for the body to do less than what we expect or intend. And the missteps that result in injury not only remind us of our chronic fallibility but also of our mortality. No matter how talented, how experienced, dancers do make mistakes and are constantly aware of the constant possibility of momentary mistakes. Also, when dancing, mistakes are certainly relative to bodily expectations and awareness of the dancer. So what some might consider a flawless execution of physical expression, dancers can often think things like, "I could have reached my arm more on that move. I should have embodied more Lightness on that move. I could have made a better decision in that moment of improvisation." And yet we still dance through the failures. Not only do we dance through the failures, we often learn about the state of the human condition and how to cope with that condition.

While some of us live a tortured life never feeling fulfilled or perfected, some of us learn how to learn from the failure of being in a body. We learn how to cope with the failure of being physical, mortal beings. We learn how to learn from the failure that come with being physical, mortal beings. We learn how to maintain curiosity, diligence, honesty, and ownership of failures. In dance correction and learning has to be momentary so as not to repeat the mistake in the next run of the movement material. So we must constantly question how to improve and correct at every moment. We have to avoid the trap of giving up falling into the trap of debilitating self-deprecation and instead push past the error into the next run of the movement phrase. In order to correct, we have to really be honest about the source of the mistake. We have to self-correct when necessary and learn to communicate in a generative way to other participants if success depends on some change on their part. That means owning up to failures that we are solely responsible for as quickly as possible. To do anything else in the way of making excuses causes everyone to lose valuable rehearsal time.

In learning how to make these negotiations without the potential scape goat that written word, speech, technical know-how, or tools may offer other art forms, dance offers a primal truth in its failures. There is very little to mask the truth of how a dancer deals with failure, errors, or mistakes. And for that dancers must be brave enough to keep moving after the errors, curious enough to solve what's causing the errors, honest enough to look inside to understand the errors, and humble enough to listen to the potential wisdom that each failure offers about self, relationship to others, and the environment. Even in moments of failure the body doesn't lie. It instead offers infinite opportunities for wisdom. Are you brave enough to move and fail?