Taking Risks

Around the same time I started going to the gym regularly I found my favorite podcast: She Explores.  It’s stories by women in the outdoors.  I am always so inspired by the stories.  Having a podcast I love that I only listen to while at the gym certainly has made motivation a little easier!

Not long before we left for Scapegoat, I listened to one of my favorite episodes again: Risk Takers.  One of the stories in the episode was from Tori Duhaime.  Her words really spoke to me and verbalized something I’ve felt but could never name.

I take every risk I see mentally and yet in physical form I struggle to act on them.  I was a much riskier child until I was told I needed to tone it down for the fact that it could possibly ruin my perspective career as a dancer. I can’t say I regret that by any chance. My dance career has been extremely informative and I’ve made many relationships as a choreographer and photographer to my relationship to risk and love for outdoor recreation. But I’ve also come to a place where I want the risk to actually exist and not just dissect it for choreographic input. I’ve stepped away from my dance jobs currently to take off the weight of fearing an unsuccessful career in order to explore my recreational risks and desires. That itself might be the biggest leap yet – walking away from a career I’ve trained for my whole life, just to climb a mountain and that be enough. To make my self trail run and not let myself fear ruining my knees. To not measure my success in audience responses or views or how much my research has translated. But to simply reach a peak and be the only one that knows or cares that it happened.  Ski a line that could wreck me but enjoy it without hesitation.  It’s a daily task and it’s a personal discipline I’ve missed since graduating and training every day, but risk certainly isn’t just about the skill of survival, it’s embedded in my own judgement of what I can and cannot do and for possibly the first time in my life stepping into the risks I’ve imagined myself taking has made me more like the woman I want to be than the dancer I was trying to prove I could be. And at 25 I may be putting my body in a position to never be able to dance like I did even a year ago ever again. You only get small gaps of time as a dancer to have a full career as a mover.  But I’m training my body also to take me places and do things I never thought I was capable of. And that’s a risk worth taking. And I’m a much happier person for it now.
– Tori Duhaime

HlÍđarfjall ski area

I’m so thankful for the things dance has allowed my body to do.
I’m so thankful I’m learning to do more than my dance body would ever dare.