The year was 2003. I was eight years old and in Grade Three. My mum and I sat side by side facing my homeroom teacher to receive my report card. ‘She’s a good student,’ my teacher said, ‘However, she could be better at maths. When it came to solving problems, she would always memorise the formulas instead of understanding the concepts. Also, she sang and danced too much… on the playground during recess or even during class.’
Staying true to our Asian heritage, my mum signed me up for maths tuition instead of paying for singing or dancing classes. But also, the comment from my teacher means that I’ve had anxiety since I was as young as six. Instead of solving problems intuitively, I’d try to memorise a solution to make sure I had the right answer when a problem emerged. Nobody ever investigated further, because I did get better at maths. However, my anxiety continued to manifest in different forms, and it was as silly as being scared of tsunamis every time a storm came. My primary school was located next to a mangrove reserve, and my classroom was on the highest floor, which meant we had a full view of the mangrove trees and the ocean. Whenever the sky turned grey, so did the water, and my anxious brain somehow perceived the murky water as a cue that a horrible disaster would ensue any minute. I would avoid school on rainy days and nobody could pinpoint why. My parents and teachers thought I was being silly and weird. Eventually, I grew out of my fear of storms, and life was okay for a while. And then there came my dad’s cancer diagnosis.
The whole experience – from his diagnosis to his dying days – caused a lot of tension in our family. A stage four cancer diagnosis felt like a death sentence dangling right in front of your nose. We spent the first year feeling alright because my dad’s body was responding well to the drugs. Towards the end of the second year, his body started giving up. Then there came the waiting game, which drove everybody insane. After spending so many days caring for him at the hospital, my mum once woke up screaming out his name in panic during her sleep. My younger sister was brave enough to be present with him the whole time; but a couple of years after he passed, she struggled a lot with her mental health. I carried a lot of regrets because I wasn’t as brave as my mum or sister to stay with him at the hospital, and also struggled with health anxiety. We ticked all the checklists. We cremated my dad, completed all the rituals, and prayed for him every night. Why did grief keep haunting us? Also, why us?
A year after my dad’s death, I went to drama school to pursue acting. I didn’t fully enjoy the experience because all I did was try to be a hardworking student, which I thought was enough to succeed. I was focusing on being a diligent and obedient student who attended all her classes instead of focusing on the learning materials. That was how I survived my school years back in Jakarta, but theatre is a different space. You know how theatre is symbolised with a face mask? I once believed it meant that an actor should put on a mask when they entered the stage. On the contrary, an actor removes their mask the moment they are on stage. And when I took off mine, there was too much pain and grief.
So I was never an excellent dancer, singer, or actor. Truthfully, I was carrying a lot of emotional baggage that manifested in negative self-talk and weekly panic attacks. I started seeing the college counsellor, who decided to do grief work with me for three years. After most sessions, I would return to the studio with bloodshot eyes and a puffy face.
A huge argument with my mum didn’t help my case either. I was in my second year, and she wasn’t happy with my average grades. ‘You don’t understand how much effort I’ve been putting in,’ I yelled at her. ‘If you’re putting in too much effort then maybe this isn’t the right path for you!’ she yelled back at me. We got over the fight but my subconscious brain took what she said very seriously. ‘I’ll let you play around for a little longer,’ she said. ‘After this, you need to consider a more realistic career path.’
Throughout three years of training, our lecturers would continue to remind us about the challenges of pursuing a career as an artist. ‘If you decide that acting isn’t for you after you finish this course, it is absolutely okay. There is a high chance that only a few of you would continue to pursue this after graduation,’ a music teacher once said. He continued to share that he once held a piano performance with less than five people in the audience. ‘Doesn’t matter how many people turn up, you keep playing,’ he said.
By the time I gained more confidence, I was already in my final year. I believed I didn’t have enough time to explore my artistic skills, so I started thinking about various realistic options instead. I left drama school believing I never belonged in theatre. My mum and dad were right – it was just a silly little phase.
I moved to Melbourne to pursue a degree in marketing and communications. I was still passionate about art but I knew that eventually I needed to be financially independent from my mum. Creative elements are quite present in marketing comms and more jobs are available on the market. For once, I was being realistic with my life plan. No, I was being clever! A few weeks after I completed my course, I found a full-time job as a Marketing Assistant, which felt like a green light that I was doing something right. So for two years and a half, I worked in marketing with a few companies in Melbourne… Until I hit rock bottom in 2023.
During the second half of 2023, I felt completely disconnected from my friends and family. I’d be doing work at 3 am because I couldn’t focus during the day and I made a lot of trips to the GP because my physical health was deteriorating. I thought I had my life together, but the truth was I was a fucking lost cause. My anxiety was through the roof, and for once, I could understand why people wanted to end their lives. I’d wake up in the morning and wonder why God was still keeping me alive. Just fucking end it now, I’d scream internally. My symptoms were so bad that I was prescribed anti-anxiety medication, which wasn’t working too well for me. It felt like someone had put all my emotions inside a plastic bag and tied it tightly, except that bag never left my body. The medication slowed the chatters in my brain but it also meant I floated through my days in a semi-dazed state. That was my life for weeks. Then I started dancing, and everything changed.
I was working with a therapist who utilised a somatic approach in trauma healing, and she recommended that I go to an ecstatic dance session held weekly at St Brigid Parish Hall in North Fitzroy. Ecstatic dance encourages the participants to move their bodies however they want in a completely sober state. The idea is to release ecstasy within yourself through formless dance. When I first went, I spent the first half of the session dancing and another half crying on the floor. Maybe it was the dance, maybe it was the community, or maybe it was the sanctity of being in a church, but for the first time in months, I felt safe. It felt like nothing could hurt me anymore.
After discovering ecstatic dance, I could start moving my body with so much more ease. I guess by releasing expectations, I was releasing my body, and through that act of surrender, I found my natural flow and expression. I was hungry to learn more about my body, so I searched for more movement classes in Melbourne. I continued to attend ecstatic dance every week while exploring shamanic trance practice in contemporary dance with a dancer named Tony. In his classes, I learned how to embrace spontaneity in movement. He also invited two facilitators from Indonesia – a bull-trance master and a court dancer – to induce the trance state through traditional ritual and dance techniques. Through people whom I met at the workshop, I learned about a local theatre group that offers Suzuki training, a physical theatre method that I encountered briefly in drama school. I thought I might as well try that too. On the third week of January, I impulsively signed up for Suzuki classes, held weekly at St Mary’s Parish Hall in North Melbourne.
It had been six years since I left drama school, and suddenly I was back in theatre. It almost felt like I was taking a bet to see if she would accept me this time.
Japanese theatre practitioner Tadashi Suzuki developed the Suzuki Method in the 1970s to refine four important elements within an actor: the centre of gravity, oxygen, energy, and speech. Aside from the technical aspects, the philosophy behind Suzuki’s theatre is extremely profound – it is anchored in our relationship with self and space. Suzuki moved his theatre company to Toga village in Toyama Prefecture in search of a space that aligned with his ideal theatre space. The location choice allowed Suzuki to build a theatre in a traditional architectural style called gassho-zukuri, which is solely based on materials sourced from the natural environment, human power, and creativity.
This space is characterized by a series of smaller spaces that cannot be measured by a uniform standard. Therefore, different levels of darkness are created throughout the space. It is a space where no matter how you light it, there is always a shadow somewhere.
Tadashi Suzuki, For the Future of Theatre, para. 12
The construction of a gassho-zukuri space utilises organic methods, whether it’s the materials used or the construction process itself. Suzuki believed this characteristic mirrors the heterogeneous nature of society and the complex ecosystem within the human body and mind. There are probably a million resources speaking about similar topics out there, but I find so much humility in Suzuki’s wisdom. I don’t think he was trying to be the best or the wisest practitioner – he just did what felt true to him. If you have 15 minutes to spare, I highly recommend you read his essays explaining his theatre philosophy. You will feel grounded.
When I was introduced to this method in drama school, the silly young student that I was couldn’t comprehend the purpose of Suzuki training. All I knew was I was stomping around the studio to Japanese-style music that sounded like the Kill Bill soundtrack. The Suzuki Method involves intensive footwork that takes a lot of strength and precision to practise. Paradoxically, while the legs are engaged the upper body remains relaxed – there is no effort coming from the arms, torso, and head. Suzuki is also about letting the ‘centre’ – our lower abdomen area – be the driving force that leads our movement. The idea is to move with impulse rather than premeditated actions. ‘Find your centre,’ our teacher Matt would remind us before each exercise or throughout the exercise. I would receive my personal reminder at least twice or thrice in each session.
‘Vania, you need to stop leading with your head,’ he finally said one day. ‘You don’t need to lean your upper body forward. Stay vertical. It should be relaxed,’ Matt wobbled his arms around like a jellyfish. ‘When your upper body is relaxed, you can send and receive energy with more ease. You can vocalise your lines better because your throat isn’t strained from the tension. I know that as a performer, there is a tendency to make grand gestures for the audience. But trust me, when you hold back,’ Matt pulled back his head to demonstrate his point. ‘There is more power in being a little mysterious. The audience doesn’t need to know too much.’
Relax. Every time I’ve tried to relax, it feels like a relapse. Growing up, nobody ever told me to relax. As if to reinforce what Matt was trying to communicate to me, the universe handed me Ollivier Pourriol’s The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard a few weeks later.
‘When your body is calm, your energy circulates uninterrupted, like breath,’ Pourriol writes. ‘A relaxed body has more energy than a tense one.’
I have lived with anxiety for 25 years, and all along, the solution is to breathe and relax? I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. To reinforce his argument, Pourriol compares breathing methods between freediving athletes who broke world records. Enzo Maiorca and Robert Croft would use conscious, strength-based approaches to improve their breathability underwater, one of which involved hyperventilation. Meanwhile, the French freediver Jacques Mayol would imagine himself as a dolphin. ‘You have to do it without thinking. You have to become the act itself. Like an animal,’ Mayol said. Less resistance, more flow. Think less, trust more. Well, it’s been 26 years, maybe there’s no harm in trying a different approach, I thought. Maybe there’s no harm in stopping all the physical and mental torture I’ve put myself through.
Two weeks later, I went to Suzuki class with a different intention. When we were doing the exercises across the floor, I tried something new. I pulled back my upper body as my legs continued to do the work, and I was surprised. First, I wasn’t expecting it to be so easy. Second, I felt aligned with my body. For at least a minute, I felt an immense connection to myself and the space, it was beautiful and strange at the same time.
And just like that, I knew that I won the bet. I could almost hear a soft ‘welcome back’ in my ear, and just like that, I knew that I wanted to commit to this practice. Maybe I will establish a performing career, maybe I won’t. Maybe I will be redirected to another practice, maybe I won’t. All I know is for the first time in 26 years, I finally started to recognise my body. Also, for someone who’s been searching for a community for the last two years, it does feel good to have a place and familiar faces to return to every Monday.
Love the first pic😍