Queer Perspectives

I didn’t realize I was gay until I was in my late 20’s, and even then, it was a long, painful journey to accept my own identity.  There were so many layers of cultural learning and expectations, forces both internal and external shaping who I thought I “should” be.  “How Did You Not Know” is an exploration of the many iterations of myself I went through in those years.  

Dance has always helped me to process and reflect on my feelings, learning about my own perspective through the work I set: the creation of a piece being an integral part of understanding my own experience.  In this work, I have reset and re-imagined pieces I created during my long, hard journey to self-acceptance, allowing the pieces I set during those periods to be a guide to my mindset and perspective at the time of its creation.  By linking these old pieces together, my evolving world-view can be tracked through those years - my journey away from the church and religion, my slow gain of self-reliance and self-worth, and the realization of my sexuality. It is also a high-level view of my evolving style and skill - I grew a lot as a choreographer and storyteller in the 5-year span these pieces cover. 

It is a little daunting to put such a personal work on stage in front of an audience - it’s a little like reading my diary aloud.  It can be embarrassing to look back at what I thought was true in those times, what I thought was real, who I thought I was. But through the years of this journey, and the process of creating this piece, I’ve learned that I have always been the woman in these pieces, and she will always be a part of me.  I didn’t quite know who she would be later, who the integration of these disparate parts of myself would end up being. Turns out, she’s me.

- Paula Ward, Lucid Banter Project

Paula Ward (Artistic Director, Lucid Banter Project) is a dancer, choreographer and producer from Madison, Wisconsin.  She was a youth company member of the Madison Ballet, danced in Hope College’s modern and jazz companies while earning her BA in Dance and Chemistry, and spent a decade with the Joel Hall Dancers in Chicago, Illinois. She directed the Joel Hall Dancers Youth Company and Le Ballet Petit School of Dance before forming her contemporary dance company, the Lucid Banter Project, which is currently in its fourth year.  Lucid Banter presents in many non-traditional spaces and stages, as well as on film.

See Lucid Banter Project's "How Did You Not Know" in The Queer Landscape, March 20th and 21st.
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