Embrace, Give, Heal
Choreography by V.S. Kemanis with artistic direction and choreographic contribution by Teresa Perez-Ceccon
Dancer-Story Teller V.S. Kemanis
Notes from the Dancer
The title, “Embrace, Give, Heal,” outlines the three stages of my caregiving story. At a time when my two children were still in grade school, I was unexpectedly called to fly across country to care for an ailing parent. “Embrace” signifies both the physical embrace of beloved family members and acceptance of the role of sandwich-generation caregiver, in order to move on to the next two stages, “Give” and “Heal.” The act of giving brought emotional healing to our relationship.
As lawyer and fiction writer, I work with oral and written communication, intellectual activities a layer removed from the emotional plane. Writers, I among them, agonize to find the right words to evoke the desired mood or feeling. Dance speaks from the core of the physical and emotional life. For this reason, dance promises to be purer, and maybe an easier, medium for communicating the caregiving experience and to spur discussion and sharing of caregiving stories.
Read A special experience expressing a caregiving story by V.S Kemanis
Choreographer-Dancer V.S. Kemanis is a novelist and attorney for whom dance has been essential from the age of seven. With The Caregivers’ Project, Ms. Kemanis is expressing through dance-story an experience as a sandwich-generation caregiver, responsible for the care of her young children and an ailing parent.