What happens when your worst enemy is yourself? When you’re quick to criticize and beat yourself up simply because you can, not because you actually deserve it? ThySelf, put on by local dance company Broken Rhythms, explores self-sabotage and anxiety through dance; artistic director Dyana Sonik-Henderson says taking care of herself and her dancers so that they don’t have the same experience she had, which was psychosomatic symptoms as a result of anxiety, is key.
“It’s been a little bit of a less structured show in the way that we’re going with the many selves we portray,” she says. “It’s a little bit more abstract.”
One of those selves knows the constant fear brought on by anxiety, so Sonik-Henderson says it was a challenge to go into this show without the fear she was used to.
“By fear, I mean the expectation that you need to be able to sell the show,” she says. “You want there to be some narrative and sometimes that can restrict what you’re actually able to show on stage.”
Not restricting what is shown on stage allows Sonik-Henderson to be honest about what she shows in performance, but she says that she doesn’t want any of her dancers to have to deal with the physical symptoms of anxiety.
“I really had to kind of trust that process and not be scared by, ‘Oh, I don’t know where this is going,’” she says. “It’s like, ‘It’ll find its way; it’ll find its way.’”
For Sonik-Henderson, dancing—whether she is doing it herself or is directing others—is about a relationship between the body and the mind; if the mind is in a challenging place, the body will get there, too.
“I suffered with a little bit of anxiety and that kind of developed into, ‘Well, why? Why do you feel anxious?’ And then that’s where the fear came in: ‘Well, you’re fearful and that’s why you’re anxious,’” she says. “Even if you don’t have anything necessarily to be fearful of, I find that I would create situations because I’m so used to living in that bubble of anxiety; I’d create these situations that cause anxiety even if there wasn’t one, and that was a little bit of a self-sabotage.”
Sonik-Henderson says that as she was developing the show she realized that some self-sabotage is a way of the conscious self saying the person struggling doesn’t deserve what they have. She came up with the idea of using a hedgehog to symbolize self-sabotage in the show.
“I was able to sit down and have a conversation with this kind of pincushion,” she says. “You put things up; you kind of get very defensive.”
Sonik-Henderson says a big reason she created the show was to acknowledge how common anxiety really is.
“We do have many selves,” she says. “You can be suffering with this voice and you can go out and people can describe you as, ‘Oh, you’re very confident,’ and inside you’re like, ‘I’m not at all,’ and I think that heightens the anxiety,” she says.
Sonik-Henderson says that the central message in the show is “be yourself, live your life, lead with your heart, you’re not alone.” She says that message helped her.
“[It’s] hopefully just a little glimpse into, ‘We hear you. Everyone hears you,’” she says. “And it’s important.”
ThySelf
7:30 pm Friday, March 16
2 pm and 7:30 pm Saturday, March 17
$25 to $30, Metro Theatre
brokenrhythmsvictoria.com