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Have you ever felt like you need to pretend to fit in?
Or maybe to reduce yourself to crumbs, or hide parts of yourself away?
I’ve always found intrigue in the statements we have around identity.
How much of them are rigid and either-or in nature.
How few of them account for our richness, our adaptability, our contrast, our complexity.
Molds that leave little room for change, let alone evolution.
Even less confusion.
And rarely discovery.
The message seems to be:
“Give me your label, so I can know who you are”
An ask for us to pre-determine and narrow which I’ve always bucked against.
But, we respond to one another.
We exist alone and in relation to the people and parameters we meet.
Any answer we give has the possibility to change.
So why do we keep performing labels instead of meeting each other - and ourselves - with questions?
This episode is an invitation to consider what it might mean to be fully yourself — not as a fixed identity to protect, but as something alive and curious that shows up differently in every room.
I am joined by Rachel McNamee, a dancer with eleven years in a repertory company who spent a year away - not to leave dance, but to find herself outside the only frame she’d ever known. Together we move through what it actually feels like to return somewhere changed, and the question of how to bring a new shape back into an old space without losing it.
We explore what Rachel carries from a life in dance: the discovery that freedom doesn’t disappear inside structure - it often lives there. And what it actually takes to translate someone else’s vision through your body. The observation, the relationship, the trust that builds between a dancer and a choreographer over time. And how much of that, it turns out, is just what it takes to truly meet someone.
By seeking answers together, finding awe and laughter and surprising ourselves with what we find, we land on something neither of us expected: that receiving someone fully might be the most generous thing we can offer.
A warm, unhurried conversation about expression, honesty, and what it means to actually meet each other.
Rachel describes herself firstly as a human - one who spends a lot of time dancing, performing, creating, writing, talking, listening, loving. She grew up in Vancouver, Canada. In 2014, she moved to Europe to start her career as a professional dancer with Nederlands Dans Theatre. She is currently based in Göteborg, Sweden, dancing with GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, amongst other things. Rachel is interested in the body in all its forms of expression - how it holds and gives.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachmacxx/
Stepping away from comfort and into exploration
Entering old spaces in new shapes
Growth moves in more directions than we think
Finding improvisation and liberty inside every frame
Meeting the unknown with curiosity
Translating vision into movement
Languages - what do we really understand?
Feeling fully expressed
What the body gives and what the body holds
Taking up space when you’re wired to adapt
Performance is honesty
Receiving as giving, giving as receiving
Thank you for listening to Learning from Trees!
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