I had my first official “quarterlife crisis” last week. In the middle Board meeting, I excused myself, stepped outside, and booked a ticket home to Austin. I flew home approximately 12 hours later and just fell into my mom and dad’s arms as they anxiously awaited my arrival. I could tell they were nervous when I called them in tears and simply said, “I booked a ticket and I’ll be home tomorrow night. Can y’all pick me up from the airport?” You know you have good parents when they hear the distress in your voice and, rather than ask a million questions, they simply replay, “Of course. So happy you’re coming home.”

Now I don’t know what it is for you, your friends, a vacant shack in the middle of nowhere, or the privacy of your bedroom you run to but, for me, it’s the welcoming arms of a huge Texas family and home cooking. Maybe it’s just that I’m exhausted, maybe it’s because I’m just homesick or questioning my priorities, my passion and my purpose. But all I know is, like a little kid, I went running home because whatever it was, I felt like I was buckling under the pressure of adulthood’s responsibilities and expectations.

However, despite my much needed R&R, I came home to the most chaotic, depressing, unexpected  storm possible. It’s like I was trying to avoid a hurricane and fled to an island halfway across the world, only to get hit by a tsunami. The morning I arrived, I found out a dear friend had just passed away. Two hours later I was updated that one of our closest family friends was literally “missing” and that my ex-boyfriend had officially moved on (and in) with his girlfriend. Regardless, the ol’ saying, “When it rains it pours” could not be more appropriate for the past week of my life.

That’s when it occurred to me, in my pity party of one, that while we can plan and perfectly orchestrate our lives, at the end of the day, there are times when we simply have to grab out floaties and hold on for dear life. Since I pride myself on “being the author of my own life” and “dictating life on my terms,” it’s always humbling to find yourself up *%$# creek without a paddle.

For the first time in my life, I had nothing: no answers, no brilliant responses or eloquent explanations. I didn’t know up from down, left from right, nor here nor there. I sat on my couch and cried. I cried for a friend I’ll never see again; I cried for fear of my life’s ambiguity; I cried for finally closing a chapter in my life’s longest love affair; I cried for realizing I can’t control every aspect of my life nor have everything figured our by 26 and then bawled even harder at the thought of just how much I was loved by the Looney Toons I call family.

Then, as soon as it came, it was gone. I sat in silence on my couch and, when the last tear drop had rolled down my face, I realized I had just weathered a huge life storm and I was going to live. That doesn’t mean things were fixed, hearts weren’t still bruised and my problems had miraculously evaporated; it meant, in spite of them, I knew I would be okay.

And sometimes being okay is just enough to keep you going. I was once told, “Don’t waste a good crisis.” It sounded ridiculous at the time but it occurred to me that it’s in the thick of life’s greatest storms that we really learn how to sail our ships and sometimes we have to be fully broken in order to rebuild even stronger. So if you’re headed for one, in the midst of one, or have just survived a good life crisis, welcome to the gang.

My advice for the future: do what you have to do. Run home, hide under the covers, crawl in a hole when the world seems too big and too scary. But after you cry, scream, throw a fit and get everything out, you better get back out there. As I’ve said before, this life is not about avoiding obstacles, heartaches or unpleasant circumstances; it’s about facing them head on, getting beat up and knocked down but always, no matter what, getting back up.

I fly back to LA tomorrow and while my storm has subsided for now, I gladly welcome the next one that tries to throw me off my course because this girl is ten times stronger than the chick she was a week ago and it’s going to take one hell of a storm to slow me down this time.

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You don’t have to be a fan of modern dance to understand the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). According to Judith Jamison, the Artistic Director, you just have to be human.

“The first thing you do when you’re born is what?” asks Jamison. “You open your mouth first and wave those little chords in the air to make sure people know you’re alive. And you’re breathing, those lungs are moving. Everything is moving. It’s within us to move.”

AAADT celebrated movement and connection with its 50th anniversary last year, where Jamison also announced she will be retiring in 2011. The world eagerly awaits her announcement of a predecessor. “I’m looking for someone with great intelligence and great nerve – someone who understands the tradition of the company, but makes choices as an individual. That’s what I did. I couldn’t imitate Alvin (Ailey). All I could do was follow the road map.”

That map laid out AAADT’s mission to bring African American culture to the world. Ailey always believed that dance came from the people, and should be delivered back to the people. She began dancing at the age of 10, training in classical ballet, though her passionate style and muscular figure contradicted the ballerina’s wiry ideal. In 1965, Jamison joined AAADT as a dancer and found international stardom with the company for the next fifteen years; she took over the company in 1989.

Among the most notable of Jamison’s roles is Cry (1971), a 15-minute tour-de-force solo. Dedicated to women everywhere, Cry brilliantly conveys every emotion, role, and contradiction associated with womanhood. In her autobiography Dancing Spirit, Jamison writes, “Exactly where the woman is going through the ballet’s three sections was never explained to me by Alvin. In my interpretation, she represented those women before her who came from the hardships of slavery, through the pain of losing loved ones, through overcoming extraordinary depressions and tribulations. Coming out of a world of pain and trouble, she has found her way – and triumphed.”

Under Jamison’s leadership, AAADT expanded dramatically with developments like the Women’s Choreography Initiative, performances at two Olympic Games, and a historic run in South Africa that ended the cultural boycott of the old apartheid government. Jamison also established a B.F.A. program with Fordham University. As an advocate for arts education, Jamison is committed to advancing programs that bring dance into the community and introduce children to the arts. She is a firm proponent of the power of dance to reach across cultural divides and connect the otherwise-separated.

“[AAADT is] here to celebrate the idea of what the human body can do and how far it can reach into your soul and make you feel differently about yourself. Make you feel good. Make you feel, period,” Jamison proclaims. “Alvin was always about our being recognized – as beautiful, important, distinct, absolutely talented, brilliant people. And, in doing that, it opened a world to who we are as human beings. Everything we do is about giving back to this world. And if we can do it through talent, through movement, through dance, then we are all the more blessed for it.”

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