Beyond Archetypes: Haley Rae Bergeson on Embodying and Disrupting the Capricorn 'Sea-Goat'
January 22, 2020
Some of the first ways one learns about the zodiac signs are through their archetypes. Each sign has a symbol that represents its basic qualities, making it easier to interpret astrology's nuanced complexities.
However, studying astrology beyond these stereotypes proves to be complicated in a world that loves to over-simplify. Many people take archetypes as literal, even though they're supposed to be loose guidelines of what energy a sign can posses. Considering Sidereal astrology, a school of astrological thought which considers the actual degrees of planets, alongside Tropical, the more popular Western method, evokes even more questions than answers. How can we reconcile archetypes when everyone has more than just one natal chart?
Even though I write primarily about Tropical astrology, I still study Sidereal placements and incorporate the union of both in my interpretations of the signs. But this is a difficult gray area to navigate, especially when it comes to explaining Astrology 101. I am curious to refute the over-simplification of astrological study in mainstream culture by studying individual manifestations of certain energies.
Astrological consultations balance the general knowledge of the stars with an understanding that every person is a conduit for nuanced expressions of the zodiac archetypes. In this interview series, I aim to reveal the tension between expectation and manifestation, revealing the impact individual experiences has on astrological expression.
Haley Rae Bergeson is a choreographer and dancer based in Los Angeles. She comes from a lineage of Norwiegen Cowgirls, has a history as a flower delivery girl, and maintains the energy duality of an ambivalent cheerleader. Information for her body-poetic practice comes from an interest in reading, absurdity, other people, the non-existence of reality and riding her bike.
She is interested in the potential of changing somatic ideas in movement as it manifests in Gaga and related dance practices. Haley believes in encouraging people to dance because it is good for their health and imperative to their freedom both personally and politically.
Haley and I attended the same university but currently live in different states. Her posts on social media always catch my attention, as I'm intrigued by her perspective on the connections between poetry, dance, and artistic expression. Her thoughts struck me as both quintessentially Capricorn and something beyond it, which was confirmed when studying her natal chart and seeing many air placements (particularly Aquarius and Gemini) alongside her Capricorn Sun.
I wanted to know more about her opinions between the relationship between the body and the mind, dance as a form of poetry, and how she maintains creative flexibility with a Sun sign that's stereotyped as uncompromising.
MM: Capricorns have the reputation for being resolute and hyper-structured, but their archetype as the Sea-Goat indicates physical flexibility that contradicts their mental rigidity. As a dancer, how do you balance these two dynamic parts of your personality?HB: It's so interesting to hear you phrase it like that because I have always been a very unconventional dancer, despite the Capricorn tendency towards tradition. Dance does offer a great sense of satisfaction for the conventional person who enjoys performing work correctly and the reinforcement from mentors that comes with that. Those individuals are going to do well growing up as a dancer.
But that’s not who I am. I am very contrarian by nature and though I’ve cultivated lasting friendships through dance, I’ve always felt a bit different from my dancer peers. Perhaps because I enjoy creating my own ethics and structure to live them by (big Capricorn energy), I never felt like I needed deep recognition from an authority figure. I was always highly interested in improvisation and preferred choreography to performance.
As a teenager, I would perform entire solos without any choreography, which was strange for a pre-collegiate dancer. I found it liberating to lose track of my counts and intellect and think with my body. Some people compare the sensibility of improvisation to that of jazz. Dance was and is my route to escaping the rigidity of modern life and retreating to a place of wholeness in the moment. It wasn't until college that I really found solace in the tradition, structure, and repetition of a ballet class, which bodes as a spiritual experience for most dancers.
The body carries the infinite capacity of our spirits, and it makes sense that people have the desire to move, to get past and out of that finite container. Maybe as a Capricorn, I crave that with more voracity. Dance may well quell an overwhelming sense that I need to organize a life that simply can't reach total organization.
Feminine Tempo, choreographed by Haley Bergeson
MM: When people hear poetry, they often think of words on a page or a slam poetry performance. What does poetry mean to you?
HB: I began to understand my interest in a poetic lifestyle when I was a teenager and spent hours both at parties and on the internet writing and reading poetry. When I was 17 or so, I read an interview with Anne Carson that I really related to and still think of regularly. It certainly informed the way that I see poetry.
“I FEEL IT’S A KIND OF FERVOUR OF MINE TO GET AWAY FROM WHATEVER BODY OF INFORMATION I REST ON WHEN I GIVE OPINIONS. AND I THINK POETIC ACTIVITY IS A METHOD FOR DOING THAT—YOU LEAP OFF THE BUILDING WHEN YOU THINK POETICALLY; YOU DON’T AMASS YOUR DATA AND THEN MOVE FROM POINT TO POINT, YOU HAVE TO JUST KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW IN THAT MOMENT. SOMETHING FREEING ABOUT THAT.” - Anne Carson
We feel impulse in our bodies. The decision to become physically intimate with someone, for example, is an impulse. We feel fear in our bodies and we feel love in our bodies. When I am anxious, I get a wonderful and terrible tingle starting at my core and vibrating out into my extremities. When I write an essay and reach a personal conclusion, I feel a physical expansion in my body, like I am larger, more horizontal than before.
One of my favorite sensations is opening a large door and feeling a gust of cool wind as it ushers over my face. Our body thinks and our body remembers. A body lying in the sunlight doesn’t forget its warmth. A choreographer I admire once told me that “the body is always dancing” and I believe that is true. Poetic activity doesn’t only exist on the page, but in the way we move through the world in our vessels.
I like to think that the choices I make and the narrative that creates is poetry. The way I walk in and out of the restaurant, the way my mouth moves while I am there. Thinking about my actions this way helps me lead a more just and beautiful life without prescribing to any sort of dogmatic system for ethics. To me, poetry is trusting your gut and feeling what’s next with your entire body, then following that.
I truly believe that if we all listened to our bodies and considered what we leave in their wake, the world would become kinder. We are animals, we are made of nature, we have the capacity to be good in the same way that a flower blooms, is good, and dies. Though I find the thinking, logical mind beautiful, I ache to be in touch with my body. I can’t help but think we’d all feel that way if we would pay attention. And what is poetry besides attention to beauty, natural rhythm, and an effort to conjure the sensitivity we all have the capacity for? All the body needs to become poetry is for its passengers to listen. That’s what dance is.
Runaways, directed and edited by Camryn Eakes
Choreography by Camryn Eakes, Haley Bergeson and Quinn Foster
MM: Looking at your chart, I notice you have a lot of air sign energy in your inner planets (Moon and Ascendant in Gemini, Mercury and Venus in Aquarius). To my first question, you described your experience with non-choreographed dance as "liberating to lose track of [your] counts and intellect and think with [your] body." There seems to be a tension between your love of words and your desire to move beyond their limitations. In what ways is the body a vessel for communicating the elusive and fickle nature of words, ideas, or beliefs? What does it mean to "think" with your body?
My affinity for improvisation versus the solace I find in ballet class definitely runs parallel to my natal chart. In college, I used two-hour ballet classes every day to exert control over my helplessness in an environment that didn’t necessarily align with my values. Very Capricorn. Conversely, I turned to choreography to express my own values - those of freedom, rule aversion, question asking, and unconventionality. Very Gemini, very Aquarius.
I do love language - I grew up in a home with many books and parents who encouraged me to read as much as I could, which I feel really grateful for. There is something about language that I find incredibly attractive, magical, and life-affirming. I think about Sylvia Plath and the gift she gives to young women - I admire writers so much for that. They dedicate their lives to comfort, challenge, and better us.
In times of uncertainty or anxiety, my first impulse is to handwrite a pedantic list. Lists like these consist of rows of words that describe what I should do to solve a problem, self improve, or move forward. To complete the action of making a list is to physically exert control over my situation. Once I've made that physical expression, I feel an undue sense of satisfaction. I haven't experienced any trial or error, I've dug myself further into my own (or others) expectations for my actions, and I've cheated myself of sensation. The dance was writing the list. For me, it short-circuits the body and it puts me out of touch with any discernible sense of poetic rhythm I could have derived from actual action.
Coaches and teachers often say that watching a sport or dance style allows you to improve more quickly. That’s true! There are mirror neurons that fire in our brain when we watch someone else complete the same action. Just slightly more dim than when we practice ourselves, we physically memorize patterns in space and rhythmic strategy through that imagined movement.
If my perspective on body imagination and lived poetry doesn't resonate with the more concrete thinker, I’d ask them to consider the fact that our neurology proves that the mind and body function together. The only difference between the two is that the body doesn’t express lies. The memories in our bodies are less clouded by ego and other complications of the psyche. The closest thing our mind gets to avoiding those illusions and lies is dreaming. In that sense, dancing is dreaming.
You can tell when a person is truly inhabiting their body. Some people call that “lighting up.” Choreography, like poetry, tries to access those essential moments and string them together in a beautiful way. As a poem is a vessel for a universal truth too abstract to dissect but too large to ignore, a body is a vessel for the infinity of the human spirit.
The strangest things get me back in touch with my body’s way of thinking: driving with the windows down, bombing my bike down a hill, organizing a bedside table in a way I find beautiful, organizing the menus, tables, and people at my restaurant job, or diving into a pool. All of those activities make me feel sensual, in control, and aware of myself in a way that writing a list of ways to hijack my way out of stress never could; and I am better for them. I function with greater intelligence, I light up, I’m more alive.
I’ve always enjoyed the common comparison of the human spirit to a star in literature and philosophy. If we are able to inhabit ourselves, we not only enjoy our own sensations, but we become a massive celestial network and guide each other. Our physical relationship with one another is no different from our physical relationship to visible cosmic mass, and those relationships are about guidance. Maybe that's what the collective unconscious is, maybe that’s even a function of astrology. It is above all proof that the body is a vessel for our shared experience. It is likewise the critical aspect of our lived experience that draws physical boundaries between us, making us beautiful mysteries to each other. I think that’s why we dance.
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Visit Haley Rae Bergeson's website to learn more about her creative dance practice.
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