Martita Goshen

Martita Goshen is a dancer. She has performed all over the world. Her work in New York City schools is supported by the Lifebridge Foundation, and I met her a few months ago at a gathering that foundation organized to help grantees connect with each other. She is an athletic, middle-aged woman; her energy and goodwill are palpable. I asked her for an interview.

Martita’s father was a diplomat. She grew up in a strict academic environment. At Hopkins, she decided she had had enough and took up dance. She studied and practiced and then began a search for a subject that was, in her words, "something deeper, more meaningful than performing for the sake of performing". She asked herself what she loved, because love was the basis of the work of performers she most respected. "Beauty brings you to your own genius," she said to me. "I would see it in people I occasionally met -- people who were in their divine essence -- people who were very clear about who they were and what they did....I loved things that moved. I loved tiny little things. Ants and birds. And I loved big animals. I loved nature"

While dancing with the Washington Ballet in San Diego, the mayor offered the group a boat ride, and that ride ended up changing her life. Martita described to me what happened.

It was a beautiful day. A young whale popped up right beside us -- maybe eight feet away. And her size brought a state of awe -- the sound of the waves parting, her breath, the way she rolled. And then suddenly she found my eye. Her eye found my eye. My life changed right there. Her eye was so compassionate and so large. In the eye of the whale I imagined I saw God. And it was an act of forgiveness. And it was compassion. It changed the vibration that I moved in. The fear and the doubt. The pain and the blame of being an American during the Vietnam War. That whale gave me courage. It started to shape an idea. I started on an inner journey that that whale told me was timeless.

What humans are doing, they are going to do forever. But in her eye, I saw a real truth. So if I could convey that eye in my own little voice, that is all I needed to do. And that is what I did. The whale led me to other creatures and other people. And then into the real science of how you present yourself and create work that will touch an audience, that will open a vibration in the audience. If, by chance, I can open that through something beautiful and unique, then I have found my purpose.