When Roman Bacca returned from his deployment in Fallujah, Iraq, trauma did not enter the equation. He wanted to do everything he thought responsible people did. He got a really good job as a technical specialist at a storm-water company and bought a condo in Waterbury, Connecticut. He thought things were going really well for about six months. And then his wife sat him down and said, “We gotta have a talk.”
She did not like what she was seeing. He was not the guy she knew before he went to Iraq. She said he was anxious, depressed, and angry. On the freeway, for example, if traffic got heavy he wanted to ram into other cars. In the train station, he would get anxious. To deal with this he made it a game to see how hard he could bump into somebody. He thought it was funny.
He thought she was going to tell him she was going to leave him. Instead, she asked him what is the one thing he would like to do in this world if he could.
In high school, he thought he would be an engineer or something involved with math. After he graduated, his high school friend who was a ballerina invited him to come to Nutmeg Conservatory and take some courses. He applied, was accepted, and moved to Connecticut.
He started performing in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and other classical works. He loved it. He loved being on stage and performing.
Like so many of us, he had fears to conquer, ghosts of the past to conquer. He had to prove himself.
“I didn’t see being a dancer as a career. I wanted to make a bigger, positive impact on the world and to help others. I thought the quick and easy way to do that was to step into the requiter’s office and sign on the dotted line to join the United States Marine Core.”
In January 2001, he graduated from United States Marines Bootcamp. Then, after 9/11 he was shipped out to Falluja.
“After coming back from deployment in Fallujah, I thought I was adjusting fine. I found a good job, bought a condo, got serious with my girlfriend. Other people saw the effects of war on me. My wife noticed that I was angry, that I was anxious, that I was struggling with depression anxiety. It wasn’t me anymore and she was afraid of who I was. I assumed that she was just going to leave. “
“However, she had to sit me down and say, “You’re angry. You’re depressed. You’re anxious. Some people are really afraid of you. She asked me if there was anything in the world I wanted to do, and I said, Start a dance company. And we did.”
When I started the dance company I had a vision that it would be easier than it is. I’m doing the website, scoping out the theater, reading books after books on grant writing, on networking and worrying about selling enough tickets to cover costs. A couple of years ago, I was at the end of my rope, wondering if this was the right choice, wondering if we could make it.
“And then two marines close to me took their own lives. One of them was one of my platoon mates in Falluja. After that, I decided that I wanted to do more than just performances. And that’s when we started doing verteran workshops.
“Military training is extremely powerful. It affects not only the body but the mind. In boot camp, you’re taught these repetitive movements. And it’s designed to train anyone how to kill. The problem with that is, after service, how do you make that part of the training disappear.
“With dance, we can transform our experiences and start to loosen that training and we can hopefully move on.”
From Exit 12 website:
“Repurposing Movement; transforming trauma:
Exit 12’s workshops and programs are designed to bridge cultural gaps through shared movement, transform traumatic experiences into expressive choreographic themes, and inspire participants to push beyond their comfort zones. Our veteran-civilian movement workshops engage groups in movement creation, self-esteem building, empathy enrichment, and teamwork. Workshops may lead to a public performance or an informal showing with group participants.”
Exit 12: Moved by War is Roman Baca’s documentary directed by Mohammad Gorjestani. Gestani says that “Starting with boot camp, (a soldier is molded into a machine of war) it happens through posture, movements, and a physical reprogramming of the mind and spirit. It’s like you tie a knot, but (when you return from war) you don’t undo it.” Bacca’s workshops for active duty and retired veterans helps veterans through expression and movement to physically untie that knot to begin healing.”
Exit 12 incorporates dance workshops for veterans into its professional repertoire, hoping to use choreography to awaken veterans’ imaginations and promote healing from painful memories.
“It was pretty powerful,” remembers Jenny Pacanowski, an Army veteran from Pennsylvania, who has attended Exit 12 workshops.
Pacanowski said she has severe PTSD from her time deployed as a convoy medic responding to medical emergencies on the front lines.
“I’ve done every therapy type that’s on earth right now,” she said. But what she really appreciates about Baca’s approach is that it’s not another version of sitting and talking about your experiences.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is … your trauma lies in your muscles and your body. And to create storytelling with body movement, combining those two, I think is part of the avenues of healing,” she said.
Baca and his marine buddy who had also been deployed to Iraq gathered a “squad” of veterans who are also artists to go back to Iraq, to go into other conflict zones to teach dance, to teach writing, to teach visual arts, to teach acting and film so they could feel they positively contributed to those communities.
At the end of some of his talks, he has everyone kneel with their left knee on the ground and their right foot forward and place their left hand on the ground parallel with their right shoe.
“Now I want you to notice we now have four points of contact on the floor. We have our left hand and we have our right foot. We have our left knee and we have our toes on our left foot.
“Now what you will realize in this position, this is a very stable, load-bearing position. And you are going to need that information because what I want you to do is I want you to imagine that you have on your back a plate-carrying vest that weighs about 25 to 30 pounds because it has two ceramic plates that stop bullets.
“And on your head I want you to put a kevlar helmet. On your shoulder I want you to put a 7.5 pound M16 rifle. Feel all the ammunition that you are carrying for the day.
“It should feel pretty heavy by now, but it’s okay! You’re in this load-bearing position. Now I want you to put on your rucksack which is a backpack for you civilians. And I want you to start to fill that rucksack.
And what I want you to put inside of that rucksack is your fears . . . your ghosts . . . your hopes . . . your dreams . . . And now . . . feeling all of that weight . . . I want you . . . to put your left foot on the floor . . . and stand up.
“A good friend of mine told me that we all have these things that weigh us down . . . And it’s okay . . . to take a knee . . . and recenter . . . But the thing you have to remember . . . is that you have to get up . . . and you have to keep going deliberately, decisively, and aggressively, in directions that make you afraid.”
Thank you”
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
