Last week I spent all morning rolling around my living room floor exploring gesture, emotion, and gaze.
What do you do for fun?
My excuse for this behavior was to prepare for a performance of dance, movement, and poetry at the Vermont Governor’s Institute on the Arts tonight. (I know you all want to come but the show is closed to the public. Feel free to find me a venue and lots of $ and I’ll come to your hometown/art camp/opera hall/village green).
But in truth I was simply playing, exploring, discovering.
I was uncovering what it means to be lost and then to come home. How the felt sense of our eyes can shift our whole posture, open our hearts, close our toes. All of this choreographing, playing, discovering was illuminating and exhausting. Feelings were stirred, gestures were coming to the surface, intensity was building in my brain and body, and I was getting so hungry!
So I came out of the trance of slow discovering dance and went to the kitchen for lunch.
And there while I made myself a sandwich I put on music, rocking tunes that immediately took over my body and brain and had me shimmying and shaking, leaping and quaking, twirling and swirling.
All that deep silent unfolding dance on the living room floor and now I needed to let go and get down.
And this rocking out was so gorgeous, so life giving, so affirming that I began to sparkle and glisten, swagger and listen.
Dance is basic. Dance is human. Dance lets us let go and give over to the glorious bodies of water and form that we are.
Dance tells the truth.
So for the joy of it, here are two dance videos I adore at the moment.
But don’t just watch them, shake your booty.
——–
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Trauma discharge through dance. I’m pretty convinced it’s what allowed Michael Jackson the length of life he managed to live.
Jaz,
this sounds like fun! I am not a “good” dancer but frequently dance alone (or with a baby) in my house and totally enjoy myself. Too bad we usually feel as if we have to be really good at something (especially the arts) to allow ourselves to do it….when did play get forgotten, and how?
Looking forward to playing with my brand new grandson!!!
It is too bad when we think we have to be “good” at something to do it…especially when that something can be so healing as Mark mentions above, and so playful and fun as you mention.
May we all live into our glorious lives and do things badly and in our own way.
Nothing like new little babies to dance with….
Hi Jasmine,
Morning drive by complete… contemplation as well… I ask you if you would like to expand your interpretation of
dance?.. If so, go watch workmen work in a small space (it is easier
to see the dance there), watch traffic move (it slithers like a
snake), there is dance abound! I have not danced to music for nearly
twenty years… but I dance daily. I build things… matters not
what. I used to beat myself up for not being moved (pysically) by
music anymore… My music has simply changed. I have learned that I
dance all day long… when people try to do much of what I do, they
can’t… they are either scared or they fail to see the results of my
body’s motions… If you get a chance, and are interested in
expanding your interpretation of dance, go out and find an old school
furniture maker or carpenter… take a plane to wood… Join two
pieces… listen, watch, feel, exert, explode!… it will broaden the
way you see dance. I love your post.
Thank you,
-Ben
Yes. I definitely want to expand my interpretation of dance and I want to encourage others to do this as well. So thanks for joining in the effort and reminding me of all the ways we move and dance.
I have a new fish (Rick) and I’m mesmerized by how he dances. I went to see the movie Buck last night about a man who trains horses, and realized it was really a movie about dance and about how life moves.
Thanks Ben for your comments and your drive bys!