Movin' Easy Dancewear

How are dancer’s feet different?  Here a just a few ways: 1. High definition muscle tone in every part of the foot connect to every toe, to all edges of the foot, and to muscles in the ankle, knee, and hip.  2. Supple muscles in the feet stretch in every direction and connect with stretches beginning anywhere in the body from neck down through abdomen, through hip, knee, and ankle.  3.  Sensitivity to how the foot touches the floor means responsive adjustments to which spot carries the weight and the angles of each part of the foot in relation to the floor.

How do dancers treat their feet?  My guesses are:  1. Kindness in some way is a must.  2.  Moving both feet in every direction throughout the day keeps them supple.  3.  Touching the feet is a way of checking for pain points and nurturing a hard working partner.

How do dancers diagnose minor pain in joints and muscles?  Here are just a few ways:  1. Any stress or strain is seen as affecting the entire body, not just one muscle.  First test is a stretch involving the whole body.  2.  The opposite side is a next check for imbalances and to identify the location and severity of the pain on the painful side.  3.  Movement in every direction is tested to see what is working and what is not.  4. Applying a variety of dance movements tests what it is like moving into the pain and through it if possible.  The dancer’s tool chest is infinite in using movements from the tiniest and gentlest to the broadest range and force.  5.  Moving muscles above and below the stressed point relaxes muscles that may be responding sympathetically and creating spasms.  6.  Experience with a variety of body therapies also give dancers diagnostic tools such as pressure points to hold until the pain subsides, gentle pulls and places to hold, vibratory or pulsing motions, and positions of rest.

After a year of not dancing, I am completely blindsided by the learning curve of learning Ballroom Dancing.  Yes, I can remember a few steps but all the essentials I have obviously not learned or forgotten.  The most gorgeous Big Band music plays while I clunk flatfooted across the floor, holding Ginger too close, and throwing her off balance with my forceful moves.

I love dancing so much.  When the music begins, it is as if my tether has been untied.  I fly across the room as if I was a helium balloon headed into the sky, and in my total exuberance I drag Ginger with me.  It is not my intention to be inconsiderate to her; I just enter another state of consciousness hoping that she will join and that I will remember some steps in my unfocused state.

As usual that state does not work for any of us.  Back to the drawing board, I have to realize that learning to dance is like learning to walk again.  And here we are again. 

My internal question is “What is it I have to learn in order to fly?”  First lesson was how to propel from one foot to the other rather than slamming my foot down like a toddler wanting to make sure the earth wont move under the first steps.  Second lesson was to hold my body up erect rather than crunching down over myself like a monkey accustomed to hunching before leaping from branch to branch. 

Patience is not akin to flying or maybe it is since a baby bird does totter around on the limb a while deciding it is time to leap.  So in my journey to the dance floor, I will take the time to learn to walk a new way.

I assume most people can either fake it or have a natural finesse that makes their partners comfortable enough to get through a dance.  When I learn to walk, I will hold Ginger at a comfortable distance, support my weight as a homo erectus or some such species, and propel my entire body into the dance so that Ginger can read my moves.  Back to the dancing room for me.

Movin’ Easy is looking for the BEST Black Swan Costume for 2011! Send your photo to dance@movineasy.com to enter the contest and win a prize from your favorite LOCAL dance retail shop!

Tapestry Dance Company members are surviving in China!

Check out the complete photo album online at http://s1128.photobucket.com/albums/m499/Soulsfeet/

Tapestry Dance Company rearranged my cells.  I said goodbye to my DNA.

Left brain gave way to meticulous aboriginal choruses.  Right brain collapsed into brief slow motion silences.  In those spaces of mimetic time, simple circular arms took my entire body tumbling over waterfalls to one side, then roaring back to the other side.

Sound erupted from my entire body forming one word, “YES.”  I will never be the me that I knew before being immersed in this much clarity. 

Never the Same Again,  Tim Hurst,  092611,  Tapestry Dance Company, “The Souls of Our Feet”  September 24, 2011

Dedication to my partners and teachers who have loved this dance with me.

Kindness in the foot placing itself.

Kindness in the breath receiving itself.

Kindness way behind the eyes and yes deeply seeing behind trillions of intimate cells.

Kindness dancing inside precious joints undulating outwards towards the most open embrace.

Kindness drawing only nourishment from the seas we call our atmosphere.

Kindness insisting that harm is not our friend.

Kindness reaching bringing embracing our partners in this our dance.

Kindness timing our rhythmic spaces to taste tender and tragic trial and error.

Kindness within multiple moments of rest ready for momentum to exude life.

Kindness allowing dance to bubble and travel through our rapids along our placid stretches passage upon passage.

Kindness greeting our enemies offering to offend our visceral fears, our hidden wishes, our clutch on darkness.

Kindness to greet our overwhelming dance of delight overflowing from every corner of our known and unknown vulnerabilities.

Tim Hurst 092311

092111   Tim Hurst

A friend came to Movin’ Easy for tap shoes to begin tap dance at Tapestry Dance Academy in Austin.  I said, “This will be a great opportunity for you to deal with all that confusion in your life.”  I was speaking from experience since dance is my friend in this respect almost every day.

She asked me, “What do you mean?”  I said, “Have you taken Tai Chi’.”  “Yes.”  Do you remember how it felt to shift slowly from one side of your body to the other?”  “Kind of.”

“That’s the point.  Tai Chi integrates the breath as you shift left side, right side.  That seems subtle to us. 

“Tap dancing requires clear commitment in moving from one side to the other.  You shift from using one side of the brain, then the other.  Plus you are sealing that commitment into the hard wired rhythmic part of the brain.  Or at least you are getting into your psyche through a set of wiring used since the earliest humans.”

http://www.tapestry.org  See them Sept 24 for an opportunity to implode all cells to awake the brain.

Encoded sound is the way we make the day go round.  Each sentence we use is our lively rhythm or our sedated avoidance.

Scientists say we listen and our brains go click click.  We have to listen and tap the sound to make our brains go click click and clack.

Now only our youngest ones remember that our brains require our bodies to recreate the musical intricacies of our delight.