Dance from Silence
When does dance come from silence, when we know that we must to each moment bring ourselves completely and most times that calls for complete exuberance, a complete commitment that we speak as boldness or brashness in order to make a full statement of ourselves, in order to bring us alongside the others who we hold most times above ourselves.
Yes there are moments when we hold ourselves in a silence so powerful that we speak ourselves without even knowing who we are. The simple walk in Modern Dance holds the power of our earth plates sliding, riding the molten air, and catching a new forming earth beneath our heel or our toe. The moment of anticipation before every Ballet movement, the simple rising and falling practiced since childhood, has the power to create an inhale among thousands of people. In Contact Improvisation, two bodies touch at a one quarter inch juncture and the silence clanks with the completeness of a final puzzle piece finding its place. Then the silence rolls like a waterfall finally finding the edge of its own cliff.
We dance these moments so clearly, so succinctly, so courageously that we do not even recognize ourselves. Yet, we are most times very adept at erasing the memory of these moments so that we do not have to listen to the silence that bleeds like ink over the lines we like to draw in our minds.
Yes, these are the moments in our dance that bring our voice from deep inside flushing our skin alive with the rich color of our blood. Yet, most times we are unable or unwilling to roll with the silence as it takes us to water’s edge. We even seek in our dance to shed the shame of our unique color palette ignoring that everyone’s blood is part of the same hurricane.
So as fast as we seek to hide from our silence, our dance uncovers the sand over us. Sometimes we eagerly climb up the sliding sand, laughing at our vulnerability. Most times we wince at the brightness of the desert sun that reveals our rich palette, that exposes us to criticism, and that challenges us to enter the sand hills with gusto.
Tags: Dance silence
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:53 pm
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