Movin' Easy Dancewear

The rhythm I need I find @Tapestry.  2010 show now.  With Tapestry, I eat rhythm.  Meat and potatos, sweet and sour, jelly roll and dilly bar, hum a little, slide a lot, takes away the casserole and brings on the whole enchilada.  My cells devour  Tapestry rhythm.  My rhythm dishes it out, slurps it in.    My brain catches and matches signal for signal every slap skat splat.  OK my body, well fed, well read, are you trained to take on the slopes when you go out that door?

Psychologists search for why we dance.  For me the question is similiar to why we worship or why we hope or why we love.  Here are three takes on the topic. 

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/04/dance-research.aspx

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/04/dance.aspx

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/04/ancient-dance.aspx

Doctor Lawyer Artist Chief.  Imagine that now.  Artists hang out your shingle and pull down your meter.  It is time for you to join the ranks of the doctor, lawyer, psychiatrist, chief.  The need for your services will not wait any longer.  The excuses and detractors can no longer delay the place you must play in our society.  The distinctions of distraction and entertainment, satisfaction and addiction are too blurred and the needs are too great in our businesses, education, institutions, and in every layer of our personal lives.

Your move has begun in not so subtle ways that still cover your tracks so you can not be labeled as the artistic, the visionary, or even worse the feminine.  Consultants are popping out of the wood work for creativity in business, making brain connections in education, designers concerned with liveable space, and artists influence in every layer of our multimedia world.

There is no mystery in how to claim your place.  Clarify what you have to offer and put a price on it.  Then go directly to the places in our society in most need, the businesses seeking clarity, the families growing thriving lives, and all institutions struggling to make a better world.

What does the artist have to offer beyond the product that has such a long slow path to its market?  You know how to explore, how to mine the depths of the human spirit and how to manifest it in concrete forms.  That process is what saves businesses and is misunderstood and avoided in most education.

Take courage because it will take lots of it to both say clearly what you have to offer and to find the clients that will pay for your services.  Then what you have are the front line artists claiming their due and the support forces that are cloistered to research new depths of human experience and expression.  Both layers would be valued and paid for what they are offering.

Acclaimed artists and consultants understand the importance of what they have and are repeating the benefits.  The problem is that the reigning paradigm is one of patronage, honoring the individual by a benevolent benefactor.  The assumption is that the artistic process of exploration and manifestation is only tied to talent and has as its only use to soothe or ruffle the sensibilities of individuals or institutions with the resources to support it.

Changing this paradigm has been daunting.  In the present atmosphere Artists just have not had the courage or the clarity to stand up and take your place.

I enter the dance.  Step into.  Roll into.  Fly into.  Climb into.  Descend into.  Elevate into.  Enter into light from light or enter light from darkness.  Back into.  Fall into.  Approach boldly or briskly, gently or with a whisk.

I enter with all and every that I know and with a window open to what I can not at this moment know.  One given I can not escape is that from moment of entry through the last standing moment of completion, I will become what I did not know before.  I will certainly recognize myself yet I may, in the weeks to come, have to spend time practicing entering a newly found reality.

And it is the awe of this entry moment that captivates all my senses.  The space I am about to enter speaks its own anticipation in gross vibrations of the skin covering my body.  A faster rumbling enters my spine as I take in the awe inspiring preparation moments of fellow dancers, participants, and arriving audience if there is one.

Deep within my heart I continue to reconcile the map of the journey ahead of me with my inner dialog for clarity and purpose.  And my feedback system is always rolling up from my gut carrying any residual doubts, always calling my enter life into question.

Rumbling and rattling like an old jet preparing for take-off, my experience is something just beyond overwhelming fear.  My enter structure of soft tissue is on the verge of palpating in unison while I am negotiating with myself to love each sensation rather than dread what I have got myself into.

From my bones, a broader wave of vibration overwhelms all the echoes in every chamber of myself.  And finally at the crest of entering the dance, I send out a final wave of gratitude to all the immensely courageous dancers and explorers who have come to this moment.  And especially I send a shower of thankful flowers and waterfalls to all my persistent parents, mentors, and teachers who have walked this fire with me.  I can not thank them enough for holding the vision of the road ahead through all my fear, unwillingness or just my strict avoidance of taking this step I am about to take right now.

Deborah Hay No Time to Fly 2010

Contrary to “much ado”

Reverse “about”

Contingent to “nothing”

When our “going out” is the same as our coming in and our “whimper” is a valiant earthquake.

Deborah Hay, No Time to Fly, Austin 040710 When cataclysmic creates this island that we are and we leave our glacial remains in our path, then as now we deconstruct and call it clean.

When we are an island and a family of islands and we disappear into the sea, we claim to never have been anywhere.

When we have entered every chasm, innersanctum, Kasbah, tabernacle, when we have traveled every labyrinth, pyramid tomb, stairway to every temple, when we have taken safari upon safari into every capillary into every plasmic configuration of gland, pump, and organ, then as now we can only stand in the personal loss of our limitations, listen and watch.

Dream Learn Dance.  One of my favorite memories is talking to a counselor, I can’t remember of what sort, who said she dreamed in four different ways.  I took her four dreaming styles into the ways I learn, the ways I plan and initiate projects, the ways I interact with people, and the ways I dance.

Her four ways of dreaming were ONE, hearing an inner dialog sorting, planning, or informing, TWO entering the feeling of the action and being involved in the physical movement like in running, falling, or entering a room, THREE point to point awareness of position, now I am here and now I am somewhere else, FOUR sequencing of now this is happening and next comes this action followed by another action.

As I began to apply the four styles, I realized they are distinct ways of learning that educators use to identify how each individual learns differently.  Those styles are loosely auditory, sensory and kinesthetic, spatial, and sequential.

As an example, the four styles apply to an athlete learning to pole vault.  One aspect of the training is being told what to do and perfecting mistakes with a trainer’s comments.  Some athlete’s would concentrate on the sequence of now I do this, now this and follow through to that.  Other’s would concentrate on the spatial orientation of arrive at this position and apply effort or momentum to arrive at another position.  Still other athletes would favor the feel of the running approach, the feeling of how the pole is placed, and the kinesthetic feeling when the body finds the perfect synch to clear the pole.

Insomnia Sing Dance.  It was midnight.  I had too much ice cream topped with too much brownie and too much chocolate syrup and my system was trying to digest and settle down.  Laying still and determined not to get up, I remembered so many all night events I had attended with dancing and singing.  After the sun would begin warming the sky, I would be thinking that I should be exhausted but instead I would feel reinvigorated.

On this particular night, it was obvious I was not going to sleep any time soon so I tried an experiment while lying down.  I began humming and dancing with my arms.  Humm, felt good, kept that going for a while.  A deep inhale relaxed my body and gave me a little incentive to stay with it although my preference would have been to get up and work.

No, the relaxation did not put me to sleep but somehow I knew my body and mind was getting some rest that would do well for the next day.  And not that I recommend this form of long meditation to anyone, it is a great time to understand the connection of dance, singing, and relaxation.

The elements of dance that worked well were random smooth arm movements, coordinated arm movements with palms facing, crossing both hands from one side of the body to the other,  rippling any muscles from toes up through legs, hips, and up the spine, and gentle rolling of feet side to side.  Using the principles of Chi Gong, a healing movement is palms facing moving to one side of the body while the head and hips move to the other side.

Well I did finally go to sleep around 4:30 probably more from the sugar wearing off than from my relaxing songs and movements.

Watch Cult of Color by Ballet Austin on Time Warner http://www.balletaustin.org/newsletter/january10/cult.php

Extraordinary dance like Cult of Color takes me to another dimension.  Thinking becomes feeling, questioning becomes flying, sliding is definitely taking me toward a portal to the unknown.  Put Harry Potter in the satchel and get ready for a real ride.

Don’t miss Cult of Color the next time Ballet Austin Dance Company presents it live.

Grandpa’s Guide to Dancing with Children is my exploration with twin girls Twala, Tweela, their sister Tiger, and their cousin Mr. Man.

I follow two simple principles.  Children dance all the time, and a child’s job is to build connections in their brain by exploring every variety of movement.

To follow these principles, I have to adjust my habitual response both to children and to my use of time.  I have to train myself to pay attention, total attention, to only one thing, “How are they exploring now?”  Then my job is to support their brain building activity whatever it is.

Paying attention and supporting are the hardest for me because my inclination is to direct, to correct behavior, and to set time limits and schedules.  Of course my adult life has to go on even with a child present, and my fear is that “This will go on forever.  We will never get out of here if they keep doing this.”

The most important discovery I have made is that the child knows when they are done. The child’s brain building activity has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  When they are supported, they know when to begin, when to keep it going, and when to end.  Something in my adultness still wants to scream, “What about me?  Don’t I know best?”

The answer is “No.”  When it comes to a child’s exploration, only the child knows what and how much activity they need.  Their discovery process and time sense goes way beyond what we call “attention span.”  That term applies only to how long a child can be directed by an adult or manipulated by media.  My new approach speaks directly to the adult pulling the child from the sand pile kicking and screaming.  It also speaks to the child addicted to electronic games without a sense of time.