Thirty Days of Thoughts: Day 5

Tags

body knowledge, choreography, creative energy, Dance, Dance Forms, dance makers, dance making, dancers, dancing, energetic pathways, Energy, teaching dance

6/5/21

I have fallen in love with dance so many times during my adventure with it. In and out of love with the field and all of it’s dysfunction and challenges. What I have come to realize is that I have not really been in love with dance but rather a body in motion and the ability to be consciously present in the training, reshaping and organizing of a falling body through space. 

For so long I have tried to simply do this very thing and have been challenged to justify it as research, choreography, engagement, activism and outreach when all that was important for me was to simply exist in the joy of being present in this body.

I realize existing in academia all this time I have lost the soul and joy of movement by always having to assess, quantify and promote my brand. It’s no wonder the joy of movement and being in love with it has long been gone. What an exhausting relationship and unhealthy coupling it is. Certainly not a positive one to have had if dance was a person.

So in my reflections during these turbulent times I am finding out that I am remembering when it is I have been in love with my body in motion and the carving and shaping of my energies in space. I am remembering that at every turn all that mattered was the movement. I remember there is nothing else but movement.

What is delightful about this is I can return to the space of being where I am free to present and deeply committed to the conscious movement mechanics and expression of a soul inhabiting a body in motion defying space and time. 

I can be in this place again if I am capable of surrendering the justification for being driven by the ego and of the expectations of a field requiring long held hierarchies. Is it possible to exist within structures that strangle and suffocate voices that do not adhere to the same exclusive value systems laid out by a field and more specifically the archaic funding mechanism which holds so many marginalized voices hostage?

I have always struggled with this but now feel it is truly time to let it all go and fall back to being in love with falling; artfully and gracefully falling through time and space without a care for the construct which binds bodies from being all that they are and can be. 

Back to Body

Tags

artful body, beauty of the body, body, body knowledge, changes, conscious body, health, health and well being, Home, humanity, listening to the body, open body, speaking body., well being, wellness

When I return to my body

I return home

When I sit quietly with this beautiful body

I sit in immense gratitude

When I remember my body speaks

I remember to listen in love

When I am lost and the noise of the world immense

I look within to find the grounding of spirit

When I return to spirit

I return to body

 

Learn to Listen to your Body.

Tags

bodies in motion, body, body knowledge, conscious body, health, open body

 

Learning to listen to the body is at the center of training the body in any movement modality or technique. There are countless lens’s in which people engage in movement or physical practices in which they are drawn to and find a connection with. The most significant realization across this vast spectrum is that the body is the constant in every single one. And while different aesthetics or practices focus on different aspects of the body, ultimately, the body functions as a human body regardless.

If we allow ourselves to turn inward to recognize sensations of movement and techniques we allow ourselves to connect more fully to our physicality and to the spirit within that vessel. When we focus on the external picture, image or end result we no longer feel with the heart but see something outside and separate of ourselves. If we can learn how to see with our sensations we will learn to feel with our hearts. If we learn to do this more deeply, we will find a deeper consciousness with our physical tool and understand how to ask more graciously of it and build a sense of communication with a body that has an intelligence we seldom allow to be tapped.

Our culture doesn’t quite afford us this luxury. But in fact, it is not a luxury at all. What it is, is absolutely necessary. We can no longer work in a disconnected fashion any longer and expect to function authentically if we separate the head from the body and the brain from the body’s brain. The art of movement; artistic, fitness or sport, deserves a more profound relationship with spirit and body in order for more soulful action, physical sustainability and holistic well being. It is time to honor the body as a significant partner in our journey rather than a work horse to ride for selfish satisfaction only to be discarded when it no longer can support the human ego.

What if it is possible to gain without pain? What if it is possible to achieve without the brutality of body? What if you might train faster while achieving greater physical success? It is possible. It really is possible. The key to achieving this is simply to choose the present moment of practice in order to feel the information being shared in the now. Our past has brought us to this place in life and in order to move forward we must accept that it has served us up until now but that we do not have to let it hold our physicality from experiencing the magnitude of our potential. We can be so much more than our ego let’s us. Let your body speak to you and tell you what it needs. Listen to the wisdom of its physicality to speak the truth of what it can be.

 

Borderland

Tags

body, body knowledge, Chi, Energy, faith, healing, humanity, light, space, truth, well being, wellness

I live in the Borderland. It is a space between Here and Now, Before and After and the Known and Unknown. It is a vast space of reality in which many are called and seldom journey; A space of infinite physical wisdom and healing understood by all beings of this world. It is a silent, unspoken culture in which miracles live and breathe. Because of this great energy and light physical and emotional healing coexist. This is an immense and immeasurable vibration that surround all creatures enveloping them in the waters of creativity and life.

When in the Borderland one has great faith in the miracles of the healing body. You are encouraged to allow the body to do what it was designed to do; to heal itself and to know the journey of wellness through being one with the body’s brain and the Borderland itself. Listen to the body and you will transport yourself to this space of wellness. Listen to your body and you will be graced with an abundance of healing. The body craves wellness which is its optimal place of being. It longs to return to the Borderland to be whole.

have faith in the miracles of the body and you will know the power of relentless possibility. You will find yourself within an intelligent body that understands what it needs and how to achieve the state of wellness. When you listen, you will know yourself. And when you allow yourself this immense vulnerability, you will have allowed yourself the journey to the Borderland.

Sing Your Truth

Tags

allowing, art, becoming, beleif, Believing, bliss, body knowledge, choreographer, Conscious Living, courage, Courageous Vulnerability, Creative Flow, Creativity, Dance, development, EBAS, expressing, faith, forgiveness, sharing, sing, trusting

Sing your truth with passion and trust you will be guided by the spirits of the world. They will keep you, support you and wrap you in the ever evolving flow of knowledge and light. Remember you are a beautiful creature of the creative energy that is our existence and our physiology. You are the expression and reality of the universe.

Express without fear. Express with love. Express with light.

Sing your truth and let the song be heard by those  of open heart to hear it. Write your work and let it be read by those of open mind to understand it. Dance your heart and let it be felt by those of open vibration to absorb it. Radiate your energy and let the healers light be imprinted by those of open veins to channel it.

Express without fear. Express with love. Express with light.

And So It Begins

Tags

art, athens, Ballet, Believing, bliss, body, body knowledge, conscious body, Conscious Living, contemporary ballet, Creative Flow, creative process, Creativity, Dance, development, dreams, EBAS, Energy, faith, modern dance, Paris, research, travel, VCU Dance

As I finish up my last day here in RIC for a while, I am profoundly grateful for the opportunities that are opening up before me. Thankful for the freedom to move about the world and share my work and passions with people from all over the globe. I marvel at what dance has done for my life and for how it has carried me to places that I could have never dreamed of as a young man.

As a matter of fact, I had no clue I was a dancer. No clue that I would end up where I am creating three dimensional visceral landscapes, teaching how to create internal space and design external realities or bringing consciousness to the energetic pathways of our technique. I often wonder how I turned down this road.

Yet, I am on this journey. Happily and gratefully on this journey.

This trip to Athens is to present my perspective on teaching by sharing my  research, Training a Conscious Body: Redefining Pedagogy Practices in Contemporary Dance Technique for Increased Architectural Support and Physical Integrity. I am excited to share these examinations and talk about learning through sensation rather than imitation and the reexamining of time within the classroom.

The travel that follows will be to teach and to collaborate on the Paris Semester Abroad program for our students at VCU to take part in Spring 2016. I am excited to meet up with Michael Foley as well as Colleen Thomas-Young to share and organize all of this goodness. What amazing people to walk that journey with. Very grateful to Michael for his brilliance.

In addition, I will be meeting up with my dear friends Keith Bell and Josh Sessions to have a writing retreat. Both myself and Keith are working on books and we are going to spend our time writing in the cafes for even greater inspiration. A little fantasy come true I guess.

And one of the most synchronistic events will be having breakfast with Linda Kohanov. I have long admired her research and work with horses and had the luxury of participating in one of her leadership workshops this spring. She is an inspiration to me and I am tickled to be able to meet with her and hear her stories of the wonderful sharing she is doing with her work and the release of her book Power of the Herd in French.

I am truly grateful!!

And so, this begins the journey.

Seeing in all Directions/Walking Along the Center Line

Tags

Balance, becoming, beleif, Believing, body, body knowledge, change, choice, compassion, Conscious Living, dreams, EBAS, Energy, humanity

We live our lives moving forward. in motion in one direction seeing only what is in front of us and desiring what is so far beyond ourselves. Would it not be more dimensional if we started living in all directions forcing us to anchor ourselves and our energies by the center line of our beings?  Our spines and the very core of our being, and ways of being, would be engaged in a sense of ascending and descending reaching in order to stabilize this new sense of seeing and being.

In doing so, we might find a surge of energy and creativity focusing and reconnecting damaged pathways that have occurred by living a life focused on a future. We might find a sense of internal opening and awakening as we find the balance of our internal and external selves as we allow and acknowledge ourselves as the center of our humanity and the inspiration of our dreams. The radiant body becomes the very thing that grounds our existence. Simply by seeing in all directions, we find our electric selves charged by a new sense of existing and enter a life long journey of walking along the center line.

Making of Matter; Everything Does

Tags

art, Balance, becoming, beleif, bliss, body knowledge, change, EBAS, elemental, sacred

Heaven and Earth

Spirit or Matter

Man exists between

His arm span equal to height

The moon resting on his head

33 years for a perfect solar journey

12 moons to celebrate

Numbers in space

Numbers in time

Tone existing between 4th and 5th

Intervals as shape

Two patterns near perfect

Two triangles

Four squares

Everything made of light, matter and sound

Windows allow the light to see into the dark

Balance kept by line and curve

Fundamental Architecture

Tags

architectural integrity, art, Balance, becoming, bliss, body knowledge, choreography, Creativity, Dance, development, EBAS, fundamental, spiritual becoming, structural integrity

The point

No dimension

No space

Line

Emerging the active

Emerging the passive

Plane

Equidistant expression

Equidistant reality

From the singular comes the emergence of a balanced expression of architectural reality

Sacred Science

Tags

allowing, Balance, Ballet, becoming, beleif, Believing, body, body knowledge, choreographer, choreography, Conscious Living, contemporary dance, Creative Flow, Dance, Energy, faith

Accomplishing impossible

Discovery of fields

One responds to light at the center

Elegant orientation

Corresponding all orientations

One suggests singularities of calculation

Enhanced causation

Mapping patters of pathways

One experiences the intention and origin of all movement