Thirty Day’s of Thoughts: Day One

Tags

bliss, chasing dreams, dogs, dreams, enchanted life, enchantment, faith, humanity, inspiration, realities, travel, Writing

My head rests on a mountain of pillows

My body flanked by silky fur breathing me to sleep

My dreams float in a sea of phantasmic imagery

My voice vacillates between English, French and Italian

I sleep in an ecstasy of unimaginable bliss

I wake to the weight of love laying across my chest

I cannot move for the ritual that must ensue

I am content as I transfer from one reality to the next

This is a cycle that keeps my heart full of bliss

This is a life careening on the edge of creative joy

This is a body secure in its own beauty

This is a soul at peace

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.

At The Window

Tags

allowing, becoming, beleif, Believing, change, compassion, Conscious Living, courage, development, dreams, Energy, forgiveness, letting go, letting go of noise, Movement, shift, spirit, Vulnerable

In my chair at the window, I opened my eyes

Darkness was fading as light came from the east

I wondered, early in the morning

What is it that is waiting out there for me?

Silence of night raised many questions

Light might reveal answers in the time to come

Patiently, we let life unfold bringing what it will

Where is this place we call home?

When a tumultuous existence moves past our present

One breathes more easily throughout the day

Relief fills the space of our hearts

When is it time to let everything else go?

Thoughts for Jaime

Tags

Ballet, Dance, dreams, EBAS, fate, following your heart, heart, heart path, hope, keeping faith, letter to a student, Modern, Soul to Soul

remember that you must continue to listen to your heart above all else. if your feeling the urge to perform and choreograph, then do so. Your heart knows what it needs and doing what it needs is the secret to good health. Both physically and emotionally. This is what people do not understand. Good health is listening to our hearts. Good health is listening to a body that speaks. Listen and you will heal. Listen and you will grow. Listen and you will find your peace despite the chaos that your surroundings might be suggesting.

You asked for my advice about doing it all. My strongest advice would be to DO it all. Remember the ebb and flow and that there will be times when one weighs in more than the other, but DO them all. And in the times when you feel you can’t, ACT like you are DOING them all. Keeping the mind engaged in the action or better understood from our classwork together, Move into the direction of the action. If you do this you will be in the flow of your desires. You will flow with your dreams rather than manufacturing the pretense of your dreams.

I have no formula for you. There isn’t one. The only antidote for what this is, is to listen to your heart. Walk your heart path. Most of all, be kind to your heart and your body. They are your army. They will protect and serve.

Chasing Dreams: Day 6

Tags

Believing, chasing dreams, Conscious Living, courage, Courageous Vulnerability, Creative Flow, Creativity, dreams, faith, humility, passion, patience, round and round, Seeing, spirit, universal consciousness, universal heart, well being, Writing

Chasing ones dreams is a lot like a dog chasing its tail. We spend so much of our time exhausting ourselves as we move in circles forgetting that we are spiraling inward collapsing in on ourselves.

We then find ourselves completely spent because we have engaged so much of our time and energy going around and around facing our own ass while biting for something that is not actually obtainable. What are we doing trying to take a bite out of our own body or destroying our physical well being to satiate our larger than life ego?

It is ironic that we allow ourselves to get to a place that our ego drives the creative process rather than staying int the flow of creativity and letting our work make itself while we facilitate it’s progress in this particular plane of existence. When we become more important than the work, the work ceases to be important.

It is time for a returning to enchantment. We would be wise to revisit the contemplative space that allows for the creative energies of the universe to flourish and manifest. May we remember what it is like to share in the community of creativity while riding the sky of possibility. Could we dare to open our wings from our hearts so as to sift through the endless creative potential of the universe letting what will be choose us?

Secrets for the Road: Day 2

Tags

all things, courage, creative voice, dreams, essence, fullfillment of things, heart, heart path, imagination, integration, joy, path, spirit

 

If there is an understanding of the path you are on and that it is being led from your heart, there will be much joy on that journey.  If we are led by the very essence of our being we will find the unexpected fulfillment of things we could not have possibly imagined, manipulated or manufactured. If we listen to the winds that guide us, regardless of change in direction or speed, we will flow in ways that will be most beneficial. If we allow the timbre of our creative voice to be heard, truly heard from within, we will share the deepest beauty yet to be seen. If we accept that we are connected and integrated with all things, we will allow the arc of our life to carry us beyond our wildest dreams.

 

Answering a question

Tags

artist, choreographer, Creativity, Dance, Dream, dreams, following your bliss, hope, passion, w, Writing

I was asked this morning by a former student how my life was and if I was living the dream. I stopped for a moment and considered this question and responded that teaching at VCU was never the dream but it is my life. My life is the dream in all actuality. My entire existence is the dream that I believed it would be. I am, in fact, living the dream of my life.

This kind of question puts us in a place of having to justify or categorize our success. Asking it of others and feeling like we need to somehow justify this very moment always creates a conflict of our own spirit. I suggest we stop asking these kinds of questions and ask the simple question of “are you finding happiness?”. I suggest this because many of us are never where we hoped or desired. Many of us are in process. To judge another on a process or one that is not their own is to force someone to be someone they are not and limit their greatest potential.

I have found, not until recently, that I understand  my path has taken time and that there is much more unfolding needed to get me to where my full potential is. I am only just beginning in many ways because I have been letting go and unlearning so much of what has been extra baggage or weight on both my heart and my art. It is only now that I feel I am beginning my journey with a sense of freedom and humility that I have never had before. Releasing my heart into the action of the direction along with my body. There is true freedom and release here. For this I am grateful.

Now, for those of you VCU people reading this, I am where I need to be. I am happy where I am teaching and fulfilling much of what I have been put on this earth to be. I am a teacher among many other things and I am not ashamed of this. I am proud of it. Proud because I do good work and I share the love and passion of the art form in a way that is unique to me and adds to the overall educational process of the dancers. I work as a team member to participate with my colleagues embracing the multifaceted process that working as a team brings to the development of a holistic and amazing dancer.

What embracing this does mean is that it adds to my sense of being and my sense of being an incredible artist as well. Teaching does not diminish my existence as an artist. Being in the studio only enhances and deepens the process of growing as a choreographer. I am an excellent choreographer and on my own path of discovery and deepening of my own choreographic integrity. One does not need to be in a place, with a certain company or written about in certain publications to be good or to justify your ability. What makes you a choreographer is the action of making work. We must move in the direction of making work to claim who we are. So we make. I make and therefor I am. It is with time and discovery that I grow and I become.

This is the same with my writing. I am writing and therefore I am a writer. I may not be the best writer or a fully published writer, but I am writing. I am growing through my work and sharing through each word just as I place each image on the stage. We are who we are in the presence of our actions. Take action!

Having said all of this please know that in taking action you do not take for granted the need to do so with integrity, respect for the form or the deepening of your skills. We must always remember to remind ourselves to continue to reach for our best, to be our best and hold ourselves to the standards of growth and expansion. Doing this with integrity and diligent process is what makes us artists, choreographers, writers and whatever else our hearts dream of. This alone is living the dream. This is our dream.

Now for those of you who have everyday jobs and want to live more creative lives, this applies to you to. You are creative every day in every thing you do. Do not think that because you don’t work in the arts that there is no way you could ever be an artist. If art is in your heart, art is in you. Make! Make away! Find what your heart is drawn to and do. Find your heart begin to sing when you do what you love. Make art a part of your every day being and art will be your life. And when. Someone asks you what you are doing and if you are living the dream you say” why yes, I am! I am living my dream!”