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. 

Thirty Days of Thoughts: Day 3

Tags

choreography, creative energy, Creative Flow, creative process, Creativity, Dance, dance makers, dance making, dancers, dancing, energetic pathways, Energy, energy flow, joy, Movement, venation

6/3/21

After the last two days of sharing and taking you back to the intersection of creativity and spirituality I thought it might be fun to take a walk down memory lane and share a little about the first seeds of the abundant work that followed from my first professional work called Venation. 

I was so inspired by the Tao Te Ching, Qigong and energy work in general that I wanted to research energy more and pull together the eastern and western essence in this process. So off I went to look to science, specifically contemporary physics, to see what I could see. And there went the box to the lid that has still yet to be closed. 

I researched and researched from both a traditional and contemporary perspective using imagery and concepts from both to create a men’s quartet that would gain a lot of traction by premiering at a shared concert with some of my colleagues in the Chicago modern scene and danced by myself, Raven, Krenly and Troy. It was a powerhouse premier that ended up being performed in several venues and festivals throughout the next few years. 

It was my first taste of doing that kind of in depth research and work which carried me even further down the rabbit hole of inspiration. Oddly I continue the investigation as a way of explaining my belief that “choreography is the art of shaping energy in space”. This very simple belief system for myself was the best way I could explain how I made dances or more honestly how I see dances being manifested in space by how my eyes see time falling bodies organized in an artful and poetic way. 

I worked this way for several years before deciding to run off to graduate school where I would have to really justify my process, clarify the research and be able to qualitatively and quantitatively convince my thesis panel of my beliefs. I remember Donald McKayle expressing what a unique way of looking at dance making and the way I see energy as a way of making sense and the matter of dances. 

This would continue in this fashion until the premier of Amaranth Contemporary Dance in 2006 for a concert entitled Experiment in White. This title was a nod to the company I had in Chicago, Cerulean Dance Theater, and our major concert Experiment in Blue. It is very clear my need to connect the dots, pay homage and to remember where all of the work comes from. The heart has been the energy throughout this process and will always be the fire energy necessary for the art of making dances. That and the art of using conscious movement to heal ourselves physically, energetically and spiritually. Art is really from the heART. 

The photo is from a shoot to promote Venation. Photo Credit: William Frederking

Moving in the Direction of the Action

Tags

Balance, Ballet, class, contemporary dance, Dance, energetic pathways, equality, following your desire, following your heart, learning, life, modern dance, path, pathways, present, present moment, standing leg, Teaching, Technique

Move into the direction of the action is a familiar saying for me that is often applied in technique classes for the appropriate effort and placement of many technical principles. It is important to have technique to activate the desires of our dreams to dance, as well as important to activate the desires of our life.

What this means in technique is similar to what it means in our lives. When one begins to activate the muscular engagement for low to high leg articulations, one must fully activate the anchoring leg, standing leg if you will, in order to cultivate the necessary balance of engagement in the activity. There must be a little more descending energy applied pressing through the body to press the leg into place rather than by lifting.

The act of pressing allows the leg to float to its proper position through the support of external rotation and proper developmental pathways which support an actively balanced body ironically moving forward in the activity rather than moving back. The retreating of the body is a reaction to improper muscular balance and pulls one off their alignment and away from their desired outcome and task.

The irony here is that we must be present in the action of technique. It is crucial in the articulation and process that we are present in every moment of our reaching to activate the right musculature achieving the appropriate response. We must be in the act of doing by moving into the direction of the action.

Moreover, of course, what is true in technique is true in our lives, for technique is a direct reflection of our actions in other areas of our daily activities. We must be present so that we choose wisely, what is right for our lives and us. We must constantly negotiate the right pathways making sure we are moving in the flow of our own direction rather than the direction of others. We must move into the direction of the action of our hearts.