Thanks to 'libramoon' at Healing Dance Network for putting me in touch with their group (see her comment last post).
Here is a quote from one of the network postings, where they mention the "embodied mind". Some friends at Dance Your Bones have been asking about the "disembodied rationalism" I mentioned in a previous post and I will speak more to that in tomorrow's post, but here is an interesting quote and link to research on choreography and neuroscience by UK researcher Glenna Batson.
"Particularly relevant are the ways dancers physicalize thought. Dance is a prime example that cognition is for action."
"The processes of dance making are a unique form of embodied thinking and offer a unique window into our capacity for creativity and design. Today cognitive neuroscience has chosen dance as its muse. Over the last decade a rich dialogue has developed between neuroscientists and dancers. The dialogue addresses many issues around "embodied cognitiona" TM, in a movement-based art form that impact(s) widely on intelligentsia and society at large."
http://seadnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/batson_final.pdf
Doesn't this speak to what we are expeiencing at Dance Your Bones? We may not be choreographing dance for observers, but we are spontaneously composing dances each week, and then letting them go like prayers. "Sweat your prayers". http://www.danceyourbones.com/
Interesting to note that the world is reflecting on this as well. It makes me feel more commited to pressing forward with my own "meditation in movement" exploration. I hope it compels you too.
Monday 31 December 2012
Saturday 22 December 2012
The longest night
Solstice has passed now, the longest night of the year. I like the darkness of these long nights. A solstice ceremony at friends last night has reminded me of the needed rest that happens in the winter. Dark, cold nights draw me into my home, into myself, away from the busy world.
I wish I could go visit old Methusaleh in California. He holds the secret to long life, conserving his energy deep inside. I think I will dance a dance of stillness in his honour when the session resumes next week, and to remember the long night.
I wish I could go visit old Methusaleh in California. He holds the secret to long life, conserving his energy deep inside. I think I will dance a dance of stillness in his honour when the session resumes next week, and to remember the long night.
Methusaleh is said to be nearly 5,000 years old
Thursday 8 November 2012
Restoring balance
Tonight as I was dancing, I was observing myself as I was healing myself. By this, I mean I was actively noting how my mood was changing and the trigger thoughts that were connected to the changes. I had been feeling depressed, my thoughts caught up in old past defeats that were really draining my energy.
Sometimes when I practice ecstatic dance, I simply move and I don't worry about consciousness. But most of the time I try to watch what is happening in my inner world while I am moving. And tonight I observed my body shedding anger and hurt.
Daily pressures of Western ways of work take away my balance. I had been feeling my strengths were not respected at my workplace, and the pressures of producing a large volume of work for an employer.
Towards the end of the session, I was simply standing rooted to one spot, waving like seaweed in the ocean current, feeling my knees, hips, and spine become supple, dropping my anger like scales falling off as I undulated. I must have stood like that for 5 to 10 minutes.
By the time I was done, I felt completely restored, the bad day behind me, and at peace.
Sometimes when I practice ecstatic dance, I simply move and I don't worry about consciousness. But most of the time I try to watch what is happening in my inner world while I am moving. And tonight I observed my body shedding anger and hurt.
Daily pressures of Western ways of work take away my balance. I had been feeling my strengths were not respected at my workplace, and the pressures of producing a large volume of work for an employer.
Towards the end of the session, I was simply standing rooted to one spot, waving like seaweed in the ocean current, feeling my knees, hips, and spine become supple, dropping my anger like scales falling off as I undulated. I must have stood like that for 5 to 10 minutes.
By the time I was done, I felt completely restored, the bad day behind me, and at peace.
Sunday 21 October 2012
Trance dance
I am very interested in how dancing can help me attain a state of meditation that I can only describe as a conscious trance. I don't always find that state as a result of the wave (the Five Rhythms flow of music), or I may only enter it partially, but I do find I can achieve it more and more frequently after 3 years of practicing ecstatic dance.
Some would call this trance dance but when I was younger and attended trance dance raves, I would experience the crowd as moving towards an unconscious state, not a higher consciousness. It was full of Freud's libidinal energy that I talked about in my last post. Looking back, I would now say I - and perhaps the others dancing with me - we were emptying our minds to a state of nothingness, just a living body moving to rhythm. Emptying is a common term when we think of meditation. I am not saying what we did was a bad thing, it just isn't what I am practicing now when I move with an engaged imaginative mind. Or perhaps what ecopsychologist Laura Sewell called the 5th skill of ecological perception - the intentional use of imagination.
I went looking recently for some video clips that might capture a visual of this process. I started with Western yoga trance dance as it is often seen as related to ecstatic dance. Here is a link to American Shiva Rea's "liberation dance", much like Gabriel Roth's Five Rhythms videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boFGjvtmxEk&feature=fvwrel
Rea has built onto her career in yoga, expanding into dance. When I watch her videos, I notice some similarity to our practice but like Roth, she chooses to film beautiful, young, able-bodied dancers on a white sand beach in order to market her product and so the movement takes on the inevitable aura of being staged for the camera. But when she says she is "dancing for healing, dancing for life, dancing for truth", I have to admit we share a common goal.
Then there is Osho's Dynamic Meditation, a cathartic method designed for Westerners who have difficulty meditating but that avoids the pitfalls of Latihan. His method also uses dance but he encourages the practitioner to avoid rhythm in the early stages of the practice. Instead of trying to watch the mind, Osho says "throw out your garbage rather than wasting time in watching it" and so movement/dance clears away the debris so that one can meditate. This clip shows someone moving through all 5 phases of the program.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Ao--mbIho
One more. Check out this voodoo dancing from Togo, in still photography. These images by Alan Tobey from 2008 capture the inner world of the dancer without us actually knowing what they are seeing in their imaginative minds. The dancers seem unconcerned about how their dance "looks".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b17j9zpR_M
I will post more about voodoo dance later.
Sunday 16 September 2012
Chaotic libido
September marks a return to the dance floor for the new fall session of the collective I dance with. Seeing everyone again has reminded me to get back to this blog and continue my reflections on the role of the moving body in spiritual development.
I am very conscious when I dance that I come to share energy with others in the group and I know people appreciate it. When I was injured last year, I know how much I appreciated being surrounded by others who were fully committed to dancing freely. They drew me out and kept me moving.
My first week back I had a lot of energy to share and our DJ had taken some risks to play some unusual music. I really enjoyed the rise from fast flow through to chaos (rhythms in the Five Rhythms approach I have discussed previously) and a few others and I were ready to stir up the room! While I followed my body on its rise to chaos, I started reconnecting with my old reflections on erotic life force. I had read a beautiful text by critical theorist Joe Kinchloe about the radical love needed to change ourselves and the world, and he also talked a lot about libidinous energy. He stated;
I really felt I was embodying this libidinous energy in my dance tonight; not the libido of Freud's "primitive sex drive", but more of what Jung saw as psychic energy, or what Reich called orgone energy. To me - life force quite simply. I am very committed not only to expressing my life force as it is connected to the cosmos, but also to sharing it with others, on the dance floor, in the classroom, in my writing. When I express it fully in ecstatic dance, I leave the dance floor feeling balanced and aligned. If I only commit half heartedly, I will not leave my rational mind. It is too well fortressed, and buttressed by everyday life. It takes total commitment to leave that plane.
But if I do commit, the goddesses within start to speak, and maybe a few gods :-)
And this is why I dance.
1. Kinchloe, J. (2007). The Vicissitudes of Twenty-First Century Critical Pedagogy: A review of Ilan Gur Ze’ev (ed.) (2005). Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy Today. Toward a New Critical Language in Education. Haifa: Studies in Education (University of Haifa). Studies in the Philosophy of Education (2008) 27:399–40.
I am very conscious when I dance that I come to share energy with others in the group and I know people appreciate it. When I was injured last year, I know how much I appreciated being surrounded by others who were fully committed to dancing freely. They drew me out and kept me moving.
My first week back I had a lot of energy to share and our DJ had taken some risks to play some unusual music. I really enjoyed the rise from fast flow through to chaos (rhythms in the Five Rhythms approach I have discussed previously) and a few others and I were ready to stir up the room! While I followed my body on its rise to chaos, I started reconnecting with my old reflections on erotic life force. I had read a beautiful text by critical theorist Joe Kinchloe about the radical love needed to change ourselves and the world, and he also talked a lot about libidinous energy. He stated;
"Knowing and learning are not simply intellectual and scholarly activities but also practical and sensuous activities infused by this sacred notion of radical love ...Educators who want to make a difference in this context, to fuse learning to libidinal energy, and help students connect to the cosmos cannot be intellectual chickens. They must have the knowledge and the guts to stand up to the promoters of stupidification and their pedagogical poison ... With this notion of a life affirming eros wrapped in radical love, we can create a critical pedagogy that speaks more convincingly and meaningfully to a wider audience around the planet." 1
But if I do commit, the goddesses within start to speak, and maybe a few gods :-)
And this is why I dance.
1. Kinchloe, J. (2007). The Vicissitudes of Twenty-First Century Critical Pedagogy: A review of Ilan Gur Ze’ev (ed.) (2005). Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy Today. Toward a New Critical Language in Education. Haifa: Studies in Education (University of Haifa). Studies in the Philosophy of Education (2008) 27:399–40.
Sunday 22 April 2012
Where does fear reside?
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a Five Rhythms workshop in Montreal with founder Gabrielle Roth. Starting in the sixties, she identified how dancers responded to music when it was structured as a wave of energy, with different rhythms building on each other. The dance waves she created help participants to explore dance as a form of meditation in movement. It was wonderful to see her still facilitating this work at the age of 71!
Working on a masters thesis this year on white identity, I have been thinking a lot about Western rationalism and how it has repressed non-western forms of knowledge (indigenous knowledges), women's knowledges, etc. At this workshop, which was focused on the heart (emotions), we spent a lot of time dealing with fear and anger. I was not surprised that Roth would focus on these two emotions, and all their varying states, in a room filled almost exclusively with white Canadians. I don't mean to say that other cultures don't repress fear or anger, but generally my experience in other cultural systems has shown me that many peoples are much more comfortable with expressing anger, and fear can be acted out in more visible, even dramatic displays. British-descent cultures hold very tightly to their 'rational' mind, which often hinders the expression of these emotions. Many people at the session struggled with this.
I have been very interested in the concept of what some researchers call the "imaginative mind", the creative, feminine/receptive aspect of mind that balances rational mind in its ability to leap bordered queues and linear tracks to find new solutions to problems, and make connections to unseen realities. Imaginative mind communes with the emotions, whereas rational mind seeks to function independent of feeling (in the Western paradigm). Imaginative mind is my ally in dance meditation, as it interprets the emotions released by moving the body. Together, the three allies, body, emotion and imaginative mind, help me to explore my inner states and become more fully conscious.
A constant emotional state for me these days has been fear, as I dealt with the anxiety of what was going to happen in the knee surgery I was waiting for, as well as putting a solo performance on stage for the first time in 17 years. A few weeks before surgery, I had an embodied experience where I was stretching my frontal core by arching and twisting on the floor. Due to the pain and fragility of my left knee, I had been clenching all the muscles up my thighs and deep into my abdomen right up to my chest. My partner had been treating these deep muscles with osteopathy and had helped me to identify which ones were gripping in fear.
As I lay on the floor, arching and twisting, looking to the floor as if in a pool of water, a man's face rose up from the deep, a face clenched in terror, and I knew I was being presented with an image of my fear by my imaginative mind. Fear was living in those muscles and body cavities.
Where does fear live in your body?
For more information about Five Rhythms, see Roth's web site at:
http://www.gabrielleroth.com/
Working on a masters thesis this year on white identity, I have been thinking a lot about Western rationalism and how it has repressed non-western forms of knowledge (indigenous knowledges), women's knowledges, etc. At this workshop, which was focused on the heart (emotions), we spent a lot of time dealing with fear and anger. I was not surprised that Roth would focus on these two emotions, and all their varying states, in a room filled almost exclusively with white Canadians. I don't mean to say that other cultures don't repress fear or anger, but generally my experience in other cultural systems has shown me that many peoples are much more comfortable with expressing anger, and fear can be acted out in more visible, even dramatic displays. British-descent cultures hold very tightly to their 'rational' mind, which often hinders the expression of these emotions. Many people at the session struggled with this.
I have been very interested in the concept of what some researchers call the "imaginative mind", the creative, feminine/receptive aspect of mind that balances rational mind in its ability to leap bordered queues and linear tracks to find new solutions to problems, and make connections to unseen realities. Imaginative mind communes with the emotions, whereas rational mind seeks to function independent of feeling (in the Western paradigm). Imaginative mind is my ally in dance meditation, as it interprets the emotions released by moving the body. Together, the three allies, body, emotion and imaginative mind, help me to explore my inner states and become more fully conscious.
A constant emotional state for me these days has been fear, as I dealt with the anxiety of what was going to happen in the knee surgery I was waiting for, as well as putting a solo performance on stage for the first time in 17 years. A few weeks before surgery, I had an embodied experience where I was stretching my frontal core by arching and twisting on the floor. Due to the pain and fragility of my left knee, I had been clenching all the muscles up my thighs and deep into my abdomen right up to my chest. My partner had been treating these deep muscles with osteopathy and had helped me to identify which ones were gripping in fear.
As I lay on the floor, arching and twisting, looking to the floor as if in a pool of water, a man's face rose up from the deep, a face clenched in terror, and I knew I was being presented with an image of my fear by my imaginative mind. Fear was living in those muscles and body cavities.
Where does fear live in your body?
For more information about Five Rhythms, see Roth's web site at:
http://www.gabrielleroth.com/
Sunday 25 March 2012
Teaching dances
This weekend is Emergency #19, the annual Peterborough Public Energy show of new performances/work in progress and I will be presenting Maeve's Intoxication. This 12 minute piece is the first in a series of "teaching dances" I am developing as part of my Sophia Lecture Series, and Emergency is a venue for me to gather some feedback. I hope you tell me about your reactions, critical or positive, if you see the piece.
When I am not dancing, I am a human rights educator, and the Sophia Lecture Series is a combination of performance and theory, or what I am calling "teaching dances". I have a great belief in the ability of theatre and dance to express concepts at a much deeper, experiential level than what a lecture alone can convey. As I explore transformational and embodied learning in my Masters of Adult Education program, I am reflecting on new ways to share my ideas. These short dance theatre pieces are followed by dialogue and a presentation of ideas and images on a range of social and environmental issues from a feminist, anti-racist lense. I hope to present them in small venues around town (the term 'salon' comes to mind - would a contemporary format be 'house concert'?).
Maeve's Intoxication
In this first piece, I am calling upon an ancient Celtic goddess to speak to a foundational problem in Western society - its over-reliance on rational thought and loss of connection to body and soul. Maeve is the name I give to the voice who often speaks within me when I dance the chaos rhythm at Dance Your Bones. You will see how I embody her in this piece.
Maeve is also an interesting character from the Ulster Cycle tales of ancient Ireland, a fierce Queen who may have taken her name from an older sovereignty goddess. Sovereignty goddesses are those that confer the right to rule, and in this pre-patriarchy period in the British Isles, a king would ritually marry a priestess serving Maeve in order to take the throne. Her name comes from the sacred drink "meade", and hence she is also known as goddess of intoxication, as well as sexuality. Others say Maeve was the daughter of the Morrighan, a fearsome dark goddess who could shapeshift. Maeve was faster than a horse, and when she urinated, she created rivers. When she led her army to war, fighting would stop while she menstruated. Her colour is red and she carries a two-handed sword.
Dark goddesses represent the night before sunrise, winter before spring, or the death that comes before rebirth. Their energy is healing, as they clean away the psychic waste that accumulates around our souls, the way a powerful thunderstorm clears the dust and humidity from the air. There can be no new beginning without them and their fearsome form reminds us that growth is sometimes painful but in the end so worthwhile.
Maeve also calls the Celtic peoples (Irish, British, Scottish descent) to account for the monolithic empire of reason that they have constructed around themselves since the Enlightenment, and the post-colonial legacy that empire has left in its wake. She is the wild female stamping her foot, shaking the foundations of patriarchy until it tumbles.
"Emergency #19" is an opportunity to showcase new work, but it is not a format where I can present the theory, so you will only see the performance. Let me know if you are interested though and when the full event is ready, I will invite you to one of my 'salons'.
Show times:
Friday March 30th at 7:30 pm & Sunday April 1st at 2:00 pm
Market Hall, Peterborough
$15
When I am not dancing, I am a human rights educator, and the Sophia Lecture Series is a combination of performance and theory, or what I am calling "teaching dances". I have a great belief in the ability of theatre and dance to express concepts at a much deeper, experiential level than what a lecture alone can convey. As I explore transformational and embodied learning in my Masters of Adult Education program, I am reflecting on new ways to share my ideas. These short dance theatre pieces are followed by dialogue and a presentation of ideas and images on a range of social and environmental issues from a feminist, anti-racist lense. I hope to present them in small venues around town (the term 'salon' comes to mind - would a contemporary format be 'house concert'?).
Maeve's Intoxication
In this first piece, I am calling upon an ancient Celtic goddess to speak to a foundational problem in Western society - its over-reliance on rational thought and loss of connection to body and soul. Maeve is the name I give to the voice who often speaks within me when I dance the chaos rhythm at Dance Your Bones. You will see how I embody her in this piece.
Maeve is also an interesting character from the Ulster Cycle tales of ancient Ireland, a fierce Queen who may have taken her name from an older sovereignty goddess. Sovereignty goddesses are those that confer the right to rule, and in this pre-patriarchy period in the British Isles, a king would ritually marry a priestess serving Maeve in order to take the throne. Her name comes from the sacred drink "meade", and hence she is also known as goddess of intoxication, as well as sexuality. Others say Maeve was the daughter of the Morrighan, a fearsome dark goddess who could shapeshift. Maeve was faster than a horse, and when she urinated, she created rivers. When she led her army to war, fighting would stop while she menstruated. Her colour is red and she carries a two-handed sword.
Dark goddesses represent the night before sunrise, winter before spring, or the death that comes before rebirth. Their energy is healing, as they clean away the psychic waste that accumulates around our souls, the way a powerful thunderstorm clears the dust and humidity from the air. There can be no new beginning without them and their fearsome form reminds us that growth is sometimes painful but in the end so worthwhile.
Maeve also calls the Celtic peoples (Irish, British, Scottish descent) to account for the monolithic empire of reason that they have constructed around themselves since the Enlightenment, and the post-colonial legacy that empire has left in its wake. She is the wild female stamping her foot, shaking the foundations of patriarchy until it tumbles.
"Emergency #19" is an opportunity to showcase new work, but it is not a format where I can present the theory, so you will only see the performance. Let me know if you are interested though and when the full event is ready, I will invite you to one of my 'salons'.
Show times:
Friday March 30th at 7:30 pm & Sunday April 1st at 2:00 pm
Market Hall, Peterborough
$15
Friday 17 February 2012
Dancing with pain
I've been forced to deal with big changes in how I dance lately, due to an arthritic back and knee ligaments that just won't mend. I've relied a great deal on my perfect health so far in life but now just walking is challenging, let alone dancing.
What's more, I am preparing to perform a solo piece March 30th and April 1st at Peterborough's Public Energy "Emergency #19" annual show of new work. It is a piece exploring chaos and the dark goddesses who roam the underworld of our subconscious; Maeve, Kali, Lilith. What a time for my body to decide to withdraw! Because that is exactly how I feel; like my energy is withdrawing to some small place inside that doesn't hurt. Gone is my expansive range of movement (OK, not as expansive as it was when I was young but still big enough for me to lose myself inside of).
Now I am reflecting on a whole new experience during our ecstatic dance sessions. I can't rely on a cathartic release after dancing full tilt for 90 minutes. Now my spirit is having to work much harder at staying present and connected to the flow of music and the dancing bodies around me. I'm searching for a new way of participating but it hasn't come to me yet. I am still resisting the changes.
But the dance carries on, so here is what is coming up for the Afro-Modern class:
Classes continue in the Ptbo Square 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
We will perform again Feb. 26th, at 3:00 pm at the Public Library main branch, lower level, for a free family event celebrating Black History Month. We'll be joined by Drothia and some of her West-African dancers, and Anotinette VanVeen telling children's stories from African and the Caribbean.
What's more, I am preparing to perform a solo piece March 30th and April 1st at Peterborough's Public Energy "Emergency #19" annual show of new work. It is a piece exploring chaos and the dark goddesses who roam the underworld of our subconscious; Maeve, Kali, Lilith. What a time for my body to decide to withdraw! Because that is exactly how I feel; like my energy is withdrawing to some small place inside that doesn't hurt. Gone is my expansive range of movement (OK, not as expansive as it was when I was young but still big enough for me to lose myself inside of).
Now I am reflecting on a whole new experience during our ecstatic dance sessions. I can't rely on a cathartic release after dancing full tilt for 90 minutes. Now my spirit is having to work much harder at staying present and connected to the flow of music and the dancing bodies around me. I'm searching for a new way of participating but it hasn't come to me yet. I am still resisting the changes.
But the dance carries on, so here is what is coming up for the Afro-Modern class:
Classes continue in the Ptbo Square 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
We will perform again Feb. 26th, at 3:00 pm at the Public Library main branch, lower level, for a free family event celebrating Black History Month. We'll be joined by Drothia and some of her West-African dancers, and Anotinette VanVeen telling children's stories from African and the Caribbean.
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