Monthly Archives: April 2012

Apr30

can you help? thank you!

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I don’t usually do an outright ask on the blog.  And I will not do it often.  This is an ask for help with our new horse dancing project, All the Pretty Horses.

Since I started working with rescued horses, it has been my dream to create a performance with these “throw away” horses and local dancers.  We have now found the perfect partnering organization, Little Brook Farm in Old Chatham, New York.

Little Brook has been saving horses for many, many years.  The unique part of their program is that these horses then become active, participating partners in a range of activities:  riding, performing, vaulting, jumping and teaching generations of children and adults about horses and all of the ways that we can connect with them.

A visit there is moving.  It is a humble place, staffed by passionate and dedicated volunteers.  The effort goes into the programs, into the care of the horses, and into sharing the joy of horses with humans from age three to the sky is the limit.

In order to bring the project to fruition, we need to raise $3500 to offset fees and travel for the professional dancers from my company who travel from Boston.  Those funds are also for publicity, costumes and modest administrative costs to assure that the event is a rousing success.

The performance will take place October 6 at Little Brook Farm in Old Chatham, NY.  Mark your calendars!!!

Please help us to whatever extent you can.   Dancemakers Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Donations are fully tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. To contribute, click on the link below or make your check payable to Dancemakers Inc. and send to the address below.

Dancemakers, Inc.

P.O. Box 773
Sharon, CT 06069
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Apr29

dancing in the flames

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Photo:  Pam White  Anima Motrix by Paula Josa-Jones

My friend Nicole Rushin recently posted a link to a film about the brilliant Jungian writer, scholar and dreamer, Marion Woodman called Dancing in the Flames.

Many years ago, I attended a conference headlined by Marion Woodman.  I was reading Jung day and night, in the midst of a Jungian analysis, and steeped in Joseph Campbell.  It was a heady time. Mystical, sublime.

In the intervening years, I feel that I have lost some of that connection to mysticism.  I am dancing in the flames, but it can often feel like the flames of hell, with me doing a scorched tango.

Last night, we had dinner with our friend Brett, a lawyer who is also studying to become ordained as an Episcopal priest.  I have not had lovely experiences with religion.  But Brett is drawn to something deep and lovely and mystical in his relationship to God.  It is not my experience, but as we talked, I could remember some ecstatic, embodied moments in the music – the divine in the unspoken.

Brett said that he recently gave a sermonette titled “Wounded Corporeality.”  It was about coming together to share our wounds.  That surprised me.  When I heard the title, I immediately thought he meant something else:  how corporeality itself is wounded in the church.  That the disembodied, dogmatic nature of religion is the real wound, and that until we can discover a sensuous, embodied mysticism, that wound will persist.

Something in me is wanting to re-awaken to the mystical and this lovely film about a living goddess is shining a light.

 

Apr29

opening the view

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Today we received the financial aid letter from the college where my youngest daughter is a student.  The aid this year, for no reason we can ascertain, is less than half of what it was last year.  That has brought on a(nother) moderate to severe state of panic.  I am going to talk myself down.

First, when things like this happen, I fall back into a historic, chronic belief in struggle.  I grab onto the “trouble” and hold it close like an old friend.  The feeling is so familiar that it feels like me.  I think, in that moment, that it IS me.  I am IT.  None of that is actually true.

Second.  (This analogy comes from a wonderful Abraham workshop recording.)  Abraham says that when we focus on “what is” or “reality” or “the problem” it is like we are driving down the highway with the windscreen in the floor of our car, rather than looking out ahead at the opening landscape.  Or as if we have a beautiful home with wonderful views, but we have decided to live in the closet.

The other thing that happened today is that I did some very delicious and playful horse dancing.  We had our first rehearsal for All the Pretty Horses, the performance project that I am developing with LIttle Brook Farm in Chatham, NY.  We had dancers from my company, young student dancers, riders, horses (all rescued), a vaulter all working together to make a dance that celebrates the bond between horses and humans.  A performance that is rooted in the shared language of movement.  It was fun, it was spirited, even transcendent. I felt in my element, blessed to have so many wonderful people gathered in collaboration.

But when I got home, there was that letter and I dove into the darkness.

As I write, the writing feels like I am widening the aperture.  Stepping out of the closet.  Gaining perspective, breathing a bit deeper, focusing away from the scary, desperate place.

Lucky for me, the lilacs are blooming.  There are stars in the sky tonight.  I can feel the strong steady beating of my heart, which I know to be fierce and big.  Begin again, begin again, begin again.

Apr27

saturday’s very fine art

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for sale:  “Body Mine # 7”

Original framed photograph with charcoal and pencil and text.

This week’s price only   $97 plus shipping.

You can purchase by contacting me HERE, or with Paypal.

Body Mine #7