Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

Jul7

my daughter, the horse dancer

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Amado, ridden by Summer Brennan with Chandrika Carl-Jones and DeAnna Pellecchia

Thirteen years ago I adopted my daughter from Nepal.  At the time, I was touring with my dance company of humans, a piece called Antigone’s Dream.  We had touring dates set up, and leaving my new daughter tore my heart.

The following year I stopped touring and began to dance with horses.  It kept me home, and let me keep making dance art.   RIDE was the second dance of her Mommy’s that she saw.

Today, for the first time, my beautiful, dancerly, deeply feeling daughter danced with a horse.  She has been around them since she came, but this was new.  Amado, the beautiful Mustang did his magic.  He allowed us in – the most equanimous equine I have ever worked with.  This is in large part to the brilliant work Summer Brennan, at Little Brook Farm in Old Chatham, has been doing with him for the past two months.  Before that, he was wild, one of thousands of captured mustangs living out their lives in cramped, filthy Bureau of Land Management holding pens after having been removed from the wild to make room for cattle.

Watching her with this extraordinary horse, I teared up.  Two young beings, connecting through movement, through touch – listening, sensing, feeling.  What could be better?  More photos on my Facebook page.

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Jul5

300!

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Almost one year ago I began this blog.  Today is post #300, which feels like it deserves a HOORAY!  I have been hugely encouraged in my blogging by the indefatigable, generous, kind Jon Katz, whose blog and life inspire me daily.  I have been encouraged by my beloved Pammie, whose blog and passion inspire and delight.  Maria Wulf is another bright light in my personal constellation of writing artists.

I chose the name horsedancing because it is the title of my (still seeking a publisher) book.  But over the months of writing these posts daily, have come to see horsedancing as a life practice and a metaphor for being an improviser and an artist of dancing the moment, with or without a horse.

This is how I say it on the home page of my new website: At the core of my work is a passion for movement that springs from an unpredictable and limitless aliveness in the body. To me, being in the body means experiencing it in a bloodful, breathing way that is transformative and improvisational. I love diving into the deep waters of the body and all its wild possibility.  My writing, dancemaking, teaching, coaching and the horses are all part of the whole cloth of my practice as a movement artist. My goals are to help people connect to their creativity, to improvisation as a life practice, and to their own delicious experience of embodiment.

I spoke to a writing teacher today who said that she thinks of herself as a “word coach.”  I think that I am, above all,  a “movement coach” or maybe a “body mentor,” helping others push deeper into a felt sense of themselves as creative, physically expressive beings.  The blog is a part of that passion. Check out some of the other possibilities on my site!

 

Jul5

on not waiting

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Photo:  Pam White, of Paula Josa-Jones in “Frogs in a Well.”

We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don’t
insist on going where
you think you want to go.  Ask the way to the spring.  Your
living pieces will form
a harmony.  There is a moving palace that floats in the air
with balconies and clear
water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained
under a single tent.

From The Glance, by Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

Many years ago I choreographed a solo that I called “Frogs in a Well.”  It was inspired by a book of the same name about the fate of Muslim women living in purdah, who saw the world as if they lived at the bottom of a well.

Presently I am noticing that the uncertainty, the current anxieties – about selling our house, about money, about our pregnant daughter  (I think I wont go on) – that these stresses are pushing me into the black water in a well.  That I am losing sight of Rumi’s “open field of sunlight.”

Today I began my day with a swim.  Many years ago, my sister made a beautiful image with wild flowers that she had gathered that read, “Lie back and the sea will hold you.”  In the water, I could feel myself surrendering, softening into that embrace.

Inside, I lit a candle and washed out the water bowls that surround the Ganesh in our living room, refilling them with clear water.  These small rituals remind me to be here, to soak in the pleasure of the moment, to love what is here now, and not to wait.