Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

Jan30

running with the horse

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Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling is the most beautiful man on or off a horse that I have ever seen. I do not mean “sexiest man alive” beautiful, but lovely in his ability to be with a horse – beautiful in the connection. His work with a horse on the ground is an extraordinary dance improvisation.  His movement is neither predator nor prey, but has a deep, grounded athleticism like a kind of running tai chi.

When I first saw this video (below), I thought how wonderful it would be to be able to run with Nelson, the formerly wild Mustang. So yesterday we went out into the big field and did our walking dance:  me asking him to move around me in a circle and then come back to me.  This is all at liberty, no halter or lead rope and in a six acre field.  Just small hand signals.  So far so good.

Then I  started running.  I wanted him to see me running, but not be afraid.  So I ran away from him.  He looked mystified, but not particularly alarmed.  I walked back to him and petted him, then I ran away again.  This went on for a bit.

Then I said, “OK, you run.”  I have been hesitant to ask him to run because in the past he would run AWAY and then our time together is finished for that day.  But this time he ran, head up, tail flagging, but with one eye on me.  And when I did that little signal with my hand by my side, he circled and came back.  We hung out together and then I asked him to run again.  And again he came back.

I am no Klaus, but I was pretty happy with that dance.  And Nelson seemed pretty happy too.  Two animals working  out together how to go and come back, how to run and be connected.  And all of that makes me a very happy horse dancer.

Here is the master:

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Jan28

soft animal

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I love this photograph of my daughter.  She was modelling an exercise for a chapter in my book.  It feels this from “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

I wrote about the attic, the basement the other day as a metaphor for the body, and the way we experience those unconscious spaces in our bodies.  My friend, the poet Nicole Rushin shared it on Google+ and there was a pretty rich discussion thread.

She said, “There are days when I feel like I deny my physical self, my body. I wonder what I am doing here? I am spirit – why do I have these bones and this flesh? My body is like a carrier for me some days, unfamiliar and strange. And having said all that I suppose I am most at ease in the attic discovering new things and un-burying old treasure.”

We don’t live in the attic, though.  So I wondered about the body’s living spaces – where we are spending most of our time.  For me, I think it is in my hips, my spine.  That is where I feel the dancing and the riding the most.

Where are you living?

Jan26

pentimento

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Ryder Cooley and Lady Moon (Ngonda Badilia) in Xmalia

Pam White and our friend Suzanne were talking about pentimento, the practice of over-painting – basically the artist changing his/her mind.  Pam had some examples of her own pentimento on her Google+ page.

That got me to reflecting on the past two days, when i have been directing and making new movement for Xmalia. The process of choreographing, standing back, and then going in and layering in different or denser or richer movement is painterly in a similar way.  Sometimes the hint of a first rendering is there, other times I obliterate it completely, but even so, some trace remains.

Maybe I just like the feeling of the word.  It reminds me of another favorite word, palimpsest, the difference being that in that case the layers of a manuscript or scroll or painting were scraped or washed away, say with milk and oat bran.

I think what I really like is the idea of underlayers – of something earlier either concealed or revealed by what has been put down later.

When I went from being an actor to being a dancer, the actor was still there, shining through in the dances.  Now that I am writing, the dancer is still there, because the words are gestural – like movement to me – they have a physical resonance that I can feel.

And sometimes I have scraped things away – old text, old selves.  More about that in The Journal this week.

I am interested in how you are feeling your layers.  Over-painting or scraping away with milk and oat bran?

Jan24

the attic, the basement

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Photo:  Pam White

Teaching often brings me into a state of heightened awareness and vigilance for sources and new connections.  I was talking to Pam this morning about how setting up the “Books I Love” page on my site has done this as well.  The idea to post my reading list came from Linda Stone’s site.  I love the way that resources can be passed and shared digitally and physically.

So I am culling, diving into what is old, what is new, what is still exciting. (By the time I finish, all the books will be linked).  I feel as if I have been visiting the attic and the basement of my mind, my library, my study.  The attic is a place of storage and the basement holds a different kind of energy.  I was thinking about the body and the chakras, and the relationship of the supportive holding of the basement to the lighter storeroom of the attic.

When we moved into this house, the attic was what it was originally when it was built in 1790.  Old curved chestnut beams and low ceilings.  The previous owner had put in skylights, and we insulated under the eaves and put in lights.  At first it was a playroom for the kids and held their treasures plus out-of-season clothes.  Now they are in college but the remains of their play is still there:  shelves of children’s books they elected to keep, toys and dolls they have not yet surrendered.  The basement is an old stone cave, and holds the workings of the house.

I like feeling the relationship between the two:  what sits below and above – the roots and the branches –  and feeling the relationship of all of that to my own body.  Because the body is also an archive:  a breathing reservoir of thought and movement, earth and air, above and below.

How are you feeling all (any) of that?