Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

Jan26

breath and gesture

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I spent a part of yesterday doing Authentic Movement with my friend, dancer Pamela Newell.  In Authentic Movement, the mover closes their eyes, and in the presence of a witness, “waits to be moved” by whatever impulse is arising in the body.  There is no expectation or preference for a particular kind of movement.  The witness is a container for the experience of the mover, and follows their own images and bodily experiences as they arise.

In my experience, there is nothing like this practice.   You never quite know what kind of wind is blowing, where it will come from or where it will take you.  Yesterday, at one moment, my fingers felt gossamer, transparent, light as moth’s wings, and in another moment, my arm stretched out for minutes like an iron bar seeking heat.  There are no stories that need be told or interpreted, only one moment linked to another by breath and the body.

This spring I will be offering several workshops.  If you would like to host a workshop in your community, contact me here:   Email Paula

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Jan23

where I’ll be

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The Bogliasco Foundation in Italy has generously offered me a one month fellowship during time which I will be making new dance work.  Pam will join me for the last two weeks.  We are collaborating on still and moving images that will become part of the film that opens my new dance The Traveler.  I will also be diving into Beast, gorgeously costumed by my long time collaborator, Christine Joly de Lotbinnere.

Preparations are daunting.  How many books, how much stuff?  Send ahead, carry with me?  How warm?  How cool?  Actually, I know that it is mostly in the 50’s there now which seems balmy by comparison.  No swimming, but definitely some beach walking.

I am excited and honored.  I will be sharing and posting from Bogliasco and surrounds both about the place and my process and what it feels like to dive into new work in this sheltered, supported way.

I will miss my ponies, dogs and cats, and they will miss me, especially Mamacita, the feral mommy of Precious and Obadiah, who we feed and house outside, and who, after four skittish years, has decided that being petted is the bomb!  If my experience of travels all over the world from Nepal to Barbados is any indication, the kitties will find me. . .

Jan22

lighten up

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“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

       “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
― Mary Oliver

You cannot really disconnect yourself from the passionate, desirous being that you are. It was with enormous clarity that you came forth into this body, and that’s why when you try to hold your desire down, it keeps coming up…Your cork will always float unless you are holding it down. — Abraham

 I have been holding down the cork of my love for my daughter.  That cork  gets heavy and shitty with my disgust and anger at her choices.  But my cork needs to float.  Because that cork is attached to all the other corks – my love for myself, my wife, my work and on and on like a big net of floats, and the more I push that one cork down, the more it drags on the others.

So I am going to let the light enter, which can feel like hard work when all you see and feel is the wound.  This morning Pam and I shared some laughter around breakfast and realized that we had not done that for a long time, that we have grown somber and heavy with hurt.  Time to shine, time to brighten, time to love. That is my prayer for this day, this life.

Here is some serious light, a gift sent to me by one of my gorgeous goddesses, Suzanne.

Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.