Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Sep23

oceans everywhere

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from Hubble:  Lagoon Nebula in the Sagittarius constellation.

There is the ocean of gratitude

because I awaken

because you are there

because there is a cat cuddled in

the crook of my elbow.

There is the ocean of sorrow

because she is gone

because I am lost

because this precious

day is waning.

There is the ocean of memory

filled with sensation

with laughter

with tenderness and cruelty

and a pinch of bitter and sweet.

There is the ocean

in which I place my body

the briney, waving, cold

that holds me, that

reminds me to swim.

 

 

Sep19

remembering to fall (in love)

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Trent Hunter

Today while teaching at Boston University I fell in love with one dancer’s gesture, another’s soft drift to the floor and another’s aimless run.  All day long I fell in love – one face, one movement, one turn, one leap, one fall at a time.  My heart bursting with love for these young, valiant bodies, stepping into the fast, deep waters of what I was asking without hesitation, without restraint.  I am teaching, but I am also learning – sweet lessons about curiosity and devotion and listening.  There are moments when I cannot hold it all – it is spilling – and I am falling (in love) again and again and again.

Aimless Love

by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door—
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

“Aimless Love” by Billy Collins, from Aimless Love. © Random House, 2013. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

the Writer’s Almanac!

Sep18

listening

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from “Agua” by Pina Bausch

Steve Hassan said recently in a conversation, “The meaning of communication is the response it elicits.”  Yesterday when I was teaching an improvisation class at Boston University, I demonstrated a movement twice.  The first time, I performed it “empty” without giving it any dynamics or bodily feeling.  The second time, I did the same movement, but waited for an impulse to arise in my body before moving.  Then I had them to do the same process, and asked them how they experienced the difference.  One young woman said that it was “emotional.”  I encouraged her to think of it more as “full,” rather than having a specific emotional color.  At the same time, I acknowledged that the emotional feeling could be there for the dancer as they inhabited the movement, but if their performance became to full of their own emotion, there was less room for the audience to have their own experience.

That got me thinking again about movement and expression and what response I want to elicit from my dancing communication.  What I really want is to ignite a bodily response.  I want them to be moved – bodily, sensually.  To be delighted.  To breathe deeper, to feel awakened, engaged.  Looking back over the decades of watching performance, those are the moments that I remember.  Watching “Agua,” or “Stomp” or Kazuo Ohno, or RIDE, and most recently, irresistibly, Crystal Pite’s Dark Matters,  I remember moving in my seat, having to remember to breathe, bodily feelings like waves rollicking through my body, or a deep, tender stillness. I also remember as a young dancer how important it felt to show my feelings in dance, and how long it took to navigate into deeper waters.  Steeping is a process.

I am reading Sherry Turkel’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.  Her observations on the disembodying effects of technology, obsessive texting and digital life in general are troubling.  On the other hand, teaching at B.U. this week, I am heartened by students’ willingness to dive into the body, to try anything, to attend, to engage and to play.  My theme for this week  (and this life) is how to feel our own inner, sensual landscape, and how to feel its connection to the landscapes around us – even the rushing, noisy urban ones – maybe especially those.  They are game, they are brave and I love them for it.  So I am finding the meaning of my communication this week:  beautiful dances, wild surprises and heat in the room and the body.