Category Archives: improvisation life

Jun6

the view from here

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The view from here is exquisite.  A big part of me does not want to leave.  Another even bigger part is ready.  Finally.  I hate the word downsize.  I think of it as something old people do, signally the end of life.  That is not what we are doing.  And yet, it is, in a way.  We are right-sizing our spaces for what we are doing now, which is more engagement with our creative work.  So we want the focus to be on those creative spaces, the studios, rather than living spaces.

What I want is for a lovely young family with exuberant children to fall in love with this house and its surrounds the way that we did six years ago.  Our kids were smaller then and we wanted those kind of spaces. They are mostly away now, and the focus is shifting.  The energy is moving.  I am ready.  I could not say that a month ago.  I am making sure that every day the energy is clear for the next thing to happen.

This morning I had a vision of the real estate angels circling out to gather our new house partners – the ones who will take this house that we have lovingly cared for and be as happy here as we are.

We have found out next nest.  That is exciting.  I am ready.  I am ready.

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Jun5

earth dance

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How do you think of dance?
Is it shapes?
Is it steps moving across a stage?
Or is it the aged body
steeped in its years
on earth?
Is it the body inseparable
from everything
it touches?
Are you dancing now?
If you are breathing,
that is the start.
Jun3

tail, breath

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I took many, many pictures of Capprichio yesterday.  He is a black stallion, a Baryshnikov among horses and the love of my horse life.  He is also very equanimous about having his picture taken.

Some horses are not.  Sanne, the Lily of Holland, Pam White’s big Friesian, is very cagey, wary and not especially cooperative.  he is not exactly nervous, but he is an avoider (much like myself).

That brings me to another subject.  After a certain age, I did not want my photo taken. I am more than a little embarrassed about this.  I would like to be easier with it.

I got some significant help yesterday when I watched the film Breath Made Visible about the now ninety year old dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin.  It is stunning.  She is stunning.  There is a glory in her that is so rare, so unabashed, so full that I just sat in silence for many moments after the film.  (It is available on Netflix.)

What this has to do with for me (in part) is a willingness to be seen, to be witnessed, to be held in the attention of a single lens or a large audience.  These are the waters that I am stepping into again now.  At the end of the film, Halprin says that she wants her dances and her dancing to connect to something profound and shared.  (I am paraphrasing badly.)

That is true for me as well.  What I danced about before is not what I want to dance now.  In the past I made beautiful, feral dances that were like a Chinese sliding block puzzle:  you had to work hard to discover the order, the relationships and the meaning.  Now I want to dance you into the eye of the storm and into my wild heart.  I cannot wait to see what will happen.

Watch this film.  It is not to be missed.

May31

to sing or not to sing

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Pearl’s peonies – from the Sioux Falls farm to my place 50 years later

The song I have come to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my life
stringing and unstringing
my instrument.

                                           Rabindranath Tagore

I found this poem by Tagore, and it happened to be on a day when I was hopelessly entangled in the minutia of my life.  I had spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out the signature on my emails after I had been told by a friend that the links on the current one were not working. Or sifting through a bunch of stuff in preparation for a move.  Pulling weeds out of the walk way in preparation for a showing of our house.

I want to be singing the song (dancing the dance) pretty much all of the time and find that too much of my day is taken up with the stringing and unstringing of my squeaky instrument.

Part of the problem is having too many projects that I want to do.  Deciding which to do first.  Another part is feeling overwhelmed by all of them, and therefore procrastinating and finding more ways of stringing/unstringing.  I wish that I could say that the stringing and unstringing are actually meditative and prepare me for the song, like the Zen master who paints a single perfect Sumi circle at the end of his life.  But I don’t think that is the case.  I think that I am just finding ways not to sing.

Yesterday I went to New York City to meet with two booking agents, both of whom used to represent me and my dance company.  I told them that I was developing an evening length solo work.  Which is true.  But it is in its infancy, and today I feel overwhelmed by the whole idea, the whole project.

Maybe I won’t sing (dance) after all.  I am sure that the front walk needs more weeding.

Or maybe I will find a way to notice when I have gotten swallowed by my preoccupation with the details and learn to lift my eyes to the horizon, taking a broader, more breathing view of the possibilities that lay before me.