Raving in Wind (1996)

I came across this and wanted to share it.  The music is acommissioned score by the brilliant Ingram Marshall, and the video by the extraordinary Ellen Sebring.  I developed this 23 years ago during a residency at Yaddo, inspired by traveling to the Galapagos and seeing the waved albatrosses, and by the extraordinary avian drawings of Leonard Baskin. The title is from a poem by Ann Lauterbach.

Enjoy!

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I am sharing this lovely podcast with dance therapist Christine Caldwell about her new book, Bodyfulness.

I found her to be clear, incisive and both fresh and integrative of other perspectives. Enjoy!!

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This is Andrea Kozol dancing with Jaxon earlier this summer at out workshop at the beautiful Mountain Horse Farm.

What I love about this is Jaxon’s ease with this new way of experiencing a human moving.  Too often we are trying to “do” something with the horse, and need them to “do” something in response.  Jaxon teaches us that he can rest in the moment, and at the same time support and receive Andrea’s dance.

I will be offering a demo of how to deepen feel and connection with horses using Conscious Touch and Conscious Movement at Equine Affaire on Saturday morning, November 9.

And next June, I  will be teaching another workshop at Mountain Horse Farm.

Please join us!

For more information, contact me.

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I am at the beautiful Mountain Horse Farm in Naples, NY in the Finger Lakes region, teaching a Conscious Touch & Conscious Movement with Horses workshop.  The farm itself is beautiful, inviting, expansive.  Suzanne Vullers, the owner, is welcoming, wise and playful.

This morning I met the herd, and had the gift of an impromptu, improvisational dance with the lovely mare Cricket. Statsen, the Morgan gelding, formerly a breeding stallion, reminds me a bit of Nelson (above) and of my stallion, Capprichio.  Something about both the sensitivity and the confidence.

Teaching is never a display of what I know.  It is sharing questions, being open to what is unfamiliar, practicing what the brilliant Pauline Oliveros calls the “unique” strategy, meaning that every moment, every experience is new, subtly different from anything that has preceeded it.

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Authentic Movement is perhaps the most profound and nourishing part of my personal practice.  It has reshaped my inner landscape in mysterious and unexpected ways.  It continues to nourish, unravel and reveal me to myself, after 30 years.  The echoes of that ritual exploration send their ripples out into everything I touch and perceive.

Some years ago I wrote this about my first experience of Authentic Movement:

Dropping into the vastness the stillness, the silence, and finding there an emptiness, a balm, and then an eruption, a commotion, a chaos. Wild ropes of movement that had laid dormant, waiting –  woven like ganglia into the spaces between the cells, knitted into the ligaments, wrapped around the tendons, sewn into the fibers of muscle, soaked into the bone, into the marrow.

Entering one’s movement is a leap of faith. That you will survive the cellular tintinnabulation of your stillness, as well as the storms of your movement. Entering knowing that you can dive into the abyss and emerge to have lunch and a cappuccino across the street; as if you had not just feasted on your own moving dreams in the corner of a sunlight studio.

I will be teaching an Authentic Movement Workshop in June, open to all.  I hope that you will join me.  Here are the details:

Moving from the Source:  an Authentic Movement Workshop

June 29, 1-5 pm

$85

Danica Center for Physical Therapy and Movement Integration

101 Gay Street
Sharon, CT 06069

information and registration:  pjj@paulajosajones.org

508-627-1752

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Mountain Horse Farm Retreat

Conscious Touch, Conscious Movement with Horses

with Paula Josa-Jones

May 21 at 4:00pm – May 24 at 11:00am, 2019 

Reservations

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This was a big year for Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works and for me personally. For one thing, we successfully birthed River/Body.  That project was in some ways like the baby that did not want to be born, with an ambivalent mother.  Let me be clear.  I love the project and love the river in ways that surprise me –  I had not expected to feel such an emotional and potent sense of connection to this body of moving water.

So what was the problem?  In part, trying to gather $$$ support felt a lot like herding feral cats.  People are busy, or they “don’t get it.” What is this dancing in the river anyway?  Why would you do that?  What’s wrong with the theater? Again and again, I found my nose pressed against that hard wall.

I get it.  I know that there are a thousand worthy, incredibly urgent causes.  Syria, Yemen, Central America, the looming climate catastrophe, animals that are suffering, children who are hurt, girls who are not being educated.

But I feel that we each have to find a place of inspired action within this chaos.  In this moment, mine is the river and its connection to global waters. I want to share the stunning fact (thank you Andrea Olsen) that within 16 days of living within a particular watershed, those waters literally make up the 70% of your body that is water!!!! Your relationship with your fluid neighborhood is not abstract — it is cellular, immediate.

My other place of inspired action is the horses, and what they teach us about being human.  So I am making a video documentary of the new work I am developing with horses:  Conscious Touch, Conscious Movement.  It too is connected to this fluid theme. We are 70% water, as is the horse, which in the horse translates to 770 pounds or 96 gallons of water for the average 1,100-pound horse. Conscious Touch, Conscious Movement engages the body’s fluids to open a moving connection or flowing water dance that unfolds when we shift our awareness from muscles and bones to cells and fluids. I love this new work, this subtle, potent way of dancing with horses, and I love sharing it with clients and students.

So tell me something:  How can I better reach and connect this work with others?  What are some inspired, perhaps unexplored fundraising ideas?  What is important to you in your own work and outreach? I really want to hear from you!

Thank you!

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Saturday and Sunday at 5 pm are the last days to see River/Body.  Please join us to see this beautiful water dance that is our gift to the communities that live within the Housatonic River watershed and beyond.  After all, the waters are connected and they connect us.  In fact, they flow in us as well as around us!

Tickets are FREE but attendance is limited, so reserve HERE.

Dancers:  Aislinn MacMaster, Dillon Paul, DeAnna Pellecchia, Amy Wynn with Evangeline Johns

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On Saturday, during one of our last rehearsals for River/Body, Cole, a young student from the Marvelwood School asked us two wonderful questions.  Cole is part of a team of young videographers working with their teacher, Ben Willis to create a documentary about the making of the dance.

First, he wanted to know if we had ever considered bringing something unexpected – an object, a surprising prop – into our performance.  He observed that the scarves we manipulate are wave and water-like, but wanted to know about something “outside the box”.” Dillon, one of the dancers, loved the idea and said, “Like what?  A refrigerator?”  We all tried to think what those unexpected things might be and how that would change the performance. Actually, I think Cole just gave us an inspiration for the next iteration of River/Body.

Secondly, he wanted to know if we had ever done any kind of ‘nature-art situation” before. So we shared with him our exprience of dancing with horses.  To me, dancing the river is similar in many ways to the equine dances.  We are entering and communicating with a different physicality.  Riding the currents of that different body.  Enngaging with the body-mind of that other being.  And yes, we see and feel the river is a being.

On Sunday we had to make a firm decision about whether to perform in a river that had become so high and fast running that we could not safely dance with her.  I have known horses like that.  It is important to know the limits.  It is disappointing not to dance in the Shepaug, but we were also happy to return to the beautiful Housatonic and know that all of our performances would be held kindly by her watery body.

UPDATE: all performances will take place at North Kent Road, Kent, CT

August 18 & 19 and August 25 & 26 will be performed at the river access at North Kent Road, Kent, CT.  We are limiting attendance to protect the site and work within the concerns of the town, so you will neeed to reserve your FREE ticket HERE.

Please join us.  We have made something beautiful, something surprising, something moving.

Thank you to Housatonic Heritage, Housatonic Valley Association, Berkshire Taconic Foundation and our loving individual donors

See you at the river!

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Dillon Paul in River/Body

Aislinn MacMaster in River/Body

June 14 was our first 2018 rehearsal in the Housatonic River in Kent for River/Body.  Dancers Aislinn MacMaster and Dillon Paul entered the waters.  Pam White recorded some images and video.

PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!!

Performances will take place on August 18-19 and 25-26 at 5 pm.

Precise locations and directions to the Housatonic (in Kent, CT) and Shepaug Rivers (Steep Rock Preserve, Washington, CT) sites to be announced.

Performances are free to the public, children welcome.

Live music will be provided by beloved and acclaimed local percussionist, John Marshall.

SAVE THE DATES!!!

Here is a glimpse into our river rehearsals. . .

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