I lie in the quiet darkness and what emerges is:
Beginning my practice is very like tending the fire first thing in the morning when only the embers are there.
I need to blow gently, and place small kindling over the embers. I lie on the floor, breathe and wait. I tune in sometimes eyes closed. Slowly flames begin to lick around the dry wood and my body eases out - softening, extending, opening. It is an intimate process.
On the best days the moving is easy, on the difficult days there is a heavy dull resonance. As the flames catch the heat builds. Slowly my body responds. Layers of resistance shift. I follow the emerging narrative.
My moving generates thinking. It is fluid – a making sense of – a knowing – a being with – enduring.
From the intimacy of the beginning I move into engagement with the space. Gathering momentum and complexity, I move from internal focus to engage with the whole relational field. I am making and being made. Recognition and knowing converge. I am dancing.
I have cultivated this awareness through attunement. It brings tone to my fleshed body and sharpens my perceptions. As I continue to move, pause, listen - the continuous inter-personal narrative opens out into philosophical discourse with the world. Things that are troubling me emerge and direct my focus. Dancing wrestles with these emergent states – problematizing, provoking and sharpening my responses.
Dancing is my engagement, sometimes my answer to the world. It is my politics. Dancing is how I resist dominant narratives. My practice is continuous research – demanding all that I know in every moment so that I might perceive what I don’t yet know in the emergent dance.
Form is created through moving; ideas are realized through moving; questions are raised through moving.
I am enthralled by this process that gets richer every year. The intimacy with myself gives me the courage to be in relationship with the world and others. It sustains me.
I don’t expect answers …
The fire crackles away licking limbs and igniting new imaginings.
September 2016