Sacred Space is Open Space

Photo: OSA 131, Sunday, August 25, 2007, park near Eastern Market @ 4:30pm


The dance belongs to all of us
It always has
It always will

Reflection:
OSA 146
Monday, September 10, 2007, 5:11pm
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Millennium Stage, Washington, DC

I am loving every phase of my journey. Today finds me dancing again at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Something drew me here, even though I had made plans to dance somewhere else. Synchronistically enough I wind up celebrating Brazilian Independence Day with musicians Richard Miller and Patrick de Santos and their ensemble at the Kennedy Center’s daily free shows for the public. (I am on my way to Brazil to dance in November 2008.) I am dancing in the biggest stretch of open space in the Grand Foyer. My body negotiates the intrusion of new instruments into my organic dancing. Their music and passion is so invigorating. Despite a spitting headache, I dance harder, drink more water, will the dance to heal my pains. A woman asks me if I am doing the samba, and I smile, opening my arms wide as I dance my truth—“I am always doing all dances,” I say. She nods in approval. “I like it...whatever it is you’re doing,” she says.


Photo: OSA 111, Monday, August 6, 2007, on the "turf" in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland @ 7:30pm


The traffic in the Grand Foyer picks up as the Brazilian music keeps going. Some people stop to stare, some to take a picture, some to tell me I'm beautiful. After a sequence of many turns and sharp arms slicing the air, I pause for a long arm stretch, opening my chest to the heavens (via the ceiling). A thought of immense gratitude comes to me: I am dancing my soul's truth. If life were to stop now, I'd be living my highest existence. I thought how blessed we artists are to live and breathe our life's love every day. This heightened awareness made me want to dance even more, to encourage more people not to waste a second more sleep-walking through life. In the moment I felt the infinite extension of my dance reaching into the souls of those thirsty for more than what they think their life is. I internalized the sacredness of the space I was activating as a slow, prayerful dance to hidden rhythms inside the music of the Brazilians. With deep bends and elongated reaches, sculpted spines arching into the unknown, each motion of mine giving permission for all of us to move together.

Raul from Mexico comes to join me for a few minutes. We slip and slide to alternate sides. We pretend we are competing at the ballroom dance competitions in moments of intense eye contact and dramatic posing. I love when people passing by come to dance with me. Several people ask me why I’m not on stage dancing in front of the non-dancing audience. I remind them that I’d much rather be communing freely away from the cage of the stage. That if I wasn’t in the open space, the dance would be limited to a tap of the foot or the shy rocking of a head. But out here in the infinite playground of the open spaces’ moment, the dance is unbound. People come and dance with me as they please. The ego takes a backseat to the flood and exhilaration of the now, of being outside of the normal spaces for dance.


Photo: OSA 127, Wednesday, August 22, 2007, jubilee jumping with my high school students at St. Stephen Church, @ 1pm