Lifelines on 57: Transformation

I always start the movement with the breath. We gather in a circle on Unit 57 at the Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF) with women who are in the Lifelines Program. We sit with our backs straight and feet rooted into the floor. This is the first moment of collective, voluntary stillness for the women since my last session a month ago. They greet me with open arms. They want to know how my show went, how's the dance going, how's life on the outside.

"The breath is the first dance," I tell them. Closing our mouths, we breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, "haaa." After several rounds, a calm surrounds us. I smile at the women, knowing that now we have begun. We hold hands in the circle, connecting everyone's energy. I love the array of facial expressions. Some women have grown to trust me over these few months, and are open to the unknown. Others stare at me not understanding why we're breathing and holding hands. Others still chatter with nervous energy because stillness is a scary place they haven't yet embraced.


With our hands connected, I begin to pop my shoulders up and down and the group follows. When I squeeze my sister's hand to the right of me, she'll take over the movement. This process is all about intuition, listening to our individual rhythm, and also feeling the rhythm of the group. I tell them we won't talk during this process, but spurts of laughter and protests about what the body can and cannot do interjects the intuitive experiment. I decided a while ago not to make a big deal about people's perceived body limitations. The more we keep dancing, keep breathing, keep playing, the less time there is to speculate and ponder what's wrong, what's stuck, what's stiff, what's broken. As the facilitator, I have the power to keep the group's attention on what we are doing, rather than what we assume we should be doing.

After a few more movements that get the blood flowing, we begin Movement Sculptures. In the spirit of "Transformation", I introduce this process as a way to imagine our actual Selves as part of the change we want to create for our lives. I pick the first theme that comes to mind, "broken".

"How many of us have ever felt broken?" A forest of hands shoot up in the air, along with a chorus of "um humms" and "amens." I ask someone to come into the center and embody "broken" with her body in a pose. After she comes, three more sisters come one at a time, adding to the base with variations of contact. The only parameter is that you make a physical connection with the existing body(ies) in the space. When the four bodies have merged as one sculpture, the surrounding circle calls out what we see. "Pain," someone says. "She looks like she's beat down," another says. A few more sentiments come out. For a moment I wonder if "broken" wasn't too heavy an idea to start with; I don't want to depress the women.

"Now, what's the opposite of broken?" I ask. "Healed!" a sister yells out. "Okay, now before we morph into "healed" we have to take a collective breath in"--the four women inhale--"and as we exhale, I want you to shift into "healed." Slowly, with the delicacy of a flower opening up to the sun, the women become "healed." The energy of the group changes as everyone celebrates the transformation of the few symbolic of the whole.

We do three more transforming structures. From "fear" to "secure", and "weak" to "strong" and finally "empty" to fulfilled." Every time we morph into the positive the women cheer. We say what we see and feel through all stages of the process. Afterwards in a seated circle everyone reflects on what it felt like to experience the transformation in her actual, physical body. "I really enjoyed this because it gave me a chance to dance with my grandmother." My mind is connecting the dots, but my ears are in disbelief! "Yeah, she continues, that's my grandmother, and my mother's locked up here on another unit. Dancing with my grandmother remind me of when I was little and we used to play together."

If I do nothing else here, it will be okay, I think to myself. I've reunited a granddaughter and grandmother with a dance process. It feels amazing and saddening at the same time. To think, three generations of women from one family are all in one prison is mind-boggling. And then I wonder if this is more normal than I know.

I am so new to the world of prison, or rather the hell of injustice. Everything seems outrageous to me, and yet so familiar to others. On my first tour of the prison, a senior prison exec informed us that women are shackled when they are giving birth. I was so distraught to hear of this, but even more disturbed that the prison employee was a woman herself and wasn't disturbed at this heinous crime against a mother and the child coming into the world.

There are so many things I witness in the prison that I have no words for. Senseless acts of inhumanity that don't phase many people. As a movement worker, I am very sensitive to energy, physical, spiritual, and emotional. I use dance as a thermometer of temperaments in a space. Our dance indicates where we are, individually and collectively. When we allow ourselves to move, we peer into a portal of awareness.

Look around at America! Where are the dancing people? Inside cages of nightclubs, behind boxes on your flatscreen in the latest reality competition, or sweating bullets in the mirror because they don't look like the dance instructor. Really this marginalized movement is not good enough, nor is it serving the individual or society. The planet needs everyone's dance. Even in prison, we are experiencing liberation in pockets of dancing time. So again, America and everywhere else, I must ask you, where is your dance? Without it, there'll be no transformation.

(All photos Copyright 2008 Rebecca Epstein.)