Spinning Mary

Love is Dance
sweat falling
in place of tears the sun breaking through
to ancient membranes
activating
sacred spaces
rituals from before
carried out in the now
wild womb warrior
willing her way
to move
to evolve
to transform the galaxy
mother make me a
mover
I got places to go
and I got to take my babies
with me
on the road

I love spinning until I get dizzy. I feel like it's a catalyst to reaching that space where you're "out of time," you know, neither here nor there. I stumbled into a spin yesterday at the National Arboretum while easing my way into the Love-Joy session for the day. I didn't have any particular intention for the dance work when I arrived, rather a spectrum of projects that I needed to plan out--mainly outlines for several dance workshops coming up this weekend and the next few weeks. In addition, I have started developing movement for "I am the Mother"--a series of dances exploring the lives of all the motherwombs I come from as reimagined by my intuitive self. So far I am developing story-dances for my mother, grandmothers, great-grands, and a few more aunties. I'm at about 13 women. This is my soul's core artistic project right now, outside of planning workshops for youth, elders, community groups and so on. And so, even when I have other work to do, I often wander deep into the dance of my mama's mamas.

I started the movement with stretching out on the warm earth. I love grass; it's the best floor to dance on. The sun was warm, the wind refreshing, and I wanted to soak it all in. I reached my arms above my head, letting the sun melt into my belly and activate all of my creative energy. Closing my eyes to the sun-pierced clouds, I relaxed into the organic art process of the Love-Joy that was soon to come.

Upon rising from the grass, I bent my back around to all the sides to see how flexible I was today. Rotated my knees, loosened up my hips, and did an all-around body scan. I started singing a Native American chant that I want to use in the dance for Malissa, my grandmother's grandmother who was half Cherokee. The song opened my lungs and my voice transitioned to the old gospel song that I am going to use for Mary Rand, Malissa's daughter and my grandmother's mother. The song, "I'll Fly Away," is one of my favorites from growing up in my black baptist church. It's imagery of flight inspires me and I find myself singing its verses random times.

I am still picking my mother and grandmother's brains about who Mary Rand was. What I know of her now is that she was a hardworking woman who had four children. Her husband died cancer of when she still had young children to raise. I know she spent long periods of time far away from her home and family in Wake County, North Carolina and "scrubbed white people's floors" in New York. She was tall and commanded a strong presence. My grandmother, Mary Malissa, was her only daughter. I began to envision her story of one where she's speaking of moving within the confined realities of a life of hardships. I started to imagine movements that reflected the energy of breaking out of a cage, but simultaneously expressed the sensation of being stuck.
I had already developed Mary Rand's gesture for the "I am the Mother" project, but had not fleshed out how I would relay her story. A swirl of ideas continued to flood me and I spun myself around to feel something different other than confusion. That's the blessing of movement. It allows you to experience emotions in an alternative way. The mental juggling of my great-grandmother's life leaked into my body as a spin. And as I was spinning I realized, "I haven't gotten dizzy in so long!" I remembered how much I loved to spin and get dizzy, and so I spun and spun for a long time, forgetting for the moment my preoccupation with how I was gonna dance Mary Rand's story.

And that's when it happened. Inside the spin I got the grand plan for introducing Mary to the world as a dance. I imagined her movement morphing from the stiff postures as I narrate her story about cleaning countless houses for little pay, being evicted from the family land, being separated from her children and on. And that as she begins singing "I'll Fly Away" she starts to spin and then comes into the dream space where the movement expresses her hopes and visions. Through movement I can expand on things she didn't get to physically do with her own life, things I intuit as an extension of her in the present moment. Of course, today's Love-Joy journey was just the beginning. There's so much more dance to which I must surrender before I know these mothers' life-movements. A surrendering that will ultimately lead me through my own life's dance.