Dance Guru

I've been called many things, and I am always brainstorming new names for my art, for my works, for myself. I am always unimpressed with the usual names like "founder," or "director." Instead I wanna be "Host of the Galaxy" or "Dance Magician"...but then I worry if I'd be expected to do magic tricks. Some people really think I am doing magic with my body, unknowable feats and rhythmic journeys of spine and pelvis. I, of course, am "just dancing." Sometimes I write the thoughts down that come to me in between the movements. Deep philosophical ponderings that one might expand on over tea or something with other scholars...you get the picture!

Today's thoughts came after I took myself to a new OSA spot, the Freer Gallery of Art on the Mall. I'd never been there before and it was rainy, cold, and I was under dressed, as usual (I don't like clothes or shoes!) The place was quiet with dim lights. I wandered around looking at all the "art" pilfered from indigenous peoples all over the world until I found a big enough room to dream, dance, and write.

There is something refreshing about light.
It opens up a space, gives the illusion of more space.
Space is like the breath, the more the better.
Big vast luminous space is illuminated by light.
Big windows let lots of sunshine inside.
Bigness Vastness Expansion
Love expands like light.
The heart grows bigger with compassion.
What is forgiveness?
Is it like opening the shutters or the blinds
in a place that's been in darkness too long?
What is acceptance?
Is it like embracing the shadows
that loom even in the abundance of light?
So much light. So much space.
Why be cramped up anywhere, ever?

Shoes feel like shackles
to me
confining constricting
prohibiting movement

Happy feet love being free
to dance wherever
they want to be!

I am spatially oriented. When I feel there's lots of space. I feel good. I feel like dancing, like spinning, like imagining new things. Today, I surrounded myself with lots of art and space. First stop before the Freer Gallery was the National Museum of African Art. It's one of my top five OSA spots in Washington, DC. I stared at the same art for nearly two hours, noticing all it's nuances. I didn't even look at the name or artist info because I didn't want to be biased. Every now and then, I would stretch my back and my arms. In the process of doing that a grand idea came for me for a movement presentation I have to make to some middle schoolers next week. But anyway...these are more of my raw genius rantings:

Sometimes if you stare at something long enough, you will begin to see it. Really. It's depth, its texture, its luminosity. You will see where it curves and where it also bends and varies. You will see its patterns and symmetry, embedded even in the folds of asymmetry. When you stare long enough you will see what is flat and stable and what too has spilled on the floor and splattered on the ceiling, but with deliberate placement of some design all the same.

When I had found my spot at the Freer, I took my shoes off and started reaching up and out and over into the thickness of empty space around me. I spun in slow motion a few times, trying to catch my reflection in the glass panes protecting ancient Japanese screens. The lighting was too dim for me to see my reflection and so I stopped looking for myself. I found I was content just moving my body.

I started experimenting with trying to spell my first name with my arm, and then my head, and then my shoulder, and then my foot. Then I thought to try spelling my first name with my right arm and my last name with my left leg--a great brain challenge for sure! While twisting and contorting in the empty gallery room, lots of thoughts swam through me. I started thinking about how I am often confronted with the common objection to dancing: "I don't dance/I don't know how to dance/I don't like dancing." I think it's impossible to not know how to dance; you don't know how you're breathing, but you find yourself breathing all the time. A thought popped up: "The Movement is Inevitable." After dancing for a while longer, I sat down and wrote this:

The Movement is Inevitable
the dance is already happening internally,
and has always been happening there, if no where else
The blood dances through your heart and veins
The oxygen leaps through your blood,
All the movement within you gives birth
to the life you are living on the outside
The body is the container of an ancient
sacred
magical dance--and what, what are you
gonna do with it?
The dance belongs to all of us, even you.


(A Kamoro woman from East Indoneasia prepares for a ritual dance, Bali, May 2006)