new youth love

This is the title of a playlist on my ipod for a new group of young people that I just began dancing with. They are fierce, brilliant, beautiful, and full of fears all at the same time. In bits and pieces they are coming into their own powers, recognizing their awesomeness one celebratory sway at a time. I was so overwhelmed after leaving their space that I had to go dance. Dance off the rage and absurdity of some of their energy, decompress from the profanity, the violence, the constant cries for attention with which some sought to disrupt our class. And at the same time marvel in the majesty of the movement that, in spite of everything, the youth lovingly birthed in our tiny dance laboratory.

I ventured off into the chaotic frenzy of recess time downtown. The lunchtime crowds of the 9-5 tribe and the enthusiastic first-time-in-DC tourists all clamoring for tables to slurp their caffeine shots and down their microwavable nutrition provided the backdrop for this day's space activation. I felt like air conditioning for a change and went to the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard inside the center of the National Portrait Gallery.

What awaited my dancing body was a surge of new movement material. I found a wide stretch of space to insert my dancing body and had a creative blast. The floor in the courtyard is also very smooth and soft to the soles of my feet, always a plus! I found myself soaring, mentally, emotionally, physically. I felt my body opening up into new rhythms and shapes. I was grateful to my youth muses for activating a new dance within me as I sought to process all that had happened in our workshop. In one class, we used nature themes as the motivation for our movement. I taught them the sign for "river" in sign language. Once they were comfortable with that, I asked them to "put the river in your legs, in your spine, in your neck...".

WOW! was all I could say after watching their movements transform their whole bodies. The textures and intricacies of their dance greatly contrasted the immature insults they were hurling just a few minutes before. They even began to celebrate each others creativity when they saw new movement coming from their peers. After the wind and the river, we became ice, and then we melted. The melting was a lot of fun. At first they thought I was weird of course for being so uncool as to actually melt into a puddle on the floor, but they had to admit it was a really fly transition. Soon after, a few of them began trying it out on their own, risking dust on namebrand jeans and possible scuffs on fresh kicks!

The result was a beautiful, organic dance sequence. One of my boys who had been mostly non-participatory jumped up and asked, "can we do a hurricane?". Sure, I said, and the group broke out into whirlwinds of arms and tilting torsos. They created the soundscore of storm, wind, rains with their voices and bodies. As I reflected later, I thought, hmmm, dancing out the storm is so healing. A constructive way to scream, shout, and release, and yet still be peaceful, (non-violent), and creative...

I love my new young people so much. They are inspiring a lot of growth and enthusiasm in me as a dancer but also as a movement educator. I look forward to the rest of the summer with them. Stay tuned for updates, I'm sure they'll keep me on my toes!

Photo by Caroline Angelo 2009