Black Luv, The Dance

I love dancing with my people. When I was in Ghana five years ago I fell in love with communal dancing. One of my favorite dance experiences of all times was in a small village called Adalku in the Volta region of Ghana. I danced for five hours from sun to rain, from dust to mud. The musicians created rhythmic escapades with recycled metal, tire rims, scraps, and more. There were no traditional drums or instruments, just found objects. I was amazed at the improvisational genius of the indigenous human spirit. Art is everywhere, I remember realizing for the first time. After that experience of organically jamming with the whole village thru the thunderstorm, I wrote a poem that began to articulate what would become my movement philosophy. The opening line captured it all: "The most beautiful dance you do is the one you do with your people."

I really felt I had tapped into the source that would feed my whole movement evolution. "My people," as I have come to know during this growing period is everyone--Afrikan folks, women, youth, DC people, environmentalists, womb activists, healers, mothers, writers, elders--everyone, like I said! I realized that the most important thing about dance to me is that it brings humanity together. That it gives us a space to share, to commune, to grow, to heal, to love each other even more. And this is what I have put my energy into as I have been spiraling into my movement these past years.

I was reminded of the critical role of community in my dance when I attended Washington, DC's annual Black Luv Festival yesterday. The sun was blazing, the children were running, the elders were nodding, and the MCs were working hard to keep the energy high. I relaxed on a blanket, looked up at the sky, and thought, "I am home now." This is my ideal space: grass, sun, music, family, veggie food, peaceful vibrations, and dancing. What more did I need? I felt so good and full of love.

The crowd was sparse early in the afternoon. They wanted people to get up and dance to raise the energy. Ususally at that type of request, I am the first person up. But today I am grounded in my spot on the blanket, as observer--(I also know that I'll eventually be dancing later on and once I get up, I never sit back down until I'm at home). Instead, I took pictures of the growing momentum, chatted with folks I hadn't seen, and rested in the warmth of the sun. One of the MCs wanted to amp up the energy when he saw the crowd filling in. He sent forth the word for what I call the "Black People's Right's of Passage Dance in the United States"--the Electric Slide. This dance is not complicated or very different from other line dances. In fact when I was dancing with survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, I learned other dances similar to the Electric Slide. Nevertheless, around these parts, the Electric slide is done at every family reunion, wedding, barbeque, graduation party, and caberet (I even taught this dance to children in Ghana, African Diaspora dance exchanging all the way!). There's no escaping it--and why would you want to? The Electric Slide is the chance for everyone to dance together. This is when all the shy people join in, when all the elders groove on the periphery so as not to get knocked over by the super-inventive youth who've incorporated a back flip into the standard choreography. The Electric Slide is, essentially, everyone's dance.



The power of dancing together is so transformational. That is what I tapped into while studying and dancing in Ghana. That is what I experienced in India and Bali, and in West Philly at the Trinidad and Tobago Festival, and countless other places. It's magnetic, this space of communal dance. Everyone feels loved, everyone feels welcomed, everyone feels celebrated. When we are activating the love energy, then we also activate peace, compassion, forgiveness, joy, creativity, and more. The dance is not merely social, it is survival. It is a prerequisite of healthy, stable, thriving communities. That is why we dance all these years, through every revolution, shift in humanity, the dance continues.
After the Electric Slide, the next dance we did together was the all-mighty Soul Train Line. The MC put out a call for some of us to start the line and this time I bounded up to the front. I was "ON" now, ready to agitate more movement for the masses. Several others joined me in forming two lines facing each other so that we created a "runway" which we would dance down in pairs. This is so fun because you get partnered with whoever is on the other side of line and you make the dance work between you. Talk about facilitating more peace, cooperation, and understanding in communities--the Soul Train Line captures all those themes in an instant. There's no holding up of the line. You can't not go because you don't like your partner; you must simply dance. And your cooperation sustains the momentum of the community dance. We learn so many skills for strengthening humanity in the dance. How could we not be dancing?

When we finished the Soul Train Line, the go-go band Mambo Sauce came on. Mambo sauce is a combination of condiments that you can only get in DC carry-out restaurants. Some have tried to ponder what it is, but why would you? It goes with chicken wings, and back when I ate meat, yes, I too was a Mambo Sauce connoisseur. Anyway, go-go music is also unique to DC, so the band named themselves after the one thing you can only get in DC. Go-go is DC's ancient-future indigenously relevant contemporary Afrikan music. It's syncopated, layered, ecstatic and reflects the hearts of the DC people. Growing up in DC I LOVED go-go music, and still do. So when Mambo Sauce took the stage, and the crowd was already hyped up, all factors were in place for our communal spiritual dance explosion.

I had lost my shoes long ago and was barefoot on the warm cobblestones. Encased on all sides by everybody, I let go everything. I jerked and jumped, slid and spun, bumped booties with whoever, screamed and laughed at the beauty of all of us dancing black folks. We're dancing despite all the drama and deaths, the despair and financial worries, the fear of losing something or someone--we're dancing together in this moment that is all we really have. It is in these moments that I am happiest. Cameras wove in and out of gyrating bodies, the crowd roared along with the band (because we all know the words even if we don't "listen" to go-go"). I danced with sisters I know and those that I don't. It was a beautiful moment of infinite black love. Imagine the wondrous potential of all the globe's inhabitants to generate that much love in a dance we do together. Such is the intention of the Love-Joy, and we're just beginning.

Vintage Binah: March of 2003, dancing in Adalku with village dance ensemble

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.

Leap into Love

The Love-Joy: A dance of infinite possibilities is my movement entity. It's a whole world where anything and everything is possible. The Love-Joy is my mobile sanctuary, my temple-on-the-go, my dance laboratory that can manifest anywhere I am. The Love-Joy is the space I surrender to, the place where I dive into my creativity and trust whatever comes out. I strive to commune inside of the Love-Joy as often as possible because it makes each moment of my life more purposeful.

Every adventure to the Love-Joy is a miracle unfolding through whatever I happen to be doing. This weekend I attended the "Women & Courage" conference at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. It was an amazing experience and I wanted to leap into the Love-Joy from the very beginning of the journey.

We are a sea of women, mostly strangers to each other, all gathering at the New York City Port Authority Trailways gate #26 for the shuttle to the Omega campus in upstate New York. Thanks to a one hour delay--rain, broken down bus, Friday traffic (and because it's New York!)--we had ample time to bond before reaching the conference. I, surprisingly, wasn't in the mood to talk to all my new potential sisters. Instead I found myself rotating my hips in a circle and singing a song to myself. Why was I randomly booty shaking? Because I had stuffed myself with food and had gas and didn't want to take it on the long bus ride. Yes, a lot of times, the entrance into the Love-Joy is merely an attempt to conquer digestive blues.

"Excuse me," a voice from the woman behind me calls. "Is that some sort of exercise you doing?" A common question that I hear all the time. Most people ask me "what type" or "what is it"? I'm continuously exploring this fascination with labeling and categorizing because it is such an anti-Love-Joy process and yet I am expected to deliver an answer. I change my response everyday. Somedays, I just say "yes" to whatever people think I'm doing: "Sure, it's yoga!" or "Yeah, it's belly dance."

Today, though, I'm inclined to actually tell the sister about Bootyism and how I believe in activating the power of the booty for the optimum life experience. She loves it! She starts shaking her booty with me, right there in the line. We introduce ourselves; she's from the Bronx and she's on her way to the conference because there will be a screening of a documentary about the alarming phenomenon of black women diagnosed as HIV+ in which she's featured. Chavelle is bright, bold, and definitely eager to explore this booty dance that I tell her will relieve menstrual cramps, prevent fibroids, release stress and anger, and--she adds enthusiastically--give her more creative ideas for lovemaking.

"Yeah boo!" Chavelle screams into her cell phone with hips a-shaking. "I am doing this Bootyism right here in the bus station...It's good exercise for me, this woman says...Yeah, I'm gonna have some new things to show you when I get home!" Chavelle is ecstatic about her newfound booty motions. I ask her how she is feeling, reminding her to be gentle with her body, honoring any discomforts or pains that might come in the knees or the back. She slows her booty rolls down so she can carefully scan the movement in her body.

I am swelling with joy as I connect with Chavelle during her booty discovery process. It is such a delicate, beautiful, and sacred journey to bear witness to someone's consciousness expanding around the power of her body. This movement exchange is especially powerful because I am with a woman who has been stigmatized and judged because of the very choices she made with her body.

A man passing by us stops to leer dramatically because he assumes our booty movement is an invitation to some sexual thing. I, of course, am used to this misinterpretation of my booty expressions because I do this dance all the time and get lots of reactions. I usually ignore it and keep dancing and they move on. Chavelle, my dance partner for the hour, flips my script.

"It's exercise!" she screams out at the man. "That's right, it's exercise. Not what you thinking!" It's so comical to me because I never engage in such dialogue. And yet, in using her voice, Chavelle clearly tells the man to "step off" with humor. Later, one of the Port Authority employees stops to question the booty energy. Chavelle is now the official Bootyism spokesperson. Even if I wanted to get a word in, I can't! She is explaining the philosophy and power of booty to everyone passing by and encouraging them to booty shake. Her girlfriend, Lizzy, comes back with a sandwich for her and Chavelle doesn't miss a booty roll. She keeps moving and updating me on how she's feeling all while picking apart a spicy chicken wrap that has too much rice.

Energetically, I feel the space is now warm. With our booties, Chavelle and I have activated the space, created our makeshift sanctuary, and transformed the potential of what would otherwise be a frustrating, idle time. Now that I am deep inside the Love-Joy, my movement begins to expand. I begin singing again and exploring movements for a dance I am creating about my Grandmother's grandmother, Malissa. Occassionally I swing back into a booty roll as I move through lots of different gestures and movement phrases. I am not writing anything down or trying to remember exactly what I do. Rather, I am intuiting movement from the emotions I imagine Malissa would have experienced at different times in her life.

I am so grateful for the fertility of this Love-Joy moment. As I dive into unchartered movement a woman and her young sons sitting across from me are following every move. Chavelle is chatting away with Lizzy as she experiments with rhythmic variations on her booty rock. Other women who I'll soon be at the conference with come up to me to ask me what I'm doing; some of them throw me a booty bump in support of the movement.

I can always tell when I'm inside the Love-Joy because I am worried about nothing. All seems well, feels well, and I don't feel any pressure to move on to the next thing. I am completely absorbed in the movement, in my interaction with the people and surroundings and observe everything as a happening, a miracle that otherwise would not exist without the convergence of all these factors. When they finally signal that we can board the bus, I am ready for the long bus ride (a daunting place for someone like me who wants to be up and moving around!) I simmer my movement down, returning to my slow booty rolls to accomodate the heavy bag propped against my right hip. I smile at the opportunities ahead, excited about all the beautiful kindred beings who will share in this Love-Joy with me.


Ps...a vintage Binah pic: Me leaping in "girlchild in the promisedland" for my senior recital at The College of William & Mary in 2004...my mother loves this picture!

The New Binah

This year for my birthday, I hosted a “Celebrate Binah Festival.” It involved three consecutive days of dance, celebration, and community gatherings. I wanted to leap into my 26th year with gratitude, enthusiasm, and of course as much dancing as possible. I really believe I have to be living the dance in order to be blessed by the dance.

The first day of the festival, which was also my actual birthday, I held a “Dream Dance-a-thon” at the Kennedy Center, my favorite OSA spot. For five hours I kept the sacred space of my dance laboratory that I had carved out of the open space of the Terrace. The sky, the beaming sun, the scorching concrete beneath my bare soles, and the occasional guard asking me for my phone number all came together to support the opening of the Celebrate Binah Festival. I invited the world to join me, physically, mentally, spiritually—whatever fit your fancy. My dear sister Samaa came to the sacred laboratory after a few hours and took a nap in the shade while I willed myself to dance, even when it seemed as though nothing was coming today.

Frustrated I was that I had allotted this concentrated five hours to dance magic and had yet to stumble across my next choreographic genius. I moved in circles, sang songs, chanted ancient sounds, waved my arms, bent my knees into funky angles, shook my booty to the sun—I did all these things and still three hours in, I didn’t “feel” the dance taking my over. I didn’t feel myself inside the groove of galactic, transformative movement that I was so sure was coming because it was my birthday and I had scheduled myself to be there for my creative awakening!


I knew this much: creativity comes organically and the only way to experience it is to be in the present moment. I thought I was pushing myself too much, so I lie down next to Samaa trying to get comfortable in the shade, and still was restless. I closed my eyes, pretended to meditate, still nothing. For a moment, I almost talked myself into leaving my own celebration early because it wasn’t going my way.

After a few minutes, I realized something really that seemed funny to me. I felt like I was waiting in the clearing of a big forest for a big miracle to drop on my head. It was like I was expecting some external sign to bless me with what to do next and in the meantime, I was missing out on the abundance of the present moment. Here I was, healthy, happy, whole, loved by everyone, blessed with birthday wished galore, in a huge space without any constrictions or limitations, and able to try any dance I wanted—and I wasn’t diving into the infinite possibilities of it all. The “ah-HAH!” moment for me was when I realized I was already inside The Love-Joy. The Love-Joy is what I am calling my movement; it’s not a company, or a troupe, or a school—but the “dance of infinite possibilities.” I thought to myself, “DUH, Binah! This is it! You’re in the Love-Joy! Dance! Dance! DANCE!”

I closed my eyes and saw that I was not in a forest waiting for a message from the Divine about my next creative project, but that I was in the fertile galaxy of my dance and every and anything was mine to craft and mold into a physical expression of my emotions, my stories, my relationships, my life. I saw light beams coming at me in all directions; I saw images of everything I want to do, all my dreams floating at me and all I need to do was reach out and grab it. I felt a surge of energy flow up from the ground and through my whole body. I started to run, to laugh, to play with lots of movement variations. I made myself the every-ready canvas and found new dances underneath old muscle memories. I began to have fun with myself and new I had finally arrived at my celebration.


Samaa awoke to me bounding from corner to corner, spinning, yelling, singing. I had tapped into my abundant creative zone and she came to dance with me for a bit before heading out to meet my mother at the grocery store to purchase surprise goodies for my birthday feast the next day. (Samaa is an amazing chef!)

I was soooooo happy to have embraced the power of the Love-Joy on my birthday. This is the space of limitless opportunity that I surrender to everyday as acceptance of the creative vessel that I know I am. Joy flooded my being as the dance flowed out easily and abundantly in my newfound awareness. And so it came to me to do a dance that honored the challenges and triumphs of my 25th year of life on this planet and Samaa recorded it for me. There’s so much more coming, and I am here, I am present, I am excited to be alive inside The Love-Joy.

Baby Mama

I came to an empty play room that I was supposed to turn into a dance space. The women I came to work with at the shelter for women and children were not there, but I could here their voices floating in from down the hall. I thought we'd do some breathing first, to center ourselves, and then some stretching, and then some movement games, and of course, by special request of the social worker, some Booty Energy Dance. I rolled over the flow in my mind, finally got my burned CD operating via the DVD player, and was all set. Enter 4 women with newborns, infants, toddlers, strollers, and an exasperated "hmph" as they all sat down. I smiled at them and said hello, introducing myself over chatter that seemed to ignore my presence. What, I wondered, were we going to do?

"Let's all stand up," I offered. Nothing. Blank expressions, an adamant declaration from one sister that she was not going to dance, complaints of tiredness, and curiosity whether this was belly dance and were we going to do downward dog? I said yes to everything, you know me, all dance is one dance! "Sure! We're gonna do it all, so let's all stand in a circle." Still nothing.

Onto introductions then! So I asked who they were and to introduce the babies as well. I was at a loss in terms of what to do. Two mothers were standing, one was cursing out some imaginary foe, and another was fighting with her son over keys. I said, okay, let's start seated then, so we could breathe. The purpose of the breathing is to transition the mind from the activities of the day, the frustrations, the anxieties, and so on, and come into the present moment. Of course, the present moment for these mothers had not miraculously morphed into peace and tranquility upon entering our makeshift dance sanctuary. For a mother with a newborn, her awareness is not on a deep breath, but a little one who depends on her for everything. Even as I struggled to think of what to do to bring unity to our group, I realized I had not only never had to dance with mothers and babies, but an even bigger realization hit me in a new way: I've not yet had to be responsible for anyone's breath but my own. I was suddenly humbled before this group of courageous women, and surrendered to the opportunity to learn from the ones who have the most laborious job of us all.


Every moment was like an unfolding experiment. I literally did not know what to do from moment to moment. Everything I had prepared seemed to not be relevant. A little boy discovers the DVD player, sisters are oooing and aaahing over each other's babies. I began to realize, these "distractions" weren't tangential to the movement, they were the movement. This group's dance had to incorporate all of these elements that I had not initially acknowledged as real factors in these women's lives. There were instances when I thought I had been thrown into a circus without my next queue. And that is how life teaches us new things...right?

So you get the picture that this was not a typical dance workshop, I'm sure. One of the biggest things that threw me off from the start was a sister who was angry about something and cursing out some invisible enemy and threatening to “kill her”. The others kept telling her not to worry, everything would be okay, but I didn’t know what was wrong. Her anger was so intense she refused to participate at all and eventually broke down crying. Pryor to the crying, I was attempting to engage everyone else with movement. I realized we couldn’t move on without acknowledging whatever was wrong, so I stopped the music, and we all gave our attention to her. Someone else who didn’t know what was wrong asked and I finally knew what was wrong: someone on Myspace has posted a comment saying that her baby girl was ugly. It was one of those moments when just when I thought I’d heard it all, I soon realized I hadn’t! It was an incredulous thing—I’m thinking, Are you serious? Myspace! But yes, she was serious, and crying, and hurt. So many things were running through my mind, like how small the world must seem to her because a random comment from someone she will never meet has brought her to death threats. I was baffled, and still aware that I had to be sensitive and not judge her. We had to honor her pain collectively or there’d be no dancing—this much was clear. Everyone hugged her, assured her that her daughter was beautiful, and reminded her that the person on Myspace was a stranger and stupid and to forget them.

While the intensity of her anger saddened me, I was excited to use this as an opportunity to finally center the group. Everyone was quiet, and in a circle, at last! I asked everyone to hold hands and I introduced myself again and explained again that I am here to share some movement. I reiterated that the only way to benefit from this type of exercise was to actually participate. From this point on, we had better synergy and we actually got to the dancing!


The most energetic participant also had a one month old son. She nursed him in between dances and continued to encourage her peers from the sidelines. I showed them one of my favorite booty dances that also works the thighs like you wouldn't believe. One mother asked, "Why the booty?"--my favorite question of course. So we talked about booty power while we danced different booty moves.

After the booty energy we moved onto movement sculptures. One of the most memorable moments was when we made a group movement sculpture for “home”. Movement sculptures is a process where in we embody an idea with our bodies, literally. There are many ways to do this, and I decided to try it a new way since I had a new group. I had everyone draw a square on one side of the paper, and a circle on the other. Inside the circle you write your dream in one or two words, and in the square you write whatever is the biggest obstacle to that dream. For instance, some put lack of money and education in the square, and family or career in the circle. To make the movement sculpture, one person comes to the center and makes a pose with their body to represent the idea on her paper. We start with the obstacle idea. Others who want to support her in the process join the sculpture by representing the same idea in her own way, and attaching some part of her body to the root of the sculpture. After three or four bodies have created the sculpture, the unit takes a collective breath and morphs into the pose for the dream idea that was written in the circle. One by one, we went through the obstacle/dream pose for each person. Then at the end, we did one group pose for the idea of “home”. Everyone was eager to do this because the idea of home is so present and vital for them. I wished I had had a camera to capture their collective bodies in “home.” I was so thrilled; we’d come such a long way from the beginning of the workshop. And even more, I could see they felt empowered by the process of activating their dream of home together.



This workshop was one of the most challenging I ever had to facilitate. I appreciate all the insights I gained from the opportunity to work with these beautiful women. My ideal dance space when sharing a workshop like this would be without the presence of children, because the movement and breath work is an essential part of relaxing the mind and body, and tuning into the self. I would have prepared a mother and child workshop had I realized the strong likelihood the youth would be there. I continue to learn with each opportunity. This workshop opened me up to improving my communication style, resolving issues in the moment, switching gears to better serve surprise circumstances, and of course, remembering to laugh and have fun. If I’m having fun, we’re sure to have a good time. I am always more interested in creating a space where people are laughing, and enjoying themselves. I don’t “teach” dance, I dance with people and each time is different because the people bring new things to the process. This group brought me humility, as I was honored to be in the presence of mothers. Despite whatever course of events landed them in the shelter, they are still mothers, and are to be revered for their love and sacrifice. It was a joy to dance with them all.



More of us should have babies, become mothers, practice loving unconditionally--the world would be a happier place!

Dance Anyway!

even when you don't feel like it
move your body
dance out the tears
dance out the frustration
dance out the heartbreak
dance dance dance anyway!



even when part of your body hurts
dance with the other part
even when you think you'll sweat
dance the toxins out
even when you want to throw something
dance and fling your arms, imagining you are releasing whatever
dance even when you feel the emotions will never change
dance and pretend you're in control of the moment
dance anyway, it's healing



even when it seems you're falling
and you can't get back up this time
dance on the floor
explore new movements within limitations
find your freedom in creative solutions of moving around
and through the impossible
laugh, make sounds, jerk the body into a different temperment
if you want to cry, then cry
but keep dancing
dance dance dance anyway!

A Liberated Booty is a Liberated Being!

Peace and booty, that's how I sign a lot of emails to people, personal or professional, I do not discriminate with booty blessings! Booty as a blessing, what a radical concept. I mean we live in a world where the booty is judged on all sides--it's a sin, it's too sexual, it's a problem, it's too big, it's too small, it's for sale--and the list goes on. What did the booty ever do to get such a funky wrap? I have my ideas of course, but you'll have to come booty shake with me to really grasp the sacredness of booty. I want to share with you the magic and transformation I experienced with a group of courageous women who joined me for my first "Booty Energy Dance for Women" a few days ago at the Emergence Community Arts Collective in Washington, DC. The Bootyism is on! In fact, while reading this post, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!


We started the Bootyism with drawing our booties. I had music playing and handed out file cards and crayons. I wanted us to get out of the everyday humdrum and prepare the consciousness and the heart for diving into booty love. Honestly, I have never drawn a picture of my own booty. I picked up the crayon with no ideas in mind. I've seen my booty drawn by others because I've done figure modeling, but to draw my own...hmmm. So we sat quietly, regressing back into childs-play and crafting two-dimensional booties. Afterwards we looked at them, and passed our booties back and forth to our neighbors in the circle. Then closing our eyes, taking deep breaths, we visualized the image of our booties. I had big visions of doing a whole meditation, but my cell phone rang in the middle of some beautiful Japanese flute music, and two more sisters came to join the group, so I switched booty-gears.

Opening our eyes, and stretching out our legs we massaged our booties "walking" back and forth on our thighs. Already, as we're stretching, I am tired of hearing my own voice, but this group is quiet, and curious, and waiting for me, I assume, to tell them exactly what Booty Energy Dance is. And inside I feel like not talking, and just moving. It's always a balance, having to explain something for the Left Brain, but needing to experience the movement for the Right Brain. If you hadn't guessed, I am definitely more right-brained, and sometimes ignore the whole logistic breakdown of movement. I'm learning to balance, of course. So anyway, my lovely group of sisters seem to be relaxed and ready, so we stand and open up our hips and and feet and chest and arms with simple gestures. I really want everyone to feel comfortable, to move to their own rhythm.

I didn't explicitly say this, but I purposely don't "teach" people how to dance. I can't, even if I tried. Like I can't teach you how to make your heart beat, or how to breathe. Just so, the dance is inherent, innate. The breath is the first dance, I tell everyone. I use the words "teacher" or "students" to describe the dance workshops sometimes, but only because the general expectation is that I am going to show you how to do something. I figure if anyone is up for a new experience and comes to dance with me, she'll "learn" soon enough that her movement is her teacher. I'm just a conduit of remembrance. The reflection one might have ignored when he looks at himself in the mirror, and thus sees the light, the possibility, the life in me and my dance instead.

Booty Energy Dance evolves as play. My goal, if I can even have one, is to insight lots of laughter, sweat, and confidence in oneself. Everyone's booty is different and moves its own way. We can share movement all the time, learn someone else's booty moves, but so many of us never even experience our own booty's vibration! It's like never knowing what your own skin feels like, because you only touch others' skin to see what theirs feels like. So again, as I ask in each post, have you felt your booty dancing? Like really just put some music on and let your booty lead you to wherever? That's one of the games we played. I had burned a CD with all different types of music and every 45 seconds to a minute, I would switch the track. The music varied from R&B to hip-hop, to calypso, to classical piano, and on. I love to surprise people, and lots of new booty dances emerged on the floor.


We talked about our booty politics. How we feel about the booty in society, how we were raised to love or hate our booties, and more. The conversation was deep. My own mother talked about her negative booty feelings shaped from being teased as a child, and how she came to appreciate her big booty later in life. It's so hilarious that I am her daughter, you know, the bootyist that I am. You might think my mother was a card-carrying bootyist herself. But quite the opposite, she covers the booty religiously with blazers and skirts that are too long and jeans that are too big. On more than once I've pleaded with her to take the big, hot, shoulder-padded blazer off with that pastel outfit! But alas, I am really her daughter and it was powerful to share the workshop with my original booty shaker. Yes, your mother is your first booty initiator. Think about it, your mother and father were engaged in a sacred booty dance to conceive you, and then in a miracle, your mother "booty-danced" you out of her womb during labor. Booty dancing is essentially a return to the source of life, the origin of your experience. When you activate the booty, you allow yourself to be in tune with the life force energies! Look out around you, see the walking dead? Those not dancing, those not embracing the miracle of life within themselves? See their booties stuck and stiff, foul and molded over in fear and insecurities? Do humanity a big favor, bump booties with somebody. Save the world!

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.)

Lifelines on 57: Controlled Movement

A friend told me that we artists do not do enough to work in the unpleasant areas, that we only want to be around positive things and people, that uncomfortable places or working with people who suffered injustices is not our preference. She said we critique the system, "but don't participate in the mechanisms which address those issues head on, in a direct, programmatic way." I think the operative word here is "way," seeing as the artist's "way" is her art and making that art accessible to all. I find that people who don't self-identify as artists dissociate themselves from the artistic process, as if it is just another responsibility that can be delegated to the "Artist". However, as ALL people are artists and have essential, creative power, it is extremely problematic when even just one person decides his artistic gift is not really "art" and therefore expendable. What are these gifts? Therein lies the joy of life, discovering, embracing and owning your art. Everyone is different and everyone's art is essential to all of our lives.

So anyway, I want to share an excerpt of a book I am working on about dancing with women who are in recovery from drug abuse and who are behind bars. The movement, like all art, and life, is present everywhere. I'm reminded of the scripture about "the least of these," and that to share your art with people who have forgotten that they are beautiful and sacred and remind them that their contributions are vital to all humanity is to truly recognize the God in everyone.

The women clap when we come on the unit. There are a few seconds of hesitation as old eyes remember us and new eyes wonder at us. Who are they and what do they have to say to me, some of them peer. I am happy to see them. Relieved we made it out of the jam-packed elevator that was temporarily out of contact with the control room. Our session today is coinciding with the GED graduation so the elevator traffic is more than usual. I was squished against the hips and chests of sisters, girlfriends and mothers holding the babies of inmates. The prison escorts were exasperated that the control room hadn’t acknowledged our calls from the elevator. I didn’t know what was happening even though my claustrophobic tendencies quickly informed me that the amount of breathable oxygen would be expiring soon if we didn’t get off of that elevator. My mind raced through the possibilities of freedom and space and the ability to run! That’s when I remembered that I forfeited all of these liberties when I walked through the first set of sliding bars.

Controlled movement. That is the type of electronically-manipulated security system installed at Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF). Every five to ten feet there’s another door. You push a button and the omniscient control room approves the request to let you move on to the next door. Today though, there’s a problem.
“You see how these doors opening and closing,” a guard behind thick glass questions one of the prison administrators attempting to pass through the same interval that we are.
“Yes, what about it?” She, like the rest of us, doesn’t understand why he won’t just let us all through. Everyone has proper identification or is with an escort if they have a visitor’s badge.
“We ain’t controlling that,” he replies like a person tired of telling a bad joke.
“Well who is? Is this some kind of game y’all playing?”
“No, the doors is opening and closing on they own!” He throws his hands up from behind the glass. We look at the other guards who are perplexed at their inability to control the doors from their computers. Hmmm, I can feel everyone collectively pondering, if the doors are opening at will, can people escape? The likelihood of that doesn’t seem that high, considering the tell-tale prison uniforms and the amount of guards stationed at every exit. But wait, we gasp in unison, if the doors can close at will, could we get stuck in here!
I steer my thoughts back to the best-possible scenario: the guards fix the glitch so that we can move under their supervision again. Control makes us feel that we’re safe, freedom oftentimes being such a risk. Every moment inside the jail is ripe with contradiction. Here I am ready to teach women about moving their bodies freely, and yet it’s all taking place inside a locked-down facility. I always wonder at my work here, what is this experience of teaching freedom through moving the body when that very dancing body is simultaneously restricted to the confines of a gray and burgundy cage?

The doors decide that we can pass through to the long hallway that takes us to the elevators. A crowd of family members is already waiting to get onto an elevator where an alarm is ringing.
“Don’t get on that one!” A CTF employee yells, sticking her head out of the next elevator and motioning for all of us to jump on. “That bells means it’s stuck.” After five eternal minutes in the elevator, we finally reach our women.
Today’s theme: “POWER—My power lies within me.” Last week's session was twice as many as the week before that. Today there are even more new faces. Another duality floats into my consciousness. As a dance facilitator, I love having more people to dance with. However, the presence of more women on this unit also means that there are more people in jail than last time. I flip back and forth through my thoughts. On the one hand, I’d rather be dancing with these women on their own terms, outside in the free world. And still, my intuition tells me, I’d probably wouldn’t have crossed paths with these women if they weren’t in a structured, substance abuse recovery program.