Beyond

Really. Seriously. This picture makes me feel as if I'm stretching for heaven upside down. I can actually feel the stretch in my hamstrings, back, arms, even toes and fingers, brain and soul when I look at this. It's a still from the movie La Danse, a most amazing film following the Paris Opera Ballet as they prepared for a recent season. My favorite choreographer featured is Wayne McGregor, and this is one move from his piece. What attracts me so much in his work is that the emotion and wonder for what the body can do isn't hidden, the sweat and elasticity it takes to achieve these movements isn't covered up at all by costumes. It's all out there. Look. See the tendons, the quiver. You can practically feel it coming off the stage.

My friend Becky, she of my merry band of dance luvuhs, suggested I keep a dance diary. Such a good idea, and after seeing this movie I scribbled something in it about how I was struck by the fact that I could see every one of the five senses being engaged with these dancers, and how I was completely transported by that connection. (Kind of the difference between seeing Showgirls and All That Jazz: while both have visible bruises all over their celluloid body, the former tries to hide them with glitter, while the latter gleefully pushes their purpleness in our face, an action I'll take any day.)

Connecting to the senses is something I've been struggling with recently in my own movement. I took a class with with an S teacher who was so prescient in reading my body that what she kept saying to me as I danced was Breathe! At one point she said Be Careful, and it took me aback. I thought, Well, yes, in fact I'm climbing up a pole, but I'm not going to fall.... After class as we talked, she explained what she'd meant: That in not breathing, I couldn't fully experience my senses and hence wasn't able to explore my movements. I was fleeing from my dance rather than wrapping around it. There was no touch for my hands and feet to feel the beauty of the floor or the pole (and we're not talking pointed toes here), my eyes (whether open or closed) were not seeing what was possible, my nose was not taking in the air to move me forward, my ears were not hearing the spaces in between the notes—the quiet and powerful spaces that speak as loudly as the bass and guitar, my mouth was not tasting the confidence that could come with all the pleasure of my movement. She was so right in that I've been running from the power in me, and as with everything I learn in the studio, these words resonate out into my whole life...the dance of my every day.