sense & memory

in frolicking through this holiday, one in which I and me-honey mixed up a great smorgasbord of fun, food, play(s), libation, and relaxation, there was an appreciation in me of what it is to indulge in what the body wants, to give the mind (the overthinking part) a break. Twould seem easy, but i was presented with a question last week in class: how to let my body remember without my mind getting in the way? How to let the memory of what it is to move with honesty (a place I've visited before) prevail without my mental state mapping out the landscape. And being reminded that just because I've done it before (the free-your-mind-and-the-rest-will-follow part) doesn't mean it's the go-to place.

The 20+ inches of snow that fell on the NYcity helped remind me that there's no controlling the landscape or movement of anything: one day a street looks like a street, the next it's rolling mounds of white-covered hunks of steel with little side-view mirrors peaking out. Yesterday I knew where the blue mailbox on the corner was, today not so much. It's taking a chance that a train may come...or not. it's struggling in my clunky boots and hat that falls over my eyes through the icy river of an intersection gritting my teeth, then laughing when I fall on my ass in a snow drift (tho not so much when little salt pellets spray me from the salt truck. those puppies sting). it's all random. It all moves me in a way unexpected, because nobody gave me instruction on what to do as i slushed and negotiated the curb outside the front door.

Therein lies the rub: to approach it instinctually, to get up and over and sometimes land on my butt—then most likely get up again—without a solid plan. to be able to live inside the experience without building big thoughts on top that tip it over into choreography. i'm a lot less freaked out about looking silly than i've ever been before, so why not live it? no sense. no memory.

silences + discernment

Last night myself and the band of merry dance luvuhs went to see Alvin Ailey at NYs City Center, which just about brings me full circle to my first blog entry that featured Ailey at City Center on December 29, 2009. What an amazing year that has twirled me here and now (a topic to be returned to)! But specifically it dawned on me last night while watching the show that two things I've not known very intimately before are much more prevalent in my life: 1) calm and easy silence, 2) discernment.

One of the pieces, The Evolution of a Secured Feminine, my favorite (followed by a veryvery close second in a piece called "Uptown" where Clifton Brown, incredible Ailey dancer, did a solo piece to Langston Hughes "Weary Blues"), was a solo performed Brana Reed, choreographed by Camille Brown (click on the link to see a snippet). A portion of the piece was danced with no music on a bare stage featuring only a chair. For me, hearing her breathe, exert, deep ins-and-outs, feet scraping across the floor, feet landing on the floor, practically hearing her arms slice through the air was mesmerizing because, duh...dance...what do you move to if you don't have music? What do we respond to without a prompt? I've been facing those moments of finding a stimulus other than what is put in front of me to respond to. And of course breathing has been such a challenge for me, that to hear others do it loudly and necessarily is a kind of thrill. But almost as important was the realization of how uncomfortable silence can be. I may be making this up (as I am wont to do), but i sensed the audience's fidget and squirm as she moved and moved and no audible beat came from the sound system. no amplification, only the rhythm of her body language.

Silence with others has always been a challenge for me (when on my own it's no problem, i don't even talk to my cats, which is the reason as i understand it, some people actually own cats, but then the little beasts never pay attention to what i say anyway...). With people around, my go-to place has been to fill those expanses up because they made me nervous. My sense of What Are They Thinking? kept me from letting myself figure out what I'm thinking. It's been a big part of my dazzle and look-over-there-shiny-object way to distract before anyone can think or form an opinion. Gasp...an opinion that might not be favorable to/of me if i was just still. This last year I made leaps and bounds in the still department, much of it to do with learning how to move in class from my stillness (while attempting to remember to breathe), and also to do with my realization that i just can't control what people think and do. boy-oh-boy did i get that lesson this year. While wrapping my head around events that happened in the dark silences of my marriage, trying to wrap my arms around relationship echoes, and wrapping my mind around the knowledge that everything was going forward noisily anyway, I found myself giving up to the realization that it had to fall apart. It seemed like the kind of quiet that may happen in the calm before a storm or the eye of a tornado. Something that is quieter than quiet itself. Now I find myself sharing a space with someone where being quiet can be very very intimate, where I don't feel i have to prove by saying. Where my friends know me without hearing me get vociferous about stuff.

And so she danced with no pre-recorded soundtrack.

On discernment: I used to take the first thing that came along, just in case nothing else appeared...i'd learn to like what i got. I used to think that once the moment was in front of you, you had to like everything about it, because to admit flaws was to sully the experience. Last night at Ailey, I realized that there were some parts I really liked and some parts that left me cold. But the experience and view as a whole were absolutely worth it. And as I dance that out into the world I'm realizing that it's so much more fun to run my hands over the smooth bits and the flaws (which actually make the smooth bits that much better).


(this pic* is for me a good example of my eye of storm...the music had stopped playing, the joy was ongoing, the sound was only of click-click-click, the smile came from a place of knowing I'd chosen this. worked hard to get to this quiet place where I could feel/show me: flaws and all. Heather, the photographer, is also amazing at letting her subjects get to that place. Check out her website to set up your very own quiet riot: divavoom.com)


*stay tuned for more pics to come.

through a lens lightly

LA. Land of my youth. land of my leaving. land of my ex (recently). land being reclaimed (now). I was there last week for Thanksgiving and the city was tinged with a slightly different light. A good portion of my favorite people are there (father and friends), and I loved seeing them, still flashed on and visited places that make me smile (Fred's, Le Figaro, Jumbo's, the offramp on the 5 where last year, when Led Zeppelin's "Dancing Days" came on the radio, I became a teenager again and sang the lyrics out the window into traffic...loudly), but this time I didn't feel pulled between there and here. I just felt happy to be there and just as happy to be coming back to NYC. I did give thanks in what a difference a year makes. Especially when I went to the studio to take a class.

Last November something most definitely cracked open in me after an immersion class in the LA studio. I think of it as the beginning of my realization of how much i needed to slow down and let myself be seen--and to feel everything i did. everything. And so began a chain reaction of events throughout this last year that dipped into darkness, lifted into light and oftentimes simply coasted on curiousity regarding who i was becoming. For that I am extremely thankful and happy. This year as I sat on the floor in class, not knowing anyone and feeling fine about that, the comment I heard after my dance was to be more selfish. to hold more for myself. not give it away (which given my recent experiences as I show people my apartment to sublet is something I should just tattoo on my arm: Do Not Give It Away. eeek.) But I sense a theme: altho for maybe the first time in front of a new teacher I wasn't told to breathe, I was asked to see what it would be like to think of what I want first and move from there. This is an interesting moment for me. Especially as it would be the first time being in a relationship where I didn't put him in front of me. But in understanding that the essence of selfish in a good way is to support and live out the best that i have to offer unabashedly--kind of like in the airplane safety video that everyone ignores about putting the oxygen mask on yourself first--I'm feeling my way toward what it's like to understand and express my own happiness without it being parceled out and dependent on anyone else. Yes, it's true that I'm smiling most when the people i care about are in my life, but i'm also a grinning fool when something seems to be going a bit awry yet it's not the end of the world. Ok, so sometimes i may just feel the fool and/or the grin is more like a grimace, but the moment comes and the moment goes. And I'm still breathing.

This year in LA, the moments were sweet and funny and even featured a grimace, but as they dropped from the sky, I took them happily for myself first and found I had plenty of air to share from there.