Today 9th of August 2021. My dance is once more starting on the floor.
I quite ungracefully slide of the end of my bed and arrive on the hard wooden floor. These days I prefer a mat or two. The floor really brings my bones into the sharp end of my awareness along with the smaller range of movement in most of my joints. Sinead O’Connor sings ” Thank you for hearing me” and it feels like my bones are speaking these words to me in anticipation that I will listen to them and to the rest of my body. They are hopeful of nourishing breath to revive and ease them and it is true that I sometimes forget to breath! Why is that I ask? Does it seem somehow not necessary? In my head I know that is not right! Does it feel like taking up too much of something? Air, Space ? Does it feel somehow ugly ? Perhaps I simply take my breath for granted, expect my body just to get on with it. But at some point down the movement I am going to have to take in more oxygen. The purpose of this movement practice is to feel more flexible, more free, more alive and to lift my body mind and spirit! Breath is needed for all of that. I am reminded many times of Anna Halprin. ” Dance is Breath Made Visible” Back to basics, to the very start, the very core of movement lead by the breath!
“Aging is like enlightenment at gunpoint. I have always said that dance is the breath made visible. That covers about everything because once you stop breathing and the breath is no longer visible, you stop moving”
“Just as the ancients danced to call upon the spirits in nature, we too can dance to find the spirits within ourselves that have been long buried and forgotten”
Anna Halprin
Back to the floor! Slowly, caring for the bits that don’t bend, the achy bits and the bruised bits! It feels like some bits of me would break if pushed where they no longer can go. Adaptation, finding what works, what feels good. Stretching feels good. The long diagonal stretches just following the breath and the weight of my body in that first small movement. Curling and uncurling on back front and sides. The music changes. Robbie Robertson ” Walk in Beauty” What would that be like? Could I love this old body enough to walk in beauty?
Breath is Beauty
I am urged to stay with the positive frame, to give out positive in order to receive positive. Often this doesn’t work and I become drained and tired.
Perhaps with real movement, real work.
Not just to accept the mundane,
The old negativity, the old patterns.
The old ‘norms’ to be expected.
What if this precious time left,
could be spent differently?