passing on a performance of "fear, yes, and freewheeling"

Magical dancers in rehearsal for "fear, yes, and freewheeling"

I have already let go. I let go days ago. Physically, yes, I passed on this dance in each of our rehearsals. But I believe in an essential exchange of words:

"This dance is now yours."

It's a ritual passing of ownership. And for a piece all about rituals creeping back into my existence, this was an important ritual for me. It's not just movement that transfers from one body to the next, but trust and psychic energy. Letting go and passing things along opens the project--the baby--up to newness. Things you didn't create explicitly. But things you set in motion. 

I didn't have a baby this year, I had a dance. 

How do we pass things on? And what a strange phrase it is, "passing on." Death with dignity. Give and take. There is movement to it, momentum. Ancestry. I think of my mother, passing on my grandfather's brother's ring. I never take it off.

Right before showtime, when we get down to the wire,  it's interesting to see what my expectations are. What last burst of brilliance can I share? Of course it's too late. I know that. The dance is done. It's all pent-up potential energy now. I spent months doling it out to dancers. What nuance is left to be eked out? Unexpected rhythms will rush, galumph, soar, roam. It's quite literally out of my hands.

A week or two ago, out of nowhere, I finished this piece. I put my head down, did the work, and we woke up on the other side with a dance. Months ago, in the nascent stages of this work, I envisioned chaos and a painful lurching to the finish line. I saw us all in my mind--disheveled, distraught and drained. I continued to work. I know what I know. And my body tells the stories I know only subconsciously. Primordially. As with all magic, a surge of energy emerges. Muse-like. Muted grays and blues come through with hints of ruffled underskirts. Unknown rituals take shape and organize a set of strangely specific rules. I write things down again and again, tilling and culling the good bits. I put them forth into the rehearsal room, week after week.

Now here we are. Now is the moment right before costumes and makeup and final eyes-closed-here-we-go. I am almost not needed. There is no more time for choreography. There is room only for words.

What I say and how I say it matters. Dancers need to know this work belongs to them. It has been passed on. They need to know that "lights up" means in-the-moment intuition is everything. They alone make the work sing. They are the work itself. They are free.

I jumble out these words as best I can. The dancers nod. I sit on a blue-cushioned chair, waiting.What happens? A dance unfolds that I've never seen and I'll never see again.

A door I didn't know existed opens up to heart-rushing spontaneity. The dancers' animal instincts mischievously ask "what next?" They soar on adrenaline and bleeding, bandaged feet. An essential pause happens where there was no pause before. The dancers hang. Centers of gravity drop. Eyes wash over as physical command takes over. Hearts are along for the ride. I sit with the witnesses. We unhinge. We lean in.

a no show

I happen to look up.

One silent hawk circles

Broad and easy overhead.

He joins 3 or 4 more.

They circle off into the distance.

I look down again.

I hear the call of something,

A trill. 

A “ha ha ha ha.”

The tall, slender trees 

talk to each other, creaking.

The water ripples, coldly,

un-rushed but not slow.

Things move on.

The wind in my hair,

Birds in the distance,

Calling, seeking,

Lessening, deepening.

A felled tree, like a bridge,

Reaches half way across the river.

It is green on the other side, always.

But it is green on my side, too.

I hear the rush of something,

Like a highway, far away.

A muffled “vrrrrr, vrrrrr.”

I think of standing in the quiet, 

sacred center of Central Park 

And still hearing traffic. 

The roar in the distance 

Proves to be the wind 

Sightlessly moves through trees.

A storm is not coming, 

but I think of how the air feels 

When one is on its way.

The invisible roar reaches us—

Me and the birds and this creaking tree—

And a quiet, full feeling emerges.

I take part.

The talking tree groans side to side

Springing to life, saying,

unsteadiness, readiness. 

Water moves under the dock.

I sit. I stand. 

I soften my knees and rock into my heels.

My cold hands know

This world is sunless, radiant,

Breaking away.

A fish!

A blop!

A blip in the continuum.

I drop down.

The sun is up there, somewhere

Behind this grey.

I might wait.

A fish!

I might not.

Thanks to the Edward H. McCabe Nature Preserve for the space to breathe. 

Blurring the Edges

A pond view at Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, DE

While we rounded the native plant gardens at Mt. Cuba Center, walking literally at a snail’s pace and enamored with unfurling ferns and spurts of hidden beauty, our docent Lauri spoke to us about edging. There is the canopy—the vertical forest, the high-up umbrella, the celestial sky touchers, the cloud mates, the trees. They sway in gentle bows and arcs, rustling newly formed leaves. Below the bird nests and owl haunts, lives the forest floor—the blanketed earth dwellers, the lay of the land, the ground lovers, the short-statured panoply, the low cover art. 

As you pan from the trees to the underbrush, your eye might glaze across the neighboring meadow, a wide open space swept with an open-hearted feeling and a smattering of small birds. But go back. Slowly pan backwards to the base of the trees. Right on the outskirts. There. Between the forest and the meadow is an edge. It’s not a hard-stop, but a gradual gradation of vegetation…a whole other habitat. 

At Mt. Cuba, they encourage purposeful edging. The edge of the forest is not manicured and trimmed like a formal garden. It’s more amorphous and subtle. It meanders. It changes. It flows. The gardeners allow an edge to not be an edge. It’s not sharp or cutting or clean. They foster the role of edges as transition, as places in-between. 

Yesterday, while teaching yoga, while shifting my weight forward and back and side-to-side on my feet, I thought about edging. I thought about how I often describe our feet as snow shoes. I use the image to explore the function of feet as easeful weight bearers, wide and long. I imagine my Snow Shoe Feet moving out infinitely in all directions, touching the base of the walls and moving out beyond and beyond. And so, in that moment of shifting weight, edging made sense. There is no hard-stop between the skin of my feet and the surrounding air. There is a much less-definable boundary between “me” and “you.” There is a breathable transition, a slow slope between my body (and what I imagine it to be) and the rest of the world. 

This edge might be an aura. Or energy. Or the prickling of hair standing upright on arms. It could be the breeze or wings or a draping of sunlight. It’s a glow, a blush, a hush. It’s heat rash, a good sweat, and waves of emotion. It’s both a chill and a warming rush. 

My edge is the part of me that reaches out, the part that feels the magic of expanding my arms out into space. That’s not nothing. In fact, it’s everything. Because part of you is standing stock still, watching the cherry blossoms blow in the wind. And part of you is riding the air with them, just out of reach. 

The edge is the part of you that intimately knows the moon and her moods. The part of you that knows the joys and the sorrows of the ocean. 

We can breathe life into our edging, allowing it to be exactly what we need…protection, safety, comfort, peace, possibility, support, strength, buoyancy, uplift, empathy, instinct. We can surround ourselves with the light we emanate. There is no hard-stop between our feet and the floor, between the breeze and the back of your neck. 

Now when I wander through towns and houses and gardens, I see hard-stops everywhere. 

This is my space, that is yours. My land is here, don’t go past this line in the dirt. The path is clean-cut and clear. My mulch is not yours. This is the end of the forsythia, there is no more. The weeping cherry has an embarrassing bowl cut, it can’t reach out in surprising tendrils. The boxwood can’t brush your legs accidentally. 

And I am looking for softness, empathy. 

I am starting to think about what thrives in my in-between spaces, in my edges as they blur. I am thinking about my edges as I approach you with the wind moving through open palms. 

Shadows loom large over the underbrush at Mt. Cuba 

a cup of weird and wild

WONDERFUL (adj.):
"way up in the sky, like a witch," as defined by Princess

WEIRD (adj.):
"to turn, to wind, to become"

WILD (adj.):
"fantastically irregular, inhabiting the forest"


The coffee heats in the pot as I watch--mystical, magic, mysterious. It's a simple task I do every day, heating coffee on the stove. Today was different. Today I am alive. My eyes are wild, my brain is unhinged and I finally (oh) saw what happens.

And I have no earthly idea how it happens--change. Coffee into steam. Heated so hot there is no other choice but to "yeowp!" and become air.

This pot, this steam, it transcends...just because I opened my eyes today and watched it. I actually watched a pot boil. No music, no radio, nothing on. Just me in silence with a silent wet dog sitting just as attentively at my feet. She has the gift of seeing, of wanting to see. She taps into the world through animal instincts--her starts and her fits and her need to see everything that catches her eye or her nose. Freezing mid-step to listen, to see way, way, way off into the distance. No future, just now. Friend or foe? Something delicious? The feeling of warm wind as we move forward.

I feel more grounded. The screen on my window beside me is smeared with rainwater. Earlier, I saw pansies in pots drowning in rain. They'll dry or they won't. They'll die or they won't. There will be more. I am here, writing. Carrie said, write! And I am. I resisted the urge to go to the store or settle into some unimportant task. This is the thing. This is the fire. If I don't follow it, I'm...

I am following it. I am writing. I am collecting and gathering words. I am here. I am calling out for words. And sentences! I am ready. I am doing the writing and I AM SAFE HERE.

I am moving through the fear with this small pen. It may run out of ink, but I won't. My new pens say, "ink joy" on them. That's the kind, the line, the brand, the style. I was a copywriter for years and I know when something hits, when something lands. I know I bought those pens because they say "ink joy" on them. I am calling out to the pens, "Pens! Please, Pens! Let the joy come through, the weird and the wild joy. The WONDER.

Is that was that was? Wonder? Finally! Standing over a pot and watching it boil. Well, almost. No one wants burnt coffee. Standing over a pot, wonderful like a witch, watching the air call to the coffee, enticing it to let go, to become steam, then air, then something...else. I know how that all happens, of course. The changes. Or I know at least how it happens. You heat something, add an edge. And at a certain temperature, "yeowp!" you have steam. But how wonderful! What a mystery. This steam circling the pot, rising, disappearing into thin air. What an illusion, this trick. Here, not here. How beautiful! How weird. Turning, winding, becoming. "Having power to control fate."

I don't feel like I am controlling fate. If I've learned anything in this coffee-spilling world it's that I have control over NOTHING.

BUT.

(Ring of my wind chimes. The wind is changing.)

I do feel that I have dropped into something...else...my intuition. A smidge. An iceberg tip. I have come to a deeper knowing of my body down here in this stream below my every day. In the pulse, I know what I am, what I have always been, and will always be (even when I am a lilac bush--soft, purple, quiet).

I will be weird, wonderful and wild.

I am here.

In the thick of brain meeting body meeting, I..."oh, hello soul. So nice to see you."

The steam is changing into air, into rain, into stream, a deeper seeing. I won't always swim here. I won't always drop down. I won't always watch the coffee almost boil with white hot intensity.

But today I did.

And that is everything.





With a nod and a tip of the hat to Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. 

The Magic of Controlled Chaos

Magic spaces appear everywhere when your mind's eyes are open.

Here is the 6th attempt at answering my own question in the dance writing bonanza. And if you're in Delaware and you're looking to see dance in March (some of it made by my own two feet), scroll all the way down to the University of Delaware Dance Concert information. 

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 6: CONTROLLED CHAOS
How do other aspects of your life filter into the way you experience dance?

I am a writer.
Dancing speaks to the writer in me, the storyteller who knows dream-logic is true. Dancing is real-time and dream-time blended. Movement tells me what I need to know and withholds what I don't. It's my timeline (movement moves forward in time and space) where I can revel in timelessness.

I am quiet.
When I dance, wordlessness is welcome. Allowing my thoughts and emotions to travel through my vocal chords and out into the world is, to put it mildly, difficult for me. It doesn't happen often in real time (i.e. during a conversation with fellow human beings). When someone asks "How do you feel?" I can legitimately say, "I don't know." Yes, I'm working on it. But in the meantime, dancing puts me in direct touch with emotion--letting it out, letting it in, letting it rage or fester or swoon or mope. Moving actually shakes everything up and helps me process, cope. Afterwards, I'm able to move on to the next moment, the next emotion. It's like going for a walk or a run when you need to make a decision, only I'm rolling around on the floor and hanging upside down.

But I am bossy. 
Dancing satiates and kick-starts my intense needs for both control and chaos. I can hold control and chaos in the same movement phrase. I walk a line between spontaneity and set action. I can loose control and steal it back again. I can be bossy and set things in motion and then enjoy what happens inevitably or unexpectedly. I like setting people in motion. I can feel both masterful and like an absolute beginner in the same breath. Dancing feeds my ego and then bats it down to the floor like a stinky dog toy. I identify as a dancer and always will. However, I'm moving off the dance floor and into the role of the old lady who sits in a chair and commands the action. I like that role. I think I was born to play it. As I get the heck out of the way, I take my own physicality out of the picture. I can play choreographer and director. The piece I am making right now has very little of my own innate movement in it and that's a good thing. The work can become it's own thing instead of a forced reflection of me. I'm giving it away, I'm trusting my dancers. And they step in and stun me with their brave choices and embodied commitment.

I am a teacher.
I like passing dance down. I like sharing it with total beginners. I love being a student's first introduction to physical freedom. It's eye-opening. It's bliss: "Here, look. This is who we can be in our bodies." It's magic to observe how the room becomes charged. We walk in at first afraid. A dusty floor. It's hot or cold or just right. We are in sweats and zippies and socks. We don't talk or just laugh, nervously. I take attendance. We stand up. We can't settle. We close our eyes. We are embarrassed. We breathe. We move. And then we are made new. Everyone is through the wormhole and into the gleaming everything. This is it. As silly as it sounds, it's a soul trek, an awakening, a "yes I am part of this world fully right now." When I see that dawn in the face of an eight-year-old or a college kid or a sixty-five-year-old curiosity seeker, I am whole.

I am along for the ride.
How do we start? How do we let people in (both the movers and the moved?). That space-clearing first action is so important and there are infinite ways to do it. A handshake. A sage cleanse. Eyes closed and breathing. Turing the lights out. Settling people down and down and in and in. The incomparable choreographer Tere O'Connor considers this moment a deep and profound shift in perspective. How do you create that crucial, initial transformation, that trust? He probably grinned as he told his dancers, "magic space, people." It's a simple vote of confidence, a waving of the wand, an "all aboard!"

I am always a student.
Leave the everyday. Embrace falling. Reach out. Trust the space. One step leads to another (oh yeah, I remember).


In Delaware? Check out my latest work...
University of Delaware Dance Concert, Perpetual Artistry  
Friday March 13th and Saturday March 14th @ 7:30 
Mitchell Hall (South College Ave and The Green)
Newark, DE
$10 adults / $5 students
Info:  Call 302.831.3311 or email kschroed@udel.edu

Legs! Know How to Use Them!

springing off the edge of the earth

Presenting the next installment of the dance writing bonanza...

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 5:  LEGS! KNOW HOW TO USE THEM!
Get nerdy. What is the function of the leg joints? How does ease and efficiency of movement help you dance?


plié

to bend, to fold
easy springing
bouncing like a baby swing
fat, happy feet
barely boinging off the floor
a trampoline effect
catch and release

an intimate and simultaneous connection to earth and sky

simple support
locomotion, shock absorption
a spring in your step
legs hold us up
and deserve sympathy
respect, kindness
receptivity and resilience

the beginning of a step, a jump, a leap
the base of a laugh

the reverse antennae for trembling in the earth

receive information
gracefully
from your roots
and let it travel unfettered
to your hips, your head

it's your rhythm
the legs you stand on
it's dip, sway and swing
a brand new thing
with every step

Doubt Rears its Heady Head, Volume 4 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Finding my way while losing it or losing my way while finding it?

Number 4 in the dance writing bonanza series.

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 4:  DOUBT REARS ITS HEADY HEAD 
OR:  THE QUESTION SPIRAL
What questions and challenges are you currently encountering? 

I was fresh off a triumphant feeling of wholeness. I was centered, if not in body, at least on the page. I spent all morning yesterday writing about when and why I feel centered. I wrote about how I make it happen. I felt confident, a rare gem in my self-tripping emotional arsenal.

And then I sat down to answer my next question. It happened to be about questions themselves: "What questions and challenges are you currently encountering?" 

And all hell broke lose in my brain. Resistance. Panic. Anger. Who would ask such an exposing, soul-peeling question. Why am I taking this so terribly (and being such a baby)?

When I originally posed this question to my students, I meant it in the context of taking a dance class. I wanted them to share what confused them in class--techniques, concepts, knowing Right from Left. "My hamstrings feel tight when I hang over my legs...what can I do?" "When we perform in class, I feel silly. Does that change?" "What is Modern Dance and why would I sign up for it?"

Okay, I realize I am asking for exposure. Vulnerability. And I see when I pose the question to myself, I take it personally. This question raises my hackles. I want to skip it. Who's going to care if I erase this one little question? Me. Alright. But why would I ask this? It feels like a personal assault. That's extreme, but I feel exposed (just like my beginners do when I ask them to open their arms and their hearts). I want to smooth over this ultra-open wounded feeling with a light, pithy answer that doesn't scratch the surface. But I know I'm going in. I don't know where it's going to go. Here we go.

(Side note. I originally asked my students to answer these questions with a meaty paragraph or two and no more. It was a way to quickly capture their thoughts and reactions and gauge how the class was landing in their brains. Somehow, though, when I sit to answer these questions myself, they hit emotional sweet spots (and sore spots) and the answers have become long diatribes of delirious discourse. So be it. Hey, Queen of Distractions and Sidebars...come on back to the task.)

This question cuts to my core--my balanced, enlightened, groovy core that was so light and bubbly only yesterday. When I begin to answer this question, I don't think of my technique-laden dance answers. I take it as an affront to the way I live my life. I see and feel all the blocks that keep me from being fully myself. My blocked creativity, my procrastination, my collection of degrees sitting idly, the work I do that I could do better, the feeling that I'm not good enough, the judgement of myself that I feel so strongly that I superimpose it onto the way other people look at me. Oh, those challenges. The "how do I make it through the day with something to say" challenge.

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnnit..." confirms Stuart Smalley of Saturday Night Live yesteryear. I would say that for most of the time, I'm on board with this. I'm more on board with "good enough" than I've been in several years. But there are triggers, questions that cut, things that make me question the status quo. Doubt rears its ugly head and change is certainly, constantly, on the horizon.

When I first tackled (avoided) this question, I wrote down a list of other questions in my notebook. I never answered the original query. I just evaded it with more questions. I think that list boils down to two essential questions for me:

Why can't I get started? What is holding me back?

I have so much I want to do. I can feel my potential bursting at the seams. I keep it down. I keep it humble. I downplay myself. I have so much I want to do, I can't do any of it. It's too important. It's the BEST DANCE IN THE WORLD syndrome. THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL syndrome.

For the past few years, I essentially stopped rehearsing. I didn't bounce many ideas off anyone. I called myself a dancer but I didn't dance. I called myself a writer who wanted to write. I was waiting for something...a lightning bolt, an invitation, a cushy supportive artsy job...I don't know. I was waiting for an external fire starter. I didn't have the juice or the balls or the hutzpah to just begin. I felt "underwater" or "behind myself"or "perpetually wearing old glasses with an outdated prescription." I watched the world move without me. I couldn't write about movement if I was still. I was sad. I was underground. All the while, I blamed the world for holding me back and not giving me a chance. When I finally turned off the music and the podcasts and the TV and the running water I noticed that it was my own vice grip on myself that held me back. I fell into the classic artistic trap..."If I don't share anything with the world, it won't judge me." The unfinished work in my head remained pristine, unchallenged and showstoppingly awesome. MacArthur Genius Grant good. And invisible.

For years, untouched artwork laid inert in my ratting brain, sometimes boing-ing into my consciousness as "AUGHHHHHH!!! I never did that!" And then I'd go buy groceries or make soup. All good things. But it wasn't words on a page. It wasn't finishing my half-finished dance film. It certainly wasn't getting anything off the ground. My heart pounded silently and only I heard the call. I changed the channel.

But I knew I needed to write. I knew if I got that started, it would unlock so much.

And hey, I wasn't a slug. "Check the records. I did some stuff," retorts Bill Murray in Scrooged. I taught, I performed, I choreographed. I dusted off my leg warmers. Again, all good things, things I love. But it wasn't work for me. It wasn't the work that rumbles right under my skin.

Last year, I laid some groundwork. I connected with friends and family and fellow creators. I read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and it shook me to the core. It woke me up. It sparked a writing practice however irregular. It taught me to get the contents out of my head while my inner critic is out to lunch. I read Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon and agreed with every word. But I have yet to really show anything.

So the writing books keep coming, like beacons, like life rafts, like reminders to !?$#@$ WRITE. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is underway. I've decided the embark on her 12-week creative recovery program officially on March 1st. I'll let you know how it goes.

I am calling out to the world again. I am saying what I mean. I am doing the work again. I am awake if only for this moment. 

I know what was holding me back was me. I know that anything that still holds me back is me. I know I've opened the door enough to sneak through and keep running my pen along the page and see where it goes. I know I need to tell you I'm writing. I know I need to write.

I don't know if I've answered the original question. I don't know if that matters. What matters is that I'm here writing now, I'm practicing.

That's what this is, just practice. A friend asked me what I'm doing with grinbearmove. What is it? It's just practice. I'm writing about movement, however that comes. I'm opening myself up to the process.

Is that what you asked for, Teach? Next question.

Center of Your Universe, Volume 3 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Your gut knows more than you give it credit for...

Hello! The dance writing bonanza continues...

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's 
VOLUME 3:  CENTER OF YOUR UNIVERSE
What is center? What does it mean to feel centered? Have you ever felt this way? What centers you? What brings you back to a feeling of home base? 

A plumb line down the middle. That's your center line. The intersection of imaginary dotted, yellow lines that criss-cross and dissect you...that might be a center of sorts. Center is heart, but also the belly. It's hard to choose between the two. Some days center is deep down in the bowl of your pelvis, driving the ship. Gut reactions emanate from your center, the middle of your personal starfish. You might think of it as moving through the molten, viscous layers--lava, magma, mantle, more, less--to the core. All the dots connect to the center. It's where we store our heat, a starting place.

Ideally, it's the awake hub of connection. It's how you stem forth. Creativity lies in store at the core. Impulse, a shifting of weight. It's deep, man.

But often we think of center as superficial. We think abs. We think muscles and six packs and simple-minded strength. It might be "fitness" or "fashion." It might be our self-inflicted judgement of our core. When we're operating on the surface layers of our body, of our emotions, we can't imagine our center as intelligence. Nevertheless, there they are, our Spidey Senses, our intuition. If we don't connect to belly breath, we can't fully embody our fingertips.

In my sweetly insane, psychedelic teacher talk, I call branching out from the middle "starfishing out." Like totally. Total connectivity. Firing on all your cylinders starts from a warm core.

Trust your gut, eh? It's true. You can go anywhere from center. But here's the thing. We block. We don't breathe. We clench for years on end. We hold on for dear life and don't let go and then can't feel. (Hands up if you're feelin' this...oh you in the front row...yes you! The author, hello! Yes, this is familiar. Okay, then. It's okay.). We miss subtlety. We miss softness. We miss shaping our torso to embody and enhance our moods. Our sensitive side bodies and dreaming back bodies are waiting. The sides of us we can't see. They need life breathed into them like a fish needs water. We lock center away in its own vault and hope we never have to face it--the contents, the emotion, the injury, the pain. We "hold it in," or more violently "suck it in." Ah, language. How you cut. But where does our gut go, let alone trusting it? What if we were to hold compassion at our core, or the vaguest inkling of it. The beginning. What if we could float and swim softly in the middle of things.

Try this. Stand up and close your eyes. Float for a minute. Let your body catch itself. It knows how. Yawn your arms way up. Climb an imaginary ladder. Hang from the sky. Let your arms sift down at your sides. Undo your mental belly belt. I take no responsibility if you undo your real belt. Let the corners of your mouth turn up. Know this. You have all the support you need. Breathe into the edges of your skin. Fill fully. Expand not just the front of your belly but the sides, the back. There you are. Hello.

When I'm centered, I feel heavy and light at the same time. I feel the earth under my feet. I know myself. I trust myself. I have access to and permission from my whole body. My blood pressure drops, my breath slows, my eyeballs soften in their sockets. I "see" in a new way. I am both clear-headed and full of creative energy. I feel ready.

So, yes, I have felt centered. But I don't give myself this opportunity as often as I should. I hold back. I keep myself away. Or I look for center in quick fixes...like 7 minutes before class. But, folks, here is what it takes for me to center myself...

• Lying on the floor for an indefinite amount of time
• Breathing slowly and moving just as non-fast
• Working through a series of subtle, serious, silly, sumptuous, stately, starfish-y moves 
• My body's the boss...whatever it calls for shall be done
• Continue for at least 45 minutes
• Consider a down dog
• Roll up, stand and see who I am when I arrive on my feet
• Roll down and up and down and up the spine indefinitely until I feel a surge of something...inspiration, clarity or a true connection to core (an uplift and a downshift)

So, after an hour, I'm ready to "begin." I am free to move, although I've been moving all along. It takes me that long to say hello and see what's happening. And the whole time it's bliss and boring and nerdy and fraught and free. Yeah, like everything.

What centers me? Warm mugs on cold days. Hard wood floors and socks. Empty studios with patches of sunlight. Unexpected stars on crisp, clear nights. Hushed voices of trusted teachers. Green bell-bottomed sweat pants. Quinoa with chick peas and avocado and greens and good olive oil. Etta the dog exhaling. My old wooden spoon and making soups. Or lately, it's risotto. Homebase is the table that Tim built. A finally, consistently made bed. Our front porch light on. A clean kitchen. A set task...write for at least the length of this incense stick. Ok fine.

Center is breathing into my belly and just that. Center is the expansiveness of just this.

Alignment / Body Nerds Unite! VOLUME 2 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Alignment in action after action after action in the studio

Hi! Here's Take 2 in in the dance writing bonanza. 


Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 2:  ALIGNMENT / BODY NERDS UNITE!
What is your experience of alignment and posture? Where do these ideas come from in your history? Is alignment changeable?

Ideas of alignment are so ingrained in my dancing history that I hardly know how I would stand without dance. Since I can remember, being in dance class meant a longing for an unachievable up-ness. A noble pursuit, but for gravity. Jump up, head up, eyes up, kick your legs way up. Go for the superhuman. Teach a bear to fly.

My mother was always worried about slouching. We have a familiar, familial history of casual schlumping, and it even had a name:  the famously sweet "Benesch Slouch" on my mama's side of the family. No one was a hunchback by any means; I don't remember anyone really slouching. It was just a fear of slouching. Nevertheless, to her unending credit, my mom has done miraculous, heart-opening things in her yoga practice. Plus, her natural effervescence and buoyancy keep her perpetually youthful and up. It keeps me up, too.

Erika and I hang in the balance

A true, tactile experience of alignment (a stacking of bone, form as function, standing flow) didn't creep into my awareness until college. Then it began to simmer and steep during the magic of grad school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain. In my first week, Jan Erkert (who now heads up the program) was an invaluable guest artist for a workshop on "teaching dance." I wasn't yet a teacher. I thought I could be, but at 24, I hadn't really taught a soul. I didn't even have the confidence or courage to "audition" as a graduate teaching artist for my first semester, so I spent my grad assistant hours filing dance articles (probably reading them more than filing them). Jan has us do a simple walking exercise with a partner--walking and observing our partner in motion. What do you see? A simple beginning I've done in many forms many times over since then, but it was the dawning of seeing habits. Feeling them, really. Finding out what's been dormant or chronic or shining or painful. Who are we when we step forward? At the time, I was a young woman weeks away from a haunting hamstring injury that speaks to me still, 13 years later. Hello, body. Which foot is always first? What happens if the other foot is first. I didn't yet know.

Grad school was rich with...are there adjectives worthy?...outrageously gifted teachers. I received Laban and Bartenieff Fundamentals teachings from Sara Hook and Sara Lampert Hoover. I took Alexander Technique and Kinesiology with Rebecca Nettl-Fiol and Alexander and Ballet with Luc Vanier. I danced in class with Cynthia Oliver and Renée Wadleigh. I uncovered the joys of yoga with Linda Lehovec. I could go on. This is only scratching the surface of teachers and talents. I could write for years and never touch the knowledge I was exposed to or the gratitude I feel for being lucky enough to be there. Writing about it makes me little-kid wish with eyes squeezed shut that I was back in that wonderful womb of self-inquiry. It's hard to do on my own. But this post is a start, eh? We press on, aligning as we go. For a few different classes, I mapped my body, literally. A friend would help me crime-scene trace my outline, then I would color myself happy with crayons, adding emotion, injury, imagination, budding anatomical know-how.

(Side note...I am perched on the very edge of a cushion on the very edge of a chair that is too low for this table to write. Right leg is haphazardly over the left, half asleep. My head is in my hand and my spine, as is customary, is windswept to the right. Left-handedly I scrawl outside of every line. So...)

It may be as simple as saying "bending my knee changed my life." My experience of alignment (and therefore the world) has its roots in unlocking my knees. My hyperextension pushed my knees way back. I'm sure my whole teenage persona hinged on my precarious locked-back legs and swayed hips cocked and locked and ready for nothing. I even had a habit of snapping and jerking my knee back to get it to "pop" like a knuckle. Violent.

Thankfully, gracious and wise teachers have led me towards an ease in my joints, a softening to lengthen. Invite the "micro bend," as a true body nerd might know it. Now, alignment for me is like breathing before I speak. It's a fluid give and take, a kindness. It's sensual rather than stiff, a supple awareness, an ever-growing out to grow in.

Up to go Down

I like to say "hanging from the sky," and I do. More and more my movement images ingrain themselves in my psyche. What I tell myself I am. I am my alignment, an ongoing story. I like the stories that take me up, help me imagine, teach me to fly. My teaching language talks of puppetry, push-toys and starfish.

And, of course, we can't go up without down. Alignment is teeming with paradox, and as Parker Palmer would attest, we must hold the paradox. We need to unhook to connect. We need ease in our strength. We must breathe in to breathe out. We are many things at once. Alignment is how we are in the world, an everyday expression of who we are.

So is alignment changeable? As the wind. I have felt it bone-deep in my body and I've seen it in action in everyone I meet. But I know that alignment is a source of feeling stuck for so many people. They use the term "posture" and when I think of "posture" I think of stuck in the mud. Fixed. Born with it, deal with it. I hear so often, "I have terrible posture." It is what it is, yes, but then the weather shifts, your mood shifts. You hear good news, your heart sinks. Then we see who we are, where we are. How do you feel? How tall are you? Alignment isn't frozen. It's steam. It's water. It's so fluid it's happening right now. It's warm and malleable and meant to support you.

Try this. Melt your heels. Breathe in between your toes. Ease the fronts of your ankles. Unhook the backs of your knees. Suspend your pelvis over your legs. Fly up and away from your hip flexors. Your spine floats, curving ever up. Lungs expand in 360 degrees. There's a slow, helium-bounce buoyancy to your heart. Oh, especially the back of your heart. Yes. Underneath your ears you tickle with uplift, a secret, a sending. The back of your skull simply hangs from the sky. You receive it. Your eyes blink. Let go, listen in. You are standing grounded, moving every upward.

As changeable as the weather...strong as the wind

What is Dance? VOLUME 1 in D.A.F.M.O.D.Q.

Stars of Bethel Park & Rec "Ballet" Class, 1981

Settle in for a brand new series called "Modern Dance Journal Prompts." No wait. That's brutal. How about "Dance Talk Real Fine, First Edition" or "Everything You Wanted to Know About Dance But were Afraid to Ask?" Let's do: "Dance A's for My Own Damn Q's." Alright then. This February I'm taking on my own assignments for a month-long bonanza of dance writing. I gave these questions out as journal prompts for my Beginning Modern Dance class last semester. I've been juggling these topics in my brain, body and jumbled notes for, oh, the last 18 years of Dance Minor-dom, Grad School-a-rama and the last many years of teaching. But I've never formally answered my own questions. I'm always asking my students about movement, be they college kids or kindergarteners. And now I'm suiting-up as a student. Here we go...a taste of my own  nerdy-ness. And remember, no right or wrongs. Also, I'm big on complete sentences and never leaving sentences dangling, but grinbearmove is nothing if not poetic license. I'll go for rhythm over grammar (gasp). 

Dance A's For My Own Damn Q's
VOLUME 1:  WHAT IS DANCE?

What is dance? How do I relate to it? How does it manifest in my life? What are my goals for this experience (in this case, a month-long bonanza of dance writing)?

Dance is movement, life, an expression beyond words.

(Hang on...I'm just getting started.)

It's when words go unrequited. It's joy and loneliness and everything in between extremes. It's what we all (all of us) do. I am a sign-toting crazy person when it comes to believing everyone is a dancer. There is dance in and because of each of us.

Dance is a spontaneous response, an outburst. Outbreak? Dance is poetry in motion, blah, blah, blah.
You've heard it all and it's all true. But how do you talk about movement? We always talk about dance in terms of other forms--poetry, theater, music, writing. What is it on its own?

Dance is a communion with what is ephemeral and eternal in the same breath; it's a celebration of what cannot last, a moment-by-moment document of an idea or emotion. It's here and now like no other. "Here today, gone tomorrow" or 10 seconds from now. You know?

Sometimes dance is a long-stifled action, something you've been holding in too long. It comes out like a landslide or a slow expiration of stale air. Something on the inside wants out. It escapes gracefully, violently, outrageously, neatly, whathaveyou. Sometimes we suppress dance--you, me. Society might squash it or at least we feel it does. Sometimes we don't welcome it unless it's on a stage or in its right place--an obligatory dance at the Oscars before the "real work" of the night is honored. Fine. Not fine. If dance is in the grocery store, it's crazy. If it's out in the woods, it's hippy. If it's a ritual, it's witchy. If it's a wedding, you must be the right amount of drunk to shake inhibitions. But what if you didn't have to be? Drink in movement all it's own. Bust a move like you're 3 years old.

A gust of uplift on Putnam Park Road

All along, dance is there, waiting. It's raw potential. It's noble and base. Up here, down there. It's inevitable. It's structured, it's wild, it's animal, it's raging instinct or quiet intuition, a heavy heart or a light mind. Maybe the other way around. Dance is when your limbs get together and rock your core. Connect directly to flow and shake off dust and demons.

"Dance it out" is a phrase you'll hear from time to time. We send something out into the ether--what it is is up to us. 

Dance is essential to be a part of yourself, to be on your side. It's a way towards (what?) wholeness. Piece yourself together. Say, "I'm here." "I am worthy."

Dance and be a part of the world. See and be seen. Bounce next to someone and smile. Be a part of history. We dance because people danced before us. The time is ripe. Jot down your story in gestures. Connect to your DNA. How does your family dance? It might be so small, you can't even see it.

Dance is everything and we forget it's even in us. It's dormant. Whatever your mobility, if you have access to your imagination, it's there. Cells leaping, nervous system sparking. A way of learning and knowing the world. An untapped intelligence for the most part. Moving is such a wonderful way into your brain, your emotional intelligence, your humanity. 

Dance is something that needs defending. We fear its full power, we push it aside. We don't talk about it, and if we did, we wouldn't know how to. Let's start. What is dance?

I am a dancer, whether I'm dancing or not dancing, judging or not judging. I define myself in movement. When I stop, I am stuck. When I start, I am here. It give me energy and purpose. I remember it's not frivolous (hear that, brain?), it is essential. A way of being, a way of life. So if I say it another way, I don't relate to it. I am it. Dance appears everywhere for me. A flock of birds organizes, two dogs sit, I fold a shirt or steer into a farmer's turn, my mother opens her arms, you can hardly sit still, we barefoot beach squish side by side.

My mom and my grandma took me to see the Nutcracker as a toddler. I'm told I was fixed, motionless on my mother's lap the whole time. A rapt two-year-old, enchanted. I don't remember it, but I bet my body does. Same with my first Park & Rec ballet class at three (I'm in the red tights and the red tutu above, all business). Dancing was unconscious in the way a child's being is all inside itself. When I did think to think of dance, I loved it. I was it. I didn't consciously choose dance until college. Oh. Here I am, all along. Now dance shows up in my everything--my writing, the way I speak. I am a dance snob, a dance nerd, a freak, certainly. 

My M.O. is more free-flow rather than goal-oriented, so I think it's a healthy thing for me to express some goals. Here we go(al). I want to publish my answers by the end of February. Hold me to it. I want to articulate my views of movement at this moment in time and pinpoint the emotions that move along with those views. I want to recharge my sleeping dance batteries and get myself back into a studio to physically answer these questions. This is a statement of purpose to begin rehearsals for a new solo. It's time. I'm looking to tap into that joy I talk about intellectually, but don't always experience. I want to remember way I started grinbearmove in the first place.

Red tights dance party (I'm the shrimp with the killer clippy belt)

poetry breather

When I'm alone at a table in a restaurant for a hot minute--instead of making eye contact, instead of sipping serenely--I pull out my phone like the best of 'em. Rest of 'em. When I can pull my scrolling eyes and restless fingers away, I open the yellow glowing notepad (dating my OS) and write. Here's something I uncovered from a few months ago that I reworked. And honestly, I was distracted all the way through the process. But I wrote it down instead of thinking about writing it down. Enjoy!

Hey Busy Hands
(quick slip)
take a moment
(type treat)
breathe
(check, double check)
think big
(tap go back)
have thoughts
(undo)
obliterate them
(ping bling fling sing ding)
with endless lists
(fists fingers linger)
announcements
(can't stop eyes glaze)

and sadness 

(sip steady ready un-dead-y)
simply sit
(fidget flake)
Busy Hands
(hey it's hard)
all thumbs
(quiver itch slide pop)
just this
just this
refresh

BIG F, little me

A balloon bumps up against the ceiling one late afternoon

...or to say it another way...here's another meditation on fear...

“Okay. I hear you.”

“You go first, please.”

“Just jump.”

“You go.”

“I can’t let go.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t have enough information.”

“I heard you the first time.”

(Pause.)

“I’ll be gone soon.”

(Pause.)

“That’s so morbid.”

(Pause.)

“Well…yeah.”

(Pause.)

“Can it be joyful?”

“What?”

“This living until we die?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“You go.”

“Show me.”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t have time.”

“I am too far.”

“I am too old.”

“Dammit.”

(Pause.)

“I see.”

(Pause.)

“You look uncomfortable.”

“I can tell you’re not breathing.”

“I’ll be alright.”

(Pause.)

“Let’s take hands.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’m serious.”

“Gross.”

“Peace. I only mean peace.”

“I don’t touch anyone anymore.”

“Okay, nevermind.”

“That was your chance.”

“Dammit.”

(Sigh.)

(Thought bubble. Blank slate.)

“Let’s strip it down.”

(Starts undressing.)

“Oh.”

(Pause.)

“Is this the part where we shed all the layers and stand here naked and you think we all have an epiphany?”

“No. Oh I see what you mean.”

“Should we go back to the hand-holding?”

“Nevermind.”

“Okay.”

“You know, we should do this more often.”

“I’ve lost my touch.”

“You’ve got it.”

moving within fear

Artwork by a young Brooklyn YMCA member.

“When we bring presence to fear…we find within the fear itself the very juice that frees us.”

                                                                                                          -Tara Brach

For the last year, I’ve been living in fear—not running for my life, but swimming inside the causes and effects of being afraid. In my life, in my relationships, in my writing, in my dancing, I had been grappling with the idea fear. My obsessive compulsive stove-checking, second-guessing and general malaise came to a head and I came to a crossroads. I had to talk about it, to flesh it out, literally. 

A year ago, I was invited to teach some dance classes at Bucknell, my alma mater. I immediately felt the pressure to teach pitch-perfect classes with stunning heart-rate-raising arcs and masterful, professional choreography. I thought about attempting that. But then I looked at how I was actually teaching my current yoga classes. I found that what fed me fed my students; what my body needed seemed to be what they needed. My gift wasn’t in planning pristine exercises but in spontaneously and intuitively riding moments with the people in a class on any given day. So, I decided to teach dance the way I teach yoga. The playlist plays. I feel. I teach. When I arrived at Bucknell, I had been humbled by my years in Delaware and my empty resume. I had no alumni tales of glory, just my voice. I decided not to hide it. I pressed play and we took it from there. We continuously moved. As the students matched movement to breath, I spoke to them from my notes and my heart about fear and “holding the space.” I allowed myself to teach from the heart. The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer echoed in my head. 

Below is a compilation of my notes on fear that I’ve shared with classes and have used as jumping off points in choreography. 

Fear has been on my mind. I’ve been noticing my build-up of fear over the years. Like residue.

Habits, distraction. More habits, more distraction. I’m ignoring the fear, letting it fester. But when it finally taps me on the shoulder (or punches me in the face), I start looking for escape valves and ways to decompress.

We move away from fear as a way to soothe, protect, find refuge, soothe our nervous system.

But acknowledging it can lead to greater freedom. It’s not even about moving through it (I don’t know what that means), but it’s about moving within it. That’s where the dance comes in…literally move around in it. Exhale curl in, in, in. Hollow out, empty. Move with it, because of it. Be next to it, moving maybe forward, maybe zig-zag. Maybe ‘round and ‘round in circles, my favorite. 

So, when I can’t look away anymore, I look in. I lie down on a wood floor and slowly move my arms and legs. Snow angels. Heel rocks. Inch-worming along. This is me up against the hard surface. Supported by it. What’s happening? Hey, breath is always here. I can always drop in. Oh yeah.

Fear is overwhelming when it’s nameless, when I don’t dare take a look. What are my options? Hide under the blanket. Do battle. Embody it.

“I am afraid.”

There, I said it. I’ll have to say it so many more times forever. Let’s dance. Dancing is my safe zone for working with fear. I dare myself out on the floor. Or I surrender. I don’t have a choice. The floor hasn’t opened up yet, I haven’t fallen through. It says, “I’m here.”

When I do things I’m afraid of, I move out (of myself, of the shallow end). I can converse with fear. “Hey, buddy. Did you see that Marina Abramovic documentary? Cool. Me, too.” 

I am afraid of injury. I am afraid you’ll think I’m a fraud. I am afraid you’ll get to know me and then not want to know me. I am afraid of never finding what I’m for. I am afraid of not fully living. I am afraid of money. I am afraid of fear. I am afraid of dogs dying. I am afraid I won’t ever feel like myself again. I am afraid I’m too old. I am afraid I look young. I fear newness, I fear boldness. I fear I’ll never finish this dance. I’m afraid of hitting “publish.” 

What’s the worst that can happen? My dreams are always worse that reality. I have terrible stress dreams of out of control classes. I’m up in front and no one is listening. People walk out, they walk all over me. I get worked up, I start to scream. I lose it. 

That has really never happened.

I can work with this. I can connect to what is real and ever-present—the part of me that remains unchanged, essential. First, breathe. Second, breathe. Hey, keep breathing.

Natalie Goldberg and her writing about writing is teaching me to say a “holy yes to the real things in our life as they exist.”

What you might find at City Lights in San Francisco