In our Sundance classes, we have been playing with the idea that we are never dancing alone. Every gesture, step and shape we create is the manifestation of a complex group choreography involving relationships between ourselves and other players in the field of creation.
There is your relationship with your self to which you must pay constant attention. What thoughts are crossing your mind which may negatively or positively impact your physical body? What messages are you receiving from your body regarding it’s position in space, the speed at which it is moving, the tension it is holding, the story it is telling, how it is initiating a movement, and what messages are you sending back to alter all of the above and more?
Examine your relationship with the floor, the ground, the earth; the wood, cement or marley which is communicating with you through the boundary of the skin of the sole of your foot or the sole of your shoe. How are you releasing your weight to the floor? When are you holding back, and not completely surrendering yourself, as if fearing that you will not be supported by the earth. Are you dancing on the floor in tension, skating along it’s surface, or generously digging under it, communicating through the joints of your legs to scoop up the power of the earth in order to jump and fly? What emotion do you express when you push, press, strike and caress the with your feet
Investigate your relationship with the space around you. Where do you end? What are the surfaces of your personal boundary? That delicious envelope of skin, often hung with layers of clothes at this time of the year, separates the assortment of molecules you identify as ‘you’ from the assortment of molecules you identify as it, that, he, she and they. So often we dance by making shapes in space. What if you could dance by carving space? By moving air? With the knowledge that there was just as much ‘space’ inside of you as there was ‘outside’ of you?
Dive into your relationship with the music. It does not matter if you are accompanied by a Spotify playlist, the London Philharmonic or the rhythm of your beating heart, as a dancer you are a vessel of movement and a translator of sound. You posses the gift of enabling the viewer to see the music with their eyes as you feel it with every cell of your being.
So never dance alone. This is a sorry state of self-depravation that indulges the delusion of separation and is a recipe for certain disaster! Your every move is a delicious co-creation with the elements, seen and unseen, that surround you and support you on your journey of conscious movement and self-expression. Welcome to the cast!
