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DAY 1

Tanztheater Wuppertal

Choreographer: Pina Bausch

Nelken (Carnations) Performer: Julie Anne Stanzak

Photograph © Jochen Viehoff

Basic Concepts

Dance is a way of living in the world.

—Lisa Nelson, interview

Dance is both universal and highly personal. It is common to all peoples and cultures, and framed by particular styles and desires. Every person is a dancer—yet fully embodied intelligence expressed through the moving, dancing body is rare.

Three basic concepts enhance our understanding of movement in contemporary life. When embodied, they inform where, how, and why we dance, and who we are.

Bodies are part of Earth. Humans co-evolved with this planet, and our perceptual and movement systems are embedded within every landscape and cityscape we inhabit. Orientation to weight and to space informs inner and outer movement. As dancers, we don’t create movement; we participate in a dynamic, moving universe.

Bodies have intrinsic intelligence. We share a highly efficient form, developed through 3 billion years of evolutionary history—beginning with the first living cell. A multilayered nervous system is present throughout our structure, reflecting this heritage. As dancers, rather than seek control over our bodies, we learn to listen to this deep intelligence.

Bodies locate us. Movement is inherent; we move to feel ourselves in relation to the Earth. The mysterious animating flow that moves through every cell in the body and all life systems is the creative source. For innovation in creative work, we need inhabitation—of our bodies, of the places we live and love, and of the ideas we want to bring responsibly back to community.

STORIES

Distinctions

When we were naming this book, a colleague said, “Please don’t use the word dance in the title. It leaves me out. I’m involved in movement, but I’m not a dancer.” We pursued this with colleague Lisa Nelson, who responded, “But dancing is what we do.”

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Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of the School for Body-Mind Centering, clarifies that the difference between moving and dancing is the quality of embodiment.

Yield

At several times in my life, yield (rest) was not enough. I had to lay my belly down on the Earth and drain down, down—for hours—until I felt energy returning to my body. Then I stood and walked back into the world. The first time was on a rocky shore along Penobscot Bay in Maine. I was in a secluded waterside cabin, alone after a family reunion. Outside in the August morning light, I lay myself down on a bed of warm stones in the cove. Listening to the lapping of waves, I did not get up. Lunchtime passed and eventually the shadows of dusk arrived, the water moving closer and away. Collapse, waiting for the return of self at the end of deep, loving relationship was a letting go beyond what I knew how to do. Only the Earth was enough to hold me.

One learns the difference between yield and collapse. In the latter, all the body systems call out to receive what they need. Intrinsic, organismal intelligence goes to work to refresh and repair, resetting broken rhythms and healing the heart.

Orientation

Arriving at Heathrow Airport in London, Susanna Recchia from Italy greets me: “I’m going to take you to the place where time and space were invented.” As a dancer, I’m intrigued. We climb to the monument for the Prime Meridian of the World and stand along the illuminated stripe marking 0 degrees longitude. Turning, we face a clock displaying Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)—the global standard, delineating hour, minute, second. Here, in Meridian Park in England, where and how we stand creates our experience of the world.

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In Quito, Ecuador, one month later, our guide asks, “Do you want to go to the equatorial monument? Not the fancy one in town, but the accurate one marking 0 degrees latitude?” We pull into a parking lot next to an empty expanse of ground.

A woman at an outdoor table offers me a map of the world, with the equator running north to south. The map key states, “The Equator is the line that unites the two hemispheres into one World. That is why Equator means ‘equalizer: the line of balance, of equilibrium, and of unity.’”

This shift of perspective broadens our view. The grid of longitude and latitude delineates the outer world, but the body has its own compass. More ancient than clocks and maps, gravity tells our human perceptual system about “down,” locating us in time and place.

TO DO

Orientation—“Where am I?” (Caryn McHose)

Taking time to arrive and locate yourself invites embodied awareness.

Walking: Greet your oldest friend, gravity, telling you about DOWN. How do you notice the sensation of weight in your body?

• Continue walking, exploring the floor with your feet. Enjoy active feet.

• Then receive with your feet. Explore through sensing feet. Does that change how you move?

• Now, let the soles of your feet meet the surface of the floor—tamping the Earth. Enjoy active and sensing feet simultaneously.

• Continue moving, and stretch the palms of your hands. Feel the air, and receive the “news of the universe” from all that’s around you through the palms.

• Extend the top of your head, reaching into space. Pull on the tops of your ears and feel the skin stretch upward (like Spock’s ears in Star Trek).

• Visualize the little ear stones (otoliths, mostly calcium carbonate) in the labyrinths of your inner ears. This is your balance system, telling you where your head is in relation to gravity, as well as about acceleration and deceleration. Imagine long earrings dangling, amplifying your sense of DOWN.

• Bring in peripheral vision, soft focus with awareness of self and what surrounds you. Now use your eyes to see something specific, drawing you out into space.

• Grow a tail of your choice: poodle, salamander, or dinosaur. Move your tail and feel how it resonates throughout your spine. Enjoy! Shake out any tension from your spine, as you elongate head-to-tail.

• Continue moving, dancing, exploring all the senses involved in orientation (tonic system): hands and feet, spine, otoliths, and eyes.

• Now, yield down to the floor, lying on your back and releasing your weight into the ground.

• Feel the sensations of being “backed up,” surface to surface, supported by the Earth.

• Yield, and breathe deeply—full breath in and full breath out.

• Before you roll to a seated position, notice the pre-movement in your body. Can you stay spacious as you prepare to bring yourself to vertical?

• Stand, connecting to weight and space. Maintain a sense of back-space, supporting your depth as you look forward.

The pre-, pre-, pre-movement of dancing on the Earth is yield, connecting down toward gravity so you can push away and move through space.

TO DANCE

Familiar-Voice Dancing

10–20 minutes

Begin with what’s familiar: your idiosyncratic movement and heritage, your own dance vocabulary.

Start moving:

• Enjoy what feels good as you’re dancing: your unique sense of time, space, and dynamics.

• Notice your signature movements (those that show up in every dance).

• Dance long enough that you have to dig deep for endurance. Stay close to your true self.

• Find an ending or transition.

• If working in a group, improvise your familiar-voice dance witnessed by others. Form a circle and alternate who enters to solo; watchers stay open and ready to enter (1–5 minutes each). Explore improvising this voice in different places—for example, the studio, outdoors, and in your kitchen. Does place change how you move, how you perceive yourself?

TO WRITE

Personal Orientation

20 minutes

What do you care about, and how is that reflected in your work? Open your writing journal. Begin with “I care about,” and write for 10 minutes; then change to “I don’t care about” and continue for 10 more minutes. Fill pages. Write faster than you can think. Be open to surprise; don’t preknow the answer.

Hubert Godard teaching at Resources in Movement; Caryn McHose (facing)

Photograph © Kevin Frank

About the Tonic System

There are nerve endings in the soles of your feet, the palms of your hands, and the inner ear longing to orient you to the present moment. This is called the tonic system. These specialized nerve endings evolved to feed the movement brain, the parts of your nervous system that need information about context, answering the question, Where am I?*

*Kevin Frank writes in Tonic System (2004): “Tonic Function is the name for a model of structural integration developed by French dance professor, researcher, and Rolfer, Hubert Godard. Tonic function links structural integration to current scientific research and historical studies of movement and development” (16–18).

Photograph © Marilynne Morshead

STUDIO NOTES

BONNIE BAINBRIDGE COHEN addresses the distinction between yielding and collapse in this section of her article “Dancing through the Transitional Fluid,” published in Contact Quarterly (2009):¹

Everyone has a different fluid-membrane balance [in the cells]—a basic constitutional preference that also varies from day to day. Many people don’t know how to maintain balance. Balancing involves flow toward the earth and/or space, flow coming back to self, and transitional fluid: flowing in or out. Flowing in gives the sense of more fullness of self; flowing out gives the sense of a release into gravity or space. Many accomplished dancers are most often flowing out. How do they perceive self-nourishing? For the dancers who are more inwardly focused, how do they perceive what other dancers and audience members are feeling/doing?

Distinguish between collapsing—letting go of the membrane so there’s flow only in one direction, toward gravity—and yielding, where there is reciprocity of fluids flowing into and out of the cells. Collapsing, you give up your weight to gravity, surrendering totally. Yielding involves release into gravity with rebound and resilience.

Collapse is not necessarily a bad thing; it may be the first step in recuperating. If you’re exhausted, it takes time to become activated again. Let go of the membranes until there is another kind of energy that creates a desire to move that is not connected to the will. If you are pulling away from gravity (holding the cell membranes so you can’t feel your own weight), you might need to collapse until you discover the relationship that goes both ways. It is only by giving your weight to gravity that you can perceive the weight itself and then feel the rebound. Feel the fluids flow through the membranes, finding the return to self and the release of self into the earth and into the universe. This cycling of the fluids is a natural phenomenon.

Exploring Collapse and Yielding

• Lying on the floor, explore the sensation of collapse—letting go of your membranes so you feel flow in only one direction, toward gravity.

• Explore yielding, feeling release into gravity with natural rebound (awareness of “antigravity,” that is, levity or support), where there is reciprocity of fluids flowing into and out of the cells. If you are fatigued, this may take time. Rest until you feel restored, with enough rebound/sense of self that you have energy for motion.

• Change—spontaneously move in space, yielding toward heaven.

• Flow into stillness.

• Change—again release and move into space. (Keep the moment of change spontaneous—faster than you can think. Then it goes wherever it’s going.)

• Flow again into stillness. (Never lose connection to the earth or to yourself; be comfortable while you explore.)

• Alternate between spontaneous transition into movement—yielding toward earth (gravity), yielding toward heaven (space)—and flowing toward stillness (self), feeling the relationship and rebound.

• While moving, transitioning, or being still, notice the fleeting moment of surrender that precedes change—of consciousness, movement, or presence. Enjoy the surprise of transition, the possibilities of change.

• Now forget it all and release your spirit into the dance!