Reflections

Santa Fe, at the Railyard, a Thursday night, seventy or so bodies, men, women, children moving in unknown ways. That was the first time I walked onto an improvised dance floor. Where could I look? What on earth was going on? Where could I put myself?It was so long ago, I forget the question exists these days. Here, and here, and here too are the answers that follow me around since. I’m glad to remember the first time, my lostness amidst a sea of movement before my body began to curiously answer its own question, ‘Where am I?’I danced that first night facing a wall, an english woman’s back to a whirl of desert-dwelling american artists. I returned twice every week for my 3 months in the town. I begged to know where to dance on the other nights. As I moved on, the first question I asked in every town I landed was, ‘Where is the dance?’ The question travels in my shadow, and answers in lungs, in gravity, in motion. That night in Santa Fe changed my life. Her name was Frances, she invited me that night, I have no idea where or how to thank her.

For Lisa Remington. Good to play :)Took me some persuasion time to make this 'Public' but hell, what is there to hide when we die anyway. See the empty space people ?Posted by Leela Fisk on Friday, 30 October 2015

There is a woman, she walks the hill of my neighbourhood as habit. She makes a life of walking. I see her on the river path pausing on the bench between steps. She wears a long skirt, an awkward stance, with each step the weight of her shoulders slipping down through the trunks of her legs as though the shopping bags she carries on the way to the town are as heavy as on her return. One day, when her face was becoming familiar to me she called out, ‘You smell nice.’ ‘Rose.’ I replied. But she was already continuing, ‘You look like a hippie who got it confused, funny dress you are wearing.’ I looked surprised until another lady ahead offered, ‘She has bipolar I think or something like that.’ My heart still circles that remark with uncertain curiosity. I have become used to this honest lady, we cross paths every day and I wonder if she will meet our passing moment with silence, or the next judgment. I approach our shared space occasionally with a smile, sometimes I look away in hesitancy, or I take a big deep breath and listen to what she has to say as I move on and breathe out. There is a remarkable similarity to the internally voiced criticisms that I offer to myself daily. Accurate, irrelevant, kind, rude, unpredictable, honest. Life offers creative reminders.

 Everyday I introduce myself to space,To the full soft space of breath,To skeleton joints, opening gateways to movement, To the moment as the breeze touches a sky of birdsong.My mind does not know space, it longs to. It knows only to give way to the spaces between its own coming.There, In those spaces, It humbly rests,While my senses translate.

Today I was in a dance class, the leader said over and over, “Release your jaw, soften your tongue.” This is music to my ears, how many times I had dancers come and ask, “What’s with your mouth?” Or my friend Art reveal his secret dancing name of name for me is fly catcher. But still, I can’t jump on my response to hearing those familiar words, if so, I’ve already hurdled the moment and missed myself. I have to take it new; my jaw, my tongue, softening, down my spine, open jaw, open hips. As dancers we have to listen again, not to what we ever knew, but to what is here now. As I entered the room, I noticed my response to see a woman that I barely know but had a mix-up with long ago, I found myself imagining her eyes – her view on me. The word ‘bad’ appeared. I had a brief wondering, could a ‘bad’ person be an authentic dancer, could one with no integrity listen and trust and move and reveal? I danced beyond the question, where there is no-one in this dance, where there is no one owning these sensations. The question itself fell away as a falsity.   Sometimes the leaders’ words impinge upon my actions, usually only when I hear a statement that appears to exclude what I’m doing, when I hear a statement that seems to demand something other to happen. I once heard a teacher ask us to notice if we were making ourselves ‘special’ by not fitting in. I loved the sweet confrontation of this question. Now I remember, I can re-hear the statement, the invitation, and include what I’m doing within it.

Some reflections on our Tuesday committed explorations.Sometimes we arrive to the sound of ocean waves, or rain, chimes. Sometimes we focus on dancing alone. Sometimes the conversation is kept alive by switching between crayon ‘markings’ on blank canvas, back, forth, marking, moving, reflecting, responding. Sometimes we dance from ground, pushing up and falling down through space from forgotten surfaces across the body. Sometimes we hear the sound of being alive amidst silence.Sometimes we dance in partnership, sometimes we think we can’t and sometimes we find utter joy in the presence of another set of unique movements around us. Sometimes we see how relaxing space is and throw movements like liberation. Sometimes we listen into small space and it cushions like life-juice of amniotic sac. Sometimes we play in the centre of the room as community then diffuse through the room alone. Sometimes we rest.Always I do not know what will happen. Sometimes I’m scared by that. More and more I notice the extraordinary landscape of daily creativity as leadership approaches. Usually I remember to relax. Always I’m inspired and amazed by the Infinite and Infinitesimal potential of movement and scores to play with.Sometimes I’m sad to be so far away from the teachers and community who taught me to explore this vast world through simple leadership principles called Soul Motion. Every time, I’m grateful to stand at the beginning of a fresh path carving new ways with you. 

Post by Leela Wendy Fisk.