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This past weekend I attended my hometown’s May Fair, a huge street festival of food, music, arts, and crafts. I always go into these types of things with the same mentality:
Don’t buy anything unless it speaks to you.
There is a fine line between being intrigued by something and being utterly captivated.
With the former, you can admire it, sigh, appreciate its worth, hold it in your hands, imagine it hanging in your house or adorning your neck. When you put the item back on the table, there may be some resistance, but you can still walk away confident with the decision to do so.
With the latter, there is an instant connection. The moment you hold up the print or try on the bracelet, there is a conversation. The art is speaking to you. Some invisible line of energy connects the intention behind the work to your brain and heart, and suddenly you feel One with this object in front of you. It is not just a portrait; it is part of you. Putting the artwork back on the display table feels like betrayal, and you can’t help but step back and pick it up again. The notion of walking away without this art becomes unbearable, and you cry out, “I’ll take it!” without even looking at the price tag on its underside.
The first item that had me under its spell was this torched copper dancer. It was only available as a pin, but at my request, the artist looped a cord through the backside and instantly transformed it into a pendant.
I had been looking for a long time for a pendant that represented the essence of 5Rhythms, and this just shouted to me loud and clear. I love how the chemistry behind heating the copper brings out so many colors. It’s one body filled with so much…stuff. The five rhythms are swirling inside of her.
My heart skipped a beat again when I passed a vendor selling prints of vintage photos. Two of them instantly called out to me, and I picked them out of the milk crate they resided in without even hesitating.
The images are part of a collection of photos of the National American Ballet taken in the 1920s (archived in the Library of Congress). To tell you the truth, they aren’t the best-quality prints, but I wasn’t at all interested in the technical aspects of photography or reprinting; it was the emotion in the dancers’ bodies that drew me in and took my breath away.
When I looked at those women, I saw me. I rarely dance with mirrors anymore, but I am confident that my body is filled with that kind of rapture in those precious moments in 5Rhythms when Chaos winds down and Lyrical takes effect. In fact, the vendor selling these prints titled the bottom portrait “Joy” and the top one “Bliss.” I probably would have given them the same names myself.
There is so much I love about these images. In the top image, the dancer is connecting with earth and sky and everything around her. It is indeed Bliss. In the bottom portrait, the woman’s expression is both ecstatic and yet somewhat pained, yet the artist gave it the title “Joy.” I like to envision that this woman was captured during the very moment she danced the devil off her back (to quote Florence), simultaneously letting go of something that pinned her down and breathing in a new kind of freedom.
I also love that these are ballet dancers, but they are barefoot with regular-sized bodies. Their physique is so different than what we see in today’s ballerinas: chiseled, waif-like, rigid. Not that I don’t like 21st-century ballet, but I connect so much more with the liberation portrayed in these images from nearly 90 years ago.
I imagine these liberated dancers landing back on the ground, rolling into the grass and picking dandelions. When I look at these photos, I see myself at the pinnacle of my dancing frenzy, 100% nourished and fulfilled, one millisecond caught in time but a moment I want to extend into 1 minute…1 hour…1 day…1 month…1 year…1 lifetime.
The other night it occurred to me that I have two homes.
(No, friends, don’t get excited, we didn’t buy a shore house.) 🙂
But along with our suburban bungalow, there is another place—with smooth wooden floors and music constantly streaming from the speakers—that I’m beginning to find refuge in.
My second home is the dance floor, whether it be above an African restaurant in West Philadelphia, in a former warehouse alongside the Delaware River, or in the basement of a South Jersey yoga studio, whether for 5Rhythms, YogaDance, or Nia.
Once I remove my shoes in the entryway and my bare feet touch that floor, I am home safe. Not only do I feel physically supported by my environs, but a feeling of emotional security greets me in that moment as well. My fellow classmates and I may hug before the dance begins, and even if we do not, there is still a silent exchange of energy that is the catalyst for movement, for magic.
This past Friday night, I was “home,” in a Let Your Yoga Dance class at Yoga for Living. Teaching the class was Nikki, who had to jump some medical hurdles between late last year and now to return to teaching. I was thrilled for her return and was glad to see she had not lost any of her charming ‘tude while recovering. When her playlist clicked to Florence and the Machine’s “Shake it Out” as a workout for our solar plexus chakra, I loved her even more. Classmate Suzie and I just couldn’t resist that opening church organ music and began shaking the devil off our backs before Nikki even gave us the directions.
By the time we worked our way to the upper chakras, that feeling of safety and openness was strong—very strong. Nikki had us get in pairs and showed us some simple choreography to dance with our partner to a heart-stirring gospel song. I didn’t know half of the people I danced with, but I could feel my anahata chakra swirling in all its vibrant greenness, a flourishing vine wanting to intertwine with everything it connected to.
One of the last people I partnered with was the owner of the studio in which we were standing in. With her yoga studio as my home, she is its mother. Our dance was profound and heartfelt, and it brought us to tears. We connected foreheads during a move in which we leaned forward like arching swans, a physical gesture that reminded me of the preciousness of this second home.
During a final private dance prayer, my dance turned into one of incredible appreciation of this safe space, this home. It started as a reflection on the physical space, the floor that has supported my feet, the Sanskrit on the walls that has mesmerized me during my chaotic 5Rhythms trances. This studio is where I first discovered 5Rhythms; its physical foundation is my emotional bedrock. Oh, the places I’ve gone while dancing within these walls.
But then the prayer expanded into appreciation for a greater sense of home, the feelings of comfort and belonging that dance and movement brings to me. The feeling of leaving behind a long day of work and stepping inside the doorway—coming home—relaxing with and giving in to that which greets me.
Living here in this brand new world might be a fantasy
But it’s taught me to love….so it’s real, real to me
And I’ve learned that we must look inside our hearts to find
A world full of love—like yours and mine—
Like home
~ “Home,” The Wiz
I have been moved by dance before. I recall seeing Alvin Ailey’s Revelations and getting goosebumps, my heart feeling light and stirred, the gracefulness and power in the dancers’ bodies so striking that I fell into the dance with them.
However, the dance piece I saw this weekend moved me, not just visually but viscerally. It was a 25-minute long painting come to life, every step stroking my soul to the point where what I was seeing on stage translated to a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.
The piece, Out of the Mist, Above the Real (a video excerpt is available here), was part of the penultimate performance of the Philadelphia-based Jeanne Ruddy Dance company, founded in 1999 and discontinuing this year. The work was first performed in 2004 but was obviously so well received that it was selected to be a part of the final season.
In short, the piece is a moving representation of artist Thomas Cole’s series of paintings, The Voyage of Life, which depict the four stages of life: childhood, youth, middle age, and old age. The score commissioned for the work was a combination of choral and Irish chamber orchestra music, both joyous and haunting.
The dance begins so colorful, a chorus of dancers guiding a beautiful blond 3-year-old as she leaps, runs, and skips across the stage. The scene is absolute innocence, this fair-cheeked cherub audibly laughing and giggling as she is guided from dancer to dancer. The ensemble is her support system, and they carefully watch over her, lifting her when she needs to be lifted, directing her where she needs to go. The little girl is dependent on these dancers but follows the voice of her heart. A woman dressed all in white—the girl’s guardian angel—stays close by the child’s side, a heavenly maternal figure keeping a constant, loving watch over the child.
In the second stage of the piece, the child has now developed into a 10-year-old girl. She has still retained much innocence, but her movement is now more refined; she is trying to find her place in the world and uses her support system for guidance. She dances with the ensemble, copies their moves, but is now able find her own dance as well. It is her time to seek out autonomy, testing the waters between being led and being a leader. The woman in white remains present.
There is a marked shift in energy between youth and middle age. Company namesake Jeanne Ruddy performs the role of Middle Age, and she is absolutely striking. There is no doubt the woman has become independent; she is a leader, and she is captivating. She commands the stage like a balletic bull fighter, a motherly matador with a subtle sense of sorrow imbued in her movement. Much of her dance is performed as a solo, but the colorful ensemble still emerges to dance by her side, and the guardian angel is never too far away.
Jeanne Ruddy photographed by Bob Emmott
When the woman of Old Age takes the stage, there is a profound difference between Middle Age’s dance of independence and Old Age’s soliloquy of alone-ness. With her long gray hair and thinning arms, the woman dances in front of a black backdrop, nothing but stars to guide her movement, the lack of others—the support system—so loud in the silence. Her dance is so much more subtle than the earlier movements of youth and middle age but is so emotionally heavy and laden with wisdom. When the chorus finally enters the stage, their brightly colored clothes are now draped in black. Instead of nurturing the dancer, their role is now to guide her into the end of existence. The woman in white—the guardian angel—offers her loving presence one last time, a reminder that during a time of great loss—family, friends, independence, home—the spirit is always there.
Photo by Joe Labolito / Philly.com
***
Why was I so moved?
A longing for that youthful innocence that never dictates movement, being able to prance freely in the park or wildly on the beach and being encouraged rather than scorned.
A recognition that the journey between age 10 and middle age is a long one, and at times I am still so very much a little girl trying to find her place in the big world.
A reinforcement that one day my dance will rise to its pinnacle, knowing it has only reached that magnitude through lessons learned, lives lost, and experiences treasured.
A reminder that we are infinite but not immortal, and although the spirit carries us throughout life, the dance will eventually slow into silence and stillness.
The dance reminded me of a 5Rhythms class I attended a while back, during which two new students showed up, two high school girls who looked about 15. Before class started, they stood in the center of the studio and practiced their kicks and extensions and straddle jumps and pirouettes in front of the mirror. I was nervous, because clearly these girls had no idea what this class was about. They were concerned with their form, and even when class commenced and we were all slinking over the entire studio floor, eyes closed, back, forth, up, down, right, left, the girls remained fixed in the “front,” eyes on the mirror, moving only the way they were taught in class and making sure it looked correct in the reflection. I think they got a little freaked out during Chaos, when myself and the other students have a tendency to go kind of trancey and spin around like whirling dervishes. They sat out for a while, then joined back in, only to stand in the back and do a silly line dance.
My first instinct was to be really annoyed with these girls: They clearly didn’t get it. They were too young to understand. I had a bit of this holier-than-thou attitude, like I was Queen of 5Rhythms, and they should be abolished from my kingdom.
But after I had more time to reflect, I realized that, 15 years ago, I was them. I came from a dance studio background, where jumps and turns and splits and extensions were only as good as they appeared in the mirror. When I first got to college and had time alone in the dance studio, I didn’t close my eyes and lose myself in the music: I stood in front of the mirror and watched myself jete across the room, making sure my back leg was in line with the front. That my penchee arabesques sunk low enough, that my back was straight and leg was aiming toward the ceiling.
And still, I realize I’m not even halfway there in discovering my true dance. Certainly, what I feel now feels authentic, the same way whatever those girls were doing during class felt authentic to them. However, what do I look like to the 60-year-old 5Rhythms instructor? Is it possible that to him, I am just as naive as those 15-year-old girls are to me?
Life experiences, challenges, wisdom are the foundation of any form of artistic self-expression, and it would be silly for me to expect those 15-year-olds to have some profound sense of self that is comfortable expressing itself through dance. Heck, even though I was one hell of a contemplative teenager, I didn’t express my emotions through frenetic ecstatic dance at the time. And what will my dance be 20 years from now? 40?
As I wrote earlier in this post, “It’s a bit cruel that by the time we reach an age of such wisdom and experience—a time when our dancing would reflect decades of memories—our bodies are breaking down. If only an 80-year-old could dance in an 18-year-old’s body!”
One of the beautiful things about practicing 5Rhythms is that I get to witness so many stages of life, as expressed through dance. On the floor are fresh-faced 20-somethings with clear skin and luscious locks, 70-somethings for whom each wrinkle and gray hair represents a story.
Individually, each of us is the main character in Out of the Mist, Above the Real, whether we are young, middle-aged, or old.
Collectively, we are the ensemble, the support system that encourages the dance and watches each other’s back.
The energy generated during this time together is the nurturing Spirit, and that is what remains in our flesh and bones even after class is dismissed.
During intermission of a dance concert I attended Friday night, I was asked when I started dancing. I responded that I was 3 years old, but that I did the standard ballet-tap-jazz combo that all little kids do when they first start dancing, as if dismissing my early involvement in the art. Small-town dance studio, nothing too intense. More concerned about what costume you’re going to wear for the summer recital, what cool jazz song your teacher is going to choose for your routine. Turns, splits, smiles, sequins. Ta-da! Jazz hands. Curtain call. Take a bow.
It was just my thing, I said. Some people played rec soccer. Some took piano lessons. I danced. Whatever. It was just an extracurricular to keep me occupied.
That’s what I thought Friday night, that dance was just “a thing.” I mean, it has obviously grown since then from “a thing” to “THE thing,” but why was I so quick to downplay my foundations?
As if guided by some spiritual guardian, yesterday morning—as I went into my closet to retrieve a shirt to wear for a 5Rhythms class later in the day—I noticed the program from my college graduation sitting on the closet floor; must have fallen when I was retrieving some old yearbooks last week. I picked up the piece of paper, thumbed through it quickly, surprised to see my name. Totally forgot that I had won a creative writing award my senior year. Hmph.
I opened a random box in the closet to return the program, but it was the wrong box. Instead, this one had a portfolio of writings from my past, essays and short stories and poetry from my youth, things I don’t even remember writing or items that I had thought went out with the recycling long ago. I found a myth I wrote in high school, a charming story about the origin of stars that my teacher said had potential as a children’s story. A horror “book” (15 loose-leaf pages stapled together) about a group of teens vacationing on a beach with a homicidal maniac on the loose. Stories I wrote when I wasn’t even an official adult yet that still speak to my 31-year-old self.
But, most important of all, was the handwritten poem I found. It was written when I was in 8th grade, 14 years old, braces on my crooked teeth and awkwardness in my gangly limbs. I may not have been the most graceful or elegant dancer at that stage of life, but—contrary to what I had just expressed last night about not considering my early dance a “passion”—dance meant a lot to me.
This has been tucked in a closet for the past 18 years; today is the day “My Passion” emerges from the dark.
Take me on a wooden floor,
Where I’m not human anymore.
My mind is far away, a distant place,
While my body is dancing in the same space.
My legs are moving; no thinking is involved,
I just keep moving; it helps my problems get solved.
The music is playing, the music I can see,
No one is around; just let me be.
I do all my turns, I stand on my toes,
I am lost in the Land of Sweets, but nobody knows.
Now I’m Odette, flowing along in a river,
And then I’m Aurora (who almost dies); I give a shiver.
My mind is not here, it is far away.
But my passion for dancing will always stay.
While I have been diving into 5Rhythms lately, attending as many classes as possible, simultaneously swimming and drowning in Wave after Wave, I’ve only just begun to skim the surface of another movement modality, Nia.
Last week was my first Nia class in nearly two years, and—as I described here—it.was.GREAT! I overcame a mental barrier to get there and gave myself fully into the class, despite it not being 5Rhythms. Yes, it was different than what I am used to, but the bottom line was that I had fun. I couldn’t wait to return.
What I wasn’t expecting this past Friday was how open my heart would be. But there was a lot going on: I had just come from dinner with the widow of my former middle school principal, whose anguish over her husband’s death was still very evident; the “supermoon” was hours away from its monthly fullness; and a lightning storm was buzzing through the clouds. It was the perfect backdrop for an evening of raw, uninhibited movement.
Suzanne, the instructor, structures each class around a theme; this time, the focus was resistance, the dance of fear between holding on and letting go. To demonstrate, she had us clasp our hands together, fingers clutching onto fingers, pulling, grabbing, tension. Then, she told us, “let it go.” Feel the freedom in your hands and arms. What are you holding onto that doesn’t serve you anymore? she asked. Suzanne invited us to think simply, maybe in terms of your kitchen junk drawer. If you keep holding onto something you don’t use, there will never be any space for new, more functional items.
In a very staccato fashion, we executed chopping motions with our hands, banged on drums near our heart center, made punching motions with our arms. As we thrust our legs forward in martial arts-like kicks, I realized I haven’t kicked like that in a while, maybe because I’ve feared hurting my hip or because nothing like that has come up in 5Rhythms. I felt the motion coming from my core, my powerhouse. I felt like a warrior: Grounded, focused, steady. I was onto something.
Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).
What I think I was doing was letting go, breaking loose the rigidity that often surrounds my heart. I was giving into the moment, immersing myself fully, no commentary about my insecurities running through my mind. It was at this point I began to feel empowered, surrounded and supported by my fellow classmates, my sisters. It was an all-women class, something that doesn’t occur often in 5Rhythms (especially since my main teacher is male). As much as I love exploring masculine-feminine energies through dance, I think the moment a man enters the room, women slip into a bit of a caricature: shoulders back, chest out, come-hither eyes, no matter how subtle and perhaps even unconsciously. But there was none of that Friday night in Nia. I felt unabashedly female.
As the class winded down, we all stood in a circle, swooping down to the earth, gathering gratitude, then releasing it up the sky with a nurturing “Ahhh” sound. I was standing across from an older woman who, during the previous class, was dressed in a blue sweatsuit and mentally struggled with the movements, still profoundly affected by the death of her mother. This time, she wore a short-sleeved pink shirt with sparkling sequins, and every time she lifted her face to the sky, I saw more light entering her spirit. It was beautiful to witness. It made me think of the woman I had just met for dinner, how much she would’ve loved this class; she wanted to attend but was hindered by a knee injury. When I lifted my arms to the sky, I sent my love her way. All I felt at that moment was love, love, love. I wanted to take the yoga studio owner—also a 5Rhythms classmate—in my arms and swoop her around the floor.
Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).
Before our final moment of stillness, Suzanne closed class by guiding us backward through the “5 stages” of human life: walking, standing, crawling, creeping, and embryonic. We stayed in our “embryos” for a while, invited to move as though we were suspended in time. There on my back, I sunk deep into my essence, floating down, down, down into my true self, my root, my beginning. It was only appropriate, then, that this was when the playlist switched to the final song: Sarah McLachlan’s “Rainbow Connection,” a song with deep personal meaning for me, the song played often during my yoga teacher training, the song that always made me wonder, “Why am I studying yoga when all I want to do is dance?”
Like that, the theme of the class hit me smack between the eyes: Why are you holding onto all that junk instead of making room for new things?
The class stirred up a lot, and the longer I hung around the studio, the more intense things got. The studio owner must’ve sensed this “stirring,” looking me in the eyes point blank and asking, “So, what are you going to do?” as though she knew I have been longing to fly but afraid to take down the runway. She reminded me that my presence is strong, that she felt me in the room during 5Rhythms class last week (even though I was dancing elsewhere), that my “spirit has touched so many people.” The woman in the pink shirt was there as well, and she looked at me closely, as though she were examining my aura. “You have good energy,” she assured me. “I can feel it. Whatever you do, whatever class or practice you conceive, the energy is there. It will work.” And that’s what she said, just like that. Just like that? Just like that.
And just like that, I walked outside into a lightning storm, electricity circuiting through the sky every 20 seconds, a glimpse of the full moon captured with each burst of light. I could smell the ozone, I could feel the storm, and when I finally reached home, the thunder began rumbling the earth beneath me.
I am usually gung-ho about attending any form of yoga-like dance classes, but I found myself growing nervous and nauseous as I drove to my local yoga studio this past Friday for a Nia class.
I have nothing against Nia. My first class was in 2008, when I danced in a large room with a beautiful Black woman at the front, leading a group of various bodies and abilities through expressive movements ranging from yoga to dance to tai chi to tae kwon do. I danced with a woman who was 8.5 months pregnant, a man in a motorized wheelchair, a focused 12-year-old with the desire to dance in her blood, and an older woman in her 70s.
I danced Nia weekly that summer and the next, when the teacher was in town. I bought some of the Nia-issued CDs and Nia’ed in my living room.
Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).
I loved Nia until 2010. I had signed up for another summer series, but then life threw me a curveball.
It was that summer—after months of hobbling around in pain—that I found out I had a cartilage tear in my hip joint. And not just that; x-rays that I had gotten as part of all my diagnostic tests had shown a mysterious “thing” in my femur. I’ll never forget the look on my sports medicine doctor’s face as he placed the black x-ray film against the lightbox.
“That’s not normal?” I asked, completely clueless about the streak of white shooting from mid-femur to my knee.
“No,” he replied, eyes wide. “I suggest you see an orthopedist as soon as possible.”
And like that, no amount of yoga or meditation or expressive dance could console me. My brain completely took over, convincing me that my leg was dying, that even though I had never experienced pain in that area before, I was now in pain. In my heart, I knew I was being brainwashed by my overactive neurons, the power of suggestion consuming me. I’d constantly fight with myself, telling me this was all in my head, but my memory kept returning to that x-ray, and just like that, I’d feel stiffness, aching, throbbing. I considered seeing a hypnotherapist to delete the thought from my mind or at least tone down my fears of my leg having to be amputated.
Convinced I was going to become Peg Leg Pete.
It would be months before the “thing” was deemed by a bone specialist as a harmless entity, but in the meantime, my dance suffered. Nia, the outlet that once brought me so much joy, began to become burdensome. Of course, the labral tear in my hip caused some pain, but with each plié and kick I did in class, I imagined my femur further breaking down, the alien inside on the verge of spreading outside the bone and inhabiting my blood and muscles.
I left class one evening crying to my teacher and then never returned for the remainder of the series. She’d e-mail me periodically to check in or to tell me about an upcoming series, but even after I got the all-clear by my doctor, I never wanted to see Nia again.
The power of association is just wild. I mean, I’ve been dancing 5Rhythms now for two years, but when I finally talked myself into attending this most recent Nia class, I felt sick to my stomach. It didn’t help that I had to look up something in an orthopedics journal for work, and that—coupled with the thought of having to go to Nia that night—made those 2-year-old feelings of soreness and discomfort bubble up in my leg again. So much for time healing all wounds. It is both frightening and fascinating just how much the body holds onto memories and traumas.
Fortunately, the Nia class this past week took place in my “homebase” 5Rhythms venue, the yoga studio in which I discovered, fell in love with, and was healed by 5Rhythms. The power of association worked in my favor this time, as it was just a few weeks ago I stood on the very same floor and danced one of the most soul-stirring dances my body has ever moved.
I saw that polished wooden floor, and my heart softened, relaxed, and opened to this return to Nia.
Once the music started, the only thing that became (slightly) uncomfortable was the notion of choreography, something that 5Rhythms does not have. For the past 2 years, I’ve been following the lead of my heart, not an instructor. However, that feeling quickly subsided as the teacher reminded us to make adjustments for our body, put our own feeling into the moves, to move the way our muscles craved to move. It was satisfying to have a foundation but also the freedom to build my vision on top of it. There were plenty of breaks for free dancing, and I sunk into familiar, delicious territory, my eyes closed, my arms spinning. (Later, after class, a woman described my movement as “distractingly graceful.” “You just looked so happy,” she complimented.)
In fact, I fell so in love with the movement that during a martial arts-like kick when the instructor encouraged us to shout “NO!” along with the choreography, I almost could not speak the word. I didn’t want to say “no”! I was having a good time; I was enjoying this. I wanted to shout “YES!” (Fortunately, that was the next part of the routine.)
Even when the kick-shout exercise ended, my body continued dancing “Yes!” throughout class.
I was back in business.
Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).
I’ve been dancing the 5Rhythms for two years now, but this past Saturday’s class felt like I entered a new realm of movement and expression, as though the past 24 months have been Level 1 of a video game, and only now have I been given the key to the secret portal.
I’m really struggling to put into words the pure awesomeness of my dance this weekend. And I’m a writer, so this means I’m dealing with some intense sh*t. I just keep imagining that scene from Contact when Jodie Foster stares out the spaceship window at the golden galaxy of stars, moons, and planets swirling around her, and all she can stammer is, “They should have sent a poet.”
Yoga people, you probably understand this. You know that moment after you’ve been practicing for a few years, and then you have a yoga “experience?” And you’re like Woah. And then something even more Woah happens in your body and breath, and you’re like, “WOAH, I get this now!”
Kinda like that.
Here are the tangibles: The class was held in an amazing restored warehouse with the brightest of bright sunshine streaming through the windows, warming up the expansive studio and causing our sweat to glisten like diamonds.
The guest teacher was Daniella Peltekova, a 5Rhythms teacher from NYC whose Bulgarian heritage blessed her with an exotic accent that, for me, sounded like a saucy hybrid between Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz. Every word she spoke was a verbal expression of Flowing. Her instructions filled the studio like water filling a tub for a warm bubble bath, and I just wanted to soak it all up.
The experience was surreal. When I first entered the studio, I felt like Alice walking into Wonderland. The room was warm, radiating with sunshine, the music was already pulsing, bodies were spinning and flowing around me.
Daniella played bass-filled, earthy, sensual music, punctuated here and there by loudness and softness, just the right combination of melodies and sounds and lyrics that I exhausted myself by the end of class because I wanted so badly to dance to every song.
Halfway during class, as we all sat sweating and glistening and drunk on dance, Daniella poised herself next to a shaft of sunlight and spoke of the beautiful space, the wicked sunlight around us, the full moon, Easter and Passover and things rising and coming to life. She noted that we were out of winter’s cold and darkness, the light is here (oh my it was), and that we didn’t have to do anything but be receptive. “The light is already here; just receive it,” she encouraged us in her Flowing voice.
I felt like a born-again Christian, but not quite sure of my religion. The words comforted me so deeply, I felt them rattle my soul, I wanted to believe but didn’t know what to believe in. Everything within me screamed Hallelujah! but instead of praying we danced, danced, and danced.
(cue the non-tangibles)
Daniella began a new round of Flowing from the floor, on our backs, instructing us to move just the hands, feel our flesh, explore our body’s largest organ. We roll onto our bellies, and from there I observe my loose strands of hair illuminated in the sunshine, doing their own wispy dance to the whir of the overhead fan.
The adventure into Wonderland continued, my body gliding by others, my arms intertwining with those of strangers, our audible, sharp Staccato breaths engaged in a dual of inhalations and exhalations. Palm to palm we gently push and guide and use our single hand to initiate a twisted tango.
Over and over again in my mind, I ask, “Where am I?” The light coming in the giant windows is blinding; I squint long enough to watch a woman across the street on her front porch paint a shelf, and my arms unconsciously imitate her strokes inside the studio. Up and down. Up and down.
Every song that plays is like one of Alice’s “Drink Me” bottles, and I gulp and gulp and struggle for a breath and gulp some more. Down the rabbit hole I dance; where the hell am I going? Is this a portal to reality? Or is it my imagination?
(See this video for an idea of how I felt for much of the class.)
When Florence + the Machine’s live version of “You’ve Got the Love” with Dizzee Rascal blasts through the room, I am thrust into reality because I am dancing so hard that I realize I am gasping for air, my face flushed. OK, yes, lungs. Lungs need oxygen, and this is real.
Reality stuns me again as I briefly partner with an older woman whose overarched feet, willow-like arms, and elongated neck are a dead giveaway of her former life as a classically trained ballerina, and I suddenly feel like I am dancing in front of a mirror of time, an image of me in 30+ years projected right in front of my eyes. I see her age, wisdom, the muscle memory in her calves and shoulders and torso, and I am her and she is me. For the briefest of moments I want to cry, an innocent, profound urge coming deep from my heart, one of pure lightness.
It is a wonderful encounter, and an invitation to see all of my other fellow dancers in the same light. Although my brain had trouble processing much of the class and labeled the whole experience as some kind of wacky adventure into Wonderland, in my heart, the afternoon felt like poetry, something more along the lines of this:
My favorite dance blogger Meg used to do a series called “Inspiration Tuesday,” and each week she’d post a collection of interesting/beautiful/inspiring stuff from the internet.
Her blogging focus has since changed and the series is no longer, but there is still inspiring stuff out there! I have links and I want to share!
(1) The video “Gestures,” featured on the Colors in Motion® “Experiences” website. It’s dance, watercolor, and music all meshed into one beautiful experience.
I found the site through (2) Kripalu’s blog, Thrive, also a link worth bookmarking. A note to whomever moderates this blog dedicated solely to Kripalu-related endeavors: You have my dream job. If you ever hit the jackpot, retire, or move on to a new career, please shoot me an e-mail, PLZOKTHX.
For more videos like Gestures, see Colors in Motion’s Touchstone page. (I’m particularly fond of August’s “Light Dances.”)
(3) Another video that has pleased my neurons is “Moments,” featured on Everynone.com, which I gave a shout-out to previously for their “Laughs!” video.
“Moments” is slightly longer and a bit more emotional. It reminds me of a miniature version of Life in a Day, a full-length movie compiled from YouTube clips from around the world. They are both reminders that ordinary moments are extraordinary when you look at them with mindfulness and awe.
(4) The next video I found via the Let Your Yoga Dance Facebook page. Never, ever say you can’t dance because you have two left feet.
(5) Finally, I am tipping my proverbial hat to Lucia Rose Horan, a 5Rhythms master teacher who I am ecstatic to be taking class with next weekend. Watch her let loose here.
Comment with an online video/website/photo that’s been stirring your soul lately!
Not many people like being photographed from behind, but living with a photographer, I am used to hearing the shutter flutter whenever my backside is facing him.
Sorry, Sir Mixalot, not like that. More like this:
The photos above are all from our 2006 trip to China, when every step I took was the beginning of an adventure into the unknown, whether it be onto an airplane leaving the Tibetan plateau, a wooden pathway through the luscious greenery of Jiuzhaigou Valley, or aboard the dingiest water vessel I have ever set foot on.
Caught in time is one foot in front of the other, a poetic symbol of a journey about to begin. I am not posed, but I am poised.
I wish images like this could be captured each time I walk into a 5Rhythms practice, but then there’d be photo after photo after photo—millions of photos—because sometimes I feel like it’s not just stepping inside the studio that’s the beginning of a journey but each individual step within the 2- or 3-hour class that has me embarking on a new adventure, exploring unfamiliar terrain.
One minute I’m throwing my body across the room in a frenzy of Chaos, and then—just like that—I find my center and twirl around myself like a whirling dervish.
I lean against the wall, roll on the floor.
Slide up next to a woman with a bum knee sitting in a folding chair and engage in a seated version of dancing.
My hands and feet are claws, then feathers.
My face dances as we pair up for a dueling Staccato, one person exclaiming “Yes!” and the other “No!”…
…The sensation of hearing my voice during a dance class is both foreign and exhilarating.
I glissade with a partner as though she and I are ballerinas; when partnered with a male to the same music, we are friendly warriors, all angles with a touch of lightness.
Stillness comes, and I think I don’t want to go on the floor, but without thought I am soon on the floor, curled up like a fetus, expanding like a stretching cat.
I am breathing audibly, entranced by the soft music my lungs have created for me.
So many snapshots, so many destinations in one class. With each step, I have boarded a plane, skipped through a grassy field, balanced myself on railroad tracks, jumped into the ocean, fallen off a cliff. Where will my next step take me?
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
~Lao-tzu
At the conclusion of a recent 5Rhythms class, one of my fellow dancers shared with the group that she loves class because “I feel safe to be a child again.”
I understood what she was saying—5Rhythms is a space to be playful, uninhibited, curious, and spontaneous—but I was feeling something much different that night.
5Rhythms doesn’t make me feel like a child. It makes me feel like a woman.
The week leading up to class, I had been privately mulling over at what point in her life a female comfortably begins referring to herself as a “woman” (particularly a female who has not yet carried a child or given birth, which I imagine would be the tipping point for being comfortable calling oneself a woman). For instance, if I am writing up a blog bio, I struggle over what noun to use after “Jennifer is a 31-year-old ____.” Girl? Gal? Chica? Saying “woman” feels so…adult. So mature.
Most of the time, I do not feel like a “woman.” I am obsessing over big airplanes, spilling cereal and yogurt all over my cubicle, laughing about butt jokes, and dreaming about Disney World.
But during 5Rhythms…that is when I feel like a woman. Certain music, certain movers will extract that essence out of me, and I feel wise, vibrant, strong, feminine, proud, daring. There is a head-to-toe, bone-to-muscle-to-blood connection with myself, and I feel so whole, so womanly, so pure.
So Pure, just like Alanis Morissette in her music video of the same name. I have fun, I let loose, I sweat and open up and become the dancer that has always lived inside of me.
I am still replaying in my mind the moment during Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” when I was dancing on my own, my arms rising above my head to the lyrics “In the arms of an angel….,” and suddenly from behind me, another’s arms linked through mine, now intertwined like angel’s wings. My feet were solidly planted on the floor, but I felt miles above the earth. We remained paired together in the final stretch of Stillness, a wordless song that was eloquent, fierce, passionate, sad, and intense all wrapped into one. I gave myself fully into the movement in a way that no “girl” could do; this was the dance of a woman.
During the sharing circle after class, I began to blush as others in the group commented about being fascinated with our movement, how they loved watching the two of us dance together. Some even thought we were part of a modern dance troupe! One woman had very nice words to say about how watching us was like watching two spirits completely connected with each other.
It was all so overwhelming to take in (I have always had a hard time being complimented on my natural talents) but also so so so so very much appreciated. I had not felt this way since 2006, when during my Kripalu yoga teacher training Megha and I danced our separate solos together at the back of Shadowbrook Hall as Linda Worster performed at the front. That night, a few of my classmates kept showering me with compliments about how beautiful I was to watch.
Despite the words making me smile and squirm at the same time, the compliments from both my YTT and 5Rhythms classmates were a touching reminder that I am still a dancer, despite not practicing in a studio or wearing pointe shoes.
Likewise, even though I don’t necessarily feel “grown up,” dancing has certainly given me comfort in my femininity and allowed me to move beyond the boundaries of girlhood.
Thank you 5Rhythms, for making me feel like a woman.
Flowtation Devices 