Finding Balance...

A long, busy day with a lot of movement and witnessing. Revelations were made, and barrios were crossed within the group and on a personal level. Beginning with a hr long movement score, exploring the relationship and transition between standing up and standing down (not sitting down), we were asked to apply the three movement principles that we chose yesterday; tiptoeing, striding and kneeling whist exploring this transition. At first it was demanding on my calves and toes, yet to fully wake up, then something shifted as I began to explore what it felt like to stand up and down on one leg, moving in as many different positions and at as strange angles as possible - now the focus shifted to becoming a game with myself. How long can I balance for, to what edge can I work with and what is happening to the rest of my body when I play here? Where is my weight distributed and at what point in the movement does it tip - can I re-align myself to make the movement more efficient somehow? What other body parts are supporting me in keeping my balance? And most revealingly, what do I rely on, in my body and in life? As if deliberately interrupting my play, a voice asks, what movement do you need? (thus, what do you need more of in life?)Ahh, I sign in surprise and relief as furious kicks take over my body, propelling me in all directions with differing intensity. I need to push, I need to kick, I need to assert…And as I close my eyes with this furious kicking I imagine all the red seeping its way out of the right side of my body, my anger, my sadness, as my left side supports me, and I finish slowly, with a sliding of my toes, my body whispers, sliding out, sliding out…

Contacting…Connecting…Emerging

My first contact improvisation class in SF, its original home. To summarise; listening, awareness, meditation, receptivity….The focus of the class was knowledge - how much does your partner know when you connect and dance together, how much can you give, are willing to give and how much can you receive? I find contact improvisation constantly fascinating and intellectually stimulating; it requires focus, awareness, receptivity and internal strength with external softness. Positing the question, can the body find a balance between reacting and responding, the mover is invited to explore how the body informs one’s knowledge of one’s life. This of course, is a subject of constant flux, dependable on one’s emotional body and its physical openness and that of one’s partner. The beauty in this form, is its very quality to confront and corrode such barriers, to challenge issues of personal space and invite trust into oneself and one’s partner body.Amazing!...

Beginnings…

Arriving here in California away from the beaucratic zigzag of HK, I feel a sense of utter relief. As my last weeks were filled with validating my identity; bank balances, numbers, figures, codes, security devices, visa’s, I felt a growing sense of frustration of being  distracted from what I was about to embark on; of feeling outside my body when all I wanted was to be IN my body. And thus I arrive here, in beautiful Marin county, feeling like I am returning home…

Stepping into Mountain Home Studio,  I felt both overwhelmed and excited to be finally standing in Anna Halprin’s studio amidst the redwood trees, breathing in the magic energy with the knowledge that 50 years earlier this was the spot where dance was taken into the expressive arts . My body, soft, tired but receptive as to what may happen in the next three months, finding ease and clarity introducing myself in the opening circle through movement rather than stories of my ‘home‘ and ‘job‘, the body expressing the metaphorical self and the path to embodiment beginning…