Give Back Your Heart to Itself

Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986

Trusting the Practice

1. Set the space and the score and the intent with as much grace, love, clarity and humility as is available, this morning.

2. Breathe in, breathe out.

3. Be surprised at what happens.

Listening with the Inner Ear

Gary Snyder says,
As the crickets' soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills
{thanks, Steve}


Soothe and be soothed
See and be seen
Dance and be danced
Move and be moved

Soul Motion practice, this week:
Tuesday in Berkeley, 6-7:30pm
Thursday in Rockridge, 6:30-8pm
Sunday in Sebastopol, 10:15-noon

Isn't That Something?

Rumi says,
I like it when the music happens like this:
Something in His eye grabs hold of
  a tambourine in me,
then I turn and lift a violin in someone else,
  and they turn, and this turning continues;
it has reached you now. Isn't that something?

This week, the grand opportunities to experience the web of interdependence continue: Enter The Ocean Refuses No River this Thursday, 6:30-8pm at Jeffrey Bihr Studio. And this Saturday morning, July 10, in the light-washed, bamboo-floored Eighth Street Studio in Berkeley (Friday Dance Jam's Warm Room), 10am-noon, Soul Motion: Spiral Odyssey, a journey through the Soul Motion landscapes. And to round out the weekend in the same room, Sunday I deejay 7:30-11pm at the venerable (and still unpredictable) Barefoot Boogie. Come shine, reflect, radiate!

the cheer-leading universe (god, spirit, earth, ocean, life?)

dear toe-dipping dreamers,
this morning, a warning arrived: "What you don't know can hurt you!" the email went on to warn of "internet intrusions" and "hidden surveillance programs" that seemed to be lurking in some shadowy cyberzone, dangerously just outside my sphere of awareness. wow. talk about restimulating childhood fears of an unsafe world, waiting patiently, unstoppably, for me to drop my guard, anticipating the opportunity to nail my sorry, sweet, naive ass.
this is one way to consider, take in (or repel) the universe and how i am in it.
this week, as i continue to teach Tuesday in my dear teacher Zuza's absence, i am reminded of a deliriously different possibility she suggested some time ago: that the universe (god, spirit, earth, ocean, our life) is actually rooting for us, wishing the best for us, and always offering (however tragically veiled they may be) opportunities for us to express, exalt, shine and shimmer. and that our entering this field of work and play benefits not just our own souls, but is actually what serves all beings in this fractured world.
the chance to be and move and risk together is some of what i am so humbled to offer, this Tuesday in Berkeley, this Thursday in Oakland, this Saturday in Santa Rosa (see Events and Classes, top right of this page). come.

Desire and the End of Desire

dance dears,
i'm back from NCDC Dance Camp, having spent a long, luscious weekend teaching, eating marvelous food, engaging in worded and wordless conversations, gazing amazed at the Milky Way and the waxing moon, and dancing dancing dancing. in classes and, especially, in the nighttime boogies, i fell in love, in lust, aloud and in screaming silence. i felt myself melting, merging; exalting, expanding, extending. and comparing, vigilant and doubting. leaning into my desire, joyfully, mercifully. leaning out, over, down and crashing, sometimes, into that which i imagined would tell me, "i am enough. i am necessary. i am seen, felt, loved."
desire is the fuel to feeling, to creativity, to possibility; the leaning inward, the swirling of the nectar--my nectar-- in the mouth of the belly of my beast. in screaming silence and in "speaking out loud in the clear air." opening to desire, feeling, creation, possibility: first leaning in, then offering out. and being surprised.

Inside/Out: Travel the Soul Motion Landscapes This Saturday Morning in Berkeley

dear dance-casters of light and shadow,
do you give yourself away, when you step into the light?
do you stand in the shadows, because it's where you always stand?
do you find yourself inside the brilliant, shadowy, blinding calm of the solo dance, or do you hear your soul's sweet song most clearly when it's echoed back across the human canyons of one, two, twenty others?
let's explore all (or none) of these questions this Saturday morning, August 14, in the light-washed, bamboo-floored, open/protected Eighth Street Studio in Berkeley (Friday Dance Jam's Warm Room), 10am-noon, during Soul Motion: Spiral Odyssey.
after a luxuriously to-the-point warmup, we'll gather our attention together, and, supported by light, clear words and spacious music, travel through the Soul Motion landscapes of Dance Intimate (solo), Dance Communion (with one other), Dance Community (with more than one other) and Dance Infinite (with the One). spiral in; spiral out. bask in the fields of discovery, dialogue, discourse and devotion! all are welcome!