ENCOUNTERS: dancing with a collective body
Back in Brussels after a turbulent and beautiful summer, I started dancing. It's a kind of contemporary class that calls herself movement research.
Finally, a place where play moves from the head into the body, and where I am pushed to my edges of plasticity and some of the wounds of my childhood. A place where silence is a language, and connection is a means of listening deeper. Where competition doesn't exist and your contribution is like a colour of a piece of art: unique and necessary for the whole to become the picture it is.
Yesterday, the instructor pointed out around 10 out of the 30 people and told them to start moving on a song. They did. we were standing on the sideline of the gym, sensing into how the moving bodies moved into relationship with the grey floor, the moldy air and each other. She called us in: 'Go, observe. observe your role as an observer. You are part of the dance, such an important part.' I walked into the space, and I literally felt how I was shaping the response and responding to the flow of movement around me. I felt the bigger whole, all of us being together in this and becoming part of a different whole. Never before have I had such an embodied experience of all the theories I'm obsessing about for years. Wow, wow, wow. A collective body, hello, nice to meet you, nice to be a part of you. The beauty of the moment moved me to tears, and my importance as an observer completely frickles with my perception of my past and with how I have learned to be in this world.
This environment is such a gift, the openness is outstanding and the invitation to find a deeper connection to body is calling me so loudly. And it shows me how I currently sabotage myself through stress, physical limits (and the acceptance of them), zoom and psychological blocks that trace back to experiences in the dancing classes I visited in my childhood.
I am invited into kindness and exploration. And practice. Can I trust that what mind is dancing with so fascinatedly will land for body as well, in relationship with all the beautiful flowing bodies around me? I do, I truly do
In awe and admiration
Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash