Camp Blues

I've been doing lots of reading still and thinking. In the meantime, I was hired at the last minute to go to Camp Blues in San Francisco. This means that Brenda, Topher, Abby, and I are driving down to San Francisco over night in about 2 hours.

My choreography has been going well. THe guys have gotten through the hardest part, and we have two more meetings left. I also started advertising a "boot camp." That will be a 4 hour workshop on a Sunday to work on technique.

Lastly, I performed my adaptation of Death of Adonis for my teacher's Choreography class. It was fun, and I got to thinking a lot about how an unassuming community college student (not me) can become something timeless and powerful when they stand up and move.

as an exercise

I have changed my keyboard to dvorak. I hope to learn control and patience.

Buddha

We are what we think.
All that we are arises
With our thoughts.
With our thoughts,
We make our world.

of all the books

I've been reading Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, and I've just started Anthony Robbin's Awaken the Giant Within. In each of these books about achieving one's goals, the authors insist upon one basic tenet. That is, without a definite purpose, one cannot succeed. For this reason, I have bought a small notebook and written myself a mission statement for my life.


My goal is to understand myself and the laws of nature through the
study of dance. I want to become aware of the subtle nature of
reality, take full control of my own power, and be an ambassador of
love and hope for the world.

In the short-term, to accomplish this goal, I need mental and
emotional clarity, courage to accept the reality I find, physical
health, and financial security. I also need to humble myself in order
to take in the teachings of all teachers who are sent to me. I must
remind myself that teachers can come in any shape or form. I must
analyze for myself what is helpful and harmful - fully opening myself
to what is helpful and fully defending myself from what is harmful.

I have been presented with teachers who can help me in the
accomplishment of the above goals. My biggest current liability and
source of worry comes from how to finance my education. For this
reason, I am laying out financial goals.



The statement continues to lay out a budget and series of goals within the next year, but I'll keep that private.

reading and brownies

It is as it sounds... but with walnuts.

master of my fate, captain of my soul

I think that many people do not understand the nature of dreams, ambitions, and ideas. I write this for some people who may identify themselves through the whispers of their heart as they read my words.

"A burning desire to be and to do is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition."

I wonder if you see things the way I do.

that routine

I just performed my Death of Adonis routine in my class, and it was certainly better than the version online. Maybe I'll update it. We'll see. I took my shirt off in front of the class, and when I started dancing, I just let myself go into the performance. It felt really good, and it was the first time I had done that. I left behind the potential judgments and just danced what I felt this dying youth must have felt.

I also realized that that performance was the culmination of this first stage of being in Portland. I've been working hard, probably too hard, and the summer will be a time of rest for me. But to see what I've been working on is to watch that video. I am proud of it, though still wishing I had a better version up.

Death of Adonis

I haven't been blogging, and I haven't been dancing. I ordered very expensive supplements today and spoke with an energy worker. I'm getting really into this stuff, says Mariya, my roommate. I was told that I should exercise and dance no more than 10 hours per week for the next six weeks. I will do my best, but I have just booked a trip to LA and SF. In the latter city, I will attend Stanford's Historical Dance week, studying all sort of dances from the past 400 years.

Here is my dance inspired and somewhat based upon what I have seen of Ted Shawn.

and my favorite

Ted Shawn

There is a short documentary lended to me by my Modern teacher on Denishawn, one of the early American modern troups. There are about 40 seconds of footage of Ted Shawn performing his Death of Adonis that I'm going to learn and present as a final project. Here are images from that performance.

the choreo

The choreography went really well. I changed up the routine quite a bit beforehand, and I really loaded it onto the guys. They stayed really engaged and focused and we got through about as much as I could have expected.

In other news, I had an intense energy session on WEdnesday. After getting up, I was in touch with the pain in my legs and feet, and I couldn't even stand. I limped for the rest of the day. Seeing such destruction made me rethink (once again) my schedule.

I spent a lot of time in the sun these past days, smelling the many varieties of roses, biking, bumping into friends. Finishing Zorba the Greek. Thinking of picking up Wendell Berry's The Art of the Commonplace.

My first choreography

I'm starting to teach my first choreography tonight. I had it finished and asked a teacher for some feedback. He pretty much said it would look good with lots of guys (which I don't have), but with just a few the movements might be too simple and repetitive to really look good. I was going over it again on Sunday, and then I was in the midst of my blood sugar crash, and I was not feeling good about it. Today I've been re-working the first 40 seconds that I'm preparing to teach, and I'm getting pretty happy with it. We'll see what the guys think.

The song is "checkin' up on my Baby" by Sonny Boy Williamson.

Freakout

I had a bit of a freakout last night. I got really depressed, feeling like I couldn't find a point in anything I was doing. And then today I was feeling pretty good but not great.

Meanwhile, I have been scrounging for food. I was mostly eating canned things and the same stew from the past 4 days. So yesterday I went shopping. Shopping is becoming quite a production. I went to the co-op for veggies, eggs, and grains; to New Seasons for meats and some cream; and then to Fred Meyer for canned goods, more grains, and some habanero chiles.

This afternoon, I had a nice salad while slow roasting a pork shoulder. That shoulder finished in mid-afternoon, and I made myself some pork tacos on corn tortillas with green peppers and local greens. And what do you know, my mood entirely shifted. Not only did I become more coherent, but I was happy and energized. My mood was down because I was hungry. Well not quite hungry, but not sustained. I realize that my body is becoming more of a ferrari than a civic. It craves fresh food - veggies, salad, meats, not to mention ice cream. Mac and cheese, fries, simple grains - none of this is cutting it. I can be satisfied and no longer hungry, but my mood turns sour, and I can't work or focus.

It's all in the food.

Dante and the Rose Garden

I rode my bicycle into the hills of Southwest Portland this afternoon. I was visiting the International Rose Test Garden - a beautiful spot with more types of roses than I cared to count. I sat in the sun, people watched, and took a bit of a look at this left side of mine.

I watched people walking around and watched myself. Somehow I was reminded of Dante's journeys. I never did quite understand that book. Maybe I'm not filled with the pious wonder of so many of his readers.

I realized that my left side is far weaker than I cared to admit. More often than not, I compensate for it with my right side. I focused on it longer, and something inside me started to yell out. This is the scream of repressed fear. It's a strange thought to think of one's issues becoming physically present in the body, but less strange when I consider the change in posture in a child 3 years old to 12. He begins perfectly aligned and upright, and only when he learns of the cares of this world - or rather when they are necessarily imposed upon him - does that perfect alignment change. In the movie, The Matrix, they refer to their bodies in the Matrix as mental projections of their true self. It seems to me that that might not be so far from the truth. I watched more and more people walk around, specifically observing their posture and gait. It was fascinating to see so much revealed in each person. I think that I rarely take the time to really watch a person, but when I do, I realize that each person has their own baggage like me - their own wound in the side, if you will. The problem, it seems to me, is that we tend to ignore our wounds, and this lets them continue to fester. By focusing on them, we can observe their effects and hopefully begin the healing process.

I feel a bit like the walking wounded today, but at the same time, I feel wonderfully healthy. When I look at myself in the mirror, I seem to be radiating health, but this instrument of mine is still not functioning at capacity. I feel a bit like one of those rosebuds on the hill - beginning to surge with maybe a peek of petal showing, but so far from blooming. It's strange to be walking on this path and thinking these things. Sometimes I think I'm full of it; other times, I know this "wound" in my side to be as real as if Thomas had put his finger inside.

I had another thought while riding to the rose garden. I thought maybe all these thoughts about energy, posture, food, health, love... I thought that maybe I'm just distracting myself from the real, visible world in front of me. Maybe I'm wanting to see something behind it all, but missing the visceral connection. For a long time, I've felt that the only world of any import is the one in front of me. Whether there is more and how I relate to it will take care of itself if I can order my life and thoughts here. Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is here in front of you. This bolsters my belief in the need to focus on the world as it presents itself. But in the midst of this desire, I realized that that first series of thoughts is not what distracts me from the present. Fear and hope, the connections my brain tends to make from all these immediate sensations is what distracts me. My brain seems to undertake a continuous analysis of everything that might happen in the future, or a continual review of everything that already happened in the past. Rarely am I present enough to examine my side.

I'm not sure what it would be like to live fully in the present. It seems to me this would be the man who completely forgot about the kingdom of heaven, but the one who lived it most fully. Paradoxical? I don't understand what it means to live in accordance with the words of the Sermon on the Mount or the Tao te Ching. Lao Tzu said, if people did not laugh at the teachings of the Tao, it would not be the Tao.

"The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice."


I suppose what I fear most of all is not that few have the courage to put it into practice, but that we have entirely misunderstood the meaning of "overcome." I'm rambling today. It's just that I stare at my body, the people around me, the world, and I feel like just under the surface there is some simple sense to it all. Somehow I can't quite see it, just as I can't quite let my body weight fall evenly through my left side.

I am the Walrus.

The last entry maybe needs some more elucidation. I realized this long ago, but am only now just starting to really accept the conclusion one must form from its acceptance. The way to become great (and I specifically refer to the technical sense here, though my earlier definition still applies) is to dance with those who cannot dance at your level. And it is to approach this dance as worthy of as much attention and admiration as a dance with the best dancer in the world.

To dance with a beginner is to maintain control in the midst of chaos. the beginner has strange, unpredictable movements. The beginner is loaded with tension, and generally uses you to support themselves. To dance well with a beginner means to dance your own dance without being affected by unexpected impetuses, and without being physically overbearing so that they cannot dance their dance. We have to lead without forcing and without comprimising. Ahh... I suppose that is it. How difficult it is.

I once did a wonderful exercise with Brenda. I walked across the floor, and she poked and prodded me in different areas. This touch was naturally a surprise, and more often than not, knocked me off axis. the point of the exercise is to absorb these inconsistencies in your movement, and not let them affect your groundedness. O-sensei was once in a car crash, and he emerged unscathed, while everyone else was seriously injured. When questioned about this occurrence, he offered up the explanation, "in the moment before the crash, I grounded my Ki (qi)." It is this calmness in the midst of a crash that dancing with a beginner is like. This is why most of us get frustrated or tired of dancing with beginners - because we have to stay grounded, in control, and in rhythm with outside interference. The task of the social dancers is to minimize this interference, while still dancing as an individual.

Dancing with beginners is thus the best way to get better, not to mention the best way to build an amazing community. In a dance with a beginner, we are forced to reassess which motion is possible. We can choose only those particular movements that we are most comfortable with. For many people, and I don't try to separate myself from this crowd, this can be frustrating and exhausting. But the beginning dancer gives that shock to our system that is necessary for improvement.

It should be stated that these are still thoughts half-formed. I am exploring these concepts, and my responsibility in a dance and in a community.


--------


Thoughts on groundedness:

What is groundedness? It's rather difficult to explain. We all have a sense of what it means, but in terms of our bodies and posture, how can we make sense of it? In my Pilates lessons (which I may soon become addicted to, to the woe of my bank statement.) my instructor has been pointing out that I tense my left hip instead of relaxing it downward. I saw a good image in my book recently to visualize this concept. Imagine the near end of your femur (the hip socket) sinks down towards the ground. Then to lift your knee if front of you, imagine that there is an invisible string tied to it which allows the work to be done effortlessly. when lifting the knee, maintain heaviness in your hip. My hip rises with the leg. I essentially crunch my left side muscles. I have no idea why I do this, or what I'm trying to accomplish, but this is my default. My goal is now to relax that hip and keep it heavy in everything I do. This results in a state of groundedness. I will thus try to define groundedness as the state in which our body exercises the least amount of effort necessary to perform any movement or to maintain any given position. Good posture is the state where we are perfectly grounded. There is no excess tension in our system. I used to get very frustrated at my own tensions, and Brenda would tell me just to acknowledge the tension, breathe into it, and slowly it will dissolve itself. This is the process she was talking about - finding where you can expend the least energy possible.

Imagine the shoulders. Many of us hold excess tension there. If we can allow those to drop down to where they would naturally lie, we will... hmm, I don't know. I want to say lots of things, but I don't really know what good posture and alignment accomplishes. I have a gut instinct and a belief, but I can't confirm it. I will say that one of O-sensei's sayings was "A good posture indicates a good state of mind."

This is the partnered social dance...

As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and give to what isn't enough.

Breakfast and things

I'm eating local mushrooms from the mushroom guy at the farmer's market. They are put into a scramble from local hens that laid multi-colored eggs alongsidea cup of Sumatran coffee roasted by my favorite coffee shop. I think every day should start like this. I've been considering the costs of my breakfasts. I steer clear away from expensive cereals. I have oatmeal with honey, raisins, and walnuts more often than not. I estimate this meal to cost me about $1 plus $0.50 for the coffee. I try to stick with oatmeal, because I thought it was the cheapest, and it generally tastes like what I imagine manna must have been like for the Jews fleeing Egypt. Pretty good. But this egg meal is surprisingly cheap. Two egg scramble with mushrooms is also approximately $1.

I'm telling you all: put that cereal away, go to a farmer's market, buy some eggs and mushrooms. Heat some butter and give the mushrooms a few minutes of fry, crack the eggs and scramble. A little salt. Then you email me and tell me if that was NOT worlds better than magnificently overpriced processed wheat product floating in milk that tastes weird and tinny and is far removed from what fresh must actually taste like (I've never had raw milk...) You will probably be spending about the same amount of money.

But it's a hassle getting to the farmer's market, and if you don't live in Portland, it probably only happens once a week... But trust me, when you get there, you won't be sorry. I've been meaning to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's a book about her year removing herself from the industrial food chain and supposed to be a great read.

-------------

Last night the ballet was awesome. I haven't been to much ballet or professional dance, and I can't look at the dance and conceptualize the underlying technique. What they are doing seems so far removed from the possibility of my own dance that I can merely take an aesthetic appreciation away from it. Thus one must not take my comments too seriously. I was struck by a few things. First the dance rarely seemed a direct response to the music - the music often seemed to be accompanying the dance, as a sort of background. It seemed like the little hits that synchronized with the dancers were meant to accent THEIR movement, rather than their movement accenting the music. This is certainly a different conception of dance than what I have been brought up with. I'm reminded of a passage I heard Andrew Smith read from Toni Morrisons's book Jazz - it talks about the dancers thinking they know and control their own movements, but the music is a silent, overarching (even oppressive?) master. In the ballet, if the dance is not a direct response to the music, I'm not sure what takes the role of master - maybe the choreographer, but I don't even think that. The movements and the dance, as beautiful as they were, elicited a deep existential quandary - WHY? Why do these particular movements? Why choreograph these pieces? I can be forgiving of myself in this regard, because my why is answered by the music. The music plays; I dance. It is simple, logical, straightforward. But if the dance is separated from the music?? It's somewhat frightening to consider. Somehow it seems disconnected from all art and nature. I quote again from Isadora (and I may have written this earlier, but the gravity of her words account for the repetition)

"For three hours I sat tense with bewilderment, watching the amazing feats of Pavlowa. She seemed to be made of steel and elastic. Her beautiful face took on the stern lines of a martyr. She never stopped for one moment. The whole tendency of this training seems to be to separate the gymnastic movements of the body completely from the mind. The mind, on the contrary, can only suffer in aloofness from this rigorous muscular discipline. This is just the opposite from all the theories on which I founded my school, by which the body becomes transparent and is a medium for the mind and spirit."

That being said, I loved the show and will certainly go more. I simply found it odd that the most resonant moments for me were ones that were inherently eerie and unnatural. Moments of brokenness, awkward poses, missed connections, hopeless solipsism, dire moments when, more often than not, the crowd laughed. But can these moments be considered dance in my conception of the word? I don't know, but I swear this modern ballet is more at home mimicking and twisting that which is natural than it is at representing it.

And then I went dancing in a suit. You want to feel good? Try busting a move solo, in a suit, to a rocking band.

such a good night

Ballet, blues in a tie, tango, crepes with mushrooms and cheese.

Maybe I'll blog later, but now I leave you with a quote.


"... but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"

Wind Energy positions?

Does anyone have any sort of connection to a wind energy firm in Portland? I'm looking to connect someone for a position to work.

Here's a link to the Rose City Sweets

And by the way, I love this song. LOVE it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_-iXxL1XEg


I'm teaching three classes tonight - my routine, the May progressive series at Tuesday Blues, and the drop in at Tuesday Blues. Lord, send me some students...

I went dancing tango last night, feeling rather comfortable, and maybe even a bit complacent. I don't use complacent in the sense of smugness, but in the sense of feeling rather satisfied with my dancing. And I don't mean I was satisfied and not wanting to improve my technique, but just that I was relaxing (maybe a little too much - I had a small crash) and not caring what might be said in the gossiping corners of the tango community. It was a complacency of the mind more than the body. Hmm, maybe I was a little smug too.

My dancing did not feel particularly on, and this didn't surprise me after Sunday's showing, but people keep responding very positively to my dancing. I went through each dance, thinking mostly of amusing myself, and my partners seemed to emerge happily. It was a fairly nice night of dancing. I must admit, however, that at Monday's venue where they tend to play traditional tango music, I yearned for more musical references to the African diaspora. Give me some drums!

I need to ask some more people their opinions, but while tango is uniformly considered a smooth dance, it seems that the heart of it is extremely rhythmic. One only needs listen to the music for evidence of this, but the rhythms seem to be lost in the modern conception of the dance. I am necessarily biased coming from a jazz perspective, but remember that early jazz and tango developed in the same eras. It wasn't until Astor Piazzolla came along that they were outright unified, but the playfulness in the rhythms of tango scream of jazz. The technical aspects of the tango walk are designed to create a strong staccato rhythm, but they are hardly used in as nuanced a way as Brenda would dance jazz. I don't know why. Modern dancers certainly dance rhythmically within their steps - that is to say that they use the staccato nature of the walk, but when you watch the steps, most people step almost entirely in single time. Where's the syncopation, hesitation, doubles, triples, the real complexity?

Here's a thought. Balboa is a minimalist rhythmic jazz dance typically danced on body to fast music. I'm told that in the jazz era, there was a Balboa scene to be found in Buenos Aires. I saw a Milonga demo (this would be considered the rhythmic version of tango, but the music is in a different basic rhythm.) that looked very similar to balboa. The lead and the follow were dancing together, but their footwork was completely individualized - the way advanced dancers dance Balboa. I commented on this similarity to Brenda, and she told me about the Bal dancers in Argentina. Unfortunately, they are pretty much all gone. BUt how refreshing to find this stylistic similarity reemerging!

An tango instructor asked me fairly recently, Jonathan, do you want to dance the tango? Or do you just want to develop the technical skills of the dance? I was taken aback at the time. I love the tango; it's just that, like all my dances, I haven't yet found the feel of the dance. Sometimes I get little glimpses of that thing I'm after.

I was dancing in a class with Brenda in the fall, working on milonga, and we were walking little circles. I was very focused on my own steps, so wasn't thrown off when she started walking off beat (while I was still on beat). In a few moments, she came back on beat. The effect is one of tension and release; it creates a beautiful accent, but this is far outside the acknowledged realm of possibility from what I've seen. As for emulation, I love Juan Carlos Copes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpLqCth7DrY

video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpXYNIDE32I

breakthrough

I performed a demo with Drew tonight, which I expect to be online tomorrow. I also saw the Rose City Sweets perform a different type of routine than I had seen them do before. That was awesome and makes me excited to choreograph.

I also had a breakthrough with my arms. Last Saturday, I asked my ballet teacher how to get my arms in the proper position in second. My shoulders were always popping forward, and I could never make it feel right. She explained that I needed to roll my elbows forward. I was thinking about it all week, but I couldn't find the right position. Yesterday, I asked her again (and she told me I'm too much in my head...) and for the rest of the day, I kept my shoulders in that position. Tonight I danced tango trying to keep the position, and I found that suddenly it was much easier to let my shoulders relax, to place my sternum in the right place, extend my spine, lift my head... only I wasn't quite understanding the movement of the arms. All the same, tonight I was oozing music - just letting things fly out of me. My grounding was on, my technique was feeling solid.

I went to another dance that plays alternative blues - hip hop, pop, trip-hop mixes... and I danced solo for quite a while. In fact I danced for so long and started to let things go so much that I looked around at one moment, and no one was on the floor dancing. They seemed to be just watching me and a friend dance. It was strange, but I could feel energy radiating from me.

Suddenly as I played around with my arms, I felt the movement extending from my core. I felt the rhythm of my arms. This was one of the most exciting things since I moved to Portland. My arms have been a continual struggle - they flopped around like broken wings. But I just started the process of really owning them.

There have only been two nights in Portland that I have really felt the music and danced. One was after a nice dinner (earlier blog) with live music. Tonight, the music that really grabbed me was Candombe - tango with African influences still in it. It mostly comes from Uruguay. I remembered how badly I wanted to dance in Uruguay so many years ago... But there was another factor in my dance, I believe. I was meditating today - not for incredibly long. I was trying to focus on healing my knees and feet, but for a while there - just for good measure - I followed the lead of Isadora, placed my hands on my solar plexus and started searching. I can't say I found the "motor in my soul," but something certainly affected my openness to the music tonight. IT's odd that my dancing seems so intimately related to seemingly external factors. It makes me wonder if I should reconsider my whole process of learning.

this weekend

I started really riding my bike around the city this weekend. I saw four marches on Saturday - one pro-immigration rally with thousands of people voicing their anger at the Arizona legislation. It was touching seeing everyone out with their families and taking up the Obama cry - Si, se puede! For some reason or another, an anti-WTO and globalization rally was tagging along as a caboose. Then there were the demonstrators outside NIke who somehow managed to silence the immigration rally; these were against Nike's use of sweatshops. Last and certainly least (by numbers) was NORML, the organization for Marijuana Legislation Reform. This mostly consisted of a rock band and a circle of amazingly good hacky-sackers...

I realized today that driving my car stresses me out, and riding my bike makes me feel like I have everything I need. Of course, it wasn't raining this weekend.

In other news, I'm off to tango, then to demo at Barefoot Blues. And soon I'll have a video of me and Drew dancing. ALso, I start teaching a men's group on Tuesday.

knee trouble

My knees are really getting messed up. I've had Brenda and a pilates instructor note that this is due to my underuse (and almost non-use) of my inner thigh muscles. I have overdeveloped my quads and the outer muscles of my leg. The tendons running outside my leg and over my knee are extremely tight. Even riding a bike is stressful right now.

Sometimes I wonder if my body is going to hold out for me. I don't know if I can get this stuff fixed. Maybe I'll end up like so many dancers - brutalized.

breaking and entering

The peoples broke into my car two nights ago. They smashed the window and took my wallet. Damn!

It was my fault. I left it sitting on my seat. These things never happen in the suburbs...

Choosing partners through intuition

There is a moment when I am walking through a dance floor, bodies moving and flowing. My perception seems to take a step back, and I am no longer focusing on one particular thing, but I can feel the pulsing and motion of the room. Suddenly my eye catches a potential partner. This is how I like to pick my dance partners. It sounds so simple, but it doesn't feel that way.

So often, my mind is flying through all sorts of things. I may desire to dance with someone, or not desire to dance with another. It's rare that I am simply open to dancing with whoever presents themselves. These moments happen all the time, but whether I choose to follow my intuition depends on my mood and awareness. When I am fully present in a room, my intuition dictates my decisions. Sometimes, when I'm in these moods, I just wander the room waiting for that person I should dance with. I look around the room like it's a fruit tree - looking for the ripe fruit that is just about to fall. There is always one.

For a great dancer, it becomes more obvious. I watched Steven Mitchell dancing one night at Studio Hop in Eauze, France. He was standing in a corner asking each woman closest to him to dance. He did this for almost an hour straight - one amateur after another. I watched those women walk away glowing. The dance had become something more than two people trying to execute steps or stay on time or show off. It was something I can't describe.

When I refer to a "great dancer," I am not truly referring to a person's skill. It seems to be true that a great dancer is always technically proficient (And I don't understand why...), but when I say "great," I am referring to this openness. The dance for these people is a gift - it's nothing to be held onto for their own pleasure. It seems to flow through them, and they attract partners like moths to a fire. People can sense something different and powerful. This is certainly what Isadora found.


Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

-From Tao te Ching (15)