About ready to return to Pdx

I don't know how I made it through 5 weeks of Herrang before, because one week of dance week is really draining me. I'm ready to return to my bed, but I will miss the coffee here in SF. Ritual is some of the best I've had.

What does it mean to be great? I think greatness requires confidence, relaxation, self-knowledge. I'm not sure if it requires humility. It certainly does not require a false humility, and I think that much of the recognized humility in the world is of an affected sort. I think that the truly humble man knows himself to be great. The humble man is humble before God, and therefore before his fellow man, but never in a way that makes him smaller. The humble man recognizes and respects resources and gifts - he uses them accordingly. The falsely humble man destroys them in the name of humility, or fear, or piety. This is the story of the talents told in the Gospels.

But back to my real question. I think greatness is full of spontaneity - or at least this is how it seems to me. My suspicion is that the great person is not spontaneous in the sense we think of it - that is, spontaneous meaning random or unrestricted by laws. I think the great person has understood whatever laws are governing us, and in doing so, is able to move freely within them. To the uneducated eye, this would appear as spontaneity or even madness. This is essentially what we seek in dance or the other arts. We need to understand the rules of the game, but not be bound by them. Understanding the rules, we are free to emerge as a Mondrian, but it is our understanding not our disregard of the rules that allow us to achieve that state.

Though this is the desired end in the dance, it seems to me to be an apt metaphor for the end of life. If I could understand why we're all so WORRIED, then I could be free from it. At least that's the thought.

Relaxing

Finally, in trying to find my pelvic floor muscles again, I am realizing how crucial this relaxation business is. I don't think I've ever relaxed my pelvis in my whole life. I've obviously been working on it in the past days, and I've noticed a few things:

1) It's hard to keep my posture right. I go straight into my sway backed, jutted out chest position when not keeping my posture secure with tension in my hips and abs and whatnot. I think that once I can really locate the pelvic floor, this will change.

2) I'm way more comfortable all the time, and this even seems to come out in my personality. It feels so GOOD to relax. I sat with my legs straight out in a mini-lecture today, and it wasn't hard to sit upright. Normally, it's quite a task, because of all the tension in my hips. I have to really work to be able to stretch forward or even sit balanced in that position.

feigning ignorance

Feigning ignorance, a man who bought strawberries at the Wednesday afternoon farmer's market in Palo Alto might believe that the placement of the trash cans down the next three blocks were spaced exactly for him. He might deduce that some brilliant engineer calculated the average rate of leisurely stroll along with the time necessary to consume one fairly large, extremely juicy California strawberry. But that would be a man feigning ignorance.

There's some good blues harp being played to the community outside the Palo Alto Apple store. Feigning ignorance, a man who saw that scene might think that a community wealthy enough to buy Apple products might support such an asset as good live street music... But maybe I write too soon.

A man who heard Mura Dehn in the Spirit Moves refer to blues as the "most essential, the most profound" aspect of jazz music might not understand what she meant. I still don't understand, but today Richard Powers taught a blues class. The basis of the class was American steps that crossed the Atlantic and were recorded by the French. Two of interest:

1) Slow, quick, quick... The first slow is a double cross step. Both partners cross in front of themselves, followed by a little side quick quick step, and the patterns repeats to the other direction.

2) Something called the "two plus one" It's a side, together, side step followed by another slow side step to the free foot. Then the pattern continues. Done only as side steps, it progresses to one side.

These two steps were amalgamized by other types of music and dance - the first becoming the cross-step waltz, and the second becoming the foxtrot. To make this even more interesting. Richard first saw someone performing the cross step waltz many years ago in Stanford. When inquiring where this step came from, the man told him that he took the step from a blues class Richard himself had taught. He simply modified the rhythm to fit waltz timing. Richard continued teaching this as the cross-step. But the story continues... Upon traveling to Prague or France or somewhere that dance historians travel to, he saw Frenchmen performing the same steps to waltz music. inquiring where it had come from, they said that it had been around for some time - arising from a certain step originally attributed to blues dance!

The exact same development had occurred 50 some odd years before.

I don't have the full story on the development of the foxtrot. Seemingly, it went through some more stages, but it's a curious phenomenon. Why did the blues result in these dances? Maybe it had nothing to do with Mura Dehn's claim. I have no idea, but it was a fascinating class (and I am not feigning ignorance).

swing dancing

This was an excerpt from an email I was just writing:


Richard was giving a class on the texas Tommy today, and said the move we know of as the texas tommy probably came from a dance called the "Apatcha...?" It was a performance piece where a man was beating on a woman, and he whipped her out by the arm and then back in. He thinks that this move was adapted into the Texas Tommy dance (seen below in the latter half of the video). When I see this dancing, I find myself doubting that Shorty George Snowden actually "created" the breakaway. Richard thinks this video was probably from 1910 just after the earthquake in SF, but it's dated 1914 here. ANyways, that is some swinging dancing, not very different (in my mind) from the Savoy clips. naturally the difference was the music - here they were dancing to rags. fancier footwork and rhythmic variation would naturally arise as the music got more complicated, but it seems like all the groundwork for swing was already there. But maybe I don't understand the full importance of rhythm in the dance...

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

picking bones

I'm at my friend Andrea's house for last night and tonight. That meant that I didn't need to travel back to San Francisco from Palo Alto for two nights. I went to the Palo Alto farmer's market and bought some sablefish/ black cod/ butterfish, and now I'm eating it (them?) with other goodies. I've been trying all new types of mushrooms since arriving in the northwest, but fish was the thing i really planned to learn about. Unfortunately, I haven't found a great fish market in Portland yet. However, the farmer's markets stock good stuff.

The Stanford dance weekend just finished its class portion, and the historical dance week begins tomorrow. This weekend I learned the cha-cha, cross-step waltz with variations, the night club two step, salsa, and some Edwardian Steampunk dances. The last one may leave you, the reader, as confused as I, the student, was. Essentially, these are dances from the Edwardian era (about a ten year period of time) at the turn of the 20th century. These dances are then performed by dancers and at dances with a Steampunk theme. The natural question follows. And no, i can't quite answer it. It's something part fantasy, part aesthetic, part fiction, much imagination, a little attitude, and maybe one of you can tell me a little more. A quick google search resulted the image above. I think I'll leave it at that.

The class on Edwardian Steampunk was taught by Richard Powers, the person running the week here. The way that class was run was particularly interesting. In one hour, we learned 5 full dances. Many of them used similar footwork and rhythms, but it was a lot for one class. This class did not emphasize technique or move combinations - it was rather meant as a social experience. It was accompanied by brief history and explanation of Steampunk, which itself was meant as encouragement to spread the culture and hold your own Steampunk Ball. It was like no other dance class I've ever taken, and that brings me to the whole experience of dancing in this community. Most dance communities that I'm a part of stick to 1 or 2 dances. Lindy/ balboa, tango, blues, etc. This community prides itself on dancing everything. The playlists are seemingly itunes on random, and all the while, people do whatever they might to get around the floor - waltz, polka, one-step, mazurka... This is more in line with the dancing of the American dance era, where each song or set of songs would be announced (foxtrot, swing, waltz...), and it makes for a different sort of social experience than I am used to.

For a long time, I've felt something missing in my dance communities - this applies all over the world - somehow it seems that when the communities' focus on one dance, we tend to lose our understanding of dance as a social phenomenon. We try to master the basics and fundamentals. We struggle to be the best at one particular thing, but we often lose the spontanaeity (and in my mind, the spirit) that is inherent in social dance. The dances go down one track, techniques become specialized for that dance, no one wants to dance anything but that one thing. When we dance multiple dances, we lose the security of feeling proficient at our one dance. We are left with a partner looking for a nice time and some music. Something completely different arises from that situation, and it is this that I call the heart of social dance. It is making due. The old saying is "the best of anything is what you have." I think that when we can truly embrace this concept, we can find the purest state of social dance.

Anyways, social dance is alive and well in Palo Alto.

Defense

I was walking around Ruth's neighborhood in San Francisco today (which happens to be very near Zuni Cafe, one of my favorite restaurants here) and I was doing what I tend to do mostly all the time these days - trying to be conscious of my body. Today I was working on lengthening the spine by lengthening the muscles in the front of my neck, relaxing the muscles in my lower back and hips, and trying to get my legs to track correctly.

At one point, as I relaxed my beck and hips, I felt something deep in my pelvis engage and my spine lengthened upwards with internal support. I think this was my pelvic floor - that elusive muscle people always talk about. The idea, as I understand it, is that the muscles on the outside of our body should be used to move but not to support our body. Mostly I use my abs and back when I'm trying to align my pelvis, but the pelvic floor is the muscle that should be supporting this position.

I can't seem to find it again, but it should come back.

In other news, after reading more Tony Robbins, I'm changing the language that I use to refer to the patches of tension through my body. "Tension, shit, blocks..." All these words have negative connotations to them. Using these words puts me in a state where I am judging my body instead of feeling compassion for it. I was experimenting with different words, images, and mantras, but my favorite is to call that tension "armor." I think this is a good word, because I developed all that tension from the issues of my life, because I didn't know how else to deal with everything. Now it's time for me to shed it and move lightly through this world. The metaphor continues to make sense, because I think that the perfect defense is not made of obstructions. The perfect defense is permeable and harmonizes with an attack. This way, the attack is neutralized and conquered before the attacker knows what has happened. The perfect defense conquers before any attack; it succeeds by its nature. To create obstructions is to invite attack. Likewise, calling my tension a word with a negative connotation makes me want to attack and destroy it. This only serves to increase tension. So now I'm thinking of shedding my armor - armor put on for good reason, but no longer needed, as I'm developing a much stronger defense.

San Francisco.

The sun is shining down on me as I prep for class tonight with Ruth. In the meantime, I've been juicing some of the crate of oranges I bought in Southern CA.

Driving north

After a great few days in LA with monica, I'm headed north up the 101 and 1 to San Francisco. Off to Stanford tomorrow where I will attempt to continue resting while attending dance camp...

In other news, I had the best strawberries of my life this weekend, and some tangerines that would make you all so happy.

two videos of me and Drew

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijQ4ITFs4Bo

all the greats

All the greats have told me to take the world as my teacher. O-sensei said to never sit in front of a flowing stream and not let it teach you something. I'm on a little stopover in Ashland, OR on my way to Los Angeles, and I walked into their town park and sat at a river for a while.

My notes:

The river is constantly moving. If we consider the river to be water, then the banks are a container. Not unimportant, but certainly not the main attraction. The river (unless we're in Santa Fe) must be defined by the movement of the water. It is this continuous flow of water - simultaneously homogeneous and varied that defines and shapes the banks. That which is solid (the bank) has an inertia to it. It will not change instantly, but it is in a continual process of change. The energy of the water turns it into what it will be. It is the energy of the flow that shapes the course of the river. Similarly, I must view my body this way. My physical body is analogous to the bank of the river. I can feel this when I walk with awareness or when exercising on Pilates equipment. I can shape the flow of the energy in my body, and slowly, alter the shape of my body. When I talk about a blockage in my left side - that stitch - it feels like a dam in the river. The energy stops and is diverted down my right leg instead of my left.

Like the river, my body and life have a certain momentum. I have gifts, opportunities, inherent setbacks and struggles, but the flow of my energy continues to shape my life. It must flow around certain things, but it can cut right through others. To think that this energy is harnessable is an exciting thought. If I could truly use and direct it for what I wanted (and this is certainly what O-sensei taught), I would find my true power. My confusion arises from the fact that all the greats also speak about a place of stillness and silence. But where is the stillness in the river? How can something be both still and moving?


I may remember this anecdote incorrectly, and I may even have written it before... but when O-sensei was asked why no one could push him over, he responded with a laugh, "How can one move the whole world?"

But why is food so expensive?

The question we really need to answer is why is conventionally produced food so CHEAP?

Quoting again:

"A common complaint about organic and local foods is that they're more expensive than "conventional" (industrially grown) foods. Most consumers don't realize how much we're already paying for the conventional foods, before we even get to the supermarket. Our tax dollars subsidize the petroleum used in growing, processing, and shipping these products. We also pay direct subsidies to the large-scale, chemical-dependent brand of farming. And we're being forced to pay more each year for the environmental and health costs of that method of food production.

Here's an exercise: add up the portion of agricultural fuel use that is paid for with our taxes ($22 Billion), direct Farm Bill subsidies for corn and wheat ($3 billion), treatment of food-related illnesses ($10 billion), agricultural chemical cleanup costs ($17 billion), collateral costs of pesticide use ($8 billion), and costs of nutrients lost to erosion ($20 billion). At minimum, that's a national subsidy of at least $80 billion, about $725 per household each year..."

I suppose someone might begin to read my blog and wonder what all this has to do with dancing. Maybe they would understand after reading the entirety of the blog, but maybe not. My path right now has led me to fine tune my bodily intake. As I said earlier, I want to drive a Ferrari, not a Honda, so I need some high octane fuel. It's simple to reduce this down to nutrients, but I don't think that will ever cover the whole story. I think that even if science were able to reduce every particle of nutrients in fresh broccoli and put it into a supplement, we would still not receive the same sustenance from the pills that we would shopping locally and cooking for ourselves. This is because there is energy in food. The care with which we grow, buy, and cook our food reverberates throughout us. In the book Midnight's Children, there is an ongoing theme about cooking emotion into food - love, hate, etc. The author describes it as though it were as real as a spice. I actually believe in this. I can feel the difference in my dancing after a carefully prepared meal that I sat down to eat with friends. This is why food is important. There is something more to it than nutrients. I am out to figure out what it is.


And by the way, I'm looking for books to explain the global agricultural economy in terms of subsidies, WTO and World Bank loans, etc. I want to know what a free market would look like. Any suggestions?

quoting Kingsolver on the price of food

How delusional are we, exactly? Insisting to farmers that our food has to be cheap is like commanding a ten-year-old to choose a profession and move out of the house now. It violates the spirit of the enterprise. It guarantees bad results. The economy of the arrangement will come around to haunt you. Anyone with a working knowledge of children would see the flaw in that parenting strategy. Similarly, it takes a farmer to understand the analogous truth about food production - that time and care yield quality that matters - and explain that to the rest of us. Industry will not, but individual market growers can communicate concern that they're growing food in a way that's healthy and safe, for people and a place. They can educate consumers about a supply chain that's as healthy or unhealthy as we choose to make it.

Damn

I went to the farmer's market, and just to be thorough, I bought Morels, garlic tops, carrots, walla walla onions, two pints of strawberries, and a half quart of chocolate milk. And then I splurged on a 15 minute massage. The massage (after a Pilates workout) left me reeling and unable to keep on very many electronics. It was really similar to energy work. This is either a sign that the masseuse was really good, or that I was really able to relax in his hands, or both?

On a dinner note, I'll tell you - braised chicken, garlic tops, walla walla onions, cranberry beans, and a homegrown salad is the way to eat.

Here's the key to enjoying vegetables and the farmer's market. Don't buy what you would buy in a store. Buy what's fresh, buy what the farmer's are excited about. Buy green, and when you don't know what it is or what to do with it, ask. And then you will have a good meal, I promise. I've been reading two books today 1) Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin - a guide to raising commercial beef in a humane, sane, and healthy way and 2) Animal, vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - a story of she and her family eating truly local for one year in the Shenandoah valley. The thing that has really impressed itself upon me in both books (through different verbage - God v. evolution) is that nature has a plan. We are best not to disregard this, but follow what has worked for however many thousands (or millions) of years past.

I encourage you all to follow my footsteps in the past 6-8 months and embrace Michael Pollan's definition of food (that which your grandma or Great-grandma would recognize as food) and feel better. I'm telling you, go feel better. And break the routine. There is more to life than apples and spinach. You'll see.

tired

I think my soul is tired. I don't feel like dancing to old jazz music. I don't feel like dancing to blues. I feel like dancing to Mary J. Blige.

money and back pain

I'm watching my money dwindle away. My successive failures at turning a profit while teaching dance have a tendency to wear on my mind. I am, maybe oddly, consoled by a fortune I received at the Chinese garden a few weeks ago. It read, "Prosperity will come when you most want it and least expect it." A part of me has felt that way since leaving school. I watched my inherited stocks drop, and then felt compelled to sell at a low point, so that I could be sure to be out of school debt. Now my life seems to be more and more a walk of faith, and somehow I believe this is the only way it could be. There is something about a safety net that inherently holds us back. We may walk on a tight rope with a net below us, but our spirit stays small.

I'm reminded of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ. There's a scene where night has fallen and Jesus is standing on a hill above a small town, watching the fires cast their light through the darkened sky. He considers the idea that he is at his most content while possessing nothing and placing his trust in God and man in order to survive.

I live in a world of wealth and excess. This is my safety net. I forget how much lower I could fall and still not lose my soul. To keep that safety net in place, I am tempted to abandon my hopes and dreams. The safety net provides me with comfort and the luxury not to examine myself.

What does a man with nothing have? Can we really be true Christians and glaze over Jesus' claim that it's harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven? There's something here. I don't know what it is.



My back has started hurting when I stand with my hips forward. This is good pain, because it keeps me aligned. I danced a little tango last night, and I realized that as soon as I enter the tango embrace, I compromise my posture in this way. With my back hurting this is impossible. I have to fix it immediately. It is an interesting thought that what provides us with pain and pleasure is in such a flux - that we can actually shape these things.

challenges

I had a private lesson today that I didn't feel too confident about. It actually turned out better than the others I had had with the same students, but it took a little work. Then I taught a workshop that I had advertised for a week or two. I wasn't as prepared as I should have been, and I probably didn't advertise as much as I should have. Three people came, and one left early because it obviously wasn't what they were looking for. It was a little discouraging to say the least. I felt like I really failed, because my lesson plans weren't clear, the class was pretty low energy and not very fun, and I didn't really own the material. I'm hitting this wall where I'm not sure what to teach. I've been relying, like many of my other friends, on material from the trainings with Barry and Brenda, but it's feeling stale. I need my own material. I'm starting to develop my own persona in my classes, and trying to bring the quirky me out a little more, but I don't really have the material to back it up. I suppose it just takes more lesson planning, because my choreo classes that I prepare lots for have been going really well. Lessons learned.

Sometimes it's just hard. I'm still avoiding dancing, and I hardly know what to do with myself because of it. I'll leave for California on Friday, so I've got something to keep me busy.

dancing tonight?

I put my hair into a faux hawk and have been walking around in jean cut off shorts. I am so Portland. But to see just how Portland I am, to understand my roots to the place, observe...

All in all, I now have growing 5 butterhead lettuce plants, 3 red oak leaf lettuces, some leeks, sage, oregano, basil, red kale.

And in the pictured garden, which is at Brenda's house, there is:
Yellow Chard
Ruby Orach
Zucchini
Arugula
Dragon Beans
Edamame
Yellow Beans
Green Zebra tomato
Black Pear tomato
Stupice Tomato
5 varieties of peppers including Mexican hot peppers and Italian sweet peppers.

plus
3 more potted cherry tomato plants
potted strawberry plant

I'm really tired after all the planting and sun.

o h t h e p l a c e s y o u ' l l g o

I'm swung over the edge. I fear writing this blog post, because I can imagine the scepticism from all my east coast friends and peoples. I went to work with Brenda yesterday on posture. At Camp Blues, I was realizing that I push my hips forward when I relax and often when I dance. This strains my lower back. And as always, my legs are in varying amounts of pain and discomfort.

So we worked on feeling how to properly use the legs and pelvis. The way we work on this stuff is getting more and more esoteric. She stood back so that she could see the energy flowing in my body. And when I work on my body, the only thing I can really tell you that I feel is that weight of my body sinking through my skeletal system and into the floor. The equates to energy in my mind. We worked and worked on the legs, feet, pelvis, chest, shoulders, and neck. We were getting each in the right position as I went into a pliet in parallel. Finally Brenda started talking about grounding cords. A line of energy drawn from your base chakra into the ground and into the center of the earth. She practiced doing a few pliets with and without a grounding cord, and what do you know, I could see the difference. It is in fact quite clear to my eyes. It's not that I saw the energy flowing, per se, but rather that the quality of movement changed drastically. I could see the groundedness, power and strength when she used this method to ground.

It suddenly became clear to me that this is what postural and dance imagery is attaining. It is having you move energy. The imagery always contains something moving or falling or going somewhere, and it correlates perfectly with the way I think about the energy in my body. There is an image that correlates to the image I use with my pelvis. One should imagine a plum line falling from the base chakra (the area between the anus and genitals). There should be an invisible weight falling to the ground, so that the pelvis stays heavy and in a neutral position. This was my realization last night. This position allows me to engage my inner thighs and hamstrings, taking the strain off of my knees.

So I'm sold. I've been dabbling in this energy stuff halfheartedly. I did it through imagery for the past two years. I played with it in meditation. I unconsciously used intention and preparing my mental state for achievements like getting a job cooking in a restaurant and getting into Yale. But the time has come where I completely accept it. I admit now that I see the world as a large energetic system. Everything seems to be in flux - trees, plants, tables, people - and each thing interacts with each other. It turns out that the world finally makes sense to me viewing it through this lens. To understand people's behavior, how people convince others of things, what makes quality movement is all describable in terms of the energy we use and expend.

In all my studies, it seems universally true that to hold onto energy is counter-productive. To try to keep it for yourself achieves nothing, but to let it flow through you - giving as much as you receive - turns the world around. Suddenly there is nothing to fear. Nothing can harm you. It makes sense that Socrates did not fear the hemlock, although I'm certainly not there yet.

The other amazing thing about this is that my teachers can be anything. I can learn from simply watching the energetic flow in the world. I understand when Isadora Duncan says she learned her hand movements from the fluttering of palm leaves, or when Musashi claims his teachers were the rocks and streams, or how O-Sensei could "see" the paths of bullets. I know many of you probably don't understand. But at the end of the day, I think my way of looking at the world is very similar to any other way; it's just that I'm giving words and imagery to things that most of us feel and act on without consciously thinking about it.

BOOM.

The day after Returning from San Francisco

I have so much to share, but I hardly know where to begin. And I'm about to meet Brenda and Julie (a girl who I couldn't remember where I had met, but it finally occurred to me that we met in Herrang, Sweden. She's from Seoul, Korea.)

Camp Blues was intense - tons of work and emtional intensity, but I was PAID! I met some people who might be interested in helping put on workshops in Ashland, OR and Maui, HI.

My routine is going well. We are one week away from finishing, and will have to wait to perform until after I return from California.

Brenda asked me to go teach with her in China in October. One of the goals I set for myself (with the encouragement of Napoleon Hill, the author) included buying tailored suits in China. It was a goal that could certainly happen in the next year, but actually the one that seemed most unlikely, because I didn't see why I would be traveling to China. And then Brenda asked me to go with her, and I started wondering what there is to this Napoleon Hill stuff... You see, he says that we must define our goals without any concern for whether they seem unachievable. He talks a lot about creating a mental state that is always thinking of the goal and then the subconscious will always be seeking a way to make your dreams into reality. A dubious claim if it weren't for my studies in the past years. I think a serious and prolonged study of faith is what we all need.

Tonight, my modern class is performing, and I'm going to usher and watch the show.