Lee and Jamus at barefoot dance 10th October 2018
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This class will begin and end with 30 to 40 minutes of music, minimal instruction where we can drop into dance and let our body lead us. In the middle we will come together, notice who we are dancing with tonight and explore a embodied theme.
The Dance Of Empathy And Resonance
There are moments in my dancing when I feel like I am in the zone and Now this is dancing! I am curious about this, the drive for the peak connected blissful moment where I am in my own flow and connected to the whole. Does this make all the moments where I am struggling to arrive to find my flow to connect not dancing ? What makes me feel that?
I am curious to what creates these ' in the zone moments', yes I know we all want to live in that state all the time, but lifes life and we don't. A very simple answer to the question is the little word yes. When I say yes to the experience I am having, say yes to the dance that is happening right here without needing the engagement, myself or my partner to be a improved version. Then this creates the right conditions for curiosity, spontaneity and connection to occur, wallah here I am in the zone.
What gets in the way is that little word no. When we have the idea that we want another dance, another experience, another us or another them, We are not only not available to our partner, the dance but we lose ourselves in the mix.
I feel both a sense of timing and noticing can be important here. When I am in a sense of the flow and that flow could be completely still. There is a sense of Here I am and a deep listening to how the group and the dances are moving through time and space. I may have the ideas 'O over there looks juicy' but when I wait and immerse myself in the here and now of the dance I am having. Then a little magic can happen, dances that I never saw coming can emerge.
Sometimes these dances can arrive like grace out of a really bumpy unconnected moment. This is where the practice for me is to say yes to those moments where I feel isolated and disconnected. To find both empathy and resonance for myself and my partner. Often to find it for myself is far harder than finding it for my dance partner. As one of my teachers Malcolm Manning so often says 'We are so hard on our selves'. So I invite you to cultivate the qualities of empathy and resonance in your dance on Wednesday.
About Jamus
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I love the dance, to move, to be still, too breath, the dance as a teacher and a meaning maker. To drop my weight and touch the earth, to find the pathways out into relationship. This is all important to me.
I have been learning and exploring dance improvisation for more than 20 years. I now know that so much can be achieved if we give ourselves the space and time to listen and evolve through dance and movement. Our bodies are highly intelligent, we just need to learn too be danced and moved from the inside out.
I have been teaching the embodied arts since 2003 and Somatic Yoga from 2010. I have a deep love of how the body moves and the genius of how our bodies are put together. I have done all of this as a consequences of living with a disabling eye condition.