Some days the dance releases from the bondage of self.
Other days it seems to bind up the bondage so that the self feels trapped, cannot move beyond, above, without.
Three week back at 5Rhythms after a break of nearly three months brought on by a particular frozen dance moment.
The word from the sages of the dance floor is to dance through these moments.
On that Sunday three months ago so strong was the stuck emotion from the mythic landscape of childhood and from earlier lives, there was no staying.
It was bail out the door, hit the silk, parachute out of there.
Took three months to come back.
There was a micro honeymoon period again for the first two sessions, the first with Michelle prior to her departure to Europe to walk the Camino.
Last week it was with Cath who seems to be unique amongst the local 5R teachers in that she lets the music do the talking, there’s no commentary along the way.
Maybe it was the high from that last week which set up the low at today’s dance which was mediated by Caitlin, a teacher who’s music and direction we’ve liked in the past.
Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves but the internal landscape threw up some hard stuff today which made it hard to physically stay in the room.
The original plan was to stay for the first hour and then go – So kept the watch on under the sleeve, but by thirty minutes into the dance we wanted out of there.
Just too much watchfulness – too much mindfulness of the reactions of others – filtered for negativity in whatever nuance, glance, shrug or look the negative could be interpreted from.
But the deal was to stay for the first hour so the next thirty minutes was a painful waiting for the time to be up so that we could get out of there.
Then the change happened – It came about in the Stillness Rhythm at the end of the first wave.
Everyone was slowing down or lying still on the floor or floating about in a dreamlike state.
The music was slow and tribal, a yowling and howling which evoked within a sense of dullness, dreariness, death like.
The received wisdom is to stay with this, to deal with the emotions of dullness, dreariness and death which the music and the rhythm were evoking.
Fuck that, another part inside pipes up, a mischievous contrarian spirit of just do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
So we began to dance faster and more staccato/ chaos like, finding these rhythms in the internal song arising from the mythic landscape within.
We sensed the small boy throwing rocks down from a tree at his tormentors, the pursuers of conformity.
And with the chaotic staccato movements bouncing out of the limbs came the laugher from within – Swimming against the current, finding our own light and laughter within, daring to be different.
And so the hour passed by and then ninety minutes and then the full two hours as all kinds of emotional colour came and went inside.
Most of the others were pairing up and dancing with each other, or holding and embracing and playing nice.
But the child in the tree had jumped down and waded into a huge bunch of nettles, a stick as an imaginary sword, laying waste the nettle knights and men-at-arms in a glorious slaughter.
By 1230 it was winding down and it was time to bail before it all got too crystalline and earth mother-like with the holding of hands in a circle and smiling at each other.
No glorious happy release today but at least we stayed to the end.
dancesingwrite 