Dance for God, because that's what you do on a Thursday night

Tonight I joined an amazing circle of dancers with my teacher, Banafsheh, "an embodied mystic of the divine feminine."

We started the class bowing to the Beloved, the Divine.  As we opened our hips and our hearts we were asked to focus on who we are dancing for.  We partnered up dancing while connecting deeply into the eyes of another.  Dancing is like the condensed essence of the soul for me.  Some of it brought wet eyes, some moments brought protective politeness, some moments I glimpsed a deep sadness meeting my openess.  The intensity of this connection is far more compact than conversation, it is our whole being in communication.  Dance like sex asks us to be fully in our bodies while giving and receiving energy and I feel is the most intimate request of our human forms.

Tonight we were invited to channel spirit through the crown of our heads and into our sex.  We were reminded that dance is the core practice of igniting our life force energy.  I know this deeply and I often find myself teaching this, but to hear it from teachers around me, and especially those older than myself feels unbelievably nourishing.  Most of my students are older than me and explicitly comment on their desire to connect to their youthful sexual energy through my age.  But I know that this wisdom is ageless and the transmission of it across generations is becoming restored.

What I'm so moved by is that the healing is happening everywhere.  In our dancing tonight we sat in a circle where a young woman gifted us with her trust and her story of rape and depletion.  The room felt more relaxed and present than I have ever felt when hearing this story.  We gently spoke our questions our experiences and moved into prayer for her wholeness.  I intend to share this here and now without revealing her identity holding the intention that more dance classes penetrate us so deeply and so collectively.  Banafsheh reminded us that we are not whole if one of us is not whole.  This sisterhood feels incredible, it trembles me with love.  It feels so different than the unconscious competition or comparison that can so easily slide between gorgeous women.

We all rose from the Earth to Dance for God, because that's what you do on a Thursday night in the city.  It's becoming simpler. Being whole, being sisters...is becoming simpler.  Thank you for reminding me tonight.

Walking Back In

My body felt warm and relaxed after two hours dancing in the studio.  Each week for the past 4 weeks I had come to open my body with new movement and to untangle the memories and definitions that constricted who I am when I dance.  As I left the studio I touched the elevator down button and turned to my phone.  A young blonde woman leaned against the wall smiling at me.  "This may be strange but..." I looked up to see who was speaking.  "Did you dance at Arlington Center for Dance?" she asked.

"Yes."  I answered simply, summing up ages 6 to 18 of professional ballet training 3 to 8 hours a day, 6 days a week in a small school 5 hours away in Virginia.  "I know who you are," she was beaming.  I didn't recognize her face but I started to open as if I had, knowing that she was aware of such a huge part of my life before I moved to NYC for dance.

Just 3 weeks prior I had called a Healing Circle for Dancers in this very studio after many burning converesations with dancers who had left the dance world and in some way left a part of themselves still in it.  "You probably know my father more than you know me," she gave me his name and then hers.  Her father used to fly the scrims in and out during our tech rehearsals and performances.  Yes, I believe I had heard the director calling his name for years.  Here his daughter stood before me at the doorway to the dance studio.

"Are you dancing now?" I asked.  She explained that she had left when she was 12.  She "walked out," her hands gestured a sweeping "X" across her body.  "I mean I walked out completely."  She went on to say that she recently started social dance, swing, but it wasn't "real dance." Her eyes and tone suggested that I would agree, having shared the same strict definition of dance from our backgrounds.  But I didn't. I was so happy that she was opening a new relationship with dance 15 years later.  "And now these crazy people," she swung a hand toward the studio already filling with the next group of dancers, "actually convinced me to perform."  She looked undeniably happy.

She started to repeat again that she "walked out, I mean walked out" on dance.  "Yes," I nodded, "that's very common.  I'm so happy you are reconnecting to the part of you that loved dance before our studio defined it."  She had no idea the syncronicity of her seeing me in this studio at this time of the week where I come regularly to "walk back in" to dance, whole.  "I'm so glad you said something to me," I said as she turned to enter the studio.

I have always loved dance more than anything, even when someone else was describing what it was and what it wasn't.  But these days there is a phenomenal choreography of dancers dispursing for 10, 15 years, and then slowly turning to face back to the center.  "Steve, can you fly the scrim in for the next scene? Raise the lights on stage right, we want to see their glowing faces."