Notes and stories from some of my recent dance choreography

I have recently choreographed dances to these songs.

• ‘What are they doing in heaven today’ by the Be Good Tanyas.
• ‘Farewell Shallabiye’ by No Blues.
• ‘Drive the Cold Winter Away’ - a traditional Carol.
• ‘The Huron Carol’ (Twas in the Moon of Wintertime) - a traditional Carol.

Heaven Today?- as I have called the dance - is already a song I enjoy singing and in a simple way holds some deep truths that are supported in the lilt and yearnings of the song - which lends itself to harmonies and a heartful expression. I have also long held a sense of wanting to dance more of the songs I sing - and to add more English songs to our dance repertoire.
At various times, unborn dances nudge or prompt me. Some attempt to be born and have many hours and moments spent that yield only a dance in pending but not really through. It isn't a matter of finding or deciding steps but of feeling the qualities in the song and music and honouring these in the dance. Heaven Today? has a lazy lilt where the singing lags the waltz just a little - and hold the theme of human loss, suffering and courage - and asks a question that cannot really be framed in worldly terms which in broadest terms holds a sense of life beyond the world we seem to know and struggle within.

When I choreograph, it is a form of playing. I allow movements to occur and explore those which feel alive. But often many possible variations arise and it can become quite maddening - so there can be a need to establish some basic sense of the way of it - as a sort of skeleton structure or idea in which to focus. But always the head has to serve the heart or else the dance becomes a sterile imposition. Of course the experience of this is more about trusting myself than it is about rules of any kind - but there is a rule of asking within as to how it feels - and what it speaks of or teaches. I often find lovely movements that nevertheless do not have a home in the particular dance I am working with.
It is often the case that some of the movements evoke or symbolise aspects of the dance - and where these fit without force they are welcome. In the parts of this song where hardship is sung, I found the dance moving closer to centre but turned away from it - and for the part that approaches ‘heaven’ we simply move to centre and sway - but initially with downturned eyes and humbly - because we do not expect to deserve Light, Love, and Peace from our worldly identity. But when we look up we actually find neither sin nor sorrow - this has a reaching up and discovery that is also shared at the centre. ‘Peace is found/abounds like a river’ is one part of the song that does not have this lazy lilt - and flows as a continuum - which feels congruent with the lyric - so also in the dance the continuum of sway, turn and grapevine and sway is all exactly on the beat and without pause in a flowing movement.
I also like a dance to have something unique in it that carries a moment of discovery for the dancer and perhaps extends the vocabulary of movement - but again this is a matter of discovery rather than invention. In this dance there is a common motif of a sway that on completion spills into a turn on a swivel and another sway - which is not something I have met with before.

‘Farewell Shallabiye’ by No Blues.
This is an exercise in Arabicana - a fusion of a US blues track and an Arabic song. I feel that to join these cultures in shared joy is itself a prayer that heals. It is feelgood and upbeat with exotic Arabian threads through what otherwise could pass as a JJ Cale track. I danced a very simple intro dance to it at an IFD workshop that was like a congo and quite unsatisfying to me - but I got a copy of the music and found it lovely - and desired from time to time to dance something more congruent to it. The whole dance came to me while my partner Cathi went to post some parcels at the local Post Office - almost ready made and effortlessly - (Whereas heaven today had required concerted persistence and been crafted over many sessions).

There is an instrumental theme that is very catchy and occurs between each other part of the music and this found a simple crossing step with a slight lean and a lift of hand and foot as one. Totally brainless and immediate as well as easy to gain orientation without need to count anything. The blues part found a series of step, slipstep and sway that just fits the flow of the delivery. When the Arabic singing comes in I felt to let it be an expression primarily of the hands - so I let the feet have a sort of grapevine where the latter two beats were more expansive - like the singing - and the hands were free to move to the arabesque singing. This is an area of growth and awakening for most circle dancers - and with appropriate permissions and encouragement is enjoyed greatly. So much of our expression as dancers is forfeit when we hold hands all the time. The second time the Arabian part comes round it is much shorter and subtler. I invite this to focus more on the energetic of presence expressed through subtly held gesture - and scarcity makes it precious as there is no time to take it for granted! At the final part there is blues and Arabic singing in fusion - and I hold this as an opportunity to do the blues part of the dance in the hands free and expressive style. This is not accessible at first for most so I leave it as the standard ‘blues’ part of the dance until the dancers have found the dance in their bodies and their own freedom in hand gesturing - but again is an opportunity for growth as a dancer.

What is growth as a dancer?
Not really the acquiring of techniques or skills so much as the release of obstacles that allow the fuller freer expression of life in dance.
Of course this coincides with increased perspective and freedom within a more spacious awareness to feel and be presently expressive as the very resonance of the music in ones own being. A grace and lightness of being. A natural un-armoured demeanour. A calm and receptive presence.

‘Drive the Cold Winter Away’ - a traditional Carol.
Well actually I made this last year - Christmas 2007 - but wanted to add a few notes here.
It is a merry and convivial carol with references more to the warmth of forgiving, restful and celebratory hearts than direct references to Jesus’ birth - and I wanted a simple but fitting movement that flowed in the manner of the 6/8 music. As I write this I have just seen a partner option for the first part that would add further merry meeting.
It has a pattern that naturally invites looking up in greeting - with a ‘Condor’ moment at the centre. The Horslips instrumental version is fine for when driving the winter away appeals but the seasonal celebrations are behind us! I haven't news of a good recording of the sung version that fits yet - but it is fun and hearty to sing and I enjoy doing so.

The Huron Carol - a Trad Carol.
I found versions of this Carol on youtube and liked elements from different versions - but for the dance initially I was drawn to a version that can be viewed HERE
I was drawn to the sense of opening and aspiring in the third line that then falls into a pause amidst a rather strange and wonderful incompletion from which the chorus then stands forth. I immediately ‘felt’ a dance!
As it happens the week before I had made up a simple dance on the spot for 4 seasons because I didn't recall or like the original but wanted to sing and dance the song - and the first part of this tapped me on the shoulder and said "I fit this Carol just right" - and I agreed. It is a forward travelling step slipstep step - slightly expanding and contracting.
The third line faced centre and palms up moved in to right, in to left. The 4th line has us step back before then stepping in to centre and bending knee in reverence and pausing. The chorus then bends again and suddenly rises our arms as we steap back and rock and sway to indicate the cardinal directions which is also a cross and arms come down with a slow grapevine to finish.

The feelings of this are a travelling around that comes to face centre in willingness to behold and receive - yet this is in some sense hesitant as of approaching a holy state or place that the conditioning of our past might have us feel tempted to unworthiness or fear of - for we are stripped of our pretensions in such a light. Yet we do approach and in essence kneel or give recognition, welcome into our heart and honour. This for the wise men who left their kingdoms in guided search for truth and received it. The immediate response of the awakened heart is to give joyously and to rise and release and allow the light to plant itself in the world through them, here in this place, here with these hands I join.

Now of course these words are not in the dancer - but something of such energetic symbol is innately in the dance and it is a way to bring the appreciation of the entrance of the divine into the human story - into wordless experience felt and known.

There are other aspects to the Huron Carol lyric that I hope to address. I will make a new lyric from the literal translation of the Huron version that was made by St Jean de Brébeuf a jesuit missionary in (then) New France c.1643. The popular verses used are simply a version made by Jesse Middleton, a Toronto journalist and church musician in 1926 that renders the standard nativity in American Indian terms - whereas the original included aspects of teachings in addition to nativity references.

That Christianity may be associated with the white man’s subjugation and genocide of indigenous peoples is distinct in my mind from the story of Jesus - which is not owned or ultimately interpreted by Christianity.
The crucifixion was an act of ignorance. The mind in ignorance knows not what it does - for it does not know what and who it is! Jesus is a story of a man who did know he was ‘of the Father’ - and who released his own will in service and love for ‘the Father’s Will’ found in his own heart’.

Which brings me to consider the sacred and dance as a subject for a future blog entry.
But for now I would say that to be congruent in receiving and expressing the music felt in heart and body, is to be adding not - nor taking away - but is in effect surrendering one’s self will to allow a greater Will - and this is the open ‘door’ to the sublime in whatever kind of quality of life we share.

PS - The Huron Carol - I have gotten a version by the Crash test Dummies which I will try with either a slightly adapted (simplified) dance - or use Amazing Slow Downer to play it a bit slower.

A bit about me and dance and the journey of awakening

I came to circle dance in the late 80's when a friend sent me a flyer for a dance weekend. I'd been involved in spiritual search, which had fruited such that I no longer felt to be seeking in private, but growing by sharing from a willingness to join. I didn't know what this dancing was - but felt it had a spiritual aspect - and that we could go as a family.
I couldn't dance - a helpless grin on discoordinated spaghetti legs! But the atmospheric was tangibly open and inclusive - and curiously from the outset- I 'knew' something was offerered me to share through. A path and a tool. A song at the time summed it up: “From you I receive, to you I give, together we share, by this we live”. Yet the dance itself didn't need even such few words to be potent in opening the heart.

I use the word heart here simply as our truth sense. Living with and from the heart is closer to the life of us - though in opening we also uncover the 'human conditionings' that tend to self-protection and denial of life rather than its giving and living. Grounded guidance is found within the music and the flow of our present - yet as long as there is an attempt to control from a mentality of self protection, this will not be felt or recognised. 'Knowing ourself' is not a collecting of data for developing a new self presentation - but simply growing a capacity for trust based on self honesty. Trust is the bedrock on which all sanity rests and it is not a matter of thinking or analyzing so much as feeling our way. Safety, is an inside job.

Immediately after the weekend, I saw on tv some Arab guerillas dancing preparing to fight, and Hitler youth folk dancing. I saw joined dancing carries an invitation or expectation to join a form - which may not mean what it presents itself as - and a response - which is the faith and intention of those who respond. Dance is a tool or a vehicle that serves the purpose for which we employ it. This is a fundamental truth of mind: All things serve the purpose accorded them.

My early dancing years were an incredible time for me. A living path is like as to where the inspiration within is alive and life aligns with learning in joy and an unfoldment in grace. From the early 90s I shared the dance and hosted network events from my home as well as connecting at Easter meets and Dance Camp. I worked a self employed craft candlemaker with 4 children - and Emily - our second - was handicapped. The care of Emily and family life meant I had to cut back on my dancing path - though I kept local groups. This became a sense of stillborn child in my own heart - but I felt a duty of priority and we had very little support around us.

Camps came into my life as a deeper golden thread - again our whole family could participate, again I was sharing of a freedom to be. Joy is the light that the heart shines whenever it knows its freedom. I don't dance to get something - but to be restored to a presence of giving and receiving - and dancing is an extension of living. So I became involved in running camps and that became my creative path or focus. I didn't want circle dance to be the invitation of my camps - but to be a tool within a more inclusive invitation - that expressed a community spirit in our whole camp.

When I last wrote to Grapevine it was with news of loss of my firstborn, Elanor. That was 1995. My response to that event was to let all that I was, be brought to renewal at the most fundamental level, for I had squandered an enlightenment in trying to make 'my life' work. I'd got it back to front. But I let go of teaching dance outside camp in 2000 amidst a dichotomy of the atheist and the martyr; either feeling juke-boxed by my own liability to 'give without joy' - or overstretched in giving all when leaning out into raw new creativity using live song and music (often found in the moment with whoever joined in). They both seemed to cost too much - though in opposite ways. I had a few more years to come to the point of choosing life and letting the fears go - in which my livelihood was lost to cheap imports, my marriage failed, my camps were lost and I was 'in the wilderness'. But for all the dramas and the stuff of it, I have come to a calmer and clearer abiding in life and letting it abide in me. Allowing 'new wine into new bottles'. Releasing old thinking that essentially made the script by which I forgot what life is.

To 'come out' again in teaching dance and singing for dance was extremely hard because it involved opening up an area where I had lost trust. It wasn't an issue of ability - but of true intent and dedication. When the very heart's desire seems to die or fail it is a loss of communication. Self unworthyness is so deeply embedded in our minds that it has become normal currency. But it is joyless.
For the core of what I felt moved to stand in and support was and is joy. Survival to me is all about living in truth and spirit, which is less about mentality of fear and more about trusting to live this day well, to feel the music of the day and move with it in gratitude. The call to joy is innate but often hidden, and works in mysterious ways that I don't have to know about or control - but I do have to heed the call in my own heart to know the gift by which I live.

The songs and music I sing and play for dance are the song of the human heart in all its cadences of yearning and delight, and they are each exactly felt and brought present such as I can 'get out of the way' and let the song live through me. This is the same for dancers: Relax of the world we carry in our head and feel the quality of whatever this dance is - in its unique setting in this place in our lives - becoming simply present where the flow of experience is alive and no one needs to try and say it or grasp it. Be found in such a grace and all facets will be uncovered in due course and take their place in a dance like a tapestry of threads that are distinct and yet express relation to the whole.

It's deeply fun - a moving experience - it's joined up and alive! - and runs as deep as our willingness to receive - which cant be separated from a willingness to share. To hold a welcome in one's heart for others is not to be a doormat - but to be consciously receptive.

If something alive isn't made into a 'Solution' it can be free of the problem - and a wellspring of sanity for all who come to drink. For sure when we have regained a healed perspective we are encouraged and more able to discern practical solutions where before seemed unworkable and dispiriting.
When we grow trust within our own being - it shares out, our armourings become automatically obsolete and we can share life in depth and subtlety without a word.

When I look at the world and see so many who share so little - I am glad to realize that they have such discovery awaiting them. But for me I have come to see that giving is not the cost I cant afford to keep making - but is the only way to remember the love in which I am whole. And so whatever it seems to 'cost me' is not to be weighed and measured. But that I find a willingness to share the dance I love is true cause for gratitude.

(This was written as a draft for a Grapevine article but something else I wrote was used instead so I put it here).

Dancing with Friedel Kloke- Eibl

(This has been transferred from my matters 'spiritual' blog where it was written on 15/04/08)

I have just returned from a dance weekend with Friedel Kloke- Eibl - a Sacred Dance Teacher who as a young ballet dancer trained with Bernard Wosien - who brought Sacred Circle Dance to Findhorn Community 32 years ago from where it has spread internationally. Friedel exemplifies the dance as an art and as a path of initiation - not merely an outer form that is acquired, mimicked, traded or collected.

I felt that Freidel communicated a warm and clear presence of no nonsense and in grounded but natural discipline. It was we who were expected to embody the willingness to bring attention present to what she offered. Her expression is of a directly felt conscious response to music and life and she held faith in us as dancers in process of discovery and awakening.

Freidel’s demeanour throughout the process was calm, present and considered in the light of her clear sense of purpose. Her joy was evident in her love of dance, her patience was acceptance of where we as students were currently at, but always inviting, a greater involvement than that which the current mindset or approach of the student allowed. So she was also willing to ‘trick’ of tease of drop the dancers into the deep end - or experiences of chaoticness - but she herself held and communicated a calm and connected composure and expressed confidence in all that she undertook even when we did not feel it in ourselves.

Circle dancers who are used to accessibility, exhaustive step maps in advance and motherly inclusion, as well as dancers used to being fed exciting and challenging dances had to let go of that expectation of habit - or be disappointed. Freidel used many simple movements as exercise for stilling and centering as well as using them as basic components of a more elaborate dance forms later in the session. Yet many of the dances she shared - most of which she herself choreographs - were precise in their intent and used hand and arm and gesture that was ‘just so’. This was challenging in a different way as it was really something to open to and allow or discover - rather than something to impose upon. Though Friedel would often comment on where some or all of us were not getting it or were asleep to the actuality, she never acted in any way that demeaned the dancer or worked to undermine their trust - though she was quite capable of simply not supporting a dancer’s expectations or demands and obliging them to take self responsibility.

Freidel would usually give a brief demonstration of the dance with an also brief and not very voluble description of sequence and then drop us - the dancers in it. I sense that she does this according to her sense of our capacity and not as an act of indifference. Although she would often answer questions with a warmth and patience that felt very loving and encouraging - she would often do so in ways that indicated that she wanted a greater trust from us for ourselves and her, and her composure discouraged casual questions or indeed acquaintance. but also she would repeat the dances many times and at each time we would be given further help or instruction as to our readiness.

Because of her approach we would often experience shortcoming and even chaos - which brought us into the arena of control and the lack of it but also of where the control is coming from. For the attempt to control life must yield to the heart if the dance is to become presently embodied and alive. In this and so many other ways she gave maximal opportunity to awaken to and from from our mental patternings and their interference with the dance. The manner and the art of travelling was emphasised as the dance and not the getting there - yet not with adding decoration or embellishment but rather of expressing innate qualities.

The workshop overall was rooted in and from a poised appreciation of one’s own relationship with ground and above - our vertical, and from there opening relation with others. Many of the dances were danced without hands joined - often to facilitate less distraction when learning and more freedom of movement. The social element was economized throughout the event excepting during breaks or outside the hours of practice. Yet Freidel would often express humour - particularly in her demonstrations and exaggerations of what not to do! She also took a few opportunities to read poems or talk about the dance. Being a large group in a large hall made active listening essential but even so we could not often hear as we may have wished. We did receive copies of the poems though.

Her sense of honouring the dancer was tangible and she worked with many at various times without showing either partiality or any lack of care to any - yet also she was spontaneously present in many moments of gesture , look or touch. In being so clearly the centre of our attention she also deliberately also made herself absent from being a replacement for our own responsibility - often leaving the circle - even before the dance began. her manner outside the circle was never one of scrutiny such as to intimidate but of a happenstance meeting with general attention to us on many levels and some periods of having her back to us so that we were not in the emotional dynamic of being seen or exposed to being seen. Yet she was also acutely open to opportunity for supporting her dancers and would not hesitate to engage directly in the most understated but direct expression of approval or a very subtle disappointment that itself seemed not to matter for what was gone but invited ongoing willingness to persist in the process of mastering the form in the heart such as to meet her in the spirit in which she teaches.
Whereas in circle dance we may often be used to a menu of dances whose intent is to be a journey of self fulfilment often using ‘known’ steps that we may exercise in boiler plate fashion, Freidel’s dances were more aimed at grounding and awakening us to aspects of where and what we truly are via the journey through what is obscuring that expression. The degree to which we are able to be willing and accepting-expressing truth is simply where we each and all are at any moment, but her willingness to serve and grow in willingness for such work was tangible. Her choreography extended and attuned the movements of dance but also returned again and again to the most basic stances or positions - as in classical ballet.

For a collector of dances Freidel’s workshop may have had a gem or a few such - but the experience was much more that of deepening one’s own dance and growing more present as the movement consciously expressing. This is not merely about dance - but speaks of life itself.

As such Freidel is not merely a dance teacher of professed sacred forms or notions but is in service and mastery as a demonstration and relationship in spiritual practice - a spiritual teacher or catalyst and invitation to wake up to Life. As with the dance, there are levels to pass through in uncovering and embodying a spirit unalloyed, and Freidel is accepting of these as with dance as stages that we pass through and not marks of status or specialness. Her teaching is expressed in dance and not as mental constructs to be asserted, refuted or chosen from.

My impressions here are my own. They may not resonate with others but they do express my experience. As my first meeting in dance with Freidel I am gladdened and encouraged to find such capacity and willingness at work in the world and I trust that something of what has occurred continues to be nurtured and grow through my own living and dancing.

Many look at Freidel and see a form that they could never hope to match - but this misses the point. The outer form is an expression of an integration of heart, mind and Spirit that will express uniquely and appropriately through us as we allow and discover the same within ourselves. A perceived or believed lack of self-worthiness is an obstacle that would bar the gate against grace being allowed expression through our very self. But if such thinking is put aside and the experience is embraced and allowed in, then we will discover more of ourselves than we could have ever found within the bound of such thought.

About this particular blog

I have been writing for some time on another blog at
http://livingcircle-dot-net.blogspot.com
mostly about matters that I regard as spiritual - of the heart, of the mind, of the spirit that moves and enlivens.

But I now want a place to address dance and music as a vehicle of expression of integrated being - and I use this broadly in terms of the experience of dance as well as particularly in terms of dancing in joined community and participation within such as circle dance may invite.

So as you can already see, no doubt, I remain a writer who seeks to raid on the unspeakable; matters of the heart, of the mind of the spirit that moves and enlivens.

Dead truths don't dance!

Inhibition to flowing, expressing, joining and generally being a presence of Soul in Expression is because in some way we hide our light under a bushel - or as the more recent Bibles would have it - a bowl ( I think a bushel might originally have meant a measuring basket or bowl).

What does it profit a man or woman who gains the steps but loses (the appreciation of intimacy of) their soul?

So yes I will let myself remind me - and perhaps you the reader - of this inviolable intimacy from which the world has turned our mind, but I will also address specific aspects that arise - as they arise and my fingers follow the dance of writing.

But in all that I write I seek to let fly from the cage and not to imprison.
It is true that the mind of words has sought to control and deny the heart - by listening only to his or her own private thought.

But tools are defined by what purpose they are employed to serve.
This is as true for the reader as for the writer - But - the intention is here. Feel it between the lines - in the phrasing.

The call to dance is not in the perfection of the form of the music - but in its spirit.
And the rest shall be added ye!