I hope you can join me
/On Tuesday, July 21st, from 11-1pm, I am offering a FREE dance class for the community.
Come join me to remember and experience the joy, the rest, the expansiveness, and the delight of being in a body.
This FREE class will be at the Boulder Circus Center in the upstairs studio, and I would love to have you there.
Email me if you would like to come, and I will hold a space for you.
Feel free to bring a friend.
For this week’s newsletter, I wanted to give you a taste of what we all do in that upstairs studio — far out in the fields, on the edge of the city.
Sometimes we write, and it might go something like this:
“When I move I am just a little taste of delicious” — Paulette Fire
or this
“When I move I see the world around me, When I am still I see the world in me.” — Christine Crotzer
Sometimes we imagine there is a carpet of earth covering our bodies.
Some people imagine the sea is covering them, some people imagine they are cloaked by a green field. Some people imagine mountains, or a city, or a town. Some people don’t imagine anything at all: they just feel the cool weight of the earth blanketing their bodies.
Sometimes the class gets loud and wild and raucous.
Sometimes it is quiet.
Sometimes I stick with my plan.
Sometimes I don’t.
My lesson plans look something like this:
- Sky Inside
- Drones and Durational Work
- 1,000 Bales of Hay
- Shapes in Space
- Read poem; Eat chocolate
Here is a list of some of the things I say over and over, in every class.
I never get tired of saying them.
I think because I am saying them to myself as much as I am saying them to my students.
You can say them to yourself too, when you are at home or at work or waiting for the bus:
- Imagine that your tongue is thick and wide.
- Imagine that your eyes are heavy in your eye sockets.
- Notice which parts of your body are touching the earth, and which parts are not.
- Notice the quality of that touch.
- Notice your breath: How long is the inhale? The exhale? The gaps in between?
- What are you doing with your eyes? You don’t need to change anything, just notice.
- Notice the sensations in your body.
- There is no right or wrong, you are just staying curious about what is emerging.
- Remember that the dance is already there…waiting. All you have to do is step in.
- Imagine that the stars are inside of your body, because I think in some sense, they are.
Some people have been dancing with me since I started teaching in Boulder. They have been coming to class once a week for 12, almost 13 years now.
(When I think about that, I wonder what has changed in my teaching since then, and what is the same.
I will have to ask them).
Some people have been coming to class for a few years, a few months, or they might have just started this summer.
What I love, what I can’t believe actually, is that I am still moved so deeply by what I see and experience in the classroom.
I might pull an old exercise out of my bag of tricks that I have been doing for years upon years upon years and still, I am left breathless and stunned by what I am seeing and experiencing in the dancing.
It is in these moments, these many many moments, that the dancing becomes the ground from which everything else emerges.
Your dance mission for the week is to imagine you are covered by a blanket of earth, and to notice what happens in your body, your breath, and your imagination.
I like to listen to Sigur Rós - Var when I am blanketed by the imaginary earth on top of me, and the real earth below me.
After you have danced with your carpet of earth, post about your experience here. I would love to hear how it went for you.
And then share this newsletter with a friend.
Share it on facebook or twitter or at the kitchen table.
And oh yes,
Email me back if you are planning on coming to the FREE class on Tuesday, July 21st.
With Warmth and Jivey Vibes,
Joanna
of
Joanna and the Agitators
sweetly agitating/persistently upending