This poem, Four Dance Lessons, was written by a student of mine, Paulette Fire. I love this poem, very much, so I am sharing it with you.

Have I told you about this already?

My “audition” to teach dance to little kids at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music?

How I had to demonstrate my approach to teaching rhythm on the first day, the sixth day, and the twelfth day of a twelve week session?

How rhythm - articulating it, demonstrating it, counting it out - I’m just so bad at that. So so bad.

First week, I said, would go like this:

The Sky:

Where my dancing finds itself now, that quiet place, that listening place, that still place where movement then comes.

There is so much inside, this sky.

As it gets more still, the sky, there is then, only dancing.

I was working for a non-profit in Northampton, MA and was doing such a good job with my data entry skills (I’m very good at faking it) that they asked me to apply to be the Director of Fiscal Operations.

I thought, “This is it. This is what I was meant to do. I’m done struggling with these low-paying jobs that barely leave me any time, money, or energy to dance on the side. I’m going to be The Director of Physical Operations!”

I began planning the dance class I would teach to the staff the minute I got home from work.

I went to the interview a few weeks later in my favorite dance pants and lucky t-shirt.

I started out by having everyone lie down on the carpeted office floor, with chairs and desks pushed to the side, feeling our breath and extending through the diagonals of our bodies.

I was surprised that everyone was in pantyhose, skirts, and heels, but that was okay, I could work with it.

As I guided everyone to sense their bodies moving through space and to notice where their eyes were drawn to, even if they were closed, the woman who had suggested I apply for the job, stopped me and said:

Am remembering this moment from a long time ago —

The sweetness of leaning into someone you love.

And that, actually, is how I feel when I’m dancing - that sweet moment of leaning into and touching all that I love most.

The complexity, and also simplicity of all of us reaching out to connect, in whatever manner, we are able:

1.
I'm at a contact improvisation workshop.

The exercise the teacher gives us, goes like this:

Three people stand in the front of the room as the rest of us watch.

Two people slowly take off one piece of the third person’s clothing.

The third person can say stop at anytime, and then the two people have to stop removing the clothing.

One after the other, people stand in front of the rest of the group and their clothes are taken off by workshop mates, with everyone stopping at different stages of the undressing process.

A young woman is up next, and the two who are assigned to undress her strip her completely naked before she has a second to make a decision about any of it.

No one says a word.

Not her, not the teacher leading the exercise, not any of us watching.

She stands frozen.

We sit and watch her being frozen.

I’m not interested in having you make a pretty line or do it the right way,

and

I’m not interested in having you dance to the right counts,

and

I’m not interested in how high you can leap or how fast you can spin,

and

I’m not interested in your grace, your strength or your agility.

I am interested in:

I had plans to write to you about something else entirely this morning — something about the prison work I'm starting to get back into, something about a local city council meeting focused on the arts, happening on Monday, September 16th, 5-7pm (save that date, and I’ll come back to it), something about the ventral vagal system, which I am only now learning about, thanks to a student speaking of it so beautifully — but instead, I’m sharing this.

It’s what I wrote last night, sitting with a friend, after we had homemade pizza, salad, and wine, as Glen sat with, and then stayed over at the house of another friend of ours, who is right now dying.

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today when children and their families are being separated and held, in horrid conditions, on the Southern Border in The United States.

Give me your tired, your poor,

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today when people are being turned away from that border as the Trump administration's new asylum rule upends long-standing protections for people fleeing violence and oppression in their homelands.

Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today when the President of the United States tweets hateful and racist comments about four of our Congresswomen.

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today as the comparisons being flung about, too easily sometimes, between the rise of Hitler and the rise of Trump, are now landing — on solid footing.

Good morning dearest readers of this newsletter,

I am at the airport, on my way home from a most wondrous journey.

There is so much to say about what happened, but I cannot do it now, surrounded by my fellow travelers.

I will say more, at some point, when it’s all fallen into my body in a way that is more still than it is right now.

Instead, I want to share a few emails I got from some of you I met on my travels.

“Oh no, you can’t go in the fjord without a wetsuit.”

So I spent my first two days here, at Kunstnarhuset Messen, focused on getting myself a wetsuit, because I really wanted to swim:

• Should I order one online or take the bus to the nearest city?

• What time was the bus to the nearest city?

• What kind, what size, what type of weather wetsuit?

• Would I leave the wetsuit here when I left, or stuff it in my suitcase and then never look at it again?

• How much money would the wetsuit cost and could I find one that was cheaper?

• And on and on and on.

Simone, one of the host at KHMessen, sat me down at the end of that second day, and said “I'm concerned that you’re spending too much time focusing on the wetsuit rather than on your art making. It’s time to stop with the wet suit. Get into the studio and start working.”

I hung my head and agreed.

I would not be swimming in Norway, in the fjord I could see outside of the window, in the studio I was dancing in.

All I want to do is to lie down on the floor and notice my breath.

All I want to do is to open the windows wide to the rain, the sound of the birds, the water, turn the heat up high, and listen.

I want to do that, turn the heat on, and also keep the windows open.

I don’t though, turn the heat up high. I am in an old building that is cavernous and meandering, and it absolutely inefficient to open the windows wide AND turn the heat on.

So I open the windows and I turn the heat off.

I put on all of my sweaters, I brought three, and all of my pants, also three, consider as well the summer dresses, three.

I’m thinking about warmth and also air, so I put the summer dresses aside, and instead put on my rain jacket, tie the hood tight.

I took a dance workshop, years and years ago - like double decades - with one of my favorite solo dance artists at the time.

The room was packed. We all stood expectantly, nervous and excited to learn from her.

As we waited for her to arrive, we shifted our weight, stretched our arms over our heads, and kicked our legs to get ready for what promised to be a big moving and extraordinary dance experience.

As we waited, we practiced moving our bodies in the way we had seen her move her body -- we couldn't wait to get dancing with her.

When she did arrive, she came in so quietly that some didn’t see her for a minute or two.

She was wearing her standard: blue tutu skirt, flounced out far, striped tights, a button down shirt with a tie, and big black combat boots. Many dancers were in similar outfits, hoping to be as fierce and wild as she.

We expected that kind of boldness from her -- she had come to be known for it.

What we didn't expect was, that without a word, she knelt down, pressed her ear to the floor, knocked knocked, and said, “Hello?”

(drawing of the wee people)

The emails I'm getting from you all about the dance film I made, The Sky Inside — as is usual for you humans — move me, again and again.

One email came from Jenn, relaying what her 8 year-old son said about The Sky Inside:

It’s been kinda amazing making a dance film  —  I didn’t expect that. And to do it the old fashioned way, through a storyboard: drawing out each image of each clip on a piece of paper and moving the pieces of paper around until everything fits together. That part is spellbinding. And it's spellbinding because of the people who make up this film.

What they bring to this work, fully as themselves, in their bodies and their beings ...it's exquisite. And I get to see them, over and over again on my computer screen. It has been marvelous drawing their faces and bodies on my pieces of paper, matching up the edges of each of them to each other.

It is their generosity, their honesty, and their beauty that is The Sky Inside.

This moves me, very much. 

Dog Dance is going to Europe!

Whhaaaaaat?

Me?

Europe?

Dog Dance?

But….I kinda wanna stay home!

It’s a dilemma, except it’s not, ‘cause as a friend said, “Will you kick yourself if you don’t go?”

Uh, yeah!

But but but --

it’s been quiet for a long time now.

6, 8, 12, sometimes 14 of us in the studio.

doors open to the air outside.

some are on the floor, others are upright and moving through space.

the delicacy of the body and the bones — the organs and the skin — unfurling.

the swimming into the body and coming back up for air.

the shift in the eyes from opened to closed.

maybe or maybe not shifting the eyes back to open. 

Seriously, you don’t need it, so stop worrying about whether or not you have it.

If you’re engaging in activities that you value as much as you are able, that’s a better way to go then worrying about your level of self-esteem.

Because one day you feel great, right?

Your work, your life, your relationships — all is good. 

And then the very next day, none of it makes sense: your foot’s in your mouth morning ‘till night, and all it is, all day long, is mistake, fail, mistake, fail.

(That was me yesterday: Foot in mouth ALL DAY LONG. Also bumping my head multiple times; also getting a rejection email about a grant I had no doubt in my mind I would get, then didn't; also dropping a big dollop of mayonnaise on the floor; also knocking over the cat food as the cat was eating her lunch; also messing up on my taxes; also putting my glass of water on the counter but somehow missing the counter entirely, and gravity, god damn gravity, taking that glass full of water straight down to the floor, which then shattered, right on top of the mayonnaise).

Soon after Trump was elected, I dreamt that I was Dog Dancing, outside, on the street. 

 Slow and low, eyes closed, barely moving, but feeling so much.

 I was surrounded by protesters holding signs, circling and chanting, “Get up, off the ground!”

 I kept at it, my slow moving dance, noticing my breath, aware of my skin against the pavement, and also the sky.

 “Stop moving so slow!” Someone shouted.

 “Stand up!” Somebody said.

 I closed my eyes tight and kept going, my jeans catching along the sidewalk I was dancing on, my feet sensing the earth from inside my sneakers.

Thank you for your fantastic and thoughtful responses in regard to the last newsletter I sent out, talking about art and climate change. 

Your words moved and held me these last few weeks.

Your reach toward connection -- hugely appreciated and deeply felt.

This is one of many responses that dove into that conversation, and gutted it:

Painting by Laura Marshall: Tales to The Young I: The Bargain.
14" x 16 Oil paint on canvas