Dance Artist and Educator
Well, it’s been awhile, but a tiny human entered my life and delightfully took all of my attention for the past 5 months. I’m still dancing, teaching, and creating and I’ll be posting some news about upcoming performances and projects soon. In the meantime, here’s a holiday hello in the form of a very short, baby dance film.
Secret password (!): leo
Cheerio,
Lily
One thing I love in the summer: jumping into water! I do it a little with less risk and wild abandon…but still, I love seeing what bodies can do with a little trust and joy.
If you’re curious about working with other dance artists that value somatic education, collaboration, and inventive ways of thinking about dance artistry and education…I highly recommend Jane Hawley’s Movement Fundamentals Coalescence in Decorah, IA. I’ve gone the past two years, and I’m sad I won’t make it this year. (Don’t worry…I’m quite glad I’ll be welcoming my son into the world around the same time!)
One of my Dance in World Cultures students used a great quote at the end of her paper. Bonus points!
“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
― Rumi
This week the company I co-direct, Big Rig Dance Collective, is performing our work Grit at a symposium on Gender Equity through Dance. We’ll be discussing how we see gender roles appear (or not) in our dance making methods derived from post modern dance and Contact Improvisation. In preparation for performing to this piece, I stumbled across a piece of writing about what grit means to me in my life:
There is more to GRIT than a dance…
Grit is the process of creating the life that you want.
Getting into the depth of the dirt that you want to cultivate.
Saying no and meaning it.
Saying yes when you really want it.
So, I’m curious now….what does grit mean to you?
Decisions in life can be hard (duh!). Lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot about what I choose to say yes to in my life and why. What jobs do I say yes to? What projects? What friends? Is it yes to the money? Yes to the status? Yes to the time? Yes to the joy? It’s so easy to often say yes, without asking why first. As easy as it is for me to say yes, it’s just as difficult to say no. What is scary about saying no? Sometimes, it’s the feeling that you’ve shut out a possibility, or that you’ve done the wrong thing and can’t go back.
But, I have a theory that we know in our gutswhen to say yes and no, but we don’t always listen. In my life, I know that deep down that I value creativity, building a sense of home, relationships, local community involvement, and personal growth. If something isn’t saying yes to one of those things….I need to pitch it and forget it. Seriously….say no, because clearing out the clutter and saying no creates the space for those things we all value to emerge in life.
Some thoughts about dance, science fiction, and pregnancy…
When I found out I was pregnant, I called my mom a bit freaked (A.K.A really, really freaked out) out and she calmed me down by saying that pregnancy is like a dance. This is good, I thought. I totally get dance. Though pregnancy requires A LOT of hard work, she said, it really comes down to listening and responding to the what is needed in the moment. This is sooo much like dance, especially my favorite dance form: Contact Improvisation (CI).
In my experience, a really great CI dance involves deep listening and responding from a place of intuition and sensation. It’s not a time for moment-by-moment rationalization or logic-based decision making. So far for me, this is the same for pregnancy. I recently explained my experience of “feeling pregnant” as if some intergalactic mothership pressed the activate button for my body. The creation process is going inside me, without my logical brain making lists and telling my body what to do first. I am going along for the ride, and to be on this ride, I need to shut up and listen. I need to listen to my body constantly, and respond to what is needed in the moment. Now, that’s a dance….and soon that’s a baby.
Below is one of my favorite posts from my last Blog, Make Dance Here.
Today begins one of my favorite weekends in the year: the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival. It’s a grassroots festival that was started in 2009 by Jordan Fuchs and Sarah Gamblin, both professors at Texas Woman’s University. Throughout the weekend, there are a number of improvisation based classes, many focusing in Contact Improvisation (CI). In case you didn’t know, I am a HUGE fan of CI. It’s the kind of dancing when I feel basically like a superhero. I can fly. I can fall and recover easily. I can spin and find myself upside down. In short, it’s thrilling. A few weekes ago, I was reflecting on why I love CI so much, and why I am so inspired to share it with other people, especially people that do not label themselves as “dancers.” I came up with a short list of life lessons that I gained from practicing Contact Improvisation. See if any of them inspire you to get moving…
Bam!
Go take a Contact Improvisation class. It might change your life.
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Silver Moon Photography |
Lily Sloan