Ask yourself this question: do you see yourself as an artist or a student of art? And to answer, take a leap of faith. Open to your true nature. Consider yourself an artist, and everything you do will be filtered through this lens. Unfolding the creative self, with honesty and integrity, builds your house on solid ground. Not the ego self, the “I-am-ing” self, but the individual in pursuit of wholeness, all that is whole, holy. Daily you face the blank page, emptying to open.
There’s simultaneously the invitation to maintain a “beginner’s mind.” Approaching art making with this curiosity and freshness allows the “empty vessel” perspective of a lifelong student. Art making is an investigation and discovery, a pathway for research into knowing oneself and the world more fully. In this way you are both artist and student.
You can have collaborations, assistance, and conviviality: the friend who calls at just the right moment and asks a potent question; the colleague who adds new dimensions; a community of other artists, audience members, and critics who view your work and stay the course. These essential collaborators may remain with you throughout your life, pushing and supporting the edges of your work. But ultimately, the journey is yours.
STORIES
Moving Rock
Along the rock faces of Marloes Sands beach in southern Wales, Gill Clarke and I move together as part of a weeklong intensive. We are drawn to tumbled, horizontal boulders juxtaposed with vertical uplifts that form a kind of stage. Climbing, then closing our eyes, the impulse is to invert, ooze, and slide down the coarse surface like the molten lava it once was. Experiencing the abrasive granite bedrock as fluid counters logic. Who knew? Time shifts to timelessness. Moving at that speed, every cell finds its way. Arriving at Avebury Stone Circle in England, we walk on the 30-foot-high outer bank. How did these hundred standing stones get here? Who shaped the 1,400-foot-wide perimeter, and why? Groups are picnicking, dancing, strolling with children and dogs. We have come to mark World Environment Day with movement. After hours of viewing, we slip into dancing, like others have done for centuries. It’s a ritual site inviting participation, not functional but purposeful—like our dances.
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On the Gaspé Peninsula of Canada, I meander down to an isolated stretch of the Grand Cascapédia River. Picking up two stones, I close my eyes and begin moving, clicking the stones together. Another stone catches my attention, another dance. Sometimes, themes for a dance just need an invitation to call them forth. Over the next hour there are seven stones, seven dances, forming a whole—beginning to end—accompanied by water.
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Songwriter Paul Simon has described this receptive process: sometimes the song comes so fast, all he can do is catch it and write it down. If he hesitates, it’s gone.
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Colleague Caryn McHose is drawn to stones: she can sit for hours at the water’s edge, looking, feeling, and collecting. I watch, now, as she chooses tiny pebbles from a beach in Giovinazzo, near Bari in Italy. Her absorbed focus gives me vicarious pleasure. In meditation terms, I am practicing sympathetic joy.
INVESTIGATION INTO AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT
In 1979, after seven years of performing and teaching professionally as a dancer, I began writing a book on dance choreography. I wrote thirteen chapters (on rehearsal process, partnering, the use of space …) before I got to the section on movement and realized I had nothing to say. I was trained in the modern dance vocabularies of Martha Graham, José Limón, and Erick Hawkins, and in ballet, but I had no idea how my own movement was sourced. At that point I met movement therapist Janet Adler, who introduced me to Authentic Movement. She was interested in working with dancers and choreographers because she felt that much of what she saw in her studio was more compelling than what she saw onstage. I began working in Authentic Movement, and for over a decade I have remained fascinated by its richness as a catalyst for creative work and for healing. Since writing this article, reflecting on the origins of my involvement, I still move with two colleagues from that initial movement group: Susan Waltner and Alton Wasson.
Organ model with lungs and diaphragm
© Alan Kimara Dixon
TO DO
Breathing Spot (Caryn McHose)
15 minutes
Breath links both conscious and unconscious (autonomic) aspects of the nervous system, providing a link to the mysterious dialogue between inner and outer awareness.
Kneel in the deep-fold position, forehead resting on your thighs or the floor (child pose in yoga).
• Place your hands on your lower back, and feel the skin expand and condense as you breathe. Take your time. Be patient. Breathing is essential; it takes time to unwind holding patterns.
• Volumize the body with each breath: the inhalation can be used to touch your own volume inside. Exhalation is a time to surrender, yield, and release.
With a partner:
• Partner A rests in the deep-fold position.
• Partner B places his or her hands on the low-back area, resting them lightly to receive and guide the sensation of the breath.
Be patient; it might take time to wake up back-surface sensation.
TO DO
Three-Part Breath
15 minutes
Releasing holding of muscles and organs of the abdomen can enhance breath.
Lying comfortably on your back:
• Place your hands on your belly. Breathe into this area.
• Imagine a heavy book on your belly; let it rise and fall with each breath.
• Touch your lower ribs. On the in-breath, fill the belly and then expand the circumference of your lower ribs. On the out-breath, soften or condense these areas.
• Touch your upper ribs, under the collarbone and armpits. On the in-breath, fill the belly area, then expand the ribs, and then lift and expand the upper thorax.
• Repeat the three-part breath several times; the bottom fills first.
Eventually, you can exaggerate the movement less. Abdominal support in the front body is active, and the organs are free to move.
TO DANCE
Refreshing What’s Needed—Dancing with a Partner (Susanna Recchia)
15 minutes
Working with a partner activates connection, both to self and to other.
Begin walking, and place your hand on the upper back of someone in the room, then lightly stroke from upper to lower spine.
• Following the sensation of touch, both movers release their body weight toward the floor, starting with the head and upper spine.
• Roll and stand individually; resume walking. You may touch or be touched at any moment.
• Touch a new partner, rolling down the spine to yield to the floor. Roll, stand, and walk.
• Repeat, keeping the rhythm of walking underlying your exploration. Avoid talking, so you can focus on the sensations of touching and being touched.
• Pause. Find a new partner.
• The toucher places one hand on the partner’s upper back area, behind the heart; prepare to move with your partner in this position.