In 2011, I performed in Joni Erin Brown’s Global Water Dances performance for Falmouth: https://globalwaterdances.org/falmouth-cornwall-england-2011/
I was at the start of my journey as a biodynamic massage therapist (bodywork psychotherapy, also known as somatic work) and before I became a spiritual director.
We danced the sea and danced our connection with the sea, and with ourselves.
Expressive dance is a powerful way to connect with ourselves and with what is around us. To connect with what is in and around our lives, present, past and future. We connect with movement and dance just as much as we do with music and poetry: an expressive voice. It is a profound experience to take a musical instrument and “play the sea”, for instance. Or play any other thing, the place or outside influence that is meaningful to us: to feel in to it, and play it, voice it, sing it; to feel it and move to it; to feel it and express it in words, sounds and movements. To do so is to connect with yourself, your experience, your history, emotions, memories, deeply; but also, it is to connect to the outside, to our place with the everything else than us.
I was given a spade for my performance, and asked to use it to dig my feelings; dig in, dig and find what I could find. It was difficult at first, and I hid.
I connected deeply and I discovered.
This was a choreographed performance, but the choreography was to feel our performance.
What is the word for my return to the outside world after this inner experience as performance? Soulful? The next part of the performance was to gather by the sea shore. I dropped the spade along the way. We were to dance the sea. This dance was to feel the sea in our own being, and express it in movement.
We had been practicing for a long time, with contact improvisation, moving to the sea, and meditation in silent retreat, as well as in our own work in bodywork practices such as biodynamic psychotherapy.
For more information about this performance, see this link.
‘The Choreographers: Joni Erin Brown – Artistic Director & Choreographer Christina Kyle – Project Manager Emmalena Fredriksson – Assistant Choreographer.’
‘The Performance: “Mesmirising”, “meditative” (Audience member) ’
‘The performance took place on the beach at Falmouth. Performers included students from various art forms at Dartington as well as trained and untrained dancers from outside the college. The performance reflected the interest of the choreographer in somatic practices (such as Body Mind Centering and Authentic Movement) in performance, and used the natural environment as stimulus for movement.’
This was a really special thing to be a part of.