"Lower your arms, they're up too high. See the line they are drawing? It goes to your belly button. But if you lower your arms, yes...you see that? It goes directly to your heart."
I look in the mirror and make the adjustments. He's right of course. There's a completely different feeling emanating out of my body and into the room. And if I really do the work, the feeling extends beyond the brick building and into the neighboring hillside. It slices beneath the second floor, past the first floor, down through the foundation and pierces the earth's crust and sinks into the fiery molten center. Well, maybe not quite that far, but definitely into the cool, squishy earth.
I am learning to take space and not shrink in my magnitude.
I didn't grow up taking dance classes. I have a vague memory of starting ballet at a young age, but only a class or two. For some reason, I didn't want to go back. I can't recall why, there is only the remnant of uncomfortable stifling. A sensitive kid who didn't bode well with the rigidity. I know many people who had good ballet childhoods, and now, so many years later, I yearn for that infrastructure.
In the past, I've tried a few different classes with varying degrees of success and anxiety. But a couple years ago, after leaving one too many times feeling like a complete dance dunce with movement Alzheimer's, I decided to stop. The dance demons got the best of me and I kept tripping on my own feet.
So I stopped taking classes and focused more on Clown. (Did I really think that would be any easier?) Yet, I longed for ease of movement. For my self-expression. To bring my body gracefully into what I create. Or at least have a range of movement choice. It was that longing that prompted me to sign up for a 2-hour workshop led by a man who was a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Company for over twenty years.
The workshop was crowded. And although I was nervous, I took some comfort in the hope that I could just hide unnoticed in the masses. We did do sequences and I didn't disappear. He didn't allow it. And there were moments when I was led to tears. But not because of embarrassment or wrong steps, rather because of his approach to it all.
We go through a phrase where there is a gesture, arms forward as if holding a big beach ball. He stops us. "See this place?" He puts his hand in the vicinity of his heart, just below his clavicle. He talks softly, just a hint of Southern upbringing detected in his voice. "When you do that motion, it is a holding, an embrace. This part of our body, this concave place is designed perfectly. It is the place where a mother holds her child. Or a lover rests his head." And to illustrate it, he has me place mine in that perfect nook--the universal, cross-cultural, non-gender specific, international free zone of a humanity that connects us all.
After that workshop, a couple of friends and I decide to share private lessons with him. He would say we aren't 'doing dance.' We are doing something else. It's the something else that draws me in. The intangible mystery that speaks to me and makes sense in its non-sense. That and the fact that as I start out and fumble along, he doesn't care if I get all the steps precisely. He cares about what I am communicating with my body. If there is feeling emanating from my joints, if there are roots sprouting from my feet, if the tension of holding on and letting go is felt in my limbs, if my eyes are free from masks.
There are three of us in the room. He shows us a sequence. And then we each have to do it solo. I start.
"No, stop. Do it again."
I do it again.
"Nope. Again."
I start once more.
He makes a sound like a buzzer going off. "Wrong. Again."
Now I am frustrated and a little bit angry. And pained. I try again.
"That's it! Next."
What did I do differently? This ineffable (and perplexing) place that is recognizable to the audience, yet feels untraceable. It is in the technique, but technique alone isn't enough. It has something to do with the open and vulnerable heart. Something there and beyond.
I feel he is a wise and mischievous Master. He always seems to have a trickster twinkle in his eye. Every so often, in the middle of things, he will stop, and looking towards the back of the room, start talking to the 'Maestro.' He always gets me. I turn around to see with whom he is having this conversation, and of course the room is empty. I think he does it to keep us on our toes. Keep us present in the moment. But I have another secret thought when this happens. I imagine the room is filled with his own dance mentors. Martha's there. As well as his entire dance lineage. Watching, listening, commenting and perhaps moving alongside.
They are all there with him...and with us.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy,
a quickening that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium
and it will be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is
nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open...
~~~Martha Graham~~~
