Berkshires: Moving mathematically

Am I allowed to write a blog post in a different state if the landscape is still rich with green and hilly attempts at mountains and small towns that disappear into back roads? Hope so because the wifi is good and I'm feeling fully charged after cafe caffeine. I'm in Lenox, the town of Tanglewood fame with nearby Kripalu housing yogis and transformation-seekers, after spending the morning at New Marlborough Central School and the afternoon at Under Mountain Elementary in Sheffield, MA. The Berkshires are pristine, but if you veer off route 7 for long enough you'll find what's left of the milltowns that feel near and dear to downtown Springfield. I drive hard and thorough, using this Mass getaway as an opportunity to put some more miles on the bright red Camry without feeling too guilty about my carbon footprint.

But what a day! In grad school, we have these dreamy classes where we imagine best case scenarios for artists working in schools with luxious amounts of time to co-plan with classroom teachers and walk around the spaces you'll be using before you even breathe in the same room as the children you'll be art-making with. And somehow, I got myself a gig that not only embraces this idea but is wanting to believe it is a necessary first step to good work. I found myself sharing a little table with little chairs (brightly colored and plastic) in the hallways of a rural school with about 80 kids in multi-age classrooms making explicit connections between math concepts and dance-making. Fractions became opportunities to split up classroom spaces while multiplication arrays became moving bodies row by row. All of this is in theory of course. Tomorrow we open the classroom doors and invite the kids in to jump around, think around, and mess it all up for us.

I drove south a wee bit for the afternoon to actually teach, a one-time shot with a fourth grade class whose teacher gave me a rockstar introduction while handing over masking tape we would use to break her classroom into eighths. Teaching felt good after a morning of talking. The kids gave me oxygen and my pumping blood made me a happy mover. We explored 8 counts of music, making movements for 1/8 counts, 2/8 counts, 4/8 counts, and finally an 8/8 count movement. These fractions dances demand more but the time passed so quickly. How sweet it is to be wanting more though, right? And the tape is staying on the floor.

well-(movin')-ness week

If I had to do it all over again, would I give up my castle on a hill in Spring-a-ling Springfield for the bohemian rhapsody of work and live Exner Block in Bellows Falls? No. Although I imagine different scenarios driving past bright windows full of making-it-now art where I knock on my neighbor's door to find her covered in charcoal and spend my mornings dancing in the street, I find myself happy to return home to makeshift small-town suburbia this evening after a dancing adventure in BF.

Mind you, the Bellows Falls grit is easy to pick out from the fingernails of children who grow up there. I find the comfort of my own struggling town in choppy haircuts and new names like 'Justus' and 'Angel.' I met every child at Bellows Falls Central Elementary, a K-4 school boxed between residential streets, which shares a playground with the town's YMCA. And I fell in love like only teachers who feel they know kids before they know kids really can.

The school nurse, Anita, invited me in to dance with these young ones as part of their Wellness Week and I found myself rolling on the floor, sculpting little bodies, and pulling imaginary strings as I bonded with a new batch of kids in an unknown school. I keep waking up in these small schools: These kids are way less inhibited than I want to believe. I'm ready to talk down the emo-fourth grade boy who preaches dance equals gay in order to start his own mini-revolution and instead find this child showing me new ways to think about moving my elbow through space. I want to watch them grow up into dancers who know their bodies as capable and curious. I want to sit back and let them take over, to remind me how little I know of my form. I find myself craning my neck to see more, stepping on their toes in attempts to guide them, and getting lost in the possibility of limitless movement. But I wake up with so-and-so won't partner with so-and-so and to "I'm bored" becoming a fashion statement. Neither lasts long.

Today I ate my lunch in the sunshine, hoping to burn slightly as I longingly crave the desert. It was quiet. This was my break from children so I read a little after I finished my salad. The fourth graders who started my day with go-go-go talking competitions ran outside to catch the sun too before their own lunch. One stringy-haired, skinny-legged blond child found herself enamoured with my leftover salad bits and I told her to indulge herself. It is this moment, when we talk about the dancing, our families, and school in general that I feel a dull ache deep in my chest... a reminder that this child, these children, this school, and this town aren't mine, but merely holding me as I visit.

This ain't no small town dance recital... except it is.

Mother's Day is for the the Moms, but in Springfield it is also for the dancers. May 9th and 10th welcomed the Dance Factory's spring recital with epic dance adventures filling both days to the max almost beat by large audiences who say, "Yeah. We'll take this," and cheer, baby cheer.

I take moments in between costume changes backstage at the high school that left me craving new beginnings to notice the kids that let me call them my students own their dancing bodies and claim my naive attempts at choreography for themselves. This is daring. This is confidence. This is a desire to let people in and give them a chance to see what you are all about. And I realize I have much to learn about what these moving', groovin' bodies and minds are all about.

I felt community in my dirty toes, my sore lower back, and my searching-for-air chest as I made my way out to greet the people I see in school, in the grocery store, after rehearsal during the quiet time before I close my eyes. I know dance in some ways, but these people tell me about dance in new ways. And I'm a'lis'enin'.

Spring Dance

Classes at the Dance Factory for movers and groovers interested in all things modern...

Class meet for five weeks and cost $40.

Beginning Wednesday, May 13th from 6-7pm
Choreography/Improvisation
... time for exploration, play, and dance-making ...

Beginning Thursday, May 14th from 7-8pm
Modern
... welcome multiple levels for a reflective and energizing class ...

Mmm. Sweet dancing.

slow dance

...In the midst of it all I am reminded what it means to move when the deadline is not fast approaching and the children are not waiting for genius.

There is quiet and the floor is malleable and grace is something innate in the way space succumbs to body. The answer comes in following the movement while it leads to the discovery of a new sense. In these moments, the ache of not being enough is cradled by the realization of that being just what one needs.

And this makes it easier, more necessary to love the day to day explorations in the company of ever-changing, ever-questioning young folks who don't let me rest too easy in my own understanding of what it means to move...