Breaking Rules

Rachel, Jess, Eliza, and I find ourselves making and breaking rules Wednesday evening when we gather to improvise and choreograph. The sun is still bright, the downtown traffic lights starting to work (although the promise of more construction looms in Springfield's future), and it almost feels like summer in the way we enter maybe carefree into the dance studio...

Mirroring with Rules
What's important to think about when mirroring?
slow, eye contact, how are you responding to your partner

Leader:
Cannot move your feet
Do not make eye contact
MUST make eye contact
Cannot move your arms
Much always be changing levels
Eye contact with another person
Don't know who is leading
Pushing away the floor

My partner is breaking rules and making me feel like less of the rebelrouser than I believe I am. And I like her for it.

Pathways
What do you hear and think about when I say pathways?
yellow brink road, getting from one point to another, a straight line, jagged

Start by choosing one pathway and move along it by walking. Explore other forms of locomotion. When you are ready, BREAK, and switch to a new pathway, trying to allow yourself time to explore each pathway and perhaps returning to past pathways.

Break the Rule
Everyone is following the same directions but one person must always be breaking the rule.

Rules:
Start by just walking.
Add arms.
Move in slow motion.
Pick up tempo.
Spin.
Jump.
Move at a low level.
High level.

Come get the bench...

Choreography: Sit Down
Make a dance where no one can leave the bench.

My kiddos are prop-obsessed and tonight I see why as they rediscover a tool I thought I knew well only to be surprised by legs coming down, seeing each other from different heights, and bodies being lifted. This dance is quiet with loud moments and I want them to make it again but different. And they kindly break my rules without alienating me.

Driving home

My aunt visited Vermont while I was staying at her house in Richmond, MA this week and came home praising the spot where I-91 leaves Massachusetts and finds its way winding through hilly southern Vermont. I feel my shoulder blades sink deep as I pass this spot today, leaving the Berkshires for my Springfield heartspot. I leave something good down here in the rural, picturesque towns of Sheffield and New Marlborough and feel myself smiling thinking of little bodies jumping from one array to the next as 2nd graders dip their toes into multiplication and the challenge of finding the biggest foot in a group of fifth graders to make me the largest possible area to dance in during math.

I have been treated well by these teachers, students, and Jane of Flying Cloud who is so obviously in love with living, breathing, realizing integration of arts and other curricular subjects. I found myself sitting around mini elementary school tables again, debriefing with teachers about their experiences dancing math with me and their students, and talking about how to improve my practice, develop ideas further, and what it means to be 9 and a student these days. You would never know that the end of school is right around the corner the way these folks talk about the learning and doing that is happening in their classrooms. For a moment, it feels like September when the possibilities for what will happen in school this year are rich and overwhelming.

But I cross state lines and look forward to the summer season as the lushness that is my home state envelops me and says, "Welcome home."

Burnin' Up: Sat morning love affairs

Saturday morning, in a slightly overeager attempt to clean the house, I found myself picking up the stove coils I had just used to make myself tea. The minor blistering was almost immediate and I found myself sighing as I ran cold water over my hot, hot, hot finger and thumb. The burn served multiple purposes - a reminder to slow down and think through my movements a little more as well as inspiration for family dance, which I had avoided planning by cleaning instead.

I nursed my hand with an icy beverage as I unlocked the dance studio Saturday morning, always wondering who will show up for these random gatherings of young folks and their elders every few weeks. The music was playing when I found myself sweetly surprised by a mother/daughter set, a mom with her just walking son and prancing daughter, and a friend with a student from her school. We gathered and met each other, waking up our bodies with gentle tapping and hand rubbing (my blisters just barely survived), exploring shapes at different levels, twisting and stretching. It felt good to move in the company of these folks. I sometimes find my insecurities early in the morning on these family dance days, wondering if I'll find something comforting to offer these folks during the beginning on their weekend together, and yet they always come eager to fill the studio with their own dancing joy.

My burn showed up later in class. I told the young ones my story and they quickly responded with stories of their own burns and we moved like we were hot, hot, hot before feeling the opposite coldness in our fingertips, our tummys, and our legs. And then we found our own opposites, or opposites of sorts - in and out, fast and slow, ocean and sky - and brought them to life, moving with our loved ones and teaching our new friends. I wanted to thank these creatures of movement for welcoming me to class, for inviting me into their moving worlds, and for letting me in some way feel like part of the families they were trying to build and love in their attendance of family dance.

So I do. Thank you.

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.