Photo:  Toni Gauthier

My friend Ann Carlson is a brilliant choreographer who is creating a new work, The Symphonic Body, to be performed at Stanford this week.  It is a gestural choir performed by 75 individuals from all walks of university life, from gardeners to scientists.  She has observed and distilled their gestures into this new work.  She speaks of the dance as being about embrace and surrender.

“This (self) embracing draws metaphor and meaning from the surroundings of the everyday. But during the making of the performance the embrace gives way to a surrender, there is a letting go of the individual identity into an experience of being part of something larger than the self. Symphonic Body is a social sculpture.

The particular choreographed gestures themselves become part of a larger movement tapestry within each performer and within the piece as a whole. So, these works, performed by the actual individuals who live with these gestures (as opposed to trained performers taking on the gestures of other people) exist in this tension between embrace and surrender, giving rise to questions about what constitutes humanity and aliveness in a given moment.”

I have a lot of questions about humanity and aliveness right now.  Questions about how to maintain connection to humanity and aliveness when thrust into a dark night of the soul.  Rage is here, grief is here, despair is here.  So are light, breath, and hope.  When the shit hits the fan, is it possible to embrace and surrender?  Is that a good idea?

Ann’s words about “letting go of individual identity into an experience of being part of something larger than the self” feel right.  Not just for my current situation, but in general.  If the individual identity is too big, too loud, then the subtle orchestration of the “symphonic body” of the self as part of something larger is lost. At least that is how it feels to me.  It is comforting to think of myself as part of a social sculpture.  Not one cast in stone, but in breath, gesture, time and space –  continually changing, undoing and remaking itself.  Embracing and surrendering one day at a time, one moment at a time.

Thank you Ann, again and again.