Ben Willis and I were at Little Brook Farm earlier this week shooting footage for my new film, Conscious Touch, Conscious Movement with Horses: Improving Feel and Connection through the Body.
Seven years ago, I collaborated with LBF and its wonderful director, Lynn Cross and her daughter Summer Brennan on the performance project, All the Pretty Horses. They are the most generous, compassionate rescue and sanctuary that I have worked with, and I feel so blessed to be working (playing) with them again.
As we were walking around the farm, we went by a paddock where a lovely dark horse stood in the shade of a run-in shed. “Who is that?” I asked. Summer said, “That is Izarra. She is one of the Mustangs.” Then she looked at me with a new thought, “You should adopt her.” Summer knows that I have a long, deep passion for Mustangs.
Yesterday I went back up to LBF to see Izarra and play with her. She is a dancer! Curious, playful, unafraid, ready to join. And so my heart is wide, wide open to this beautiful being. I do not know how this chapter will be written, what is the plot or the timeline. But in this uncertainty and possibility, I am feeling a buoyancy and joy that I have not felt with such clarity for many months.
Summer said something interesting – that in her experience, Mustangs, because often they have not been domesticated, put into training programs and living situations that can gradually extinguish their essence, are more “here.” In many cases, they have not closed down, despite the trauma of their capture and confinement.
Summer and Izarra