Category Archives: the body

the river, the body

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We ARE water beings living on a water planet: 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water; 60% of the adult human body is water, carried by blood, lymph, and the water within each cell. We cannot survive without fresh water. In 2016 the Housatonic region saw the worst drought in recorded history. Our once casual relationship to water, and our often-unconscious relationship to our own bodies are comingled in the growing climate crisis.

RIVER/BODY is a site-specific, multidisciplinary, community-engaging dance performance project inspired by the Housatonic River. Working with professional and local student performers, RIVER/BODY uses movement and dance to reflect the ways that our experience of environment is in fact a living process supported by bodily sensations, movements, perceptions, emotions and thoughts. My intention with RIVER/BODY is to vividly express our wild, fluid bodies and their consanguinity with the wildness that surrounds us.

RIVER/BODY will take place in August 2017 in Northwest Connecticut and Massachusetts at several sites along the Housatonic River.

This is an open call to  dancers, artists, river enthusiasts in the Northwest Connecticut and Tri-State region to contact me about how you can become involved in the creation and performance of RIVER/BODY.  I welcome your ideas, your passion your bodies!  Please email me at pjj@paulajosajones.org.

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Pauline Oliveros

PaulineOliveros.byPietrKers

 

For my dear friend and mentor, the brilliant, generous, wise and kind Pauline Oliveros, who passed peacefully last Thursday.  We are listening Pauline, remembering your instructions, remembering your sounds and presence.  You are with us forever.

 

Lines For Winter

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself —
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

~ Mark Strand  ~

 

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dance, body

DSC00667_2Photo:  Pam White; Paula Josa-Jones in “Auf Dein Eigenes Wohl”

 

How do you think of dance?

Is it shapes?

Steps moving across a stage?

Or is it the body

steeped in its years

on earth?

Is it the body inseparable

from everything?

Are you dancing now?

If you are breathing,

that is a start.

Are you listening,

to the sound of that breath?

Better still.

take heart

Screen shot 2012-11-01 at 9.07.16 PM

I took this picture in New Hampshire in October 2012 when I was campaigning for Barack Obama.  This week I will travel north to campaign for Hillary.

In what has been a protracted assault of “noxious word spew” (Samantha Bee’s words – watch the Pussy Riot episode), I am feeling soiled, triggered, disgusted by the degradation of our discourse.  What to do, what to do? I need to handle my rage before I go knock on doors.

So here is some of what I am doing, in no particular order:

  • Getting outside to take in the astonishing color and the delectable, golden late afternoon light.
  • Breathing.
  • Watching The Voice (my guilty pleasure), and savoring the sister play of Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys.
  • Lifting weights, doing deep plies, push ups, dancing to sweat – this is not really my usual protocol, but I need to cycle in some power.
  • Riding my horses and letting their softness and goodness come into my cells.
  • Not playing any podcasts that contain the other candidate’s name.
  • Making calls for Hillary in the evening.

Here is the thing.  I LOVE Hillary.  I love that she is human, that she is a fighter, that she has navigated the Class 5 rapids of 30 years of attack by a party defined by its ugly, entrenched misogyny.  I love her laugh, her compassion, her ability to listen, her willingness to keep going, her devotion to women’s rights.  I love that she speaks in sentences that actually make sense, and that she can respond her for to changing conditions and new perspectives (thank you Bernie).

So I am going to take my strong, albeit bruised heart in hand and go speak from that heart to strangers.  I am going to do my best not to take anything personally.  I am just going to put my head down and work.  I am going to do this with old friends from previous campaigns, and new friends that I will meet.

This takes a lot of courage.  I remember well the feeling of walking up to a door and not knowing what I would meet. It can be daunting, and in a climate of extreme political acrimony, it is downright scary  My model will be Hillary, who gets up every day and faces the crazy music. I will heed Michelle Obama’s words and go high to the best of my ability.

And I will be posting from the road.  So watch this space, and wish me luck.

 

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