SPEAK from Paula Josa-Jones on Vimeo.
This is the video from my performance at Lincoln Center. Still a work in progress. Love the traffic in the background. This dance is part of a longer series of solos called LIttle Fictions & Ragged Memoirs.
Stay tuned . . .
At one point in the workshop with Mark Rashid today, he began to show us the dancing magic partnership with his horse. Forward, back, side, side, forward diagonals, back diagonals – light, soft steps in any direction – articulating each foot like an improvisational tango. I fantasized my beautiful dancers, DeAnna and Ingrid in the arena with Mark and his horse – listening and improvising together – an unimaginably gorgeous quartet.
Today was fodder for about twenty blog posts. What I am loving about this experience is that it confirms everything I believe about the human-horse connection as a template and groundwork for spiritual practice.
Here are a few highlights:
During my ride today, Mark helped me to create the walk that I wanted – engaged, moving forward with softness and ease – from the first step. The horse that I am riding had inadvertently been taught to walk off reluctantly, with no forwardness. Most of the change in his walk had to do with creating the desired walk inside of me and then transmitting it to the horse. Not using more and more leg. That is the dance of creating from the inside out, not just mechanically changing the outside. The same thing works with children. It works with any creative effort that I have ever been a part of. It works, every time, no exceptions.
The day before the inauguration we visited the National Museum of the American Indian, which had a celebration of music dance and story. We watched Mexican folkloric dancers, Alaskan Indian dancers and the extraordinary KanKouran West African Dance Company. At one point a drummer stepped forward with a talking drum and began a chant with the overflow audience. “USA!,” he drummed, and we chanted back “Barack Obama!” in the perfect language of music and movement.
Last night was my performance in New York. I was at least 20 years older than anyone else in the program. I like that. At one point, one of the young dancers sharing my dressing room looked up from the floor and said, “How long have you been doing this?” I laughed and said, “My whole life.”
I spoke to Rebecca Stenn, another soloist who danced just before me. We both said that we felt more in our bodies, more present, richer and more seasoned than ever. Ripe. It was a little surprising and then delicious to both of us. What I noticed as I waited to go on, and then as I danced, was that all of the old fears, the anxieties were not there. In their place was this fierce pleasure in the dancing, in reaching across the space of the stage to say, “This is for you. And it is also for me.”