Category Archives: the dance

Dec16

being well

Posted on by


Wellness that is being allowed, or the wellness that is being denied, is all about the mindset, the mood, the attitude, the practiced thoughts. There is not one exception, in any human or beast; because, you can patch them up again and again, and they will just find another way of reverting back to the natural rhythm of their mind. Treating the body really is about treating the mind. It is all psychosomatic. Every bit of it, no exceptions.  Abraham, Philadelphia, PA, 5/13/2002

 

This week in The Journal, I am writing about dreams.  About flying and landing and taking off.  What lifts us up and what takes us down.  You can join me here.

SHARE & EMAIL
Dec14

into the wild

Posted on by

Paula Josa-Jones in The Messenger, Photo: NIck Novick

There have been  some interesting responses to my post on performance, an imaginary audience.

As a performer who is also writing daily, I am interested in the nature of the digital audience, and nervous about the ways that the hungry ghost of SEO & keywords drives the conversation.

How does the hunger for numbers and the distraction it offers shape the work itself?  My own WTF moment came earlier today when I re-upped my Twitter account, and then remembered why I turned it off.  I find it overwhelming, this river of tweeting.  I tried a shy tweet, a toe in the river.  Cold, fast, a little self-conscious.

Yesterday before The Sting, Pam and I were visiting with our friends Gillian Jagger and her wife, Connie Mander.  For them it is all about The Work.  Gillian, at 81, is the fiercest artist I know.  She is fully immersed 100% of the time.  If she isn’t building it, she is visioning it.  The Work itself is the place where her most potent, fearsome interactions take place.

Into the wild means hearing my own cri de coeur.  When that is clear, the audience that I want will appear.

Does the performance exist without the audience?

Dec11

an imaginary audience

Posted on by

Paula Josa-Jones in Russian Ghostdance

This week, I am thinking, feeling and writing a lot about performing. I write about it in this week’s Journal.

I have been working with two artists recently as coach, choreographer and director.  Both have one woman shows.  I love this part of my work – bringing my eye to their work and helping them to deepen and open.

That work has also awakened my desire to perform.  In the past, many of my performances involved deep disguise.  Ways of hiding in plain sight.  I wonder how this new creation will reveal, what/who is waiting to be seen.  Performing has always been about revealing a part of myself that I cannot show in the daylight world.  The dark side, the inside, the wild side; underlayers, like showing my psychic petticoats.

Writing the daily post is also a performance.  But unlike the theater, where I can hear you (the audience) rustle and breathe, where I can calibrate my performance by how I am sensing an audience on a given night, this performance is for a largely imaginary audience.

But here’s the thing:  before the relationship with the audience comes the relationship with myself; with the impulse to create, to shape something new and delicious, something that I can savor.

Flight attendants always tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.  Same thing here.

Dec9

Nelson this week

Posted on by

Yesterday I went to work with Nelson.  There is The Work, but the other part is that I go to Nelson because being with him is an immediate way to get happy and move into focus.

There had been snow so things were different.  Nelson was spookier than he has been for a long time.  The snow was falling off the trees onto the hood of my car making this random timpani sound which he found alarming (so did I).  For both of us the light was refracting differently, and the footing was sloppy and icy.  He allowed me to take the giant snow balls off his feet, and then we went to work.

I have been developing the work on Nelson’s left – the dark side – asking him to move on cue onto a circle going left so that his dark side is the one facing me.  When he circles to the right, his body is a smooth curve, and he moves comfortably – either close in to me or farther out, depending on how I have asked.  When he goes left, his body is straight as a plank, he doesn’t want to look at me and he is markedly more tense.  It is as if the cannot feel himself on that side.

The BLM freeze brands the captured Mustangs on the left side of their neck.  Given Nelson’s terror and ferocity at that time, I am sure that event was traumatic and violent at least.  Maybe that is why the dark side is so persistently dark.

The lovely thing was that after we practiced his a few times, he got quieter and calmer.  Not exactly soft, but I could see that coming.  That was when I hit a patch of slippery slush and made a shockingly disorganized predator movement.  Arms flung up for balance.  He took off.  After a few moments, he came back and we went on.  That is the very beautiful part of developing a long relationship with a horse.  There is a foundation of trust, a language of ask and answer that let’s us slide seamlessly back into the work and the relationship.

Here are some of the things I have learned from Nelson.  These are lessons that spill into my writing, my choreography, my mothering.

  • the importance of consistency
  • how to go slow
  • how to build the work incrementally
  • how to begin again
  • the meaning of love

The last one is probably the most important.  There is nothing like stopping to take in the sun, the trees, the hills while standing next to a creature that is choosing to be there, to be next to you in that breathing moment.  Today my stallion Capprichio put his nose on my neck and stood like that, just breathing for about two minutes.  Bliss.

postscript:  I am teaching an online class called Breaking into Blossom:  Moving into an Improvisational Life starting on January 23.  If you register before December 23, the price is $75.  On Christmas Eve Day it goes up to $100.