To Move

Members of Yama Dance Company performing ‘The Waves’ inspired by Virginia Woolf’s writing.

Dance is figuring strongly in my life at the moment. Having joined the inspirational Yama Dance Company for women over the age of sixty in January, now every Thursday morning I travel to Bath on the train. I join nineteen other women, many in their 70s, who have been dancing together for the past ten years. The energy, enthusiasm and physical expression in the room is quite unlike anything else I have experienced. A group of older women all stepping into their unique beings simultaneously.

For the past seven weeks we have been working with choreographer Mark Bruce. As someone who has always been more comfortable with somatic movement and improvisation these workshops have pushed me right out of my comfort zone, demanding that I engage with choreographed movement.  Focused. Intense. Energetic. Challenging. Liberating. Exciting. Surprising. Rewarding. Supportive. Generous. Inclusive. The classes are all these things. Alongside the challenge I’m learning to commit to, own, and celebrate my body and what it’s capable of doing.

Tara Silverthorn.

In tandem with Yama I’ve attended a series of Gather Up classes in Bristol with dancer and choreographer Tara Silverthorn. Seeing with our feet. Leading from our little fingers, the thumbs, little toes, big toes. Beginning movement from an organ. Moving as though we have no bones. Exploring how small movements effect the rest of our body. Pair work placing hands on another’s body, not to lead or guide them, but as a gentle offering that might affect their movement. Witnessing another moving and both the dancer and the witness responding to the statement ‘I am the mover who…’

A self portrait moving in front of my new plans for ‘Arrival’ in my studio.

I have taken the rhythm from these classes back into my studio, realising how important arrivals are for me, and how everything begins from the body. I used a coaching session to explore what I need to establish a form of arrival in my studio, in order to be fully present and maintain focus.

·      Arrive

·      Be in my body for the first 15-20 minutes

·      Journal about the feelings this generates

·      Draw a card to offer random direction

·      Notice what comes from these beginnings

·      Letting it be whatever it needs to be

·      Trusting the not knowing

To really be in my body for the first 15-20 minutes. To dance to music. Dance in silence. Dance until I know what I’m doing. Dance until I no longer know what I’m doing. These experiences together and individually have been really rich.

A still image from Pina Bausch’s ‘Vollmond’ performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch+ Terrain Boris Charmatz.

As well as my own moving I’ve been watching dancers move. A last minute trip to London to see the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz at Sadlers Wells perform ‘Vallmond’. A performance drenched in water, flowing from love to brutality.

A city break to Porto, Portugal, introduced me to the choreographic work of Victor Hugo Pontes. We saw his company perform their new piece ‘HÁ QUALQUER COISA PRESTES A ACONTECE’.

Described as ‘a collective physical mass’ of naked bodies forming ‘a vigorous coral piece’. Meeting, writhing, leaping, hurling, throwing, clashing, repelling. An apocalyptic vision of uncertainty, vulnerability, collision and ultimately, freedom.

Two very different pieces but undeniably equally inspiring.