*** Staying True ***
We started with this poem by Todd Paulsmeyer:
The Promise
Promise me one thing
O' lady, O' lass
That you'll honor yourself
Whatever may pass
Be true to those feelings
That rise from your soul
And live not for others
But strive to be whole
Be open and honest
And caring and free
But trust no one blindly
Not even me
For absolutely no person
Be it woman or man
Can make you feel happy
As only you can
And for you a promise
Just one that I name
It's to listen and care
And do just the same
Here are the notes from the closing circle. (Special thanks to Robin for being our scribe)
*** The question that kept coming up for me was: staying true to what? How I’m feeling? To some aspiration or ideal of the dance? I finally settled on attempting to stay true to a kinesthetic, reflexive dance.
*** I worked with the word, “Loyalty.” Staying loyal to my desires, this jam, this partner. I contextualized my decision making.
*** For me the word was “Honoring.”
*** I spent a long while watching, and for me that was staying true.
*** I found myself reflecting on “truing a wheel” – finding alignment, subtle adjustments—the difference between being really close, and being right on.
*** I had trouble finding what was specific about this theme. In contact I’m always staying true. What is the difference between staying true and “staying true”? It got my mind going.
*** There were moments I wanted to sing, and I thought, “better not!” This will interrupt someone else’s “trueness.”
*** Truth is not somewhere you can stay.
*** Staying true was often allowing a gesture or movement phrase to continue to have its life—by staying with it.
*** I wondered if I should be shedding something to arrive at what is true. Or should I be growing into something more true. I found I prefer to grow what is there and build on that.
*** The shedding can be like sloughing off what is not true.
*** For me the focus allowed me to retain what was distinct in each dance I had tonight. Each was “true” in a different way. This made the evening very complete for me.
Some more notes from various emails that were received in the days following the jam:
*** I noticed how it gave me permission to be impulsive and to follow curiosities without as much self-editing as usual: I initiated moves a bit more freely than usual perhaps, and trusted myself with my desires to do this or that, to choose or decline offers from partners without hesitation or deliberation.
*** At one point I was working with the image of my father doing carpentry, making a piece of wood "true" by shaving it down with a plane, and putting a level up to the wood to see if the bubble came to the center line ...I smoothed my partners' surfaces down and measured their relationship to the floor even as I was moving upside down...it was fun to be a imaginary sculptor with such pliant material to be carving.
*** Polonius' speech to Laertes kept dipping into my consciousness: "this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou cans't not be false to any man". I was perhaps more raw and gutsy than usual, and unapologetic about it. I found that I wanted to make sound, to sigh and grunt and laugh and so I did.
*** Finally, I felt another sense of the word true, as in an acknowledgement of my true situation and life identity as a mother/dancer, and I felt a pull to leave early and go home to my child who was waiting for me. It was as if the inner bubble in the level-instrument had tipped and I needed to respond to that and act, in order to be true to myself, my priorities. I had answered my dancer-pull to get there and then I answered my mother-pull.
*** Staying True is a committing to non-judgmental awareness (and I have noticed re-committing and re-committing and re-committing…).
*** My movement flows when I stay true to the breath, body, physical and sensational awareness, and let the mind follow the movement as a joyous, relaxed and curious witness.
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