don't fence me in

I was feeling claustrophobic in both my car and within my being, in that 'URGHH!!!' kind of way, after being stuck in a slow moving train of cars heading north from Seattle. It took me three hours to drive a distance that usually takes an hour. I realized the irony that most of the traffic congestion was due to the fact that city folk, including myself, were trying to escape to the country to visit the spectacle of the tulips in full bloom during the weekend's "Tulip Festival" in the Skagit Valley.

Not bearing to drive any further in traffic, I pulled off the highway to find my own personal space to dance freely within. I was stunned by the beauty of this wildlife sanctuary I stumbled upon at the edge of the sea at the end of a dead-end street.

While editing later that evening, I remembered Joni Takanikos' version of Cole Porter's song from her album "Love In a Mist, Devil in a Bush.” She is a beautiful soul who I met at a retreat, and also who I shared MomoButoh workshops with in the past.

The lyrics speak so much of what I was feeling earlier that day - my soul's desire to dance freely into the expansive space of sky while at the same time feeling an earthward, grounding connection. After feeling so 'soul-repressed' from the bumper to bumper commute, I felt so grateful to receive so much energy from our Mama Earth that had a balancing effect inwardly - releasing the stress of the traffic-filled commute.

Don't Fence Me In

Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above

Don't fence me in

Let me ride thru the wide-open country that I love

Don't fence me in

Let me ride my cayuse where the west commences,

Gaze at the moon until I lose my senses

Can't stand hobbles and I can't stand fences

Don't fence me in.

Just let me sit by myself in the evening breeze

Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees

Send me away, forever, if you please

Just don't fence me in

Don't fence me in...

This moon-time, Momobutoh Company is dancing with significant others in the forms of plants and animals... here, the connection was more with the significant other elements of earth (grounding) and sky (freedom).

Grateful for our ever evolving Momobutoh connections! Thank you Momo - greatly inspired!

Lee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGaOrYrfkBY&feature=player_embedded

Music: Joni Takanikos

Visit our collaborative blog here: Momobutoh Dance Company

FreeSTYLE on 1/1/11 and beyond

Kazuo Ohno used the term "FreeStyle" very often when instructing us in butoh dance at his studio (photos here of Momo dancing "freestyle" in the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio by Nobuko Shiga).

Now that we are investigating The Styles with MomoButoh Dance Company from 1/1/11 till 2/2/11; echos of his directions are repeating inside me. What is it to dance "freestyle?" On 1/1/11 at 11:11 am I initiated a dance improvisation ceremony to celebrate this New Year of E11evens. It included appearances by invited friends moving in all speeds, levels, styles, emotions and directions. It included passers by like a bird pecking at the vomit likely left by someones New Year's Eve revelation and a coffee cup carrying crow who knocked it percussively on the pavement; providing a soundtrack for our dance along with a jumbo jet flying low & slow over 11th street (we were on 10th & Pike) in Seattle. At about 6 min in, I encountered an unused cigarette and crumbled its contents in a circle on a dumpster, offering tobacco with prayers for a good year for all my relations. It was a magical and totally unplanned 11 minutes that culminated with dancing in an underground (literally) painting studio of someone I met right there on the street during the dance. It was all filmed.

Sadly, I did not immediately dowload the footage of this event and now must learn from my delinquency & mistake. My flip video camera broke on 1/6/11 just before I attended the Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. I sent in the broken camera for a replacement (Technical Side NOTE: They are doing this for me even though it is NOT under warrantee anymore because we found the original receipt and they say I am a "valued customer", cool!! --this is ONE reason I suggest all DailyDance practitioners get a FLIP camera). I asked them to retrieve the films "stuck" on the camera, and will post it here if they do. But this will likely never happen. So, please use your infinite imagination to re-create in "freestyle" what this dance ceremony might have appeared like there in the bright sunshine, in front of a horse trough turned bamboo garden planter and a drive shaft handled metal doorway with a wooden barrel for a light fixture and sheet metal for a sign closed club entryway. A very urban STYLE place to begin 2011 for sure. One of the few human passers by happened to be my good friend from the dance community -Louis Gervais...what a blessing to have the likes of him be one of my first spontaneous dance partners for 2011!! It is going to be a very fine and WILD year of FreeSTYLE indeed. Can't wait for 11/11/11 of course....

And, regarding the "Freestyle" that Kazuo Ohno would regularly call out for, I believe this may be the MOST difficult thing to do in butoh, dance and life. How can we truly be free? What does that even mean? How can we dance and act free of conditioning, ideas of right/wrong, good/bad, self imposed constraints on our spontaneously emerging actions and creativity? It would be as if we were unrestrained and totally available puppets of unfolding Creation. On 1/3/11 I may have experienced a tiny and ecstatic glimpse into this while sharing a trio improvisation score with improvisational dance luminaries John Dixon and Karen Nelson. After an afternoon of Contemplative Dance Practice we discussed an experimental score whereby the only "rules" were to follow your "embodied impulses" and when finding you were NOT doing that (such as following a mental thought or idea of what to do/not do) then to PAUSE and begin again only from an embodied impulse. This may sound quite vague but what emerged was a rare revelatory and amazingly fulfilling experience for all of us. We shared a freestyle dance for about 30 minutes of what we agreed was almost total presence and direct communion with BEING (self, each other, god?) self-emerging in action through the body. I felt perhaps that this was what Kazuo had been trying to convey when he would repeat "FREESTYLE!!" (in English) over and over while we improvised during his lessons.

I would love to hear/see what you think/see is "FreeSTYLE"...I would love to hear what happened for you if you try the meditation/movement improvisation score I explained above. please offer a comment or blog response if you are moved. Thank you.

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