WHY I SCULPT BODIES IN MOVEMENT
“Dance is the hidden language of the soul”
Last week I had a conversation with a friend of mine who teaches movement to children and adults. The goal is to teach these students alternative healthy techniques to cope with stress, loss and loneliness. The goal at this art and healing foundation is to connect people to soulful therapies that use the body itself to heal.
The logic behind this modality for healing is timeless and it is unlikely that any human society (at any rate until the invention of puritanism) has denied itself the excitement and pleasure of dancing. Like cave painting the first purpose of dance is probably ritual - appeasing a nature spirit or accompanying a rite of passage. But losing oneself in rhythmic movement with other people is an easy form of intoxication. Pleasure can never have been far away. Dance movement is poetry for the body and soul.
When we dance, our bodies takes over our thoughts and attention and our minds follows, witnessing and receiving. Dance allows our body to deliver thoughts into physical signals, a language pattern all on its own. Our bodies in movement do not lie.. When we dance, our bodies speak to us – our bodies reveal to us where we need to go and take us there through joy and a moving spiritualism.
Our mental consciousness makes itself known through our physical movement. We cannot hold back from the truth of our body’s expressions.
If we are too vulnerable or feeling bold, we take these cues from our movement when we dance and if we are honest with ourselves we can understand and actualize how we navigate through our daily existence.
When we move to music our bodies take root in a stance of trust and courage. We come from a place of listening and moving, receiving and giving. The air becomes our foundation and gravity no longer exists.
“Dance is just discovery, discovery, discovery.”
When we move with freedom from our unbridled passion we loose ourselves to the dance and channel our true nature. We realize we are part of the beautiful natural energy of our universe. When we dance with others our bodies allow us the space and body language to feel connected on a sublime level. We understand our naked vulnerability and the dance becomes primal and from our hearts.
This is why I choose to sculpt and draw the body in movement. Because I have experienced it and it awakens parts of me that are circular in time and cellular in memory.
The great Sufi poet Rumi said
“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
So yes, I am broken open, I have torn the bandages off, I am dancing in the middle of fighting, I am dancing in my joy, I am dancing in my sorrow and I am dancing perfectly free!
“The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.”
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