Caressing the Earth

I am happy before I have a reason.

I am full of light even before the sky

Can greet the sky or the moon.

Dear companions,

We have been in love with the Divine

For so very, very long.

What can we now do but

Forever Dance!

Hafiz

“We can … through dance … discover a connection with something larger than ourselves that can move us forward.” (Dancing on the Earth, Johanna Leseho, Sandra McMaster. Findhorn Press, 2011, p.9)

“The tango is on the ground, it is caressing the floor. It is the ball of the foot supporting the weight of the body, right on the axis and each person on his/her own axis. If you make pupils walk at the beginning, they get bored and want to learn steps and more steps – to show off at the dance hall. So you need to have the luck of meeting a teacher who tells you: No. Look. You must walk. First walk.” Miguel Zotto

“A good dancer is one who listens to the music. We dance the music not the steps. Anyone who aspires to dance never thinks about what he is going to do. What he cares about is that he follows the music. You see, we are painters. We paint the music with our feet.” Carlos Gavito

On the wrong foot

We are a car culture. We proclaim this with pride. Our creeds are posted on pumper stickers.

We don’t walk. Not in life. Not in dance. Walking is slow, methodical, boring.

We are busy. We move fast. We travel great distances quickly without ever having to step out onto the ground, to walk, to look and feel and smell. 

We sublimate our pathways with concrete so that we don’t have to navigate the undulations and textures of soil and mud and grass. We resist contact with the natural world – our sentient home – and retreat to our temperature-controlled virtual realities. 

Our technology has given us power over our environment. We feel strong, defiant, independent. Separated and distanced from our earth mother.We pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

The change up

We need to walk – in life and in Tango. 

We need to practice caressing the earth with our feet. We need to slow down. We need to feel our feet press deep into the ground, against the floor, to be aware of precisely where we are in time and in space, to drop ourselves fully into the moment, the fragrances, the sights and sounds. We need to absorb the delicate brush of our dance partner’s hair against our cheek, the almost indiscernible press of fingertips against our back. 

We need to paint the music with our feet.

Our Earth Mother

Traditional cultures since the dawn of humanity danced as a form of communication with the Earth Mother, of awakening and integrating with the energies of healing, of elevating the material world into the mystical, ephemeral realms. Our European culture, peculiarly, has eradicated dance from the mainstream, sidelining it as an irrelevant, inconsequential amusement.

I cultivate many outdoor practices when the temperature is moderate and the grass is green. I keep a vegetable and flower garden. I practice my tai chi in bare feet in the backyard. Patricia nd I sip tea and listen to the birds and watch the flowers grow. I walk, I cycle. And I dance.

This time of year the options become more limited. The ground is frozen, and the temperature intimidating.

So I intensify my dancing. And in particular I attune myself to the energy of the space, the subtle energies, the tensions and pressures in the embrace,  openings and restrictions or moving in partnersip.  

And to the floor beneath. I carress the earth. I massage with my foot.every inch of floor space that I traverse. I know exactly where I am and how I got there.

“And the better that I’ve danced the more that I’ve healed, the more I’ve understood that to dance tango you have to be on your axis, on your own center and grounded.. (And it) just kind of expands to the rest of your life so that the rest of your life goes back to that sense of being grounded, of being centered, of being on your own axis, so that as things come at you and hit you, you know where your emotional center is.” (Dancing on the Earth, Johanna Leseho, Sandra McMaster. Findhorn Press, 2011, p. 18)