So, when you go to a yoga class, sometimes the teacher will tell you to 'check in'; to see what you are bringing to the mat; to see just how it is you are right then.
A lot of yoga is about self-knowledge. About being able to identify what we are doing, how we are feeling, how we are acting, in order to strip back reactions, reflexes, actions which don't reflect us and work towards making the way we live full of integrity; not ruled by emotions and defences.
I think I've always previously thought my aim when I practice is to be aware of myself certainly, but to put distractions aside and just concentrate on the linking of breath and movement.
The morning after I went to see Augustine however (see previous post) I stood on my mat and I thought about bringing things to the mat, and I remembered the feelings of great contentment and inspiration from the night before. I hadn't had a camera, to capture it visually, which initially I was regretful about, and then I thought no, I'll just try and capture it in my mind and heart instead.
And so it was there, and it occurred to me that I should concentrate on these feelings. I should re-live that joy in the beauty of every day life, the inspiration I took from the vitality of the dancers, the determination I took from them to put my all into things and live myself fully, the great joy at enjoying beautiful vistas - be it sun-lit skyscrapers or leaves moving in the breeze, the gratitude at being alive and happy.
So I concentrated on all those feelings and recollections throughout my practice, and as I worked through my sun salutations I thought also about the rhythm of the breath and how - when I saw the sunlight on the church I thought 'I know what this is! This is harmony - it's the architecture and my eyes and my brain and the light all together to create beauty - that's harmony' (I had been reading an essay by Haruki Murakami on harmony in writing recently). And my movements took on a rhythm and a kind of harmony. A flow, as they should do.
And as I worked on, I found trying to feel the energy to my finger tips and to every cell in my body, gave me a feeling of having more energy from the inside. I heated up, I worked harder than I normally do, I maintained a great sense of momentum, I got into poses I normally struggle with, I opened up into upwards bow with such ease it was astonishing. And all the time, the joy and the beauty and the vitality I had felt was feeding me.
Which made me reflect on how what is in your mind can really affect how your body moves. I can tell you exactly where to put your hands and feet, how to breathe, how even you should feel in every muscle, but the inspiration and the impulse will come from you, and whatever is in your mind will make all the different to how that movement is to you, and to others who may be experiencing it.
Where I practice yoga - Triyoga
Haruki Murakami essay - Jazz Messenger
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Augustine, Darkin Ensemble
How extraordinary... A day or so after I decide I am going to create a blog combining interests in the movement/performance field and interests in the study of bodies and history of medicine field, I come across a listing for a dance piece based on hysteria in Paris in the 1890s of all things...
Titled Augustine, and performed by the Darkin Ensemble, choreographed by Fleur Darkin, it was based on the photographs of patients at the Salpetriere, and one particular patient, the eponymous Augustine.
Hysteria is fascinating. I wrote about it for my masters in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and read many articles in medical journals of the time about particular cases. As a concept it had been around since the Ancient Greeks, linked to ideas about pathology connected to the movement of the womb. Though this theory changed much over time, it stayed very much connected to femininity. The cases I looked at were stark in the disparity of causes identified - hysterical women could blame it on their anatomy and their overtly feminine disposition; hysterical men had probably been wobbled too much on the railway, or suffered another similar trauma.
We don't use the word in the same sense today. They didn't mean wailing with tears, or crying with laughter. Hysteria was the name for a vast constellation of symptoms, any collection of which the patient may possess, but which in all cases, the commonality was the absence of any clear physiological cause.
Having been around in one form or another for many many centuries, it faded out as a disease category in the 20th century. What happened to it, and why it was used as a label for specific groups of 'patients' down the ages has been investigated by many.
Anyway, the dancing, the dancing...
If I explained it in terms of components, more likely than not, noses would be turned up in disgust - disgust for 'experimental new-fangled nonsense'. Yes, the costumes were sparse, there were boxes to encage the dancers, there were cries of anguish, there was a soundtrack of breathing, panting, there was frenetic movements and tussles, there was a man laying out violins across the stage talking to himself about how the world was extinguishing itself...
But. There was also this - a visceral energy to the dancing that was so powerful at times I almost reeled as if hit by it. There were moments of captivating rhythm and soothingly sad melody. There were sequences of movement both fluid and frenetic that were enchantingly beautiful. There were 7 people on stage putting so much into it that it all held together and arrested me.
I liked it very much.
I liked the cellist on the side of the stage - who also provided the breathing soundtrack, some unconventional violin playing, and a lovely song-voice.
I liked the soundtracking to breath. Funnily enough I had been experimenting with this kind of thing walking home the other day - making the kind of sounds that people make inadvertently - sighs, umms, ahs, sounds of exertion and impatience and so on - to movements that felt appropriate. Yes, I must have looked a little strange, but so do most people on the streets of Archway. Anyway, it really did feel quite satisfying - the moving and the making of noise. A certain sound would match a certain noise. I liked it as an idea for a troupe of dancers. The same sounds or a cacophonous variety of sounds. I thought it could be quite impressive. A further kind of exploration of dance quite literally being a language - adding the expressions of non-verbal sounds on the top...
Darkin Ensemble's breath was not quite like that, it provided emphasis for the movement and heightened the sense of frustration and exertion that the dancer in the box was creating. But it had this great rhythm, which was quite hypnotic for me.
I loved the poses the 'hysterics' took. Trying to portray the complicity between doctor and patients in displaying the illness to academics, Darkin had her dancers contract themselves into taut and jagged shapes, which qualities travelled over into the movement pieces. The vibrancy of outstretched poses and flinging limbs reminded me of times when I've had such great rage or frustration that the body just seems full of some potent energy, almost forcing your limbs out, forcing a flailing, fighting, scratching release....
Release was the last section. There was not too tight a narrative; symptoms, treatment, release were the stages, but the first two seemed to be a collection of ideas and images - the helplessness of patients, the relationships between doctors and patients, frustration, delusion, performance... The third, release, really did give a feeling of release though. The patient/doctor accoutrements were removed, and in neutral clothing - just as humans - the dancers let go of the fight and just moved with energy and lyricism.
Above all it was the energy that impacted on me - jumping into another's arms, fighting, contracting into a pose. Everything was done with such startling vitality. It made me feel alive and it made me want to live harder, brighter, bigger, more hungrily.
I left the centre feeling gladdened. It was my first visit to Laban, and it's an awesome building - the angular hills, the shimmering colours, the shed-like humbleness, combined with smooth, vast majestic curves...
And the whole of the walk back to the station was bathed in golden sunlight. A tower block in browns and whites looked truly beautiful against a deep blur sky. Razor wire and barbed wire were calmly coiled, making pretty shadows incongruous with their nature. A little church spire took on a pumpkin-coloured hue, traffic lights winked at me, even an abandoned sign behind a fence struck me as being in the perfect place - it was like walking in a work of art.
I sat at the front of the DLR and watched the sun squeeze out its final deep rich rays over canary wharf and the wonders of east london and felt filled with riches.
Listen to Radio 4 programme on Hysteria http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20040422.shtml
Great book on hysteria and female psychiatry http://www.amazon.com/Female-Malady-Elaine-Showalter/dp/0860688690/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-9546212-5033427
Review of Augustine http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/augustine_0507.htm
Fleur Darkin http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/Fleur%20Darkin.html
Darkin Ensemble http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/welcome.html
The Musician http://www.sarahmoody.co.uk/
Titled Augustine, and performed by the Darkin Ensemble, choreographed by Fleur Darkin, it was based on the photographs of patients at the Salpetriere, and one particular patient, the eponymous Augustine.
Hysteria is fascinating. I wrote about it for my masters in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and read many articles in medical journals of the time about particular cases. As a concept it had been around since the Ancient Greeks, linked to ideas about pathology connected to the movement of the womb. Though this theory changed much over time, it stayed very much connected to femininity. The cases I looked at were stark in the disparity of causes identified - hysterical women could blame it on their anatomy and their overtly feminine disposition; hysterical men had probably been wobbled too much on the railway, or suffered another similar trauma.
We don't use the word in the same sense today. They didn't mean wailing with tears, or crying with laughter. Hysteria was the name for a vast constellation of symptoms, any collection of which the patient may possess, but which in all cases, the commonality was the absence of any clear physiological cause.
Having been around in one form or another for many many centuries, it faded out as a disease category in the 20th century. What happened to it, and why it was used as a label for specific groups of 'patients' down the ages has been investigated by many.
Anyway, the dancing, the dancing...
If I explained it in terms of components, more likely than not, noses would be turned up in disgust - disgust for 'experimental new-fangled nonsense'. Yes, the costumes were sparse, there were boxes to encage the dancers, there were cries of anguish, there was a soundtrack of breathing, panting, there was frenetic movements and tussles, there was a man laying out violins across the stage talking to himself about how the world was extinguishing itself...
But. There was also this - a visceral energy to the dancing that was so powerful at times I almost reeled as if hit by it. There were moments of captivating rhythm and soothingly sad melody. There were sequences of movement both fluid and frenetic that were enchantingly beautiful. There were 7 people on stage putting so much into it that it all held together and arrested me.
I liked it very much.
I liked the cellist on the side of the stage - who also provided the breathing soundtrack, some unconventional violin playing, and a lovely song-voice.
I liked the soundtracking to breath. Funnily enough I had been experimenting with this kind of thing walking home the other day - making the kind of sounds that people make inadvertently - sighs, umms, ahs, sounds of exertion and impatience and so on - to movements that felt appropriate. Yes, I must have looked a little strange, but so do most people on the streets of Archway. Anyway, it really did feel quite satisfying - the moving and the making of noise. A certain sound would match a certain noise. I liked it as an idea for a troupe of dancers. The same sounds or a cacophonous variety of sounds. I thought it could be quite impressive. A further kind of exploration of dance quite literally being a language - adding the expressions of non-verbal sounds on the top...
Darkin Ensemble's breath was not quite like that, it provided emphasis for the movement and heightened the sense of frustration and exertion that the dancer in the box was creating. But it had this great rhythm, which was quite hypnotic for me.
I loved the poses the 'hysterics' took. Trying to portray the complicity between doctor and patients in displaying the illness to academics, Darkin had her dancers contract themselves into taut and jagged shapes, which qualities travelled over into the movement pieces. The vibrancy of outstretched poses and flinging limbs reminded me of times when I've had such great rage or frustration that the body just seems full of some potent energy, almost forcing your limbs out, forcing a flailing, fighting, scratching release....
Release was the last section. There was not too tight a narrative; symptoms, treatment, release were the stages, but the first two seemed to be a collection of ideas and images - the helplessness of patients, the relationships between doctors and patients, frustration, delusion, performance... The third, release, really did give a feeling of release though. The patient/doctor accoutrements were removed, and in neutral clothing - just as humans - the dancers let go of the fight and just moved with energy and lyricism.
Above all it was the energy that impacted on me - jumping into another's arms, fighting, contracting into a pose. Everything was done with such startling vitality. It made me feel alive and it made me want to live harder, brighter, bigger, more hungrily.
I left the centre feeling gladdened. It was my first visit to Laban, and it's an awesome building - the angular hills, the shimmering colours, the shed-like humbleness, combined with smooth, vast majestic curves...
And the whole of the walk back to the station was bathed in golden sunlight. A tower block in browns and whites looked truly beautiful against a deep blur sky. Razor wire and barbed wire were calmly coiled, making pretty shadows incongruous with their nature. A little church spire took on a pumpkin-coloured hue, traffic lights winked at me, even an abandoned sign behind a fence struck me as being in the perfect place - it was like walking in a work of art.
I sat at the front of the DLR and watched the sun squeeze out its final deep rich rays over canary wharf and the wonders of east london and felt filled with riches.
Listen to Radio 4 programme on Hysteria http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20040422.shtml
Great book on hysteria and female psychiatry http://www.amazon.com/Female-Malady-Elaine-Showalter/dp/0860688690/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-9546212-5033427
Review of Augustine http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/augustine_0507.htm
Fleur Darkin http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/Fleur%20Darkin.html
Darkin Ensemble http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/welcome.html
The Musician http://www.sarahmoody.co.uk/
why?
why? because even though i cried on the way home from ballet aged 11 for feeling a failure, I knew the feeling I got from a waltz in time with the music, or the rhythm of a tricky enchainement, was worth pursuing. because when I performed even in front of a small bemused crowd on a rainy afternoon in swindon, i loved the thrill of showing what we had done, of working together. because when we sat and discussed each other's work for Foundation at Birkbeck, I found something inspiring in that environment of cooperative creativity and support. Because when I was tired and I went to capoeira anyway, I walked home feeling utterly elated and enlivened by the challenge and the energy and the community of it. Because of the importance of breaking through my own barriers, whether it be saying a word out loud to many people, or sharing my own work. Because of the awe and delight I felt watching the beauty of free-runners using the built environment as a playground. Because all of the times my heart has swelled up watching dancers perform with every cell in their body, watching a language talk to me through movement and pace and energy. Because of the moments of revelation. Because of the grounding my yoga practice gives me. Because of the fascination I find in reading about the human body. Because when i read about the symbolism of the heart, or bodies in history, or isadora duncan; or when I see friends performing, or a circus performance on the South Bank, or Sylvie Guillem; or when I go to an acrobatics class, or a choreographic session, or I dance in my kitchen... then I feel like these are pieces of a puzzle. That there are all these strands which fascinate me - anatomy and physiology, the history of dance, the study of performance, medical histories, views of the body, dance and movement in communities and for individuals, yoga, martial arts, circus arts, dance, dance theatre, physical theatre, movement therapy, choreography, choreology.... that somehow I want to collect and collate and tie all together. To explore and to build on and to collect together.
Because although I don't know exactly what I want to do, I know I want to pursue all these avenues and see what comes of it. Because although I may not become a professional choreographer, a yoga teacher, a massage therapist, a researcher in dance anthropology, or any of the many other ideas I come up with, I shouldn't let that detract me from exploring those things that inspire me and excite me and I shouldn't let that stop me from being fully open to all possibilities.
Millions of dancing cells, in my body all the time. Millions of dancing people that I meet along the way. Millions of dancing ideas, searching for context, in my brain. Millions of inspirational moments, dancing in the world around me.
I just want to record somewhere altogether, all the things I always think I want to capture and do something with. And build for myself a scrapbook of ideas and support, and inspiration and memories. And maybe for others too - an interesting repository of things seen and experienced and thought.
That's that. That's why.
Because although I don't know exactly what I want to do, I know I want to pursue all these avenues and see what comes of it. Because although I may not become a professional choreographer, a yoga teacher, a massage therapist, a researcher in dance anthropology, or any of the many other ideas I come up with, I shouldn't let that detract me from exploring those things that inspire me and excite me and I shouldn't let that stop me from being fully open to all possibilities.
Millions of dancing cells, in my body all the time. Millions of dancing people that I meet along the way. Millions of dancing ideas, searching for context, in my brain. Millions of inspirational moments, dancing in the world around me.
I just want to record somewhere altogether, all the things I always think I want to capture and do something with. And build for myself a scrapbook of ideas and support, and inspiration and memories. And maybe for others too - an interesting repository of things seen and experienced and thought.
That's that. That's why.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
