I am a movement chameleon.

Nocturnal. Dark dweller. Shadow nimble. Twilight agile.

It is with unabashed curiosity, pleasure and the barely-contained, irresistible urge to slip into the danceskin of another that I lose myself for a moment. Here, lost in another, I am never more fully in my own.

Mmm, it is walking with feet of melting rubber that bring me closer to the brilliance of “us” that I so desire. The angle of the sternum. Bridge of spine. Liquid chain. It is coming.

The world you stand in melts away as I see into another. This one vestibular; symbolic and code.

Hollow, transient, rushing, dark, rigid, yielding, engrossed and divergent comes the whisper “dance that!”

Head. “Heart.” Pelvis/”Gut”.

Head. Pelvis. My dance is here.

The world of detail breathes softly in the background until I lift the veil.  Heightened sensation tells me a story and  I am reminded of my body history.  Within the discomfort of illumination come new lessons in my design and how to use my energy. Sensation pours around me and through me, giving me subtle and not-so-subtle cues and clues.

Cues (head) transmit information bites that are pure and without judgment. “Sharp pain”, “loose”, “unstable”, “flow”, “stuck”.  Clues (pelvis) nudge me to zoom in more closely to receive the chance to unravel new moves. “Revisit that arm and shoulder move and notice where you hold the head of your humerus in your shoulder joint.”

Immersed in this ocean I can swim, decisively moving my body through liquid sensation or I can float and be moved.

Swimming charges me past in order to land me forward – a-head. I don’t know what there was. To feel. To hear. To see. To learn. To love. I don’t know what I might have received.

In Being moved I find the new places. In Being moved I feel the swells – I am the swells as the ocean changes her mind. In Being moved my dance, my life moves through me. Connected. Deeply interwoven. One.

In partnership, in collaboration and with agreement: my life will not go on without me and I will not go on without it.

The trying-on is done. With small, fascinated touch or too-big, ungainly attempts at what is not quite mine, it is sensuality that leads me to wholeness. It is this work, this pleasure, this stirring connection of cells in conscious symphony that bring me back home…

Not to be lead by my head or “heart” or pelvis – but by all.

From the mud, coal-black, sticky, warm and pungent comes

my whole

my own

my spirit

my joy

I Am My Dance.

(Photograph by Daniela Paunova)