Caminos flamenco

"We should always recognize that the beauty of Spain is not serene, is not soft, not restful--it is ardent, burning, excessive, sometimes unpredictable; a beauty which, blinded by its own splendor 'knocks its head against the wall'. -Federico Garcia Lorca

Last night my parents and I went to a spectacular flamenco performance in San Francisco put on by Caminos Flamenco with some additional visiting musicians and dancers from Spain. The show was at the Marine Memorial Theatre, which is a relatively small theatre located in a building that is also a hotel in San Francisco's theatre district. We wanted to arrive with plenty of time for tea and dinner before the show, so we drove down into the city mid-afternoon, arriving as the sun was just starting to sink behind the buildings.

We had decided to stop at my favourite tea house, Samovar, for a hot cup of tea and dessert before we headed over to the area where the theatre was located. We parked and made our way out into the city, passing the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with its many visitors streaming in and out of the doors, across the street and past the sculpture fountains, and along to Yerba Buena park, the last visitors still lingering on the grass, children running in and out of the Martin Luther King cave-like memorial that lies at the base of a multi-tiered fountain that gurgles and runs down step by step until it reaches the pool at the bottom. We slowly climbed the ramp that zigzags back and forth up to the square that lies above the fountain, the sound of water falling over stone all around us, pigeons taking an evening dip in the wide open pool at the top of the multi-layered fountain, a few tourists sitting on the benches that look out over the fountain and the park. The lights of the city were all coming on, the sky deepening from a light, watery to an inky deep blue. The church across from the park had its front door open. The office buildings climbing and falling in leggo like shapes became beautiful as the grey of their exterior walls was replaced by the tiny white lights streaming out through windows.

Samovar was filled with Saturday night cheer. Lots of folks just starting their night out in the city, or wrapping up a day of shopping before they got ready for a night out. It's glass walls radiated warm light, and Parisian tunes filled the room. We slid into a table and relaxed back into the cushions, taking in all the characters around us, the French music which transported us to Paris in another era, and inhaling the aromas of steaming tea coming from the tables around us. My mother and I ordered hot chai, my favourite drink at Samovar. It is creamy and spicy, and just sweet enough without being too sweet. I ordered my favourite dessert--Greek yoghurt springled with fresh mint, moist pieces of date, toasted walnuts and fine slices of apple drizzled with coconut syrup. It was divine. Samovar has a warm, welcoming atmosphere--from the comfy seating arrangement to the warm-hued light, it is a space for connecting, and would be an ideal place for a first date because time just sort of vanishes when you enter the front door and conversation comes easily, like warm honey.

We were reluctant to leave, but we wanted to pick up our tickets before supper and locate somewhere near the theatre for some food. The theatre was on the second floor of an old hotel that was plush and opulent. The kind of place with richly coloured carpet and a narrow winding staircase. I am not sure whether the carpet was deep red, but it *felt* deep red. We collected our tickets and then headed up the hill to a little sushi restaurant that was tucked into a tiny little space, but had an amazingly open feel to it, and somehow managed to pack a good crowd into the tiny space and still maintain a calm, warm, and relatively quiet atmosphere. We were taken to a table in front of the window--the last table in the restaurant. It turned out we had arrived just in time. The entire rest of the night a line of people waited in every available space inside the restaurant, and snaked along the pavement outside.

We enjoyed our meal and hot green tea, and left with full bellies and glowing cheeks. Back at the theatre we climbed the stairs and gave our tickets to the ushers. The theatre was smaller than I had expected--cosy and intimate. The flamenco group had a great lineup of musicians, and a terrific group of dancers. The male lead dancer, Juan Ogalla, from Cadiz, was an incredible performer. Every tap, every rise of the arms, every shake of the head was absolutely perfect. The female dancers were colourful and expressive, powerful and sensual, passionate and full of energy, joy and sorrow. My favourites were Clara Rodriguez, Fanny Ara and Mizuho Sato--from the US, France's Basque country, and Japan. The guitarist Jason McGuire blew me away. The man is a flamenco-playing machine! The night was full of rhythm and twists and turns and spins and shouts from the stage and audience, hands beating and clapping and tapping and snapping, feet clipping and clapping and tapping and stomping, strong legs leaping and stepping and opening and closing, waists twisting and hips thrusting and swaying, and arms rising up suddenly, wrists undulating and inviting, hands and fingers budding and opening into flower again and again. Even the voices of the singers-deep and throaty and rough and mournful were spot on. Sitting in the theatre, I was spellbound. Nothing existed in the world but that all-engrossing music that drew me in and danced with me for two hours, and then suddenly released me back into an awareness that I was sitting in a chair in a theatre in San Francisco, in awe, at the end of the night. It was truly an astonishingly beautiful performance by dancers, musicians and singers who have honed their craft and have such precise command over every muscle and gesture of their own bodies that there is not one detail that is overlooked.

We drove back to Sacramento with the colourful costumes and the rhythmic beat of the music still pumping through our bodies. It was one of those evenings that I will tell my grandchildren about some day, and they will close their eyes and see the dancers spinning on the stage, their bodies telling stories of love and rage, loss and triumph and birth and death, and the music circling and rising and falling--the beat of feet against the floor, hands clapping and hearts thumping hard against rib cages.

Farm dance

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

I love to dance. I know. Best kept secret in town. The most recent dance class I took was a belly-dancing class in January 2009, a much-needed respite from the cold winter on Prince Edward Island, in Canada. That was the first dance class I had taken since 2004 when I took a flamenco class for about a month before moving to Canada to pursue my Master's degree. Growing up, my world revolved around gymnastics. But gymnastics involves quite a lot of dance, so I took jazz dance, ballet, and even a bit of tap dancing along the way. By the time I was in high school though, I had quit everything but the ballet required for gymnastics. Pointed toes, arials and chains of back flips were my world. I only had one career aspiration through most of high school, and that was the Olympics. Then, at age 16, I was given the ultimatum: move back to the US and enter full-time training, or accept that I would never reach my dream. With my parents and all of my friends living in the Mediterranean, the thought of leaving them all behind was too much. I gave up my sport, and spent the remainder of high school focused on my academic work.

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

In 1996, I had the opportunity to take a modern dance class in Cyprus with an amazing dancer and choreographer named Arianna Economou. She encouraged me to re-inhabit my body, and move from within instead of always being focused on having perfectly pointed toes and straight legs. It was a new world for me, and I loved it. In 1998 I moved to Arizona to attend Prescott College. I had not intended to take a dance class, but I needed something to balance out my other, more academic classes, so I registered for Intro to Dance and Improvisation with Delisa Myles. I did not know it at the time, but Delisa had been a gymnast as well, before turning her focus towards dance. Still relatively self-conscious when I entered her class, the environment that she created within the dance studio to explore movement both alone and with others was one in which I felt free to experience a great deal of transformation. I formed deep, life-long friendships with women who are still some of my closest friends; I started letting go of the fear of making a mistake, or the need to be whatever I envisioned as being "perfect" at the time; and I was invited to dance some very important stories that brought together my love for poetry and creative movement. That I still have the journal that I kept during that class is an indication of what an important formative experience the class was to my development as a writer and creative artist.

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

Delisa and I have kept in touch over the years through Facebook, and this week I noticed that she had posted some spectacular photographs for a course that she will be co-teaching with Breanna Rogers this summer (June13th - July1) at Prescott College called "Farm Dance." I wrote to Delisa, asking for more information, and received the following:

"This class provides a forum to begin a dialogue between artists and farmers, bringing to the table a conversation that investigates the relationship of the cultural and the agricultural. We will visit nearby farms and gardens, observe and participate in land cultivation practices, and allow our artistic impulses to be informed by each site. We will examine and experience how aesthetics and labor interplay and how one feeds the other. We will look at the connections and crossovers between food cultivation and art making processes. Our artistic training will involve volunteering labor at local farms and studying the aesthetics of dance composition and site specific work. Focus will be on the body and how it responds to imagery, hard work, and our connection with the cycles of nature. The mediums of dance, performance, and visual art will be used as vehicles to increase awareness in the local community about how and where our food is grown in the Prescott area."

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

I don't know about you, but the idea of bringing together two things that I love to do -- farm and dance -- sounds sublime. And having spent the last few years working with, interviewing, writing about and photographing farmers on their land, I have become very aware of how powerful the stories of the relationships between those who grow our food and their farmland is. Our farmers are people who have intimate relationships with and knowledge of the natural world and the shift of the seasons at a level that many of us have lost simply by virtue of living in towns and cities, and not being present for the small daily changes and miracles that farmers witness every minute of every day. With all of the unpredictable changes going on in our world and economy, farmers generally manage to remain hopeful and optimistic. They have seen the ups and they have seen the downs, and they know that life moves in cycles. As one farmer told me once: "Farmers are natural optimists. How can you do a job that involves planting seeds in the soil and then seeing the miracle of the rain and sun working together to make them grow into edible plants, and not believe in miracles?" Delisa went on to explain the rationale behind the class. She says:

"Farm Dance is a course designed to makes connections between the art we make and the food we eat. It is the intent of this course to create art that helps bring greater visibility, appreciation and support to local farms. The course provides our students with an interdisciplinary approach to learning and allows art and performance to intertwine with agriculture and ecology. There is a trend of festivals and forums popping up around the nation that bring diverse creative thinkers together for collaboration and exchange. There is a growing need to allow a wider spectrum of creativity to interrelate, rather than being highly specified and separate. This course provides a model for experimentation between disciplines and creates new connections within the community. Farm Dance is one of a series of courses being proposed for the summer which address sustainability, art and embodiment."

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

So many of the problems with our food systems right now involve a lack of collaboration and interrelationships. People going to the grocery store to buy a tomato that has been marked up ten times its original price so that the store is making an enormous profit, while a few miles out of the city the farmer who grew the tomato is being paid the same amount he/she was earning in the 1940s (if that). Children who do not know that their food was grown in the earth, or that cauliflowers and broccoli are flowers. Communities that are so concerned about keeping the price of their food low that they would rather buy food that is saturated in chemicals that could, in the long-run, result in soaring medical bills later in life. Communities that have no idea who grew the food they are eating, or where it was grown. Communities that no longer have the knowledge to be able to grow their own food. All relationships that we have be taught to not think about, but that are vitally important parts of being conscious, well-informed and responsible eaters.

Artists have been painting, drawing and photographing farmland for generations. The creative and visual arts are, in a sense, a way of refocusing our attention on something from a new perspective. A painting of farmland makes us stop and take notice and reflect. Farm dance, similarly, makes us pause and rethink our relationship to the land. Farmers' relationships to the land. The relationship between the seed and the earth; between the rain and the crops; between the wind and the snow and ice and the health of our soil. It invites us to ask ourselves: how would I listen if my existence were dependent upon, and interconnected with the natural world and the seasons? How would I interact with my community and the natural world around me if the health of each was dependent upon the health of the other? How does my relationship to and awareness of the earth, the sun, the rain, and the tiny details of the day and night change when I live in such intimate, close relationship with the land?

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

Intrigued? Prescott College is an experiential education liberal arts college offering Bachelor's, Master's and P.h.D programs in a wide-range of subject areas. Located in northern Arizona, the college is known for its creative and innovative teaching practices that use the southwestern landscape as a classroom for students to gain hands-on, real life experience in their field of expertise (or in this case, to dance on and with beautiful agricultural land!). I received my Bachelor's degree from Prescott College, and consider it to be one of the best choices I have ever made. It transformed my vision of what education is, and can be, and opened me to new ways of seeing and relating to the world and my community, wherever I live (and no, in case you are wondering, I was not paid to say that ;-)). If you would like to contact the admissions office, you can do so here.

I am a big fan of anyone doing anything creative, but both Delisa and Breanna have spent their lives engaged in some exceptionally amazing projects, and encouraging others on their own creative journeys. You can learn more about Delisa, and enjoy some delicious photographs of her work here. 

And with that, I will leave you with another of Breanna's beautiful photographs of Delisa. It you get a chance over the next two weeks as we head into spring, do some spontaneous dancing somewhere that you usually would not -- preferably out of doors. A beach. A farm. an outdoor farmer's market. A park. Maybe find yourself a partner to dance with. I find that makes it all the more fun. Let go. Explore that line between your body and the natural world around you. And if you feel like it, write a poem or take a photograph, and share it with me here. Have a great week!

© Breanna Rogers & Delisa Myles, 2011

Dancing barefoot in the kitchen

I think I mentioned in a previous blog that I have been trying to integrate more moments of play into my life. One way I have been doing this is through dance. Yes, dance. I used to dance a lot, alone and with friends. Dancing makes me feel at home in my body. It makes my heart feel happy, and my body feel energized. And, let's be honest: there is very little that is as silly and fun as rocking out barefoot in the kitchen first thing in the morning while you wait for the kettle to boil. It is an instant giggle generator. A definite smile from ear-to-ear creator. When was the last time that you turned on an awesome tune and danced as if nobody was watching? (and I am talking to you men, as well as the women who are reading this!)

In the interests of generating an active (as in you actually giving this a try in the next day or two) response, I am including a couple of links here to inspire you, make you laugh, and get you moving!

The first link is of Sean Stephenson. Sean makes me smile, and every time I watch this video, it makes me want to dance. 

This second one brings together dancing fun from so many movies that I stopped trying to keep track about half way through. It is hard to keep your feet still (and why try?)

Judson Laipply is famous for inspiring people with his dance moves. I found his Evolution of Dance video, his Evolution of Dance 2, and Evolution of Dance 3. Is there a part 4?

And I absolutely love this animated version of James Brown's I've got you. but the original is the best of course.

Are you dancing yet? :-)

Reverb10, Day 14: The ripple effect of 7 highly creative people

Prompt: Appreciate. What's the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

The author of this prompt is Victoria Klein:
27 Things to Know About Yoga
@victoriaklein

'To acquire knowledge is incumbent upon all, but of those sciences which may profit the people of the earth, and not such sciences as begin in mere words, and end in mere words." ~Baha'u'llah~

"What greater bounty than this that science should be considered as an act of worship and art as service to the Kingdom of God." ~Abdu'l-Baha~

There are many sources of inspiration in this universe, and endless ways of expressing our creativity. The internet has meant that we can share our creative endeavors around the globe with each other in real time, exchanging ideas, and being inspired by projects happening on the other side of the planet at the same time that the people who are physically implementing them are experiencing them for the first time.

I have had the experience this year of chatting with a new friend of mine in New Zealand through Facebook chat. She is 19 hours ahead of me. For those of you who need a visualization in order to grasp what that means in practical terms, when it is midnight here on a Monday, it is 7pm on a Tuesday for Pascale. She has already moved through the entire day that is my tomorrow before I have even ended my current day. I grew up traveling between North America and the Middle East, and generally do not bat an eyelash to the idea of communicating across time zones, but even I am blown away by the reality of being able to have a conversation with someone who is that far away from me as if she is sitting right beside me enjoying a cup of tea.

You are probably wondering where I am headed with all of this.

I have come to appreciate many things over the last year, but since I have to settle with one, something that has impressed me over the last year is the number of individuals that I have met who are doing truly amazing things with their lives. They are using their knowledge of the arts and sciences, and applying them to transform their local and global communities. They are exploring new forms of creative expression. They are making people around them stop and question things that they have been doing and ways they have been thinking and behaving their whole lives. They are creating dialogue between people from different cultural backgrounds. They are empowering women and men, children and youth. They are capturing the profound beauty latent in all things. They are engaging their friends and colleagues in dialogue of social discourse and action. They are tapping into the amazing power of creativity and transforming the world around them. And they are using the powerful tool of the internet to share all of this energy with each other and with anyone who crosses their paths. It is more than inspiring. It is infectious!

About a month ago I mentioned in my Facebook status that I had been doing a yoga class on resistance. The question posed to us at the beginning of class was to notice throughout the practice when we encountered resistance in ourselves, to try to ascertain whether it was mental, physical or spiritual, and to observe how we responded to resistance in our lives. It was an interesting question, and I enjoyed the practice, and reflected on this idea for the remainder of the week. What I did not know was that my Kiwi friend, Pascale Battrick, had read my status update and it had created a ripple effect in her life also. Pascale is one of the remarkable people mentioned above. In the last year she has moved from Japan back home to New Zealand, and established Oxygen Fitness Excellence. Oxygen Fitness Excellence, in Pascale's words, is:

"an individually tailored health and fitness service, conducted in a fun and motivating atmosphere where no goal is out of reach. It is my aim to introduce people to a completely holistic approach to lifestyle change that is three-pronged in nature. It encompasses the Personal Training of functional exercises specific to Your health and fitness goals, personalized nutrition plans and advice that branch into home-based assessments, grocery shopping expeditions and cooking class initiatives, and something I call a Spirit Cleanse™, which aims to help You to overcome stresses and other negative forces that sap Your energy, can potentially sabotage Your weight loss efforts and affect Your mental and emotional state on a daily basis."

Sound amazing? It is. Trust me. The woman is a fitness ninja -- how many fitness instructors do you know who incorporate spiritual health into your plan? I rest my case. And she is also working on a cookbook, that I am chomping at the bit to get my hands on, full of tantalizing recipes. I encourage you to visit her website and ask her about it. Maybe all the encouragement will help her get it published sooner rather than later!

So obviously, when a woman who can create all of this over the course of only a few short months hears an idea that intrigues her, the resulting ripples are going to look more like tsunami waves. About a month after I had taken part in the class I received an email from her with a link to her Soulpancake page, and an entry called Responding to Resistance. She basically took the idea from my yoga class and turned it into a creative prompt that she shared with thousands of other people. More mega ripples. Her creative presence in the world, and the way she receives my ripples, re-configures them in her own unique way, and sends them back out into the world to inspire others is an example of the type of creative souls I am feeling grateful for in 2010. And here I am receiving her ripples and using them to fuel my creative process! It is a never-ending chain of creative energy. 

It is impossible to fully comprehend Pascale and her joyful, energetic presence without seeing her. So here is a great shot taken of the two of us while we were on pilgrimage in the Baha'i Holy Land in Israel this past spring: 

Pascale is only one example of creative souls changing the world that have rocked my universe this year. Another is someone whose path just crossed mine today. Justin De Leon is a documentary film maker, an amazing photographer, a scholar and an agent of social change. In his own words, he has:

"traveled the world, working in many different environments, and is currently a PhD student at the University of Delaware, focusing on development and ethnic conflict. From working with the poorest of the poor in the streets of India and the Philippines, violence stricken communities of Northern Ireland and Nepal, to the largest slums of Southeast Asia and Africa, De Leon has always tried to understand, capture, and share the stories of those he's encountered."

One of the things that impresses me the most about Justin's work is how he integrates his spiritual values and his passion for film and photography so seamlessly. The effect is powerful. He is currently working on Give to Live, a documentary film that examines the ripple effect of human compassion, intended to inspire and enable individuals to explore global issues in Africa and the US, and to become effective agents of social change. Are you feeling inspired yet? If not, here's a shot of Justin in Africa, where he spent a month filming his documentary. I am borrowing the shot from his website, hence the awesomeness of it (I hope you will not mind my using this image, Justin. It just seems to capture the work you are doing so much better than my description does!):

There are so many other individuals that I have come across this year who are sending out ripples of amazing creative energy into the world. Ahava Shira, who I have mentioned before in my blog, is inspiring women by facilitating workshops in Loving Inquiry from her home on Butterstone Farm, a 23-acre organic farm on Saltspring Island in British Columbia. She has also just released a new CD of her poetry, Love is like this, which can be purchased through her website, and recently launched a radio show, Love in the Afternoon, which you can listen to here, on Mondays between 1 and 2pm, west coast time. Ahava Shira, which means Love Poetry in Hebrew, fully embodies her name in her life's work. The woman is so inspired it is contagious! Here is a great shot of her bathed in the poetry of sunlight and presence on the farm: 

Louise Mould, an artist living on Prince Edward Island is creating amazing landscape-inspired paintings that embody the light and contours of the places she has lived: namely the Congo, Israel, and Atlantic Canada. Her paintings are also spiritually inspired. You can check out her beautiful paintings here, and below is a photo of Louise and I taken this past summer at the wedding of a close friend of ours, on Prince Edward Island: 

The individuals I mention above are only some of the creative folks I have crossed paths with this year. Steve Zaat, a talented musician back in New Brunswick, Canada, is writing tunes inspired by his spiritual beliefs; Paula Biasi is creating sparks in the dance world in Milwaukee (if you live anywhere in the Midwest and feel like a drive this weekend, she is performing a show called "In a Black Mood" with her kickass dance troupe, Your Mother Dances. Show times and ticket prices are on the website, and don't let the title mislead you -- these women are the most upbeat performers I have ever seen. It is a challenge to stay in your chair when you watch them perform); Rafael Routson, is a very talented emerging non-fiction writer currently doing her doctoral research on desert oases in Baja, Mexico. She has co-authored two books: A Heritage in Iron (see link on left), and Last Dollar Ranch, and is currently working on a non-fiction book about her experiences in the Australian outback (title still to come -- stay tuned!!)...the list goes on, but it is getting late, so I will stop here. I don't want to overwhelm you with all this inspiration! Here are some shots of these inspiring folks:

 

And some shots of how I go about receiving some of their ripples:

I deeply appreciate the diversity of creative people that are constantly finding innovative ways of putting their knowledge into action in the world. I express gratitude to them by telling them, as often as I can get away with it without driving them crazy, how truly INSPIRING they are to me, to my own creative process, and to the world. I also express my gratitude by allowing all the creative energy spinning around me to fuel my own creative process. Ripples create ripples. Here's hoping some of the creative energy from this entry will radiate out into your creative process too!