"Remember the old school yard...
we used to laugh a lot...
remember the old school yard...
we used to cry a lot...
oh don't you remember the days of the old school yard
when we had imaginings..."
Cat Stevens
in the summer of 2009 while dancing daily for 'YearOfButoh' i returned to my elementary school and discovered it was slated to be demolished and that a new school would be built in it's place.
although the school was abandoned at the time, i was able to dance amongst the playground apparatus and peer into old classroom windows with memories flooding into my being from a time that i barely remembered until dancing there as an adult.
my dance mentor momo and i have talked about our experiences of dancing in locations from our past - they are opportunities to retrieve parts of ourselves, parts of our souls so to speak, that we 'left behind' due to experiences that were difficult and that we perhaps would rather not remember. often these experiences, however, can be stored in our cells, in our muscles, in our physical beings...
dancing and opening our bodies in a way that allows freedom of expression from the soul can help to reconnect ourselves to our selves... with the potential to open ourselves into a place of more freedom within and without - shape-shifting negative experiences into new experiences within our bodies and within our beings.
today's dance was with my big sister at 'highlands elementary school' that we had both attended for seven years of our lives. with the old school in rubbles and the new school in the background this was a dance of sadness, of joy and of returning.
also, my first daily dance with my sister!
music: satowa
visit my dance mentor's blog here: maureen 'momo' freehill
This is so amazing that you were able to do this too. When I returned to my hometown for a 2 week long soul retrieval dance journey 3 years ago, the Junior High School where I had the most traumatic memories was being demolished and I too danced in the rubble with the bulldozers humming all round. It is a powerful act to return to the PLACE where memories occurred and reclaim and dance them into the PRESENT. In that they become a GIFT rather than a burden.
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