The Lift & The Ground

Our bodies tell us to groove every second of the day. A hand on the heart or a finger on the pulse instantly supplies you with a steady beat for which to tap your foot. We know that it all has something to do with electricity and “life-force” but there is still plenty of unknown magic out there just waiting to be discovered. Why are we even alive? Why do we breathe and love and feel? Why does the beat and the pulse exist so evenly, so rhythmically? Even more, these things work inside us without us having to think or volunteer any real effort at all. We are spoon-fed magic every moment…and all that is required of us is respect.

But what of the other “inside things” we don’t control? What about the simple truths our minds hold? Our subconscious?

I’ve been using dance as a tool for expression for longer than I can even officially remember. Before schooling, before performing professionally, before becoming cognizant of what I was doing. However, for the last decade I’ve been allowing myself to explore it further. How can dance be utilized as a tool for spirituality, meditation, trance and possession?

The prospect of intentionally dancing myself into a trance came about as I was beginning to question my Catholic upbringing. I shirked many a responsibility as an eager teen – lusting for Truth. I wanted to learn more about the alternative spiritual systems that had previously only been hinted to me and experience their magic. I eventually came to realize that the esotericism I sought was right under my nose, as a beautiful & stoic old woman – quite dear to me – began to disclose some of what she thought to be the secrets of the universe before her quiet death. I didn’t understand it all at the time but was elated to finally hear something. Her words were memorable enough to open many doors through the years, even after her death and so – I held on to them tightly.

The first time I felt I had enough knowledge and courage to attempt a spiritual dance encounter in a focused, deliberate manner I was struck by how both scared and liberated I felt. While dance was something I already practiced and excelled at, this was much different than a staged performance piece. This dance was for the spirits, the earth and all vibrations between. Not for an audience of commercially driven spectators. The magnitude of this hit me like a sack of bricks. There were no mirrors or spotlights here. Time to shed the ego.

A tough pill to swallow – even dancing alone surrounded only by my four walls and some candlelight turned me into a self-conscious, trembling mass. I was too open. I was too vulnerable. “What floating personality has entered me? Surely I’ve no idea where I am within space and time. Surely I’ve never moved this way before in my life.” It felt to me like holy communion. I had ingested, become and was suddenly dancing the message of some God-force, some spirit, some animal…I was awake and lucid and sweating; Writhing on the floor like some twitching beast. Ecstatic.

Something beautiful happens when you allow yourself to give up completely the 9 to 5, the final exams, the boyfriend/girlfriend drama, the stress and the suffering. When you pass into a rhythmic induced meditation and pass back out of it you are left with a mental clarity that I hold no doubt is a healing. You – the empty vessel – have allowed your physical being to work as both conduit and doorway to your own personal nirvana. Lifting you up – grounding you down.

Now as I study set and setting, prepare for my excursions into the next - I am beginning to understand how to shape my journies so that they may be productive experiences as much as they are freeing experiences. By setting my intentions at the start I can mold my dance into a focused meditation generating specific results. Primal instincts coming out and assisting me in my troubleshooting processes – giving me the outside perspective I need to work out life’s lifey-ness.

Sweet catharsis.

+Piercing Is the Most Important Part+

So..as a starving artist you find yourself working jobs of the menial, ridiculous, and - if you're lucky - amazingly unique nature. I've been a waitress at many a burrito stand and coffee shop, worked both the sales and sweatshop sides of an "alternative" retail chain, sold gastric bypass products over the phone, and taught tiny tots to silver sneakers how to ... shake their groove thang.

Fortunately, I've been recently lucky enough to fall into working as a pseudo-personal assistant for whom most would consider a madman. Pompous and intense and quite possibly a secret genius a la' Hagbard Celine of the Illuminatus Trilogy - my employer has for the past few months rambled at great length of mystics, 2012, and meaning -- not the meaning of life, no - he could never be so cliche - but MEANING; the meaning of a look or gesture, the significance attached to a symbol or network, and all the muddled and not-so-muddled in-betweens. He mentioned something to me quite some time ago about a Lakota Indian ritual he was preparing himself for. He was brief and I assumed it was for the purposes of secrecy and reverence. Maybe it was. However, I'd soon come to find my research on dance practices and their connection to the "ALL ONE" or ever-evolving, interconnecting spirit self quickly hurtling towards the details he originally failed to extend to me.

Wikipedia describes the Sun Dance Ritual: "The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced by a number of Native Americans. Each tribe has its own distinct rituals and methods of performing the dance, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing, praying, drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and in some cases piercing of the chest or back. Most notable for early Western observers was the piercing many young men endure as part of the ritual.

Frederick Schwatka wrote about a Sioux Sun Dance he witnessed in the late 1800s:

Each one of the young men presented himself to a medicine-man, who took between his thumb and forefinger a fold of the loose skin of the breast—and then ran a very narrow-bladed or sharp knife through the skin—a stronger skewer of bone, about the size of a carpenter's pencil was inserted. This was tied to a long skin rope fastened, at its other extremity, to the top of the sun-pole in the center of the arena. The whole object of the devotee is to break loose from these fetters. To liberate himself he must tear the skewers through the skin, a horrible task that even with the most resolute may require many hours of torture.

In fact, the object of being pierced is to sacrifice one's self to the Great Spirit, and to pray while connected to the Tree of Life, a direct connection to the Great Spirit. Breaking from the piercing is done in one moment, as the man runs backwards from the tree at a time specified by the leader of the dance. A common explanation, in context with the intent of the dancer, is that a flesh offering, or piercing, is given as part of prayer and offering for the improvement of one's family and community..."

Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it! I'm wondering right now - where the magic has gone...and moreover, are there folks in NYC currently out there - actively trying to find it? I know Santa Cruz is home of Dance Church.

{:CLICK HERE:}

If anyone is aware of anything going on on the East Coast that is similar - please, come out, come out cave dwellers! Let me know! [BODY JERK finds spirituality in nyc dance. hip-hop dance can become something viable too. nyc hip-hop dance can be taken back. nyc hip-hop dance can be a method of radical communication. nyc hip-hop dance can be therapeutic. nyc hip-hop dance can make your soul light up. dance is my religion. I am a hip-hop dance activist. You can be an nyc hip-hop dance activist too. We use dance as a mode of radical communication. Like urban gypsies, we flood the streets, sampling culture . nyc Hip-Hop was born of soul and sample. Become an nyc hip-hop dance student. Become an nyc hip-hop dance educator. Become an nyc hip-hop dance activist. hip-hop urban gypsy. hip-hop dance evolution. revolution. ]