everything, everywhere, all at once
When my daughter Sydney Rae was very young she traced a circle in my hand and told me, "mama I love you like a circle & my love goes round and round and never stops." It was a profound thing for such a small human to say and it has stuck with me in a deep way. This became our way of describing our love for each other and even our search for circle people and situations.
At the threshold of this year, one of my teachers asked me to choose a word to focus my heart and vision for the year. She gave me an elaborate list of questions to get to one word but I already knew it was of course “circle”. Just to be sure, I investigated more deeply asking myself in every situation I am in, am I standing in a circle? Am I being a circle? It has been a wandering these last few months through processes and practices that resonate and do not resonate with mine. It has been a bit like standing in the wind listening to what deeply matters.
I realized it's been a long while since I have gotten local and so I put myself on a bit of a quest connecting to people and places that feel like they are being regenerative by design. It has become a massive research of truth. I have been listening to storytellers Martin Shaw and Darren Silver, and visited the work of Modern Folklore and Birdsong Bespoke. I dove into the practices of Circling, The Threshold Collective and welcomed Fara Tolno with Kissidugu Foundation and his drummers to fill our space with sound and movement. I even deepened my understanding and love in the Ilan Lev Method.
What is common in all of these practices? They feel like a circle. Evenmore, amongst all these experiences I have deepened my understanding of truth, protection, safety, love, time and belonging when learning and creating.
Effort culture points us to hierarchies, systems and answers. A linear line for getting there, as if getting there is somehow winning. As a woman, a dance artist and a mother there have been many times where I thought I was winning if somehow I was efforting the most, eating the least and running the farthest. Under these kinds of conditions not only did I break but I felt lonely too.
Ilan Lev says true learning happens in totality, a sort of happy chaos. Like a baby, we learn everything, everywhere all at once. Also like a baby we need to be touched and held with others to survive. Leaning into the earth, into others and into the world is how we all found ourselves standing. Our entire body is a receptor of information, stimulus, touch, emotions and of course joy. This is the genius of Ilan Lev's work: its efficiency in design is like a circle with the ability to receive and send infinite possibilities and imaginations. For me it changed the quality of my heart, flesh and bones creating a longevity for moving within and with others.
It’s been seven years since I turned the dance mirrors away and stepped inside the circle with all my students, wee and wise, beginner and professional. We have connected and created at times under imperfect and impoverished conditions and somehow made the most beautiful moments come to life.
The body loves happiness, movement and belonging. It is medicine for our hearts and our communities, ancient, now and for those that come after. Under the condition of circles there becomes a citizenship to the most imaginative, beautiful, impossible and crazy things that can happen.
I always say wander in and I say this truly. It does not matter when or how you come. When you step into the circle with us it improves the quality of the way things go round and round.
with love,
Mary Lynn