‘Performing the Riots’ The body as a site of political action & the 5Rhythms as a tool for transformation — BA Drama, Applied Theatre & Education

A Dancing Eye

creations of art

from the heart

-simplicity and healing

of the disconnect

more than photography

presence creates beauty

***

Dance In Peace

in loving memory of

Michael Julian Berz

who captured the soul of our dance so exquisitely with his camera

Community is the next Buddha

– Thich Nhat Hahn 

Spoken Word Poetry by Warren Summers

Cycles, Sydney, Australia 2015

Spirit danced past my body

My body danced past your heart

Your heart danced past my future

And my future danced past my past

My past danced through the ancestors

The ancestors dance through the breath

This breath dances with the seekers, with the lovers, with the dreamers…

And the seeking is dancing with death…”  HEAR MORE

Confessions of a Free-Range Spiritualist: Dancing For My Life by Elaine Gale, Professor, California

“I’m not a yoga person or a skinny mini or even that in shape. I don’t have a guru, or mala beads or a zafu. I’m not poly or experimental, I don’t have a tantra fingernail. I’m basically a repressed sixth-generation Nebraskan with a doctorate and a tenured professor job. But I love transformational practices, I love my body, love to dance, love to feel and to connect with people. This practice brought me back into my body and into my spirit. It’s the closest practice I have ever seen to straight-up shamanism, to taking iawasca, or communing directly with the divine.”

Dance as Elicitive Motion: A Different Way to Unfold Peace, 5Rhythms as Inner Peacework

MA in Peace and Conflict Studies

By Rosalie Kubny, Dance Therapist (to-be), Austria

How does 5Rhythms Dance work as inner peace work? I started my inner and outer journey of writing a master thesis about 5Rhythms Dance with exactly this question. During my master thesis writing process, I discovered academically and quite physically the transformative potential of 5Rhythms Dance. I found that 5Rhythms Dance is inner peace work because it creates inner space for the unfolding and experience of inner peace. Inner peace is a moment of reconnection with the self – an inner healing. Regarding the context of peace and conflict studies, which I did my masters degree in, you have to start to go on an inner journey of healing and transforming conflict within yourself first, before you can contribute to conflict transformation in the outside. Or as Roth (2004) said: “Whether the war is in your head, between your legs, or between heads of state, to create peace you have to be at peace – within yourself.“

I chose to write about and to practice 5Rhythms Dance because it is a method that makes me visible here on earth. 5Rhythms Dance is a method that guides me to a moment of stillness. Every time. With that, there is always a new beginning. READ MORE

Notes on Practice:

A Blog About My Experiences on the

5Rhythms Dancing Path

by Meghan LeBorious

ENDLESS SPACE

I feel guilty when I miss Flowing.  It’s like abruptly jumping into a conversation when you don’t know what the conversing people are talking about.  The idea that the ground of Flowing is what keeps us all safe is a teaching I have heard many, many times.  When I feel pulled out of Flowing and into Staccato, I often try to delay it, feeling like it is my responsibility to thoroughly attend to Flowing before I even think about moving with the vigor and exuberance I ache for.

Not only did I arrive late, but I was working with this terrible pinch.  I have had pinches before, and I know that they usually dissolve after a short time, but I did have one that hung on and hung on.  Miraculously, the pinch eased and I stood up on the dance floor. The room was fully in Staccato, and filled with friends who I was eager to dance with.

I imagine that my dance looked like Staccato; and I was in sync with the people around me, but privately I was in Flowing.  I softened myself as much as I could, avoiding the emphatic collisions between adjacent muscles that I so love, and kept my mind on the sensation of my feet touching the floor as much as I attended to my smiling partners.  In part, I was afraid to experiment with any tightness or edges inside my body because I did not want to re-engage the unpleasant nerve pinch.

As so often happens in dance and in life, the obstacle of the pinch showed me something new….READ MORE

THE COMPASSIONATE EQUESTRIAN

For the benefit of all beings, through horses.

FREEDOM AND REGULARITY

Gabrielle Roth’s system of 5 Basic Rhythms is designed for dancers, but can be adapted to working with a horse—your dance partner!

The brain and body love movement. They love rhythm, and sound. They love drums, and hoofbeats, and deep breathing. Your body and mind crave that connection to what is most natural to us when we are feeling safe and secure…when we are protected from that which seeks to do us harm. This is why herd animals feel safe in a herd. If there is danger or conflict amongst them, it typically ends quickly. Far more quickly than it does for humans, because they do not separate themselves from that connection to others, and to nature, whereas, we do. We want to run off, not talk to anyone, not share our feelings, or stuff them down inside until they emerge in a way that causes us to react unfavorably, then we begin the cycle of negativity all over again. We need to find ways to make that reconnection to the deep, tender, yet brave part of our own soul that is our true identity in the world….READ MORE