Sacred Improv

I think this might be what I call the kind of dancing I'm wanting to explore more and more. I'm looking for a label so I can make it available to people as an option when I teach or perform. I'm liking this goal of dancing spontaneously, using my favorite movements.  It would be Kathak, Middle eastern, Hip Hop, and Street dance, but you would barely know what it was.  They would all blend but be accurate; the music would be grand, almost classical but slightly not.  I do this alone all the time, but to make it stage-ready is the thing.
BY THE WAY
What is NOT sacred in my bollywood dancing?!  Making bollywood dance routines and sequences is delightful, easy and stimulating. It's preparing me for more complex choreography and it's probably also feeding the ability to improvise.  Group dancing on simpler choreographies also brings great shakti and bliss, if that is inherent in the dancers.


But if stand alone in my dance room, put on music and make my dance a prayer, that is what I mean by sacred improv. It is given as an offering, with intention.  All dance is an offering.  But making it MORE of a conscious offering.  Surrendering the dance languages and letting them pop out as needed.  It's not oblivion. It's feeling and thinking and deciding with total attention and fluditiy. It must include the audience when its performed.  To cultivate the ability to stay with that intention no matter how many people are watching, is my goal.  I love to improvise for a few people. One on One is lovely.  Tailor the dancing to each person.  To bless them with the love in dance.  To get them moving in a way that harmonizes them.  That would be the purpose of the sessions.


People say I give grace when I dance. To me, I haven't even started yet. I give joy, because I am so joyous dancing, especially the easier dances of bollywood. But I want to blend that into the more technically-challenging aspects. (Something to investigate).  When I dance Kathak, it also should bring joy.  I want to be more silent inside, and more able to improvise in front of large groups, while remaining true to my breath, my impulses, my feelings and my response to the music.  Melting one movement and one movement style into another, I want to do what we do when we feel what we feel and are authentic with others.   I fear and desire forgetting every dance style I know and doing them without compartments.  I am facing my own desire to create a new dance form.  Maybe I don't even need to say it. It is already happening bit by bit.  Blending.  Slowly something may emerge that is a complete form, right now it's just experimentation. I don't know what it is. It's love.  It's doing each type of movement that is called for by the music and the mood.  And of course it depends on what the body is capable of.


My sense is even with limits, if the soul is engaged and the work is there, then something lovely will come out.  Something real and impacting.  After all, older artists are often more powerful, even if their physical body is less capable. Technique and skill must still be perfect tho. It must match their level and it must be filled with their awareness and the power of their courage and ideas and the fire of their longing and passion.


TRUSTING IN A NEW FORM
The first time I saw Street Dance it seemed obvious to me, its marriage and natural relation with Kathak.  That may seem strange, but they are not so different. Indian dance is full of isolations.  It has deep grace and beauty and sharpness and staccato.  I have always loved jazz because of its stacato movements, its playfulness.  That's what appeals to me in bollywood: the whimsical wildness and the blend of graceful with sharp. It's so Hip Hop today. I like the Hip Hop aspect of bollywood better than the classical aspects because when bolly does classical it's overdone.  Usually.  I can't wait to learn many more techniques involved in street dance and Hip Hop.  I need more expertise there.
SO WHAT WOULD SACRED IMPROV INVOLVE?
All this fuels my desire to dance on some type of music I almost can't define, and in a way that is spontaneous and rich.  I am so much more present in dance than in my daily life, I suspect.  That is why it is spiritual. I am completely lined up with it. No part of me is thinking "I should be doing something else." I envision musicians creating music spontaneously that I dance to.  We create together.  These musicians would be people who have collected different styles as well. Classical Indian music would be part of it. Jazz.  Anything. But in my mind I can almost hear what it would be.  


Choreography is also potentially sacred. That moment of ideas and flow is spontaneous and magic.  Great artists have learned to trust their creativity. There is tremendous courage and confidence in following that path as far as it will go.  That means they are using more of their brain, heart and soul.  Maybe spirituality is that level of engagement. Add to that great depth of heart, depth of Being, depth of bliss, the perfection of blending with the music, the technique needed to convey the essence, and you might have a recipe for increasing the sacred in dance.  Appreciation is God.  How much you appreciate, how subtle and complete and expansive.  That must be the nature of the sacred in dance. What kinds of impulses are we responding to and co-creating with?  How much of the Heavens are joining in?  How much love is being generated? How much truth.  Attention to detail is sacred.  It brings the abstract Self into collision and cooperation with the small or the dense.   It alters the dense as a result of the clash or infusion (depending on whether its gentle or sudden!).

Sacred Dance - Exploring What that Might Be

Creativity & Tradition towards spirituality in dance

I believe that the most sacred dance, the dance that could awaken someone’s whole Being to come alive, that dance spontaneous in it’s rendering, unpredictable yet organic and flowing yet precise, free yet intelligent.  I have been pondering what makes a dance “sacred” for years.  I believe in learning a discipline, yet reaching a point where there is freedom to create something entirely new, a new combination or a new move, but I think it’s important that dance obey natural laws.  Beauty of line should be there. Why? because geometry has a positive influence on the viewer (and no doubt the dancer).  There are treatises on the geometric shapes inherent in classical Indian dances and the effects of that on the chakras of the body. This fascinates me because I think all great art touches on universal laws and is healing to witness because of that connection or adherence, whether its conscious or unconscious.  Creativity is a collision of individuality and tradition.  I’ve seen Modern dance that touched universal laws from a different angle.  Indian dance does it through very precise symmetry, nuance, ancient cognitions of the subtle results of gestures that have both a literal and an energetic meaning.  Could we cognize right now?  Could it be as sacred as a temple dance in ancient times but with the individual creating moves that step outside of any particular discipline, yet are reminiscent of many of them? Of course!
You could break out of the perfect lines for a moment and come back to them, but if you make a crooked line your influence on the viewer is not as profound or orderly as if that line is pleasing.  Unless the crooked lines are so full of a natural flow that you create order differently.  But if you do it through beauty of line, that is one path.  People might not even understand why they enjoyed the shapes or the dance piece but they will experience it.
To me the elements of the spiritual in dance are 1) consciousness of the performer; 2)intention of the performer; 3) lyrical content; 4)music; 5)technique/precision/confidence; 6)reverence.   Elaborating on these elements:
The more the dancer is awake to the subtle currents within the body and also the basis of those currents in eternal silent witness awareness, the more of a transmission can occur.  And then, there could be the language used by those subtle forces – the training of the body, the conscious intention of the dancer in the moment.   I think the temple dances use of gesture is profound for two reasons: one is that the mudras themselves create subtle energies that relate to archetypes.  And not just energetically, but through the narratives and their emotions, our imaginations are stirred and our hearts opened.  We experience emotion outside of the daily life causes of those emotions, so we see them from further away.  The second reason is maybe the ornateness of the gestures but this is true of pure movement as well. Indian dance, like Inidan classical music, divides the space so to speak into so many intricate pieces.  When you look at a Persian rug, your mind has so many small delicate places to investigate.  I think Eastern traditions in general have gone into details so beautifully that our senses our enchanted and the broad canvas of creativity is divied up so infititesimally that the mind loses itself.  This is the value of ornamentation and soemthing the Kathaks incorporated more and more during the Moghul reign.  During that artistic renaissance the tabla playing, the dancers, the recitation of bols, supposedly became much more virtuoso.  But that complexity is everywhere in Indian art and also within that complexity is the intention to gain Samadhi, reverence, understanding.  That underlying intention makes it sacred.  And so must the underlying understanding of the influence of various sounds and the relationship of notes to one another.  So can we create spirituality in dance without all these elements or in different combinations?  Perhaps one or more of these elements can be present to the maximum degree and that will compensate for some lack in another.  To me there is a meeting point between the ancient laws, the science of sound and geometry, and the spontaneous cognition or transmission of the deeper energies within us, through our ability to move innocently from those impulses.   The work of people like Renee Jeffus and the tantric embodiment practices, all strive to first connect with our whole self and then move from there.  How that takes place and the degree to which one can do it is a glorious mystery.  I just want everything I know (and don’t know) to get used in the service of bliss.  To say it another way, Devi, dance me.  And  any gifts I have, just use them fully.  Actualization is just being willing to share everything we are, without holding back.  Stepping into that is the only next step.

Torn Between Two Lovers

Sometimes I feel confused by my love of the purely Indian classical ragas and my love/need for the lively songs of Indian Film music, and the universe between them.  Why should I?  Darbari is so deep and inviting. What draws me to need the intoxicating beat of "Choli ke Peeche" or "Tandoori Nights"?!  I need the edginess of rap in "Paper Planes", the melting soothe of "Guzarish", the romance and divine sensuality of "Maula Mere Maula".  Like the classical format of Thumri, my passion for music is two-fold: it addresses the lover in flesh and the invisible all surrounding One, a deep longing for the Sacred, the Silent, the holiness of a presence and the manifestation of the Devis and Devas, and the strong desire to move, break open, express every kind of move in dance, hear the pain and joy of earth-ridden star-studded popular, addictive tunes that overpower and bring their OWN quality of reverence and celebration.  It's probably just me that would even question the diversity of my musical taste buds. Everyone I know loves a variety of music.  But being so sold out to the classical for awhile, it still "strikes" the strings of my discriminating intellect as being the "most worthy."  I would never start dancing Kathak without performing our "namaste."  That feeling is still there. I just let it slide down unseen while I cater to my own and others' taste for "rajas": that which lies between the pure and the lethargic or devoid of purity.  Maybe it's like the physical need to embody the Self and discover and allow every facet to come to light in order to even be strong for the Total Experience of the Self.  Culturally, folk dance was always as much a part of life as the highly refined arts in music. Marjaani Marjaani to Allah's praises by Abida Parveen. Bob Dylan's Ain't Talkin and Leonard Cohen's Boogie Street. Raga Malkuns. "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.  All over the map on a daily basis. Or sometimes diving for days and days into one particular loka of sound and movement.  Crazy kia re!  Schizophrenic Girl of the twenty-first century.  Artist in a Dilemma. Who the hell am I?  Where did the one go who was so consumed with fire for Kathak?  Muddy waters or courageous exploration and expansion?! I think I will create a bollywood Namaskar.  Watch me.

Indian Dance with Dishama (Wendy Stegall)

Hi, I'm experimenting with using an Indian stage name. I wonder if it's a useful idea and an improvement over my "Wendy."  I come to bollywood dance from Kathak: North Indian Classical dance.  I started bollywood almost two years ago and find it such a lovely way to bring Indian dance flavors to people who love Indian dance but who would never study it as a discipline but wish to enjoy exercise with the depth, charm, fun and beauty of the movements.  And bollywood dance fulfills my creative need to express a variety of dance languages thru the framework given me by Kathak.  It's an endless, evolving genre and so popular today it has changed my life.  Not many students come to Kathak, but now, with Bollywood dance there is more potential to share dance art with the world.  So this is my first blog here and I'll sign off cuz I still have a "day job!"bollywoodiowa.com