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!).