continuous breathing calms the body-mind. Oxygen levels in the blood cue ease or stress. We have choice how we breathe, impacting movement expressivity.
Fire has a role in protecting what we love, standing up for values. We need to know that we can speak, act, and respond effectively in challenging encounters. Then silence and focused stillness are sourced in knowledge of the fire body—in fullness—not in repression. As we practice accessing our passion and channeling it in life-enhancing ways, we activate heat without unnecessary burn.
STORIES
Audacity
Visiting the Parthenon with Greek archaeologist and dancer Sophia Diamantopoulou, we step into an area cordoned off from tourists. Climbing worn steps, we pause in the heart of Athena’s temple. Once the religious center of Athens (a symbol of Athenian supremacy for their allies, and a reminder of the political power and glory of the city), the temple was forbidden to all but priests—no women. Continuing on to the outer columns, we note where Isadora Duncan was famously photographed, and take turns inhabiting her poses.
In the early 1900s, discarding breath-restricting corsets for flowing Greek tunics, Isadora claimed ancient Greece as her source and changed the course of Western theater dance. In her book My Life, she describes filling her solar plexus “with vibrating light … not the brain’s mirror, but the soul’s.”
Driving across Athens to the area of Vyronas, we arrive at the Isadora and Raymond Duncan Dance Research Center. Situated on the top of Kopanos or Avra Hill, it has an unobstructed view of the Acropolis. It was here in 1903 that Isadora and her brother Raymond built their first school—facing off with the gods, goddesses, and political and religious powers of ancient times. One hundred years later, graffiti covers outdoor walls of the garden courtyard, and the big wooden entrance is locked. I pound on a door, and a dancer emerges. Young artists are inside, still creating.
BONE MARROW
Bone marrow is the site of all blood production, including red cells, white cells, and the platelets that transport oxygen. Bone marrow connects us to blood-full, oxygen-rich, passionate movement. Bones are as strong as granite and also as fluid as the lava that created it. In dancing, focusing on the hard, outer layers of bone gives grounding and directionality; as we focus on the marrow within, the experience of bone heats up. One way to focus like this is to imagine breath traveling directly to the core of bones, bringing oxygen needed to create more blood. 2
The Ride
It’s predawn in Bali and heat already surrounds us. We are headed to the top of an ancient volcano to greet the sunrise overlooking the caldera, then bicycle from top to base. Speed is part of the ride, yielding to downward pull or putting on the brakes at the edge of safety. Moments of free fall bring childhood glee: the independence of bike and body as one. We pedal more slowly through farmlands and villages to catch our breath, experiencing the contours of this land. As muscularity mixes with unfamiliar terrain, inner heat meets outer heat on this three-hour ride. Exhilaration comes from exertion.
Finding Direction
Dancer Cat Miller spins out movement; her body loves to dance. But when she is asked to give form through choreography, it’s a laborious process. Moving from visceral, gutsy dancing to linear, directed action with a beginning, middle, and end requires a shift of focus. In her senior project, she finds directionality through emotional connection: once she has the framework of story, the abstraction of movement takes form. Her dance isn’t literal, but she illuminates a passionate world she can inhabit as a soloist, allowing the audience to accompany her on the journey.
Feet to the Fire
Wesleyan University sponsors a Feet to the Fire project, partnering choreographer Ann Carlson with environmental educator Barry Chernoff. The first two goals stated in the project’s description are “to address the need for a deeper understanding of issues surrounding global climate change through multiple lenses; and to use art as a catalyst for innovative thinking, scientific exploration, and student engagement.” Culminating the exploration is a site-specific dance project in which students learn “to question the boundaries of the certainty of knowledge and learn how to act when there are no right answers.” Embodying the time-sensitive dialogue around a warming planet can produce despair. Instead, this project cultivates participants’ passions and response. There is opportunity for hope.
Across the Expanse
Teaching in Italy, we head to the National Dance Academy of Rome, where our dancer-guide Susanna was once a student. En route we visit the Colosseum and meander through the Roman Forum. Once the political and social center of an empire, the temples are nestled between two of the seven hills of Rome. We note the flame where Caesar was murdered, then make our way across a river of traffic and up the adjacent Aventino Hill.
Amid dancers scurrying to classes, we find a photo exhibit of the academy’s founder, Jia Ruskaja. This Ukrainian dancer, inspired by Isadora’s work, created her own academy in 1940 with gardens, studios, and indoor-outdoor stages. Pictures depict dance history through the life of one woman and her school, all the way to the present.
We see her dancing in nature (like Isadora), with “Oriental” costume (like Ruth St. Denis), in deep contractions (like Martha Graham), and in music choirs (like Doris Humphrey and Rudolf Laban). Newer photos show contemporary artists such as Pina Bausch performing at the school.
Departing, Susanna points at a keyhole in a wall; peering through, we see Saint Peter’s dome in the Vatican framed across the expanse. Jia Ruskaja, in the lineage of Isadora, built her dance legacy facing the powers of the time and made a lasting impact: audacity in action.
Caryn McHose, vessel breath
Photograph © Kevin Frank
TO DO
Vessel Breath (Caryn McHose)
15 minutes
The vessel breath invites reconnection to the core of your being. The gut body has particular significance for dancers in a culture that encourages habitual overcontraction of the abdominal wall and restrictive flatness of body image. Here’s a way to begin to reconnect to the natural organic place of nurturance and aliveness in the body.
Find a comfortable position, seated, eyes closed. In the theater of your imagination, envision a primitive (hollow) sea squirt or sea anemone attached to the ocean floor:
• Focus your attention on your mouth. Start by yawning, stretching the mouth and back of the throat.
• Appreciate the hollow volume of the mouth and throat cavity.
• Invite an easeful and audible inhalation and exhalation.
• Continue to relax the gut tube.
• Allow the dilation of this volume within your body.
• Continue to breathe, allowing any sound to emerge—like an ocean breath.
• Create and inhabit space inside, like shaping an empty vessel (a vase), with a pelvis base.
• Envision yourself as all gut—a vessel empty or full. Nourishment flows in, flows out; there’s nothing to do. Can you be present there?
• Continue this breath for some time, following impulses for movement as they come.
• Be gentle and know that this is a lifetime journey.
This is related to ujjayi, a breath in yoga in which you slightly activate the vocal folds and surrounding tissues (glottis) deep in the throat to heighten sensation.
Skeleton
Photograph