Archive for the Category ◊ InterPlay Inspiration ◊

Last night I stood under a clear, starry sky and played my wooden flute. The tall, swaying, red pines were my audience. No, I’m wrong. There were also the fire flies who darted around in the dusk air. And the half moon seen partially through the trees. The flute was my expression of awe and ache, loneliness and fullness, frustration and gratitude. It had a voice that could express all of that and like the fire flies, sometimes changing direction quickly, unexpectantly. My flute didn’t analyze any of it. It just accepted my breath and channeled it into beauty.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have a community that allows me to express all these pieces of myself in a circle of laughter, ease and understanding. I use the voice of my throat, the movements of my body, the stories of my past and present, the fullness of who I am in this community we call InterPlay. The mystery of our being is so much more than words, so we relish the opportunity to express through the sweep of an arm, the sway of our hips, the touch between two open hands. Throughout human time, cultures have used dance as an important part of life, for sacred ritual and for mundane life. It is built into everyday life and draws people together, body to body, as a safe yet deep way of connecting. Expression through voice, breath and body are as old as the trees who sway in my backyard under the moon. And the earth accepts my dance, my breath, my voice and channels it into beauty. Or at least accepts it into the beauty that already is. I know this to be true and it gives me life.

InterPlay and other dance forms have really caused me to look at my attitudes about leading and following and have taught me that both leading and following are powerful, joyful, and not nearly as diametrically opposed as we sometimes interpret them to be. Indeed, there is a great deal of following in healthy acts of leadership, and there is a great deal of leading in joyful following.

An enormous joy for me is to just follow–to attune my entire BodySpirit to “going with”. I revel in the “eyes” I seem to grow all over my skin. I can be facing away from someone and I can still follow his or her energy. I can be across a room from someone, and I can still be following his or her movement. I can be with an entire group of people, and we are all following, sometimes not even knowing who is leading! (The fluidity of the whole leader/follower dynamic is still a glorious mystery to me, when the pair or group of Players seems to be following some outside entity, as leading and following morph into one another.) I can become so attuned to the leading that my body knows how to move without my conscious brain being aware…I just do something because it is the next thing to do, and the great MIRACLE is when my fellow dancers are doing the SAME THING at the SAME TIME! Wow. Group Body.

Clearly, I love to lead, too. But the great surprise in my life is that surrender, following, and “going with” all contribute to making me a powerful, strong member of my community.