Dirty Dancing Feet: Happy National Dance Week!

I’ve been thankfull with every cell of my being for the rain we’ve been getting recently here in the Northeast of Brazil, and especially today because we had a work party at church yesterday and put cal, or lime, in the ground where we’re going to start transplanting chacrona plants. We’re preparing the soil under a couple of huge cashew trees, providing just the right amount of sunlight for the chacrona to flourish. Chacrona is the plant which provides the DMT to make Santo Daime or ayauasca, and we were to put cal in the ground based on the recommendation of Seu Nello, an Italian man who’s been a part of the community here in Canoa Quebrada for the last couple of years. For about 30 years he’s been working with biodynamic agriculture in Italy, which is based on Rudolph Steiner’s theories about nature and rhythm, and our relationship to them. Seu Nello joined the Santo Daime church last year in Italy but started drinking Daime with us here in Canoa before that, and has been helping immensely in the community since he returned, advising us all on how to get the most out of the land here, so we’re starting to put it into practice and prepare the soil, which is apparently lacking cal here. It’s interesting also that I recently heard that the name California comes from “cal,” which is Spanish for lime, and “forno” or oven/fire :-)

Anyway, back to the party! As in “work party,” at church. There is an altar to Yemanja at the trunk of the tree where we were working and it has been a space for women to go and be together after Santo Daime works, or during the breaks. It’s idyllic land with cows and horses in the distance, many giant cashew trees and a rainbow of wildflowers everywhere, and it was a beautiful Sunday morning. Five young people from the Eco Aldeia came to help and also to get to know the Daime church. I appreciated their enthusiasm and desire to help, and we were all enjoying each others’ company and the inspiring environment there before the statue of Mama Yemanja with her blue and white mantle, opening her arms to us surrounded by different kinds of white seashells, Our Lady of the High Seas. While beginning to slug the heavy rake around to mix the white powder in with the top soil I remembered a conversation I had had with Seu Nello during one of his workshops here. I was questioning whether rituals were once performed, dance rituals, as a way to prepare the soil, as our feet are naturally closer to the ground than our hands, and so could be used more efficiently and sustainably, perhaps, than hands or hand tools. Also, in alignment with my belief that work does not have to equal suffering, I am always looking to join what I love doing with what needs to be done. It brought me back to that age old question, what is dance, anyway? And why do we dance, and of course, we dance for lots of reasons, so why not dance to prepare the soil, dance for prosperity, dance because it feels good and is FUN, and why not dance to thank the rains and ask for more!

I started using my heavy rubber boots to dig little trenches and carve through the dirt. The others started using their feet as well, but they were barefoot, so I decided to join them, and off we went, like Lucy in the wine vat. We’ve already had several little dance parties at the Eco Aldeia to mix various forms of clay and paint for bioconstruction, but they’re usually spacially limited, as in a square meter or so. In this case we could roam and take up some space as we were preparing about twenty square meters of soil, so it felt free and inviting, like dancing! But not like dancing. It was dancing! We were dancing, together, something that I’m always wanting to make happen more here. In this case, we were dancing because it was fun, we were inspired, and it was getting the job done! It was clear that it was more fun to dance than to rake and dig, but it also appeared to be a more efficient way to mix the dirt. A couple of the young women who’ve been staying with us at the Eco Aldeia had been asking for dance classes, but we’d been so busy that I still hadn’t managed to do an actual class with them. I said, “Hey look! We’re finally dancing!”

Last year when I was in South Dakota for the 13 Grandmothers gathering there hosted by Lakota Grandmother Unci Rita, I visited the Crazy Horse Memorial Museum. There I met Danny, a tall Lakota man who did a half hour presentation about Lakota culture focused mostly on their dances. One of the dances he explained was for preparing the ground for an encampment, cutting down the reeds with their feet, and dancing until the land is ready, and he danced this for us, showing how the feet are used as tools to smash down the reeds. This does not have to be something that some people did once upon a time, and that we don’t or can’t dance in the same way anymore. I took it as inspiration and instruction, a reminder to not only use our heads, but to use our whole bodies!

I was impressed when I visited the Santa Cruz Mission, also, when I was home in California in December, by a display describing Ohlone ceremonies and dances which included a quote by a priest who worked at the early mission and recorded in his diary that despite their best efforts to convert the native people who were living there, the Ohlone, some of them were still apt to take off in the middle of the night and hold their dancing rituals hidden in the forest until daybreak when they would return to the mission to resume the days routine and work. I thought about the deep necessity those men and women must have felt to risk punishment in order to dance all night long, and then return to a full day of hard labor.

I believe that dance is hidden everywhere, and it remains only for us to see that our design is for us to dance, and maybe even be dancing all of the time! By this I mean that we could be consciously embodied in what we are doing, and interactively present and artful all of the time. Everything can be called a dance, or seen through the eyes of the dance, and I’m more and more impressed when I watch our pets and how they interact, falling naturally into syncronized movement, the most beautiful choreography unfolding in our front yard, or out on the shallow lake at the Eco Aldeia. I’ve also been noticing and commenting on the divine choreography that happens in the kitchen when we cook together, sharing the space, the sink, the stove, and the kitchenwear, swirling around each other, over, under, and back again, artistic alchemy physicalized through us as well as in the food we're preparing. We only need to recognize and embrace it.

Like the earth calling for our blood, (see previous post "International Women's Day,") she’s calling for us to dance on her, massage her weary flesh, and her voice is getting clearer. Will we listen? Will we dance? Will we have the courage? Maybe if our “dancing” was mixed in with our life more, like the cal and the dirt, and we didn’t even have to call it dancing, we’d be more in our bodies, more present, and healthier. I miss the dance community in California, the jams and performances, the high level of research and value placed on dance. I also value very much the experience that I’m having here and how it’s influencing my relationship to dance, the deep need I feel to dance and so that I look for it everywhere, but how I am also less inclined now to burden myself with labels or expectations related to dance. You could say it’s a lack of discipline, because without my dance community it is indeed harder to make dance happen for myself, even though I do. I have to. But it’s also been a purification process in which justifications and external expectations related to dance have less influence on me, so that the purer dance can be revealed, the source, the dance fountain. So here’s to the dance. The dance party, the dance jam, the dance performance, the dance class, the dance lab, the fight dance, the dance competition. But also here’s to the hidden dance, the dance that we have to wake up to recognize, the dance that’s our birthright, the dance that’s buried inside all of us and everything, in space and time, and the DANCE that gets the job done!

#dance #biodynamic