Beginning Breath

Dear Malaïka

 

It’s been 7 years since I participated in your courses. Pause time has been necessary for me.  I need to pull back to let develop all that I experienced in dancing with you. In this letter I want to bring you into my reflections and my discoveries concerning these precious moments of dance.

 

When I began dancing with you, I was in the third year of medicine.  Seated at my work table during long hours of study, I had the impression that my body was sapped.  Inside, I wasn’t feeling much.  My breathing was superficial.  I felt bad in my own skin.  I was having frequent migraines.

 


I was looking for my independence but I hadn’t yet found my identity as an adult.

 

From the first course, I had the feeling of having reached a good place, to finally be able to dance as I had always dreamed.  My desire would have been to do courses every evening.  But the reality of my body spoke another language.  I felt like a stone statue waking up after years of immobility.  This awareness which has the goal of taming mobility and flexibility was almost painful.  From the beginning, I was aware of the lack of experience of my body, of its gravity, its numbness.

 

The Sound

I then had the experience of sound.  The beginnings were difficult!  To emit a sound accompanied by a movement made me ill at ease.  At one moment, I felt it greatly difficult to find the link between movement and breathing.  There was in me a lack of strength, a lack of breath.

 

One day, this sound came out gently – as if freed from a body imprisoned, tight and rigid and which seemed to belong to someone else.  This interior research of breath and sound allowed me to progressively live in each part of my body.  Now it can resonate freely and give me deep and ample breathing.  This breathing which drives dancing gives to the experience of being human some magnificent moments ….

 

Improvisation

Improvisation was the discovery of a movement which germinates from inside, which grows … to finally stretch or break out towards the outside.    Improvisation was also the experience of letting go of the mind which allows living plainly in the present moment.

 

In summary:  These moments of dance brought me great happiness.  They became the symbol for the knowledge of what a being who dances must experience, or the incarnation of the joy within a being in movement.  Thank you.  A. E.