moving from listening
Adapted from Barbara Dilley’s Contemplative Dance Practice, and drawing on more than two decades’ experience in concert dance, somatic practices, yoga, and improvisation, Moving from Listening is an exploration of embodied awareness in three parts. The aim is to get still enough and quiet enough to access our deep listening and allow the body’s innate wisdom lead us into moving responsively.
The first step is stillness - giving ourselves permission to stop doing, stop trying, stop getting carried away by our thoughts. In this meditative state we are waking up our deep listening - noticing all of the life that exists inside of stillness (sensation, the breath), and returning again and again to the present moment.
From this listening place (keeping our awareness internal) we open to the possibility of movement. We follow sensation and allow the body’s wisdom about what it needs to guide us into action.
Finally (and as gradually as we need), we open our awareness to the space outside ourselves and the people sharing it with us. Keeping in the responsive mode we’ve been cultivating, we open to the possibility of interaction.
Becoming Moved explores the question of how being can become the ground for doing. It invites us to get out of the mind over matter mode of making our bodies move, to practice being more fully centered inside ourselves in the present moment, so that we may come into relationship responsively and without abandoning ourselves.
FORMAT
Beginning with a brief check-in, we then dive into a 60 minute practice of moving from listening.
Participants are encouraged to honor their own timing needs in transitioning from one phase of the exploration to the next.
20 minutes stillness: giving ourselves permission to rest. In this meditative state we are waking up our deep listening - noticing all of the life that already exists inside of stillness (sensation, the movement of breath, enlivening the body through our awareness and imagination), and returning again and again to the present moment.
20 minutes solo: keeping our awareness internal, we open to the possibility of movement. We follow sensation and allow the body’s wisdom about what it needs to guide us into action. Cultivating a sense of discovery we allow each moment to be a new experience.
20 minutes group: (as gradually as we need) we open our awareness to the space outside ourselves and the people sharing it with us. From responsive internally led action, we open to the possibility of responsive interaction in a field of compositional play. Noticing the unfolding relationships/geometry/choreography that arise within the shared space.