Colleen Leonardi

Thread of Thought

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Hold on, here. Let me take you on a thread of thought. A choreographer and writer I deeply admire, Susan Rethorst, conjectures about the mind of a choreographer in her essay Dailiness (Choreographic Encounters, Institute for Choreography and Dance, 2003):

"Tere O'Connor once told me a childhood memory. His sister slept in a room in the front of their house, while he and his other siblings (all boys I think) and his parents, had rooms at the back. This, in his mind, made his sister's room into a kind of appendage thrust out from the safety and togetherness of the others. The road, though not close, ran by the front and he, being very fond of his sister, would lie awake in discomfort and anxiety thinking of her in this front bedroom; her isolation in relation to the rest of them; her seeming exposure in the vulnerability of sleep to the public sector of the world. When he told me this, I immediately said, 'Oh, that's the mind of a choreographer.' The mind that had a kind of spatial, emotional map of a situation, the emotional psychological reading of place, and of people in relation to that place and each other. In this case, its relation to road, to others, to aloneless, to sleep, is the same mind that now looks at people and movements in the studio/theatre, with an eye to arranging their various essences, how they speak and combine...

...the mind of a choreographer operating outside the studio, applying the same models of perception that are both inclination and tool."

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"Models of perception that are both inclination and tool..."---yes! Sometimes I wonder about how I'm a choreographer. What do I mean when I say that? And if you've been following my blog at all, this is a subject with which I often wrestle. I've come to really embrace for myself what Rethorst conjectures---that being a choreographer is exercising these models of perception as both inclination and tool. I can remember distinct moments from my childhood of being acutely aware, as I am now, of "a kind of spatial, emotional map of a situation, the emotional psychological reading of place, and of people in relation to that place and each other." I walk through the world with this awareness.

Sometimes defining the term 'choreographer' this way goes against my training and the teachings I've received about how a choreographer is someone who makes dances. {And it is!} But what if being a choreographer is more internal than that? What if it is defined by a way of seeing? A nature? What if there are many more choreographers out there who, because it never clicked, will never make a dance but will see the world choreographically, nonetheless. Designers, architects, film makers.....what if?

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When I fashioned this book from a blank book {pictured throughout} I named it Thread of Thought. It was truly a thread of thought. I wove thread throughout each page and then sat one morning and wrote, pen never leaving the page, along the thread---following my thoughts and seeing where they took me.

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When I read back over the thread of thought I realized that it was a thought mapped out in space over time, it was a thought meant to be experienced in space over time. It was a choreographic thought, and reading it, I had a choreographic experience of some kind. "How cool," I thought, "Didn't know I was doing that."

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Presently, I'm waiting to pick up the book so I can continue working on a solo project, with the book in tow, for a grand wrecking project in April 2012. I'll be performing in Chicago at Links Hall with Julie Mayo/Dim Sum Dance and Christy Funsch. We'll each perform a dance we've choreographed and then a wrecked version of the dance. {How fun!} With this book as inspiration, I'm finding myself continuing to wrestle with what it means to be a choreographer and have this awareness in the 21st century, each and every day. I make a dance. I make a book/object/project. I make some writings. I make some movement that never becomes a dance. The endpoint may be different but the way of seeing is constant. And you? How do you see things and what do you make as a result?

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Enter Emptiness...

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...and blue sky and black branches and an abundance of space all around. Thanksgiving offers us an opportunity to gather, savor, digest. We're encouraged to exercise gratitude for all we have during a time of the year when the natural world is falling away from us and turning back in on itself. Outside my window, the world is becoming a little more hollow.

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I welcome the emptiness. I've been letting go of a lot this year---throwing things off the train as one friend said to me. And autumn is the season to throw even more off the train. I can feel it in my bones. The necessity to clean house, give what we don't need away to those who do and simply get back to the basics. In some ways, it's all I have the energy to do.

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My instinct to pair down was reflected in a book I'm reading, which made me extra happy and even more resolute to work towards emptiness. The Way of the Happy Woman: Living the Best Year of Your Life is organized by the four seasons. Author Sara Avant Stover attributes the following qualities to fall:

Color: White

Heart qualities: Sorrow, Courage, and Joy

Creative cycle: Harvesting and Feasting

Actions: Gathering, Focusing, Turning Inward, and Letting Go

Focus: Receive the growth you've experienced from the past six months, and let go of what no longer serves you. Take only what you need.

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Take only what you need. Yes.

As I've emptied my closets, cleaned out my fridge and cabinets, re-organized my bookshelves, filed away documents from the year, cleared my inbox and returned emails more promptly, and made more space for what's next, I have felt the blessings of emptiness. I'm carving my days into an empty bowl ready to receive what lies ahead instead of trying to catch up to what's on my plate. I have time to actually enjoy my life.  I have space to dream. I feel grounded and whole in the presence of nothing.

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To be sure, there are still things I need to tend to, items on my plate requiring my attention just as there are still some winter berries on the bushes outside my house and the evergreen is ever strong and verdant, like summer grass after a long rain.

But it's nice to feel like I have room for these things. The more I empty, the more I receive. And it's not about the receiving, but the cycle it provides.

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Emptying becomes somewhat of a magical cycle. I give and receive and give again. I take only what I need and let go of what I don't need. I let go. What does letting go feel like? I like how Sara Avant Stover writes about it in her book:

"Letting go also means allowing yourself to be completely as you are and to do whatever you need to do to loosen your grip. Sometimes, to do this, you need to let yourself feel completely out of control. We see this when we witness a friend experiencing tremendous grief. We hold space for her to wail, sleep all day, rant and rave, or do whatever she needs to do to move the energy of her pain and, in turn, move on. The process isn't always pretty, but it's real. Letting go asks us to be ruthlessly candid about what we feel and how much we have loved."

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So an offering, then, from me to you to let go and walk out into the world and walk the path of emptiness, if only for a little while.

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These forms we seem to be are cups floating in an ocean

of living consciousness.

 

They fill and sink without leaving an arc of bubbles or

any good-bye spray. What we

 

are is that ocean, too near to see, though we swim in it

and drink in it. Don't

 

be a cup with a dry rim, or someone who rides all night

and never knows the horse

 

beneath his thighs, the surging that carries him along.

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Cup and Ocean by Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks from The Soul of Rumi

 

Honor Your Knowing

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Books come and go. Knowing what you know doesn't go. It stays. And grows.

Honor it.

When you make choices and decisions, take action, feel feelings, say sayings, hear hearings---honor them. Honor the long way down into the body they jump and bend, cocoon and rest.

Honor what is hidden and murky and muddy and unknown. Honor the way you end up saying Yes to this or No to that. Don't think twice. Just honor it, over and over again like sleep.

Honor your knowing because you know more than you think. What you know protects you, nourishes you and is known for good reason. Honor the reasons.

Time is woven into knowing. Time is rich with meaning and mystery.

Honor it.

Knowledge is not the same as information.

Get used to it.

Honor knowing.

The wind and the waves and the trees and the soil have knowing in them.

Honor them.

This video:

Murmuration by Sophie Windsor Clive

I watched it spread like a big collective stretch {oh, feels so good} across the Internet. So many people shared it. The way the birds fly {watch it}---we all know that way of flying, of being in the body, of being free. A universal knowing.

Get small. Grow big.

Honor knowing.

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A man is walking in a field

and everywhere at his feet

the small purple violets

are in bloom. As the man walks

the ground drops away,

the sunlight of day becomes

a sort of darkness in which

the lights of the flowers rise

up around him like

fireflies or stars in a sort

of sky through which he walks.

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Wendell Berry from Leavings

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We can't heal what we don't feel. ~Miriam Greenspan

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