Colleen Leonardi

What I Do When I Don't Know What To Do

I move. When I am locked in thought and don't know what to do next, I move. When I am making big decisions about work and life, I move, and then move some more.

I...

shake

wiggle

stretch

jump

slide

walk, walk, walk

turn

hug

lift

hold

run

roll

reach

curl

open

close

extend

swirl

tip

shift

cross

walk, walk, walk

kick

stomp

swivel

arch

lay

and rest. I do so I can do some more. I envelop myself in actual doing so the question of, "Do I write to that person?" or, "Can I make this new project work for myself?" becomes less rigid and more fluid. And when I move my questions, doing my do, I start to hear an answering that I know I can trust. 

I am particularly aware of this way of mine and wanting to share it with you because I am making bigger than usual decisions lately. I am opening myself up more and more to the magic of the universe, as someone said to me. I am choosing to expand in more directions, both internally and externally, than I am used to and take in more opportunity. I am going out on a limb, and the metaphor feels real - that little bird in me taking a step to move out onto the limb of a tree so she might see better and fly a little straighter.

When I wanted to decide on some big things recently, I realized I needed to make a dance to really know what my decisions need to be. I need to plant the questions into a space where there is nothing but space and quiet and room to move. And with the consistency of coming to a space each week to move and  build something from the movement, I know I will find the next steps for myself. The answering is in the dance/ing for me, in not simply moving but building a form I can reflect back on, repeat and articulate through.

So what I do when I don't know what to do is move. And sometimes I need to build that movement into a moving structure (a dance) so the answering I'm finding sticks around for a while and I can have a conversation with it.

And based on my time this weekend in a workshop about yoga, nonviolent communication and neuroscience (I plan to share more about it here on my blog later this week), I understand a little more about why this works. If I want to get scientific about it, I am activating the right hemisphere of my brain when I move and giving the left hemisphere, which is in charge of logic, rational thinking, a chance to bask in the glow of its right brain beauty.

And what is remarkable about the right hemisphere of the brain, according to the research shared with me this weekend, is that it is actually responsible for bigger picture, visionary thinking and decision making. So while the left hemisphere is working away at the small decisions day to day, it's the right brain beauty I really need to nurture when stepping out on that limb and choosing to expand into what lies ahead.

Move. Your body-brain knows what to do by doing.

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{Photos by © Ryan Bourque, 2012}

For the Imagination

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Palissimo's The Painted Bird Trilogy made me think of...

\being able to feel a pattern happening onstage as an audience member and trust the feeling of the pattern more than the seeing of the pattern

/seeing light through the hem of an autumn colored skirt and wanting to see more

\the distance of intention... how far does meaning have to travel to mean something?

/how a man's body fits together

\seeing history in a gaze

/the creepy recognition of knowing the sensations of what the dancers are doing as they're doing it even though you're not doing it with them... the collective unconscious of the kinesthetic/empathetic sense operating

\seeing the side of a face through a sea of backs cast in black shadow

/when the body is the site for questioning the way things work, it requires that new maps be made... all the known, documented ways do not apply

/when a neck looks to see instead of the eyes

\the way the solo performer Jaro Vinarsky (extraordinary performer!) shook at the very end of Bastard, the first dance in the trilogy... how the stage emptied of people and he shuddered like a wet bird while walking on a line upstage... how I wanted to hold him then... how this reminded me trauma in the body... the line in the Bible, "God is found where you have trembled."

/how vulnerable we all were as an audience, and how willing we all were to being vulnerable... the curiosity that comes with that

\atrocity, atrocity, atrocity

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 I really like this artist's work... Laura Letinsky

A reading of Rilke's poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing

Can't wait to see this and this

It's fall

Susan Miller's horoscope for Capricorn and Cancer

Aspen trees in Colorado

Dancing Across the Page

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I found Dancing Across the Page: Narrative and Embodied Ways of Knowing by Karen Barbour during a moment of uncertainty in one of my favorite bookstores. Now still present in me as I write, the uncertainty makes my head feel full of questions. I don't necessary want the quick fix of an answer, but something more like an answering, taking me somewhere beyond right and wrong, yes and no.

A dangerous state to be in while in a bookstore. It's like being hungry when you go grocery shopping.

So, Dancing Across the Page found its way into my life and became part of this ongoing answering. Karen Barbour is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. In her book, she writes about being a choreographer, dance teacher, improviser, writer, mother and feminist, and how all of these roles become fodder for her continued explorations in dance and in living the creative life. By telling her story about embodied ways of knowing, she seeks to, "...inspire you to affirm the values of your embodied ways of knowing as a basis from which to undertake creative action in the world."

I breathed a little deeper reading these words. And I found more moments of recognition throughout her book. Her endeavor to map out her research as she moves between dance academia, life and the spirit of dance gives rise to phrases and language that I've found myself saying, wondering, Is anyone else thinking about these things?

Like these passages:

"While I am, to some extent, culturally and socially constructed, and of course I am very specifically embodied, there are still some possibilities for me to re-create myself. And I see potential for such re-creation in dance making. I find this perspective empowering." (pg. 29)

"Now as a dance academic, my teaching and writing opportunities provide a context to reflect and to story, or re-story, my life and to help me make sense of my experiences. Like dancing, writing has become a passion for me, and I see both as different but complimentary ways of knowing." (pg. 42)

"...as I breathe deeply I reaffirm to myself that writing with an engaging, embodied voice is equally as important as experiencing embodiment in my dance research." (pg. 69)

I feel a sincerity in Barbour's writing, a genuine desire to stand firmly in her search. And it is not a solitary search. It includes others as she talks to colleagues and friends, teaches students and asks them about what they think and spends time with her sister and family, enjoying the seaside and good food. All of her questioning and articulations are folded into her life. Her life is a part of her research into embodied ways of knowing. The two seem inseparable for her. 

This model and way of being resonates with me. As a dancer, I know things - about the technology of the body, the world of movement and how people work together - and yet these things, this knowledge, is not valued in the working world. As a dancer you are made to feel other instead of celebrated for all you know and can offer to others. As Barbour writes, "As a dancer, I attempt to understand my world through embodied exploration, but I have often felt like what I 'know' as a dancer does not count."

I know this feeling deeply, in my bones.

What strikes me most, though, about her book is how she moves beyond the exploration of embodiment into the work of writing and finding language for the embodied experience. She speaks, at times, with an eloquence about how writing is a practice in embodiment as much as dance is.

And I may write that with some bias, because I believe it to be true. After reading Writing Begins With the Breath by Laraine Herring I felt like I had found a writer who knew this to be true. And it is nice to find a dance writer and artist articulating it from the other end.

And I have a new question, now, after reading the book. Barbour writes about autoenthography as a preferred form of research for her work. Autoenthography is a form of qualitative research and defined as: "...an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience." (Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams & Arthur P. Bochner, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Volume 12, No. 1, Art. 10 – January 2011)

The way she described it made me think of blogging and all of the many women who are keeping blogs, writing about their experience, challenging the status quo, and not necessarily in the name of academic research but because they find fulfillment and connection in it.

So I wonder: Is blogging a form of autoenthography, however divergent?

For those who practice it, they might not consider it research. But living the creative life and asking questions as you go is creative research, in my mind. And it's way of living, too, that can have an immediate social, sometimes subversive, impact.

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