Dance the Body Possible

Every fifteen minutes, I leave my work behind and dance. For five minutes, I move, stretch, spiral, spin. I shake my body free of the tensions of typing and the linear quality of online work. I release the news, the calls-to-actions, the cries of human suffering. I leave it all behind and dance.

Like a snake shedding skin, the world falls away. For a few minutes, breath replaces thought. Balance rises as a dynamic force. I dance to remind myself of my humanity. It is a simple practice.

“You dance the body possible,” my poetic friend, Aarti Rana, told me long ago.

In motion, I uncover potentiality. In moving, I remember what is possible.

“Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost,” said famous modern choreographer Pina Bausch.

My gaze turns toward the challenges of this world. My eyes swell with tears of compassion. My heart moves into action. We are in troubled times. Our situation is dire. Dance, dance, or else we are lost . . . I weave my dance into my movements for change. Without it, we are lost.

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” stated Emma Goldman.

My dance knows no steps, no rules, no classic moves, nothing flashy. It is personal and improvisational. It ebbs and flows with the tide of my existence. It turns and tunes into the shifting seasons, the changing times. If I can’t dance the body possible, what good is this revolution?

Dance, dance, my friends. This dance does not belong to me. Movement is your birthright, your body’s gift of being alive. Stand up. Wiggle. Stretch. Feel silly. Confront awkwardness. (Guess what? I do this, too.) Find your body possible. Add your movement to the movement. Come alive to time and space and breath and hope and grace.

265864_245446805481642_7440290_oWith love,

Rivera Sun,
Author of The Dandelion Insurrection

(The photo at right is from my dance and theater days. My red hair is in three foot long dreadlocks. I was so serious then. Hah!)

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