Private Lessons with Sunshine and Jen
We worked out at the park the first day which wasn't as hot as the sun threatened to be, but we were thankful to be indoors the rest of the time. We worked on the usual spectrum of refining old moves to working on new ones, working on various qualities... but my favorite was teaching fabric theory and analyzation for choreography. We work on how to build a move from fundamental properties and soaked in this topic for a few days. It was a wealth of information that I've thought about before but had never yet had a chance to articulate it to students until this week. It was a gift.
Below is a video that I shot right after our Friday lesson. I pulled out a couple themes that we had been working with: "few hands as possible," "walking," "spirals," and "floppy." We used those on the relatively simple choreography that we had been using to expand on. Here in the video, notice how I easily take up the whole song! It's amazing how much there is to explore with so little. I love it.
Jen's Blog: Afterthoughts on our work together
Two years ago, I walked into the East TN State University summer aerial workshop and fell instantly,
shatteringly in love with the liquid fall of color and motion that is silks. I asked my friend and fellow
dancer, Sunshine, who was a student at ETSU at the time, if she would go on this journey with me, and
since then, we've been inseparable companions in the air. We decided to attend ADF together the
summer Sunshine graduated, and she arranged for us to have these halcyon mornings with Rebekah
while we were in Boulder.
We had very BASIC questions for Rebekah:
What do you see in us that you feel needs work, or to be corrected?
Rebekah began working on basics. I am working on finding connection through my torso. Sunshine
began working on moving with different movement EFFORTS- which given our background in Laban
Movement Analyses, we rapidly put language to like: work with light or heavy weight, see how a
punch moves you differently through flamingo, etc. I latched onto the character of moving differently
immediately, and I have to admit, had a bit more fun with that than maybe I should have had. Rebekah
seemed charmed by it all, though!
How do you create such unique transitions? How do you move so smoothly!?
I think Rebekah's background as a mathematician comes out in two startling ways. First, we worked
on breaking movement into statements, or "sentences" within larger paragraphs of movement. That
phrasing centers around breathing patterns. One of the great principals of creating character and
meaning through the body is to disrupt or change your breathing and see how that matches with how
other people move and breathe. (The most startling example I've seen of this is how Gary Oldman
creates insane characters by disrupting his breath, and changing the tone and force of his words with
each alteration in breath pattern- look for this in "the professional" if you want to see that at work....or
if you can figure it out differently, let me know. I think "it's brilliant. Brutal, but brilliant")
Then we started analyzing the "endpoints" of vocabulary, and seeing how one can arrive at that point by
following a different pathway. I thought of the different ways of getting into an X-back straddle, and it
made sense. When we actually began down the path, though, I began to see the life-long discipline of
this approach. It is utterly unique, and is at the heart of what makes Rebekah's work so breath-taking
and so enjoyable to watch. One is less aware of the mechanics, and more aware simply of the DANCE.
As I was leaving one morning, Rebekah and I started talking about dance and silks. I'd been
thinking about this the night before; how when I started studying yoga, I was using a book, learning
static "poses", and in my own little way, was hungry to find ways to link them together, so I would find
new ways to do that each time I practiced. A year later, I studied with Shiva Rea, and nearly fell off
my mat when I discovered that the wheel had already been invented multiple times, by many people,
hungry for the same FLOW of movement and breath.
I started out in improvisational modern dance. So for me, dance is like a stream of continuous
movement, punctuated by falls, pools, swirls, but at my heart, I live in the flow of the movement.
Learning yoga pose by pose was like walking on stepping stones, and then looking around, and seeing
how water could flow past and over those clear, defined stepping stones in the practice.
Silks is taught much the same way as yoga. First we learn the vocabulary, then we start finding
connections both between the moves, and within our minds and hearts so that the way we link
together, the way we move is expressive and honest.
But there is, in me, a deeper desire simply to float and live without the stones, to feel the richer, wilder
flow of the mountain stream....this seems a good hunger, a true thing in myself. And my sense is that
Rebekah is one teacher who would hold the back of my head, dip me in the water, and take great
pleasure watching me float away from the shore, to join her, and others, deep inside the flow.
Happy sailing, all. And deepest thanks, Rebekah, for sharing your knowledge and insights with me and
with Sunshine as we wind our way along the journey.