Joy in Motion

The Enduring Fascination: Tango and Chess

I just love pondering parallels between dance and other disciplines. Robert Grudin writes about this in The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation:

Inspiration often expresses itself as a sudden connection or closed circuit between ideas that had never before been so connected. The mind is open to inspiration to the extent that it is open to such continuities, whether between details (as with the combination of words in a fresh poetic metaphor) or between larger subject areas (as with some new combination of materials in a manufacturing process). By extension, the sense of continuity can extend to dynamic relationships between whole disciplines or ways of thinking. In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler names this process bisociation – the dynamic interaction between two normally distinct frames of reference. According to Koestler, all creative thought, from humor to philosophy and science, is bisociational, and creativity derives from a feeling for the implicit continuity of ideas.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I recently revisited a video I first watched earlier this year of a very young girl dancing tango with her father. So precious. Actually, the original video of the performance they did was (sadly) removed from YouTube, but luckily I was able to find another video of them dancing at home that is also pretty sweet. Check it out:

Read more »

Happy Birthday, Martha Graham!

I love what Google did in celebration of Martha Graham today – check out http://www.google.com today only to view it live, or check out the YouTube clip below.

I also love The Story Behind the Graham Google Doodle that the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance posted on their website! I’m not sure how long this will be up for, so be sure to check it out today if you can. Also, here are two short quotes by Martha Graham (you can find a bunch more here):

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

And I love this one:

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

Happy Birthday, Martha Graham!

Lead & Follow: Balancing Energies in the Partnership

Lately I have been actively learning how to lead in tango. I have done some leading over the years in a couple of different dances, mostly through teaching, but never to this extent in terms of focus and time investment. Not only are my reflections deeper, but I am receiving a variety of responses – both verbal and energetic – from my local tango community. The women admire, enjoy, and express curiosity about my venture, and I learn a lot from their unique energies as followers as I explore the leading role. But it’s the men that I am perhaps learning from the most.

The benefits of a small dance community include incredible sincerity and acceptance, and the men are demonstrating an unbelievable openness to my leading. Several of them - one in particular I would never have expected! – have even asked me to lead them. What encourages me is that they are not only interested in exploring the body mechanics of lead and follow through this exchange; they seem to be subconsciously absorbing some of the energetic dimensions as well. Just the act of switching roles – even if temporarily – necessarily changes our energies towards each other, which opens up both new strengths and new vulnerabilities. It also forces us to experience our own presence in the dance in different ways.

Over the past year my dad and I have played weekly chess games. It’s truly amazing how intricate and variable the game is, even playing the same person every time. Every game has its own flavor, and subtle changes in approach and even mood can drastically alter the energy of the entire game. Last month my father and I marveled to each other at how much of a difference it makes when one of us starts the game versus the other. It’s almost like an entirely different game and yet it maintains its essence in the midst of such a strong change in energy. I feel this same tension between same and opposite when it comes to the leading and following roles, and the similarities and differences both enhance the experience of the whole.

This has been a major point of meditation for me, so I was even more pleased than usual to discover that Sharna Fabiano has written another article in which she directly addresses this very thing. The entire article is very much worth a read, but I did want to tease out a few paragraphs in which she talks about the balance of seemingly opposing energies in the dance partnership. Read her wonderful reflections below, then click on the link to access the full article as well as her previous ones, all of which are excellent and highly recommended. Enjoy!

Read more »