Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

On Saturday I did my first-ever timed 5 km run. I'm not going to win any races. I was the slowest person who did the run by far. BUT, I am pleased. I didn't have to stop even once. I didn't even need to slow down. And at the end, I was fresh enough to put on a block-long sprint and finish in 35:51. I know now I was overly cautious in my cadence, but since it was my first time, I didn't really know how to pace myself. Lance, the CrossFit running coach, was impressed by my time, and says I should be able to shear it down to 30 minutes by October.

Here's our running group about five minutes after I finished the course. I pretty much crawled into position.

I was afraid I might run something like this camel, but apparently my form looks pretty solid.



( Behind this cut lie photos.... )

12 weeks of dance classes (April 4-June 20) for the freakishly low price of $54.65. Members get it even cheaper: $45.02. Whoa. Bargain city! Classes are Wednesday nights from 6:30-7:30. To register, go to the front desk at the Rockway Centre (1405 King St. East, Kitchener) and hand 'em your moolah.

Join me for a fun, relaxed class. This is not a class where you will be learning a choreography. You will be learning technique and improvisation, and having fun while doing so. Suitable from total novices (fresh off the couch) on up to experienced dancers. And yes, I teach guys too.

Since the City of Kitchener forgot to advertise the class in the Leisure Guide, please help spread the word around. It would be a shame if the class was cancelled due to lack of enrolment.

For the past week, I spent the majority of my time in Studio E of The Children's Dance Theatre in Cabbagetown. I've been going to this studio off and on for about six years now: as long as I've lived in Ontario. I go there to study butoh, and occasionally other dance styles, as well. This week, I was studying under the tutelage of Denise Fujiwara. The workshop was entitled Embodiment, and the theme was fear.

Every now and then, someone asks me what butoh is, and I always pause. I have a hard time defining it in a way that will make sense. Although I've been studying butoh for about six years now, I think it's only been within the past year or so that I have begun to get a tentative understanding of what it is I have been investigating. Butoh is not like any other dance or movement style I've ever experienced. For the most part, it's not a technique sort of thing. That is, there is no real component of first you put your foot here, and then you move your arm like so. No, it's not like that, at all.

And it's easy to get the wrong idea by watching a performance or two, as well. You might watch this incredibly compelling presentation and think that the dancer was showing us his or her most innermost feelings, or was taking on a character role, but no.

In a fucked-up sort of way, the closest way I can think to describe butoh is akin to shamanism. Or maybe even a strange form of lycanthropy. Let's say the dancer is performing something about trees. The dancer would not be doing a sort of kindergarten approach to trees, coming out with her or his body held out in the shape of a tree, with the legs playing the part of the trunk, and the arms waving about like branches in the breeze. Instead, the dancer might focus on some aspect of the tree and become that.

Obviously, you are not seeing an actual transformation. The human in front of you is not about to start sprouting leaves and producing chlorophyl. But it's not so simple as pretending to be a tree....

Over the years of studying with Denise, I have learned that the progression is not fast. Our warm-ups are gradual. There is a certain amount of repetition. I have done many of the exercises numerous times, and I often wonder just how they will fit into the context of performance. We start with tiny movements. This week, we began with microscopic movements of the head on the occipital joint, and tiny movements of the tailbone. We worked on waking up the entire spine in a gradual fashion, getting larger and larger motions, and then progressed to suri-ashi, the gliding walk of Japanese dance (and Japanese martial arts). This walk, which is the only specific physical technique I've ever studied in butoh, gives a physical focus to practice while mental focus is upon external forces which do not actually exist. It is essentially a moving meditation, and I slip away into a different state while I do it. My mind may wander occasionally, but if I'm in the moment, the only things which exist are the floor beneath my feet and the strings which pull me along.

A string pulls the top of my head to the sky. Another draws my tailbone to the earth. Another string is attached a couple of inches below my navel and extends to the horizon. Each of these strings pulls inexorably, and I am drawn along at a constant speed. Once I am moving with no acceleration or deceleration, other strings are added. They may be attached to the back of my heart, my left floating rib, or the back of my right ear. They may be attached in multiple places, all pulling me along. Which string will pull the strongest? Which will change my direction or speed? I do not know until it happens. The impulse is subconscious. If I make a conscious decision, then my ego is too much at the forefront. The strings are what controls my direction, not my conscious decisions.

In an earlier workshop, we worked on killing the self. Since I'm here now, typing this to you, you know this wasn't a literal suicide. But it was a destruction of ego. If a dancer was caught emoting, s/he would receive a scolding. No choreographing. No showing. No acting. Just being. Embodying.

This week, as often before, we started working on the elements of fire, air, water, and earth. We would sit in a circle and free associate terms associated with one of those elements. For fire, we might hear the following:

• heat
  
• burning
  
• scorch
  
• incandescent
  
• radiating

Then we would become hollow beings, and we would become filled with the qualities of that element. I was filled with fire. My bones were no more. I was flame. My skin and eyes and hair and flesh were fire. Sometimes I flickered. Sometimes I burst in a conflagration. Sometimes I smouldered.

We repeated the same exercise for the other elements, and at the end of the first day, we were given homework: we were to prepare a list of our ten worst fears and bring it into class the next day.

The next morning, we shared some of those fears. Some are ubiquitous: things like losing your loved ones, violent death, cancer, old age. Some were unique: insects indoors, flushing the toilet at night, having feet skewered or smashed.

I was mystified. Here were were, sharing things very personal to us, but studying something which strips the personal away. What were we going to do with these fears? We paired up, and did a descension/ascension exercise while holding our partner's head, and moving it around gently while they relaxed and surrendered all muscular control of it to our hands. This takes a lot of trust and concentration, and is darned tricky. We then repeated the exercise, but this time, the person whose head was being held had to talk about their greatest fear throughout the exercise. This was difficult for multiple reasons. Just on a purely mechanical basis, it's much harder to free the muscles in your head and neck while you're talking. There is also the discomfort of talking about something that scares the shit out of you, and opening up to someone you don't know all that well about something intensely personal. There's the almost inevitable stiffening up that will happen while you think about something terrifying.

But something unexpected happened. Even though the exercise took us all outside our comfort zones, with our heads being supported by our partners, the initial tension melted away. Interesting....

We set that aside and went back to embodying elements. Once again, I was left wondering how everything fit in together.

And on the third day of the workshop, everything started to click. We each chose a fear from our list, and we mapped that fear to an element. My fear is decrepitude. I've sampled this a few times in the past because of sickness or injury. There have been times when I was unable to do simple things for myself, like walk or even get in and out of bed without assistance. The thought of experiencing these things again, or, even worse, experiencing them again without a chance of getting better, gives me the heeby-jeebies. This fear is an enormous stimulus for why I do so much physical training.

My fear of decrepitude is heavy, and weighs upon me like earth, so that is the element I chose. Specificity is key, so I decided upon sand. The way I see it, sand is infertile. It has no life of its own, but is blown by the wind, fills cracks and corners, and gets heavy and sodden. These are the characteristics I embodied. I did not act out my fear, but transformed myself into sand, giving it the same sort of "loudness" engendered by my fear. I was heavy. Everything about me was heavy. I was drawn toward the floor without collapsing. My eyes were blind because they were sand. My skin was heavy. Face. Belly. Legs. Lungs. Everything. I was pushed by a wind. I was pressed against a wall. Sodden with trickling grains.

We became these elements in groups. Some people were able to successfully transform themselves. Others had a harder time, and used their bodies to describe their element rather than to become it. Some had a difficult time divesting themselves of prior dance training, and there were exhortations to get rid of the embellishments and to stop choreographing. Demands included more specificity, no censoring, no hiding, and no expressing. With practice, there were no more frowns or sad faces, arabesques or pliés, and something much more primal, authentic, and unpracticed appeared. Performances became much more compelling, and though the dancers were not using expression of emotion at all, as an audience, what we saw was intensely expressive and deeply moving.

We continued to progress with these exercises for the remainder of the workshop, and by the end, we had three pieces placed together in a group: two fears and one thing which was the opposite or cure of a fear. I decided to go with the decrepitude again, and decided the opposite or cure is self-mastery.

So my three were:

1. Fear of decrepitude as engendered through earth. Sand,
   
2. Fear of tooth extraction as engendered through fire. Radiation and the contraction caused by heat.
   
3. Self-mastery as engendered through water. Fluidity and the coalescence of water surface tension.

Our fears and chosen elements are immaterial to the audience. I did not know what fears were obliquely represented by the dancers in front of me, although I could make an educated guess as to what element they might be embodying. What mattered was what I saw. And I saw something beautiful and grotesque and powerful.

I saw butoh.

I've been scarce around these parts lately because I've been so busy with moving. As of yesterday, I finally got all my stuff from the apartment to the new house. I am now officially no longer sick of packing, and on the cusp of being sick of unpacking. The garage is full of boxes which have not yet been attended to, and I'll be working on those throughout the week. But in the meantime, hi!

I had a nice little housewarming gift in my mailbox the other day: a pretty little handmade box from chernobylred. Thanks! I love little boxes. I don't know why, but I do. Those and blank books. I think it's the pure potential they represent. Now, what will I put inside this pretty little box? Hmm....

The new house is so much nicer than the apartments I've been living in for the past decade or more. I have a crush on my new kitchen. And on the jacuzzi bathtub. Oh yes.... My room is taking shape, and is beginning to look cozy and inviting. I plan on having a bookshelf running along near the top of the wall. This will keep the books accessible, but also not get in the way of organizing my other stuff.

For the past few weeks, I've been doing something called the burpee challenge. On day 1, I did 1 burpee. On day 2, 2. Today is day 22. I haven't done my 22 yet, but I will shortly. I managed to talk a few people into doing this with me. For those of you who are, how are you holding up? Once I'm through day 100, I plan on doing the same thing, but with pushups. I fully intend to improve my strength, endurance, and technique by embracing exercises I hate. I'm a fitness masochist, but it pays off. I used to hate doing squats, and now they're probably my favourite exercise. Will I ever get to like burpees? Not yet. They're still hateful, even if I'm much better at them than I was earlier this year.

So many people have been saying what a shitty year this has been. And yes, some horrible things have happened (what year doesn't hold horrors?), but at the same time, it's been a great year for me, over all. Here are a bunch of the things I've been blessed with:

• My health has never been better than it has been this year. In previous years, I've been stricken with numerous colds and flus which plague me for multiple weeks. I currently have my second cold of this year. The first one was in the early spring and lasted less than two weeks. I'm on day three of this cold, and I suspect it is all but gone. I feel much better today than I did two days ago. Huzzah! And I have had no asthma attacks this year which were anywhere close to hospital worthy. Huzzah!
  
• I've achieved several fitness/physical goals. I can now do glute ham raises, multiple pistol squats, handstands, a pile of power jumping jacks, and double unders on the jump rope. I also achieved goals I didn't know I had: I can hold an extended plank, and can even do push ups in that position with relative ease. I passed a fitness test at the excellent level, not only for my own age group, but for people two decades younger than I.
  
• I got to dance with Louise Lecavalier, and although her crazy choreography got the better of me, it wasn't through lack of energy and strength. I was able to keep up with the frenetic pace of two days of dancing with her. Booyeah!
  
• I toured England for the first time with knightky.
  
• I made a major breakthrough in movement and mind over matter in studying whirling with the incomparable Ziya Azazi.
  
• I think I got my first significant glimmer of understanding of butoh studying with Jocelyne Montpetit.
  
• I designed and created a pile of cool costuming, from a lined velvet dance coat to a pile of dark ages Viking clothing.
  
• I learned to tablet weave.
  
• I learned to china paint and greatly improved my sumi-e technique.
  
• I wrote a play and had it performed, and people liked it a lot.

I'm fucking lucky.

Earlier this year, in an almost unprecedented event, I set actual fitness goals for myself. This month, I achieved one of them. I can now do glute hamstring raises without it feeling almost impossible. In case you don't know what they are, they look like this:



One of my other goals is to be able to do numerous pistol squats with relative ease. I'm not there yet, but there's a decent chance I might be, by the end of the year.



For the past two years, I've had a recurring issue with my lower back/glute area. It made me stop weight training for quite a while, because it was such a bad issue, that it was making even basic hip slides and hip circles--fundamental movement from my dance--painful and poorly executed. I discovered that deadlifts were making it worse, and even though it's one of my favourite lifts, I stopped doing it.

After several months, and many therapeutic massage treatments, I thought the problem went away. And then, two weeks ago, the stupid thing flared up again while doing deadlifts at CrossFit.

I was pretty worried by this. I went for more massage therapy, and then to visit a physiotherapist who specializes in movement analysis. After lots of range of motion experimentation, he found out the issue. Apparently, I am much stronger and much more flexible than the average person. I have a slight discrepancy, with one hip being stronger than the other, and one side more flexible. Because all the surrounding muscles are nice and strong, and because my flexibility, even on my stiff side, is still pretty darned good, my body was able to compensate and cheat without me even noticing it. The cure for this is single-legged training. So I'll be focusing on stuff like pistol squats, single-leg lunges, single-leg deadlifts, etc. on my non-CrossFit days. This is supposed to iron out the problem.

Tomorrow is my first training day with the physiotherapist. It's pretty neat that this coaching counts as physiotherapy and is therefore covered by my health insurance. I lucked out.

So yeah, my physio just might get me doing multiple pistol squats. And then I'll be two goals down....

CrossFit has been great. It's been helping me achieve goals I never even thought to set.... like doing 100 pull-ups in a day. Sure, they might be assisted pull-ups, but still. Damn. Oh yes, and I can do some pretty kick-ass burpees, now. I still think burpees suck, but at least I can make 'em look good for a while.

My dance training has jumped up into overdrive. I need a place to keep track of it all, so this will do. Here's what I have this year:

• Jan. 28: On the Move dance conference
  
• Feb. 4: Dave St-Pierre repertory workshop with Karina Champoux and Frédéric Tavernini
  
• Feb. 6: Caribbean fusion workshop with Cassandra Fox
  
• Feb. 11: Contact Improv class/jam with Tanya Williams
  
• Feb. 12: Burlesque workshop with Sassy Ray
  
• Feb. 16-March 23 (weekly): 6-week session in Contemporary Dance training with Kymberley Feltham
  
• Feb. 19-20: Body Economy and Awareness through Whirling Instruction and Concept workshop with Ziya Azazi
  
• Feb. 21, 22, 24: Butoh workshop with Jocelyne Montpetit
  
• Feb. 25: CanAsian Dance Festival (I'll be watching, not performing)
  
• Mar. 26: Earth Day (I'll be performing at City Hall in Kitchener)
  
• Mar. 27, Apr. 3, 10: Contemplative Dance workshop with Denise Fujiwara
  
• May 9-13: Making and Seeing Dance workshop with Daniel Lepkoff
  
• May 13-15: Ontario Regional Contact Jam (including training)
  
• May 19, 20: Training/dancing workshop with Louise LeCavalier
  
• Off and on throughout the summer, tribal fusion belly dance with Laura McCutchan
  
• Oct. 1: Nuit Blanche poi performance at Habeeba's Studio in Toronto
  
• Nov. 9-Dec. 14: Contemporary Dance training with Kymberley Feltham
  
• Nov. 13: Folkloric Dance Ethnology with Jaene Castrillon
  
• Dec. 17: "Project Five Star" dance improvisation performance workshop and performance with Karen Kaeja, Suzanne Liska, and Kathleen Rea
  

Interspersed among all of that are the dance and fitness classes I already teach, the personal training I offer, plus my regular physical training. Crazy!

Most of my training takes place in Toronto. So do most of my performances. It would be so much easier if I were living there....

I keep hearing this in lots of situations in reference to posture: pull your chin in.

This is wrong. I'll tell and show you why.

Here is the problematic head/neck position. I see it all the time. I call it turtle head, because it reminds me of a turtle poking its head out of its shell. This is perfectly acceptable posture for a turtle, but for people, not so much. It's often accompanied by forward sloping shoulders and a closed chest. It's also often accompanied by neck pain.



In order to correct this posture, people will often say pull your chin back, ostensibly to give this alignment, instead:



However, in order to go from the position in the first photo to that in the second, I did not pull back my chin.

When I pulled my chin back, I ended up with this position, instead:



This unflattering angle not only gives me multiple chins, but also closes my windpipe off a bit, making it harder to breath. Not acceptable.

So, what did I do to go from the first position to the second?

Years ago, I picked up a Chinese martial arts book and flipped through it. I don't remember what style it was, but one gruesome analogy caught my attention. In reference to head position, it said to imagine your head was hanging from a meathook.

From this, I instead imagined the top centre of my head was suspended from above by a string (which is just a bit friendlier to me than the meathook image). By doing this, my head moved into much better alignment. My chin was no longer leading me along, leaving my throat open. I felt a better range of motion through my neck. It was comfortable. And it looked nice.

I combined this with my usual balancing tricks, carrying something on my head. If the weight is heavy and my head is forward in the turtle position, it puts a lot of strain on my neck. If I pull my chin back and carry something on my head, it applies uncomfortable compression, and also, breathing is still more difficult. And when I lifted with the imaginary string, the weight on my head was centred much better, and I had more stability and comfort.

And as far as fighting goes, you can hold this position and tip down slightly, guarding your throat without counterproductively cutting off your own air supply.

I do not know the identity of these dancers. But damn. That was sexy.

Once again, I've been wondering why belly dance training is so much more expensive than other dance styles.

I did about six hours of training with Louise LeCavalier for under $100. A comparable workshop with an internationally-renowned belly dancer would cost about three or four times that amount.

A five-day workshop with a belly dance instructor costs about $600. A five-day butoh workshop costs about half that.

I rarely take belly dance workshops anymore. I just can't afford them. I purchase instructional DVDs, instead. But I study with world-class performers in other dance styles.

Does anyone know why belly dance instruction is so much more expensive?

Over the years, I've studied a lot of different dance styles, both in classroom and workshop situations. I've also seen lots of dance performances, and I've noted a few patterns about the relationship of dance to music.

1. Dance is the visual representation of the music, and enhances the experience by combining visual with audio.
   
2. The music is mostly irrelevant to the dance, and if the movements coincide with any part of it, it's coincidental.
   
3. The dance is done only to the rhythm of the music, and the music is therefor interchangeable, so long as the music has a coinciding number of counts for the choreography/combination.
   
4. The dance is representative of the theme of the song, rather than the melody/rhythm.
   
5. There is no music at all, and the dance is performed in silence, or the act of the dance itself creates music.
   

#1 is something I see very frequently in improvisational belly dance, and is how I generally treat music/dance, when I perform. I do not necessarily believe it is the superior way of doing things, but it appeals very much to my personal aesthetics. Maybe it's a synaesthesia thing, but when I hear certain parts of music, it feels/looks like certain body movements to me.

I have seen #2 in contemporary and butoh performances, where the music and dance sometimes seem at odds with one another. I think this may be intentional for the purpose of shaking up the viewers' perception a bit, and perhaps keeping them off balance.

I have also seen it with bad dancers, who have a wooden ear and/or no sense of rhythm. I've also seen it with inattentive dancers, who are more concerned with going through a series of tricks and combinations, and are completely ignoring the music.

#3 I've seen in a lot of classroom situations, and in choreographies which are based on counting, rather than anything else to do with the music, specifically. It is especially easy to replace a dance done to one 4:4 or 3:4 time signature song with another. Just adjust the speed of the dance to the tempo of the piece. I personally find this the least interesting, but in terms of teaching, it is the simplest--especially when drilling technique.

I have also seen it in square dancing, where the dancer is using the music for rhythm, but the voice of the caller for combinations.

#4 is something I've seen in contemporary dance, as well. I have also used this a few times, while using dance as a story-telling medium. I have also seen it when a dancer performs to dialogue or poetry.

#5 is something I see in percussive dances, like tap, slap dance, etc. I have long wanted to experiment with this in different ways (ie. wiring up parts of my body so that different movements would play different sounds through a computer), but I do not have the technical know-how. If someone wants to collaborate with me on this, let me know!

There may very well be other patterns, but these are the ones I've noted. What are your opinions on the topic?